If I recall correctly, on that 1,000 ways to die episode, they showed her essentially exploding (at least, spraying blood everywhere) as soon as the pressure was released. Doesn’t sound very respectful to me, since that’s unnecessary gruesomeness (you’re not going to explode if that happens).
I find the Awards terribly funny. not funny because of the Awards themselves, but because of the irony of it all. For instance:
Yep. Larry is pretty much spot on. The whole idea behind the Darwin Awards is that natural selection is a race to achieve excellency. It isn’t. The idea is to thrive in your surroundings, nothing else. And for that, the ability to take dumb risks may trump cautiousness in determined circumstances. In any case weeding out one of the two characteristics would be a lousy strategy, your species will fare better with both.
Now, the irony here is that the people who doesn’t realize this just after hearing about the awards likes to make fun of dumb people… while proving that they aren’t all that sharp themselves.
Another irony is that they are supposed to be the Nobel Prizes for dumb people… and plenty of deeply intelligent people would qualify for the Darwins (even more if we disregard the pesky rule about surviving progeny), including Marie Curie. Hell, Nobel’s workers were suffering hilarious accidents all the time with the explosives.
Being the curious type, I just watched that segment on the net. It’s focus was T&A blowing up – not at all respectful.
How does that work? I’m not exactly sure what a decompression tank is, but was she underwater when it happened? Or…what?
Doing incredibly stupid fatal shit because you can’t be bothered to think it through?
Priceless.
And sometimes funny.
But I would agree that some of them are just sad.
The elephant one? Not so much funny. But it is stupid. Ignorant stupid. And frankly, I don’t care if she didn’t speak French. The tour guide starts yelling frantically at you, you stop what you’re doing.
I’ve dealt with that level of oblivious stupid too many times, fortunately never fatal, but sometimes injurious or destructive. Someone doing something dangerously stupid, I or someone else screams “NO NO! STOP!” and the person sighs and continues doing it until they get hurt or destroy something. Then when asked why they didn’t stop despite all the screaming, they give some arrogant bullshit about deliberately NOT listening because they didn’t like being yelled at.
A couple of years ago, I along with about 30 other people were viewing the Buffalo in Custer State Park (South Dakota). A van stops, dad and two teenagers get out. The teens walk straight past a “Buffalo are dangerous, do not approach” sign and announce that they’re going to go sit on this big old bull so dad can get a picture. I tell them not to. They “pffft” me and keep going. I point at the sign and tell dad it is a bad idea. Thankfully, he called them back. Same basic shit as the Elephant deal, but fortunately not fatal in this incident.
No, hyperbaric chambers are used to treat the “bends” aka decompression sickness. If a diver ascends too fast, you get them into a hyperbaric chamber AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, increase the air pressure so it is closer to the pressure at the depth they were at, and then reduce it to normal pressure slowly. That stops the nitrogen from bubbling out of the blood. If you let them out too soon, you are more or less back to the state they were in when you put them in; they don’t explode.
Thanks, I didn’t realize–that sounds awful. Poor woman.
I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. The guide most certainly way not screaming frantically, since loud noises are almost guaranteed to make the elephants charge.
And the mother was almost certainly not feeling one hundred percent with it. When our parents visited us, it was HARD on them. To get to that area of the country is a crowded overnight train ride, followed by 8 hours crammed in an overflowing bush taxi. Once there, the only form of transportation is motorcycle taxi (I had to teach my mom how to ride one.) They often stop eating when they see how the meat is sold from a huge pile of fly-covered offal baking in the sun. Often they pick up some intestinal parasites, making them feel like shit. And there is a good chance their malaria meds are making them a bit wack. Also, did I mention it’s nearly always above 100 degrees in that region, even at night, with no AC in sight? It takes a while for the parents to learn that you NEED to drink 1.5 liters of water before noon or you WILL get sick. Dehydration and heat exhuastion are almost unavoidable on these visits. For our parents it wasn’t so much “fun vacation” as “see what we are living through.”
We aren’t talking about some cushy Kenya safari with shiny landcruisers picking you up at your five star hotel. This is a very remote place, with no regulations and few laws. These guides have no certification or safety training, just experience.
Anyway, I personally was supposed to visit this elephant reserve. It’s pretty cool- you stay the night in huts on the property right among the elephants. Our guide was supposed to pick us up at 6:00 AM. We waited. We waited until 2:00 PM before giving up. The next day, we heard through the village grapevine why he never came.
He was attacked by an elephant.
Well, yes. That’s what tends to happen when you go around unpredictable wild animals with no protection or safety precautions. Even domesticated animals can turn on you and tear your ass the hell up, no matter how much experience you have in dealing with them. Wild animals, especially wild animals you have no experience with, are infinitely more dangerous and it’s a damn fool who doesn’t understand or chooses to ignore that basic and self-evident fact. It’s a damn shame the woman you mention died, but getting off the truck was a really, really stupid move.
Can you assend all the way in an emergency (getting the bends) and reverse it with a decompression chamber?
So, as she had already reproduced and her genes will carry on, she was not qualified for a Darwin Award.
These two assholes, on the other hand: linky.
Personally I think that if someone acts stupidly and it results in their death tough titty.
Unfortunately those people who act stupidly in dangerous situations quite often get other people killed while blissfully unaware of what they’ve done they survive unscathed themselves.
Or even more usually they cost people one hell of a lot of money and force volunteers and emergency service personell to risk their own lives getting them out of their own self inflicted predicament.
And then go on to get themselves in yet another situation not too long afterwards…
And then again…
And again…
No sympathy here.
Well, I said “fairly respectful, [as] such dramatizations go.”* The decompression-chamber death was less comical than 1,000 Ways to Die’s portrayal of, for example, the man who died of heat stroke while wearing a latex fish costume.
*For some reason, I originally typed “and such dramatizations”
When they start gathering the relatives of these people at a black-tie event and present the awards academy award style, I’ll sign up for saying they are tasteless. All the “awards” really consist of is a website listing some unfortunate but avoidable incidents. You do something stupid, people are going to laugh no matter how tragic the results.
What was the elephant doing on a vaction? 
Killing mothers, apparently.
Slight correction: they usually don’t explode. Depends on the pressure differential. cite here (granted, this was a planned decompression as opposed to one forced by a too-fast ascent…)
It was on a Straight Dope mission (stamping out ignorance).
The only one close I found was listed as a
- 2001 Darwin Award Nominee
Unconfirmed by Darwin*
Which is certainly not a “recipient.” Was there a different one?
That one was listed as a “Slush Pile” reader submission, that readers were allowed to vote on. The Darwin people didn’t reject it outright, but there’s apparently no endorsement beyond that.
Maybe “complete understanding brings complete forgiveness” but at some point it’s more fun and healthier to just say, “Yep, that’s an idiot.”
As for whether the awards are offensive, I didn’t care for the mediocre cartoon illustrations on their web site. They were as helpful as a sitcom laugh track.
However, I wouldn’t like the Darwins at all if there was actual video footage of the people’s deaths. But in print, which dilutes the immediacy, they can be funny.
Win!