Darwin award nominee

:shrug_n:

There are plenty of career choices that entail significant risk.

I'm not sure a test pilot is any safer than what those guys did. Or any of the various "X games" athletes. A commercial fisherman, etc.

Yet I think they all share a common theme.

The individuals have confidence in their ability to avoid the "problem" that always seems obvious after the fact.

Edit: Heck, I've worked doing inspections at nuclear power plants for 30 odd years and have gotten my share of radiation exposure in the process. I'm sure that plenty of people think I'm nuts for doing it, but I don't. For me the risk is quite quantifiable and acceptable. If I end up getting a cancer down the road, it won't change my opinion.

And for the record, the only place I've ever worked that I had the slightest concern about my life was a chemical plant. I've worked on off-shore oil platforms, Prudhoe Bay Alaska, loaded solid rocket motors for the Shuttle and Titan rockets, submarines, various air force aircraft, as well as nuclear power plants and I never had any real concern in those locations.

The difference was that the latter had the appropriate respect for the dangers involved and took the necessary precautions. Chemical plants were a little more "cowboyish".


I don't disagree, and I'm being overly harsh and somewhat unfair, since presumably the common link for real "Darwin Awards" is stupidity. These people are educated, motavated and intelligent in all likelihood. But driving under a tornado and getting tossed a half a mile? There's still some serious what was he thinking involved.

Cheers
 
I don't disagree, and I'm being overly harsh and somewhat unfair, since presumably the common link for real "Darwin Awards" is stupidity. These people are educated, motavated and intelligent in all likelihood. But driving under a tornado and getting tossed a half a mile? There's still some serious what was he thinking involved.
Cheers

Ever talk to a test pilot?

They make fighter pilots look like pussy

What do they do for a living?

They take up an experimental airplane, push it to the point to identify it's limits.

How do they know where those limits are?

When they've exceeded them, and things get "interesting".

Every single one will tell you that the guys who died did so because they made some sort of mistake, one that they would never do. This is the source for the phrase "screw the pooch" that I've used before.

So I have no doubt that these storm chasers thought they knew what they were doing, that they had positioned themselves in a position relative to the storm, that the risk was acceptable and that they were not going to die.

Did they "screw the pooch"?

I don't know. I don't know where they were driving, what choices they had, and which ones they made.

Maybe they made a bad choice, maybe it was simply a case of excrement happens. Maybe they just pushed that envelope a little too far and couldn't bring it back under control.

Hindsight is 20-20, so it seems obvious now that they made a bad choice. The reality is that they could have been positioned, relative to the storm, that 99 times out of 100 would keep them perfectly safe, based on the normal behavior of these storms, and they had the bad luck to get that 100th event. The tornado made an atypical move and they had nowhere to go.

BTW, not only have I met test pilots through work, where our systems were involved in inspecting their equipment, my Dad was one.

He was involved in the program right after WWII where we took all the different aircraft from all sides and did a fly-off to baseline their capabilities and feed our design teams. His roommate at test pilot school was a guy named Allan Shepard, you might have heard of him. :coffee:

He was one of two guys to survive flying the manned version of the V-1. About 10 guys didn't make it. eeek
 
I'm a Darwin Award aficionado. I've searched back here and find numerous different Darwin threads and I'm right in there in most of them. Some aren't really Darwin qualified (when the moron lives for example) and I get called out for not being in the true Darwin spirit.

I kinda think this is a good nominee right here. It's not a spectacular demise. But it's sure good and stupid.

http://www.fauquier.com/news/culpep...cle_4bf5a480-81b7-11e6-a0d4-2741d1de79c9.html


Cheers, BostonTim
 
Golf and Darwin Awards do go together sometimes

PUT SOUND ON for full effect :)

 
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