What if a Darwin Award nominee has reproduced?
Is he or she automatically disqualified if he has offspring? Since genetic and environmental factors both play a role in determining our choices and behaviors, I will discuss each as a source of potential Darwin Award candidates, before answering the question. A concrete example will help illuminate the discussion. Imagine the sole reason a man wins a Darwin Award is because he has the hypothetical Explosive Stupidity gene, a gene that causes him to ignore the potential downside of playing with bombs. The man who possesses this imaginary gene tends to minimize potential dangers by rationalizing that he is “good with explosives” and will not be harmed. No matter how many hours of film footage he sees showing flying body parts, and no matter how many friends he knows who were injured in explosions, he will never be convinced that he is anything but “good with explosives” and beyond harm’s reach. So one day he blows himself up playing Russian roulette with a land mine, like the three fell
