AN OAP built a suicide ‘robot’ using plans downloaded from the internet before it blasted him to death. And the 81-year-old man, from Australia’s Gold Coast, left notes which gave clues to his plans and state of mind.

The man, who lived alone, was said to be struggling with plans by relatives to move him into a care home.

He trawled the web for hours searching for a way to kill himself and downloaded instructions to build a complicated machine able to remotely fire a gun.

After setting up the device in his driveway with a .22 semi-automatic pistol loaded with four bullets, he put himself infront of it and set it off. The machine fired a number of shots at the elderly man’s head, which alerted a next-door workman to make the grisly discovery.

Okay, some points.

1. For the non-British people out there, OAP stands for Old Age Pensioner. Someone who’s retired, basically. It does not stand for Owner of an Automatic Pistol, although it should.

2. I don’t like the fact that even lonely eighty-year-old Australians have to die post-modern deaths these days. Look at the story again. A man searched the internet ‘for hours’ (he lived alone. How do we know this?) to find a way of killing himself. Eventually he found a blueprint for a genocidal robot that had the intelligence and audacity to exterminate octogenarians. He then built the robot, and it shot him. Except it didn’t really, because HE ALREADY HAD A GUN. Why didn’t he just shoot himself in the face? Why? What was the point of the robot? He just wanted to get into the paper, and it worked. The allure of celebrity chases us all to the grave. When robots start opening PR agencies, humans will be extinct.

3. I would do anything - that’s anything - to see those notes which gave ‘clues’ as to his ‘state of mind’.

What they didn’t say:

Woke up this morning, felt great. Went to supermarket to buy ingredients for fruit salad. Made fruit salad.  Looked at weather forecast on internet. Sunny. I knew it would be sunny. I live on the Gold Coast. Der! Went to local school to address children on the danger of firearms. Drew pictures of bunny rabbits with some of them afterwards.

What they might have said:

Die. I want to die and I want people to know about it. I’ve been ignored all my life and now my ungrateful offspring want to put me in a home. DIE. (Must find robot).

4. Next week’s suicide story: MAN DRESSES UP AS TELEVISION SET AND JUMPS IN BATH.

Tags: technology, robots, australia, suicide