‘Earth-shaking’ gender reveal party explosion triggers earthquake reports
The trend of explosive gender reveal parties has been widely mocked online (Arizona_Daily_Star/youtube and twitter)
A gender reveal party triggered earthquake reports across state lines after a family used industrial quantities of explosives to announce their child’s genitals to the world.
The earth-shattering explosion in a New Hampshire quarry rocked several nearby towns and could be heard as far as Massachusetts, police said.
After receiving multiple calls officers rushed to the quarry where they found a group of people who acknowledged holding a gender reveal party with explosives.
No injuries were reported, but the person who bought and detonated the explosives has turned himself in to police. Officers watched a video of the reveal and can confirm that the child was a boy, if anyone cares.
The source of the blast was around 80 pounds (36 kilograms) of Tannerite, a legal explosive typically sold over the counter as a target for firearms practice.
For safety reasons the manufacturer recommends a maximum quantity of 2 pounds should be sold only to professionals – clearly to avoid cases of straight madness such as this.
Kingston residents told NBC 10 Boston that the blast was unlike anything they’d heard before, and some reported property damage as the shock waves literally shook their homes.
“We heard this God-awful blast,” said Sara Taglieri, who lives in a home that abuts the quarry. “It knocked pictures off our walls … I’m all up for silliness and whatnot, but that was extreme.”
“It cracked foundations of our neighbours’ [homes],” added her husband Matt Taglieri. “I don’t know how that’s right.”
There have also been unconfirmed reports of the explosives polluting the water supply and turning tap water brown.
The blast is the latest in a series of escalating gender reveal disasters as prospective parents find increasingly hazardous ways to celebrate heteronormativity.
The now-ubiquitous practice of announcing your unborn child’s genitalia began a decade ago in the form of blue-and pink-coloured cakes with slogans such as “Ruffles or rifles,” “Touchdowns or tutus” and “Tractors or tiaras”.
Over the years it has somehow evolved into baseball stunts, blue lasagne, smoke-emitting tyres and jelly-filled watermelons thrown into hippos’ mouths.
Some of the more dangerous incidents have unfortunately led to plane crashes, multiple arrests, a deadly pipe bomb explosion and a thousand-acre wildfire.
The reckless trend has been widely mocked online as “peak straight white nonsense” – much to the regret of the inventor of gender reveal parties, who’s now the proud mother of a gender non-conforming child.
