Home Lightsaber Stunt Ends in Disaster

Barada

Saboteur
from Scotsman.com

Two suffer horrific burns in Star Wars laser stunt

ALEX MILLSON


TWO young Star Wars fans were critically ill in hospital last night after a homemade "lightsaber" blew up and showered them in burning petrol.

The 17-year-old girl and a man aged 20 were believed to have filled a fluorescent light tube with petrol before setting it alight.

However, their stunt went tragically wrong when the device exploded in their faces, setting their clothes alight and leaving them with horrific burns.

The horrific accident was revealed when firefighters were called out after reports of a blaze in woodland in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

When the crew arrived at the wood, the fire was out and they discovered the pair lying in agony on the ground.

The man is believed to have suffered more than 40 per cent burns to his body.

Firefighters gave the stricken pair first-aid while waiting for paramedics to arrive. They were taken to a local hospital and later transferred to a specialist burns unit in Chelmsford, where they remained in a critical condition last night.

Specialists said the burns were so horrific that each of the patients had only a 50 per chance of survival.

A spokesman for Hertfordshire Constabulary said investigations into the incident were ongoing to determine exactly what had happened.

The tragedy came just days after the sixth Star Wars film - Revenge of the Sith - was released at cinemas across the UK.

It boasts an impressive lightsaber battle between Ewan McGregor's character, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and his fellow Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, played by Hayden Christensen.


What a pair if idiots. Those tubes are combustible enough without the gas...

Barada
 

IG-PPO

Sith Hamsters Handler
Maybe they wanted to recreate the Mustafar duel. Only they could decide which one was to be Anakin.
 

BlueHarvest

New Recruit
Thinin' out the heard... I hope they both pull through and learn a lesson. Sigh.
All we have to wait for now is some star trek fan to "one-up" it!
:scatter:
 

BlueHarvest

New Recruit
The photo speaks for itself...
 

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Darth Boru

Celtic Sith
I hope they pull through ok.


Pretty dumb thing to do. Reminds me of a story I heard about a mysterious indentation that appeared in the side of a cliff, with scrapes in the road a half mile away, rubber burn marks further out, and melted asphalt slightly further out.......


Turned out some nutter fitted a rocket booster to his nissan (or similar). When he hit the ignition it melted the asphalt and shot off.

Then he hit the brakes - hence burning rubber tracks.

Tyres wore through - brakes still full on - hence scrapes in road.

Then he got airborne, the road turned (he didn't obviously) and he impacted the cliff head on some 100 feet up, embedding the car which shattered into bits, leaving only and indentation.

The whole thing took about 4-6 seconds, impacting at some ridiculous speed. Only method of ID was a partial license plate. Nothing else survived.....

Dunno if this is urban myth or not, I seem to remember reading it a few years back as fact.
 

Darth Boru

Celtic Sith
Something like that, yeah ;)

Apparently there was REAL difficulty figuring out happened until some nearby military base admitted to having a guy missing. He worked in some kinda parts yard. When they also said there was an old airplane engine missing, detectives worked it out....

Really wish I could find that old article to get the facts totally straight.
 
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