The Darwin Awards started out in 1985 on a Usenet discussion group to honor those individuals who “protect the human gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives” through their own stupidity. The idea was to find incidents of people doing such dumb things that the world was actually a better place because of their deaths.
These are people that you would hope would not have children to carry on their legacy of dangerous dumb. For example, in 1999, the state of Israel operated on Daylight Savings Time. Palestine did not. A group of Palestinians attempted to synchronize two car bombs. But the timers had been set on Palestinian time, while the drivers were running on Israeli time. The bombs exploded an hour “early”.
Then there is the robber who attempted a disguise by spray painting his face. The label on the paint can was clear: “Do not allow to come in contact with skin or eyes.” Nobody recognized him; he stopped breathing and died soon after the robbery. You get the idea.
Perhaps, the Darwin Awards should not be limited to individuals and that there also should be a “Darwin Award-In-Progress Award.” This would apply to slow-motion death that we can all see coming except for the government involved.
Actually, though there was one particular nation that did kill itself and the world is probably a better place for it. That is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The lighter side of the communist ideology is that if a nation could create a Worker’s Utopia, then everybody else would come onboard.
But, instead, the USSR spent all of its money on the military to help keep its own people and of the Eastern Warsaw Pact bloc inside the fences of the communist paradise. The USSR lasted about one generation.
Japan was the “killer economy” of the 1960s with years of 12-percent growth. The oil-price hikes in the 1970s took their toll but, even in 1987, the economy was growing at 7 percent. In 1989 an essay by the Japanese minister of transport—“The Japan That Can Say No”—said that basically no nation on earth could ever hope to equal Japan’s economic miracle.
But the boom/bust business cycle kicked in and the Japanese government took economic control, which has led to a generation of near-zero economic growth.
Finally, the real winner of the “Global Darwin Award” is China. In 1979 one of the top Chinese officials, Song Jian, started reading up on the overpopulation hysteria. The one-child policy was adopted in spite that the Chinese birth rate had fallen by 50 percent in the previous 20 years. The total fertility rate in China is now at the lowest ever recorded, but no matter. The government has it all under control.
Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet decided to send a letter bomb in 2000. He forgot to put enough postage stamps on the letter and it was “returned to sender”. Khay was so happy to receive some mail that he tore the letter open. His career in terrorism and as a potential government official ended there.
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