Yeah, those folks: the ones who deliberately or heedlessly put themselves at risk by ignoring public warnings intended to help keep them safe. Just now, for example, the ninnies in the Southeast who failed to take shelter or get the fu!k out when the Weather Service and the police issued warnings that life-threatening storms and floods were on the way…how about those ninnies? Why are we sending helicopters and boats to get them out of the mess they plunged into of their own volition?
Here we have this, for example: A woman in Florida who blithely discounts official pleading to get the Hell out as the worst hurricane in the history of the Atlantic Coast bears down. Her grandson, who apparently failed to inherit all her Stupid Genes, realizes she is at risk (along with her dog!!), so he flies into the state, travels to her home, and gets stuck in the predicted floods. Now both their lives are at risk and they end up having to be rescued by Coast Guard helicopters and airlifted to safety.
Know how much it costs to operate a rescue helicopter?
No? Make a guess. Come anywhere close?
It’s SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS AN HOUR, just to run the chariot to pluck some ninny out of a predicament they got into by blithely ignoring all warnings and all common sense.
- For a rescue helicopter: $1600 an hour
- For a Coast Guard rescue boat: $1147 an hour
- For a C-130: $7600 an hour
!!!!
As nothing… The same source tells us the National Parks Service spent almost $5 million in 2007, in search and rescue alone.
Our cup runneth over with stupidity.
Most such rescues have to happen when some fool decides to ignore signs to stay on the trail, decides that the news reports of an incoming hurricane are just journalistic hysteria or Big Brother trying to manipulate us, that God is watching out for them…and on and inanely on.
Sometimes I wonder how some people manage to figure out how to make their own breakfast.
It leaves us with the question of…well…how much DO we want to continue the genetic heritage of stump-dumb stupidity? When someone pig-headedly does something that public information programs and newcasts and road signs urge don’t do that, should we — really — rescue them? Why?
Yeah, I know. God tells us to be good to our fellow nudnick.
But…y’know…Mother Nature issues no such edict. Is it possible that she’s tryin’ to tell us something?
If we rescue them, we invite them to continue contributing their “stupid” genes to the communal gene pool. If we let them get themselves out of their own predicament, we accomplish one of two ends (possibly both, come to think of it):
- We make it clear to the other ninnies out there what’s likely to happen if you ignore public safety warnings.
- We remove their Idiot Genes from the stream of humanity’s genetic makeup, thereby very possibly smartening up the generations to come.
Either of those, to my mind, seems like a salutary goal…