Father-to-be Dies After Homemade Gender-reveal Device Explodes

Yet another Gender Reveal has ended in tragedy. Last Sunday, New York man Christopher Pekny, 28, died after an explosive device he was crafting to announce the sex of his baby exploded while he was working on it. His brother Michael, 27, was also injured.

Gender-reveal device explosion kills father-to-be https://t.co/Ngs9oLUEhd

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 23, 2021

Buzzfeed reported that the explosion went off at 11:55 AM Sunday morning. While police wouldn't specify what sort of device Pekny was working on, they have filed no charges.

Gender reveal stunts have become highly frowned upon, as the once-harmless ceremony around revealing the gender of a fetus has grown into a social media sensation. Some couples have begun using pyrotechnics and other special effects in the hopes of going viral, sometimes with fatal consequences. Two weeks ago, a man in Michigan was killed by a gender reveal cannon. Last September, a pyrotechnic device at a gender reveal party caused to a wildfire that devastated California. In 2019, a 56-year-old grandma was killed by a gender reveal pipe bomb.

The astonishingly high body count of gender-reveals has become a hot topic on Twitter.

just to be clear: gender reveal parties have a higher body count and have done more property damage than antifa ever has https://t.co/C8zTLiI86L

— Dan Ozzi (@danozzi) February 22, 2021

I’m going to reveal the gender of a child every hour until my demands are met

— molly, trash queen (@chainchompist) February 23, 2021

The only way I would find gender reveal parties even remotely okay is if the guests had the option to boo when the gender is revealed

— Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) February 23, 2021

Gender reveal catastrophes have killed vastly more Americans than trans people in bathrooms. https://t.co/AISCGbd04I

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) February 22, 2021

If only science could discover a non-dangerous way to reveal your baby's genitalia to friends and family.