I'm slightly surprised this one was never posted (though not at all surprised at all the hand-wringing at the top of the thread).

Q: What's got four legs and goes "Woof"?

A: Piper Alpha.*

* The Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea exploded & burnt in July 88. 165 men on board, plus 2 rescue workers, died. Only 61 escaped. The joke, as I recall, appeared within a day or two.

I don't know how widespread this phenomenon is; I doubt it's a peculiarly British trait; but it certainly acts as a... I'm reluctant to say "coping" mechanism, because most people aren't affected by such disasters. It's not macabre, ghoulish, or Schadenfreude, let alone "sick". It IS black humour, it's a way of dealing with the fact that something dreadful has happened. After Princess Di died, there was a "cut & shut" joke quickly doing the rounds ("cut & shut" refers to the illegal practice of welding the undamaged front end of a wrecked car to the undamaged back end of another; the Ford Princess was a model made up to about 1981, so it was still a familiar name to the British in the late 90's).

I wonder how widespread this trait is? Is it only British, North European / Germanic, or more universal?