[Fwd: Fw: Darwin Candidate]

[Amanda Lewanski]

This is off any topic I can find, but it's so bizarre I just had to
share it. I love the Darwin awards; shall I post the winners list when
it comes out?

--Amanda

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fw: Darwin Candidate
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 17:08:49 -0400


---------------------- Forwarded by Greg B. Jones/USA/BAC on 04/06/2001
05:07 PM ---------------------------

Human Projectile of the Month
Top honors for "Human Projectile Of The Month" go to an as-yet
unidentified
dude who, we're told, is also a serious contender for the annual Darwin
Award. That prestigious prize is given- posthumously- to the person who
does
the human gene pool the greatest service by removing himself from it in
the
most extraordinarily stupid fashion. Well, the Darwin folks might see it
that way, but we consider it a gallant if not brainless form of
ballistic
research.

Troopers from the Arizona Highway Patrol got onto this historic event
after
motorists reported some mysterious scorched and blackened scars on a
stretch
of deserted highway. The more officers found, the stranger the case got,
until they pulled back, regrouped, and launched a full-scale
investigation.

Here's what they kinda "pieced" together: JATO units are basically huge
canisters of solid rocket fuel used to achieve "Jet Assisted Take Off,"
typically lifting big transports into the air from rough-ground, short
runways, or shooting overloaded planes from the decks of aircraft
carriers.

They were not, repeat not, designed to augment the inherent boost factor
of
a 1967 Chevy Impala. But we guess- let's call him "Zippy"- didn't know
that
when he hooked one up to his ride.

Ol' Zip apparently chose his runway carefully, selecting a nice long,
lonely
piece of straight-as-string highway in good repair. Not guessing he
might
need a bit more than five miles of zoom surface, Zippy's test track had,
that far down the strip, a gentle rise on a sloping turn.

Anyways, the Zipster kicked the tire, lit the fire, and ran his Chevy up
to
top cruising speed. And then he hit ignition!

Investigators know exactly where this happened, judging from the
extended
patch of burned and melted asphalt. The pocket-calculator boys figure
Zip
reached maximum thrust within five seconds, punching that Chevy up to
"well
in excess of 350 mph" and continuing at "full burn" for another 20 to 25
seconds.

Early in that little sprint, at roughly the 2.5 mile mark, the Human
Hydra-Shok stood on the brakes, melting them completely, blowing the
tires
and rapidly reducing all four 'skins to liquefied trails on the
pavement.

Remember that gentle rise on the turn? That's where Zippy concluded his
land-speed record attempt and went for aerial honors, ultimately
reaching an
altitude of 125 feet and still climbing when his flight was abruptly
terminated. We'll never know how far and how high The Big Zip might have
gone. A cliff face of solid rock kind of got in the way, posing a
serious
violation of the laws of physics vis a vis two chunks of matter
attempting
to occupy the same space at the same time. Zip gave it hell though,
blasting
a three-foot deep crater in the terra-very-firma.

The best modern forensic science could do was ID the car's make, model,
and
year. As for Zip, only trace evidence was found of bone, teeth and hair
in
the crater, and splinters of fingernail embedded in what is believed to
be a
piece of steering wheel. If there ain't room for this one in the
Guinness
Book of World Records, there damn sure ought to be an honorable mention
in
Weatherby's.