1998 Urban Legends
| The following stories are apocryphal. They are included on the Darwin Awards website because they are inspirational narratives of the astounding efforts of legendary Darwin Awards contenders. |
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The Last Supper
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His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage, just the right combination of foods to produce a severe gas attack. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed.
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Carl Sagan determined that aliens could deduce the presence of carbon-based life on Earth by spectral analysis of our atmosphere. Detection of methane would prove continuous bioproduction of the molecule, since it breaks down rapidly in contact with oxygen. He further demonstrated that the largest single source of methane in our atmosphere is from bovine flatulence, with particularly large concentrations above the cattle producing states of the US and in Argentina. A single cow fart is significantly larger than a human's production all day.
The whole story is disputed by Ian A. York and Kenneth T. Lim, who say: "Refer to to York's research on the volume and quantity of flatulence, and the fact that methane molecules break down very rapidly in the presence of oxygen. If you multiply the total volume of air in an average bedroom by 21% (for the percent of oxygen in air) you will arrive at a figure far greater than that needed to dissipate a mere 6 liters of pure methane, a figure way too high for flatulence, which is not 100% methane." New alert! Iain says we left out a crucial part: "I heard that when three men entered the room to figure out just what was happening, they also inhaled a great amount of the gas, and all three were hospitalized for methane poisoning. None died." David F. Mayer says, "Methane Gas Is NON-Toxic. It does not support respiration, but neither does ANY other gas except oxygen. Like all non-toxic gases, including nitrogen, it causes suffocation." |
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