In 2002 ABC television aired a report about how rare shark attacks really were, they said “Each year coconuts falling from trees kill 150 people.” Also in May of that same year George Burgess, who was (and may still be) director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File (ISAF) and shark researcher, was quoted saying “Falling coconuts kill 150 people worldwide each year, 15 times the number of fatalities attributable to sharks.” Now, I have no clue how or who keeps track of deaths caused by falling coconuts, but I have read that from 2000 to 2007 there have been an average of 5 deaths per year on average from shark attacks.¬†

With that being said, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some suggestions that may help put an end to the killer coconuts. 

Below are a few ways we can both protect ourselves from the killer coconuts and also put an end to coconut killing altogether:

1) Wear a helmet. We wear helmets when cycling, playing football, baseball, and hockey, and when doing construction work, people should have no problem getting used to wearing a helmet when going to the beach or napping outside. If they required wearing helmets outdoors in states that have palm trees just think about how helmet sales would increase, it would create jobs and be good for the economy.

2) Assign someone to monitor all coconut trees and to remove the coconuts that look dangerous. Or just have someone install nets beneath the palms so that if a coconut falls it will be caught in the net. This would also increase net sales, I mean sales of “nets” thus creating even more jobs.

3) We could have the people that monitor the trees put styrofoam around each coconut so that if it happens to fall and hit someone in the head it will decrease the chance of fatality.


4) Have a scientist or someone develop a palm tree that only grows to be about 5 feet high, that way if a coconut falls and hits someone on the head it probably will not kill them because of the short distance it has fallen. Of all the killer coconuts, I wonder how many of them fell from a height of over 20 feet, hmm this is all very interesting to think about.

5) Chop down all palm trees located in public areas. Maybe they should ban palm trees in public places, they do look cool but it seems they are just too dangerous to society.  

So there are some thoughts for you to ponder about the killer coconuts. Please be careful out there, there are a lot of nuts out there, I mean crazy people, but also watch out for the killer coconuts. 

I hope this article contributes to an increase in helmet and net sales and also an increase in people purchasing sharks as pets. I think my brother actually has a pet shark named Petey.