Darwin Award: the stupidest ways to take your own life (14 photos + 1 video)

The Darwin Award is a modern marker for those who died in a completely ridiculous manner. We have collected the stupidest ways to cleanse the human gene pool.





First, let's tell you who is given this award. The Darwin Award recognizes people who have purged the human gene pool of their heritage. The applicant must meet the following parameters:

- he should not have offspring. That is, even if he died, the person should not have had any offspring. And if you deprived yourself of such an opportunity, that’s fine too.

- the person must demonstrate an absolute lack of brain. Trivial losers are not taken into account in the bonus. The way to rid the human gene pool must be enchanting in every way.

- self-selection. That is, a person must make a fatal decision himself.

- maturity and ability to reason. The prize is awarded to people over fifteen years of age and those who are definitely not weak-minded. In exceptional cases the bar may be lowered.

- verifiability of the case. That is, people should really know about death. There should at least be documents about it.



Also, a bonus can be given to several people at once: a striking example is death while trying to create offspring. By the way, there are also honorable mentions. They are given to people who have almost committed suicide or lost their ability to reproduce. By the way, 90% of the award nominees are men.

1999 Copper pipes





Wayne wanted to make some money by selling stolen scrap metal. He entered the area where a house had just been demolished and began looking around in search of any valuable debris. A long copper tube with a diameter of seven centimeters caught my eye. That's a lucrative catch! But it was impossible to lift her and carry her away. To begin with, the thief was content with the not so valuable pieces of metal lying nearby, but he could not get this copper pipe out of his head. I got hold of some strong metal scissors and came back... And then, when I started cutting, I was shocked—literally—by a charge of 11 thousand volts. The ambulance was not immediately able to get to him - a significant area was under voltage. So Wayne died and didn't have to answer for the theft.

1999 Wheel of Fortune



Daniel fell under the wheel of fortune - literally. In the early hours of the morning, he broke into a Ford truck warehouse in London, planning a robbery. He acted like this: he lifted the truck with a jack, removed the wheels from it and dumped the loot into the back of another truck, in which he managed to turn on the ignition. And so he took off his shoes, truck after truck. According to local police, Daniel had a considerable “track record” in criminal matters and had been honing his craft for many years. But that night his skill failed him. He only managed to fill the truck halfway with tires when another truck slipped off the jack and the wheel ran over the chest of the 47-year-old thief.

2017 Red Revolution



The name of the hero of the following story, as well as his background and motives for his actions are unknown, but it is so short and bright that the Darwin Award decided to give the laureate the pseudonym Vargas.

Vargas was an ordinary welder in the Kurgan region (2 thousand km from Moscow). One spring day, Vargas simply decided to stick a fire extinguisher into a decommissioned artillery howitzer - a weapon shell similar to a cannon, but with a shorter and thicker barrel.

It is not known what exactly happened, but the fire extinguisher exploded suddenly inside the howitzer, and the flying pieces of metal wounded the welder in the head.

2020 The height of stupidity



Japanese Tetsu Shiohara, who broadcast live on social networks, conquered Mount Fuji.

Suddenly he slipped and fell. So much so that in the end he received this very award. The thing is that he set out to conquer the mountain in the summer, when it is hot in Japan and melts the edge of the snow, which eventually becomes more like a skating rink.

Probably, if it weren’t for social networks, everything would have worked out. In the stream, he said that his hands were numb from the cold, but he had to use his smartphone. Tetsu’s last words were “But this is where you should be careful.” The Japanese body was found at an altitude of about 3 thousand meters: he flew down as much as 770 meters.

2021 Affected



It was a hot autumn in California when, on one of the highways, two drivers got out of their cars to argue which of them was to blame for the incident.

At this point, a third vehicle tried to avoid the scene of the accident, and eventually the dispute ended.

year 2000. Moscow Marauder



Despite the fact that the nominee was nicknamed the “Moscow Marauder” on the award’s website, the story took place already 6 thousand km from Moscow, in Khabarovsk. An unknown man found out that his wife was cheating on him, and in anger tried to blow up his wife and her lover by attaching a homemade bomb to the door of their secret apartment. Alas, something went wrong and the man blew himself up.

2018 Karmic retribution for Valentine's Day



On February 14, 2018, in a Berlin hospital, doctors stopped supporting life in the body of a 19-year-old young man who, a month before, had had a very unfortunate fight with his girlfriend. In mid-December, while the couple was walking along the banks of the Havel River, the lovers had a fight. The quarrel was so serious that the young man attacked his future ex and threw her onto the ice. As a result, both went under water, only she was the only one who knew how to swim. By the time the guy was pulled out of the water, his body was hypothermic and his brain suffered irreversible damage.

2018 Python Thief



On January 28, 2018, Malayan Zaim Kosnan discovered a 3.5-meter reticulated python on the side of the road. The man decided to catch cold-blooded animals for subsequent sale and armed himself with gloves and a sickle. Everything went like clockwork, he raised the snake’s head high above him, got on his moped and drove home. However, the miner soon turned into prey: the python, dissatisfied with the situation, wrapped itself around the rider’s body, as a result of which Zaim did not travel even five kilometers. He suffocated as he walked and fell into the ditch.

1998 Ditch your wife and jump yourself



Who won the argument? In the midst of a bitter marital quarrel in a working-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Boedo, a 25-year-old husband, grabbed his 20-year-old wife and threw her from an eighth-floor balcony.

To his horror, she became entangled in the wires running under the window. The killer jumped from the balcony to his wife. What goal he set for himself, we can only guess. Did you think of finishing her off or did you repent and try to save her? In any case, he succeeded in neither one nor the other. He flew past the wires and crashed to his death. The wife managed to get to the nearest balcony and was saved.

1995 Do not count your chickens before they are hatched



Six people drowned in southern Egypt while trying to save a chicken that had fallen into a well. The first to dive into the 20-meter-deep well was the 18-year-old chicken owner. And he drowned - apparently, he was pulled in by an undercurrent. His sister and two brothers—none of them, as police determined, knew how to swim—climbed to help him and also choked. Two middle-aged peasants rushed to their aid, but they too were dragged away by the current. The bodies of all six were recovered with difficulty from a public well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 400 kilometers south of Cairo.

They also pulled out the chicken. The chicken survived.

1982 Flying high



Larry Walters is an offbeat flying enthusiast based in Los Angeles. One day he decided to take a desperate step: he tied 45 meteorological balloons filled with helium to a chair. I took a shotgun, beer and sandwiches with me. After which, fully armed, he sat down on a chair and asked his friends to untie the rope. He planned for the chair to rise to a height of 30 meters, but it flew up to 5 kilometers. Walters was unable to shoot at the balls at such a height; he was carried for a long time through the expanses of clouds. Until he got stuck in high-voltage wires. Because of it, a short circuit occurred and the entire Long Beach was left without power. Larry was the only exception in history. The man who was awarded the Darwin Award, despite the fact that he remained alive.

2002 Export!



A certain Luhansk deputy was walking with his boxer dog. At the same time, a police cadet, accompanied by two girlfriends, was walking towards him. It is not known what caused the scandal, but as a result, the cadet began to express his indignation to the deputy about walking dogs without a muzzle and collar in public places.

Speechless from youthful audacity, the servant of the people took out of his pocket an RGD-5 grenade, which he traditionally carried with him, pulled out the ring and threw it at the cadet. But at that moment, proving a high level of training, the dog darted after the grenade like lightning and proudly returned to its owner, clutching it in his teeth. The result is disappointing - the dog died on the spot, the deputy died in the ambulance, and the cadet who escaped with minor injuries spent several days in the hospital. The girls escaped with fright.