Hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, Johnny Cash -- all well-known sources of disaster. The damage they cause is tragic, but at least they come from an understandable place. You can see the storm clouds brewing, or that the whiskey bottle is 3/4 empty. You have advance notice that something bad is coming your way. But much like your significant other, sometimes there is just no predicting what will set off a monumental disaster.*
*We may have just accidentally called your significant other a monumental disaster, and for that we apologize.
(Cracked's Antiheroes series shows you just how bad superpowers would be in real life.)
5
Screw Up Your Golf Swing, Start a Raging Wildfire
Shady Canyon Golf Club
On the great list of destructive sports, golf seems like it would rank pretty low. Hockey games will get you punched in the mouth. Soccer matches might cause riots. Baseball fields ... explode, maybe? But what's the worst thing to come out of a golf game? Plaid slacks and a bad business deal?
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Hint: It wasn't Gary's "hot new IP" that would melt his golf cart.
One anonymous golfer was playing a round at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, California. He had a particularly rough slice, and the ball landed near some rocks. Now, Anonymous Golfer (we'll call him Aggie, for short) was an upstanding gentleman: He wasn't taking a mulligan. He was going to play it as it lays.
Aggie took his swing, his club scraped against one of the rocks, and together they produced a tiny spark. That should have been the end of it. But alas, Aggie was using a titanium club. Titanium clubs are fantastic for playing both golf and Thor: They're made of a strong, lightweight metal ... with a tendency to cause 3,000-degree sparks that stay active for a full second.
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The designer was eager to fulfill demands to "make golf less boring."
The super-spark landed in the grass, which burst into flames. "It's OK," Aggie surely thought, "it's just some grass."
Then it spread to the bushes.
"Only a few bushes, surely somebody will get a fire extinguisher out here and everything will be fine," Aggie rationalized.
Cut to a few minutes later and ...
Shady Canyon Golf Club
"Play through?"
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