With Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida on Wednesday, ready to make landfall late this Wednesday, millions have already evacuated the state.
“I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN on Monday.
Some people are choosing to stay though, despite mandatory evacuation orders across most of the state’s western coast. They’ve all got their reasons, from fuel shortages to transportation issues to a lack of housing elsewhere.
Who is Lieutenant Dan?
One person staying has been dubbed Lieutenant Dan, a viral figure who lives on a boat in Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg. His real name is Joseph Malinowski, he told News Nation’s Brian Entin on Wednesday morning.
“I’m not going anywhere – the safest place to be is on a boat in a flood,” he told Entin.
TikToker Tampa Terrence previously made videos talking with Malinowski about his experience in Hurricane Helene, which he also rode out.
Malinowski’s plan to hunker down for Milton provoked a stream of comments on Tampa Terrence’s videos warning him to get out.
But Malinowski has been resistant, despite all the comments and concerns.
Castor later said that Malinowski had evacuated to a shelter, but Entin posted an update just before noon showing him hunkered down under a tarp in his boat.
Now, one crypto casino with an online gambling license from the Autonomous Island of Anjouan in the southwestern Indian Ocean is offering wagers on whether Dan will live or die in the storm.
The gambling site offering the stakes is called Retardio Casino, and leans into an extremely online aesthetic, offering traditional crypto stakes and games as well as prediction markets.
“We’re targetting niche markets non available to large companies with shareholder duties 🤡👍,” its account wrote on X.
The prediction its hosting for Dan is pretty simple: will he survive the storm?
“This will resolve as ‘yes’ if the individual known as Lt. Dan is shown by any media source and timestamp evidence that he is alive within 10 days after hurricane Milton passes over Florida,” reads the conditions of the bet.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 63.4% of people are hopeful, putting money on the line that he’ll survive.
The casino also offers a couple of other unsavory bets, including wagers on whether the combined death toll from Helene and Milton will be over 500 people by Nov. 1, 2024, or if a Boeing plane will crash before 2025.
Retardio Casino has its gambling license from the Anjouan Gaming Board, which is run by the Autonomous Island of Anjouan in the Union of the Comoros.
The gaming board didn’t immediately respond to questions about the wagers, but the law governing its licensing does note that nobody “known to be of bad character” can hold a license.
The casino says it is donating all the revenue from the bets towards humanitarian aid in the impacted communities, but didn’t immediately respond to questions about how that would work.
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