2000 Personal Accounts

The Darwin Awards salutes the spirit portrayed in the following personal accounts, submitted by loyal (and sometimes reluctant) readers.

Instant Sunrise   2000 Personal Account (1980, Michigan) The worst case scenario was averted at the last second, but I'm sending it in anyway for your review. I was stationed at an air base in Michigan, from which we flew B-52 bombers. One of my jobs was to haul nuclear weapons for the planes to and from their storage location. We would tow them on a bolster, which is a spindly cart with four casters, one on each corner, on which were perched four 1-megaton nuclear bombs. In order to tow these, one had to unlock either the front or rear casters, but never both, and hook the bolster to a truck. One morning, I was assigned to work with a man I couldn't stand, and he returned the compliment. While inspecting the bolster before towing, I unlocked the front set, not realizing that he had unlocked the rear set. We weren't speaking to each other, you see. The bolster rolled out of the building easily enough, but as soon as we made a tight turn to the right, all four casters swiveled and I looked in the rear view mirror to see the bolster rolling majestically over to the left, the right hand casters now 8 inches off the ground. When my coworker heard my terrified gasp, he slammed on the brakes, which is the only thing that kept the bolster from rolling completely over. He carefully put the vehicle into reverse, and eased the bolster back down. Now, would those four bombs have created an 'instant sunrise' if they hit the ground? No, the safety precautions would prevent that. But each bomb carries several hundred pounds of high explosive in the trigger mechanism, and this certainly would have detonated, scattering radioactive material all over the Michigan countryside and turning me and my co-worker into unpleasant memories. Had the accident progressed to its logical conclusion, I believe we would have had the ultimate Darwin entry, or at least one with a half-life of several thousand years. DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2008 Submitted by: Anonymous Ben says it's not true: "My occupation gave me fairly specific information regarding the handling of aircraft delivering nuclear weapons. There are so many things about the sequence of events described in this story that couldn't possibly have occurred, it's ridiculous. The weapon handling described is even on the weak side for conventional weapons. Plus these weapons have been tested in accidental impact scenarios including truck-slams-wall, truck-hits-train, traiin-hits-truck, plane-hits-ground, and even lightning. This story must be made up." Steffan says it's not true: "I can tell you that this story is pure bulls**t. I am a nuclear technician. I help design neclear weapons. Specificaly, ones that go on bomber planes. Those nuclear weapons would not explode even if you shot them with guns, hit them with trucks, trains, or even planes. When a bomber plane releases a nuclear weapon, the plane sends a "message" to it that starts the arming sequence. The bomb will then calculate the amount of time it has until the target is reached. After this time is calculated, the bomb will only explode when hits that time. If the time to the target is too short, the bomb will not arm itself, and will simply hit the ground and stay there." Read More Opinions. Awful? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Great? Hate it! Love it!

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