Link to column about falling coconuts
I recall this was a very real concern in Hawaii and that the local government would routinely harvest them from the trees or at least issue warnings to be careful. But in the 2-1/2 years we lived there, I don’t recall any actual coconut injuries. Quite a few shark attacks occurred, though.
Here in Thailand, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone getting conked by a coconut, but I always look up whenever I’m around the trees.
I almost got hit by a coconut in Thailand. I was at a resort on a beach under a palm tree reading a book.
I suddenly heard a heavy “thud” sound near my head and saw this huge coconut had fallen maybe half a meter from my head.
Until then, I had never thought that sitting under a palm tree could be deadly.
I moved away from the tree and for the rest of the day, indeed the rest of my vacation I kept seeing my own tombstone in my head with my name and “DEATH BY COCONUT” written underneath.
Come to think of it, I seem to recall posting about this experience on SD. It was years ago though so I can’t remember when if indeed I had posted about it.
When I was in Bali, a local man told me (with a twinkle in his eye) that “Uncle Coconut Tree would *never *allow such a thing to happen!”
S’okay…I think I’ll move my chair to the other edge of the beach, anyway. 
I was surprised when I first learned they came in those green husks. On Gilligan’s Island, they always fell off the tree husked. We started watching The Pacific last night, and they had it right when one guy managed to hack through the husk to find the shell and asked: “Now what do I do?”
[quote=“Siam_Sam, post:1, topic:577348”]
Link to column about falling coconuts
My job occasionally involves removing sprouting coconuts from around coconut trees in Queensland, Australia (they are a non-native species here and therefore a “weed”), so I guess that puts me in a high-risk category. I have to put “impact injury from falling coconut” on the risk assessment and warn my team to check above their heads and minimise the time they spend in the “drop zone”. However, on any given day spent on this task, involving dozens of trees, I probably see maybe one coconut fall (assuming average wind). The chances of someone being struck, let alone killed, therefore seem rather small (but also rather difficult to quantify!).
That would be a pretty cool tombstone!
If I live into my mid-90s, I think I’ll move to a place with lots of coconut trees, and spend as much of my remaining time as possible sitting in their shade. If I didn’t get hit by a coconut, it would probably be a pleasant and relaxing way to spend my senescence, and if I did, I’d get the cool tombstone!
How about Durian?-
Anyone ever get hit by those mammas?
Even bigger than coconuts, aren’t they? Doesn’t look like chance of survival
from a solid hit is very good.
They do look like medieval war weapons. I’d hate to get smacked in the face with one of those by some Bozo swinging it around. But I don’t think the trees grow much higher than 2 meters.
Per wiki they may grow to 50 meters.
Maybe cultivated trees are pruned much shorter, but it sounds like
you had better be careful on those back country hiking expeditions.
I can’t say I’ve seen a 50-meter-high durian tree. Maybe I wasn’t looking up.
Tommy C, don’t you wear a helmet on a job like that?
And how rigid are those spikes on a durian? If they’re hard, they’d make it more dangerous, but if they’re flexible, they could cushion the impact like a Koosh ball.
I do not think durian spikes are anything like a koosh ball. Maybe Sam
can tell us more about it.
One good thing about durian is that they literally stink.
My brother has a Thai wife and has been to the county several times.
He says they smell like raw sewage to him (but God do they taste good!)
Anyway, the smell is so strong that you are likley to be alerted well
before you step into the range of falling fruit.
I stay as far, far away as I can from the evil durian fruit. Nasty stuff. Being hit on the head with it would definitely be preferable to choking it down. It’s therefore been a long time since I handled one. But they’re certainly not as hard as a coconut. Maybe not like a koosh ball – maybe rubbery, like hard rubber? – but I’d not like to get whomped on the head with one, although again, that would be preferable to eating it.
They do NOT taste good. They taste like a three-month-old corpse left to stew in raw sewage. The smell is even worse.
Hahaha maybe it was a bad year for durian when you tried them.
You do like mangosteen, don’t you? My impression is that mangosteen is impossible
not to like, and it doesn’t have a bad smell, either.
But getting back to durian, here is what the great naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace
(codiscoverer of Evolution) had to say about them:
There is no good year for durian. Alfred Russell Wallace was obviously delirious from malaria.
But yes, mangosteen is really good.
Heinlein described the taste of durian as “A little like a cantaloupe, and a little like a pineapple, but mostly like itself”.
Maybe the government’s “Coconut Death Mitigation Project” is working, then?
