Charles Darwin at a green chalkboard.

2017 Darwin Awards

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Honoring Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool--by removing themselves from it in the most spectacular way possible.

Forklift Around And Find Out
2017 Darwin Award Winner
Confirmed True by Darwin

"Stack Attack!"
"A stacked rack, a broken back."
"Don't fork around with pallets."
"He got 'forked up' in more ways than one."

Towering stacks of beautiful wooden pallets, and a man on his
     forklift pondering the many possibilities.

(August 2017, Japan) Logistics was uppermost in the mind of a warehouse employee of Tanarumono Logistics. The worker needed to change a light bulb ten meters overhead. The forklift could only reach 2.5 meters, clearly not close enough. Lets express this as a math problem:

If a person can reach a light fixture 2 meters overhead — and wants to replace a lightbulb 10 meters overhead — how many 15-cm wood pallets must be stacked onto a 2.5 meter forklift platform, to enable the person to reach the burnt bulb?

The answer is 37.

"Let There Be Light!"
Perched on this rickety wooden wonder, the 40-year-old convinced a colleague to forklift them to the ceiling. Anyone experienced with a haphazard construction of pallets can identify the problem with this cunning plan. The rickety stack collapsed.

Our unfortunate winner died in the wreckage, ironically reaching "a higher plane" than anticipated. This intrepid logistics escapade earns the 'former employee' a Darwin Award for a heroic effort to 'reach the light' with the tools at hand.

Title Suggestions - From Readers
"An Unpalatable Death" -Wendy
"Don't fork around with pallets." -D.Dixon
"Stack Attack" -J.Bracki
"He got 'forked up' in more ways than one." -Anon
"A stacked rack and a broken back" -A.Witham
"Even The Odds Were Stacked Against Him" -C.H.Bell
"Jenga Difficultly Level: 10" -S.S.Weir
"Pallatative Care" -A.Foss
"One pallet more and he would have stood an even chance." -T.Pegler
"Deadly Jenga... Just ONE More." J.A,Z.Pérez and D.S.Medlock

 
"Very foolish. If a forklift can lift you 2.5m, then the sensible solution is to stack four forklifts on top of each other." -R.How
 
"skidmark" -B.Evans
"Unpalletable death!" -P.Crusse;;
"A bad taste on his pallet." -M.NRory
"How do you say 'hold my beer' in Japanese?" -B.Stewart
 
"How did he die? He asked his colleague to drive in circles in order to screw in the new bulb." -F.Gobbi

DarwinAwards.com © 1994 - 2022
Submitted by: Kim SK
Reference: Internet Archive 8/31/2017, ORIGINAL: http://www.naratv.co.jp/news/20170831/20170831-02.html

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