Fire Breather

Professional divers are not known for thinking too hard about the hazards they face daily while working under water. Darwin is constantly weeding out any diver who pushes over nature's limits and anyone who thought about the risks they were taking would obviously choose another line of work. Diving is a very macho profession and there is an almost an innate need to show your friends how tough you are. However, the saying in the profession is that, "There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old, bold divers," and Darwin's selection process begins early in a diver's training.

In the Spring semester of the Marine Diving Program students are introduced to welding on dry land in preparation to their learning underwater welding later in the course. One day before the first day of welding class, and before the instructor showed up to put a stop to the festivities, a group of students were gathered around one of the welding tanks that (most of them) would soon be learning to use.

A welding rig consists of two tanks, one of oxygen and the other of acetylene, an adjustable pressure reducing regulator, a flashback arrestor, and a torch with valves that control the mixture of oxygen and acetylene coming out of the torch's cutting tip. A single spark and this mixture bursts into a flame that can be adjusted to be hot enough to cut through steel.

Before the first class where he would learn the purpose each of these parts of the played in the process of safe welding, our award winner decided that he was going to show off his ability as a fire-breathing diver trainee. Putting the cutting tip into his mouth, he released the torch's valve to breath in the flammable mixture of acetylene and oxygen. Striking a match, he exhaled the his lung full of gas over the open flame. Needless to say the results were everything he could have hoped for, the ball of flame that shot from his mouth was worthy of a carne sideshow fire breather.

If he had stopped at this point he would have been a local hero and there would be no story, but sometimes you really have to work at being stupid. Of course, he had to do it again. However, this time as he stood there with his lit match, he held his breath a bit too long and he felt the sudden urge to take a quick inhalation before expelling his lung full of flammable gas. If he had waited until after class to do his stunt, he would have learned the purpose of a flashback arrestor. Flames follow the flow, which in this case was into his mouth, down his wind pipe and into his lungs. Natural selection wins again.

Submitted on 02/04/2006

Submitted by: Karl Lueck
Reference: Santa Barbara News Press 1972

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
While this happened too long ago to be a verifiable DA (unless you can get us a copy of the news clipping), it is DEFINITELY worthy of a PA! I could easily see how someone would be emboldened by a successful first try and attempt a it again...with dire and colorful results! Thanks for submitting, Karl, I really liked this one!

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I've known a couple of divers and this sounds like just the kind of stunt that a newbie would have tried! Good story, Karl, and thanks for the submission!

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