Well, the SD staff has recommended I throw this question to you all, so here it is…
Does anyone have knowledge of someone actually killing themselves by cracking their neck?
I do this, sometimes just by stretching it, sometimes by using both hands to give my head a good twist. The responses I’ve gotten range from, “No worries, I do the same thing,” to “Omigod! You can DIE from doing that.” I’ll grant that I’ve seen commandos on TV break someone else’s neck with a similar action, but has anyone ever died
by breaking their own neck that way?
…<<<<<<has anyone ever died
by breaking their own neck that way?>>>>>>
NO.
<<<<<<Does anyone have knowledge of someone actually killing themselves by cracking their neck?
I do this>>>>
You do what? Kill yorself?
Try harder. I’m serious. It’s impossible.
I do it all the time, and the only ill effect is that I spend too much time on Web message boards.
My ankles and toes haven’t fallen off yet, and they crack all the time.
How come all these stories come from “old wives” ? Don’t young husbands have any imagined worries?
In “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” they’re killing people by twisting their necks as easy as snapping their fingers - a shortcoming in an otherwise good movie. In the book “Mouthful of Rocks - Adventures in the Modern French Foreign Legion” by Christian Jennings, the proper way to kill somebody by snapping their neck is described (which I won’t deliminate here, since this isn’t the How To Kill People Message Board). But I learned how to crack a neck from the barbers and sex workers in the Philippines, and from what I read in Jennings’ book the difference required to kill someone is a matter of leverage & fulcrum placement. To crack a neck you twist it someplace where it won’t go. To kill someone you twist it where it shouldn’t go - and to address the OP, I don’t think it’s physicaly possible to do the latter to oneself
In the movie Red Sun Rising starring Don “The Dragon” Wilson, a yakuza hitman that was captured by the police used the same method that I use to crack my neck to commit suicide. Clearly, it is possible to kill yourself this way barring the slim possibilty that the movie wasn’t 100% accurate.
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It is possible to die from neck cracking, from strokes. It’s very rare, and I believe it’s mostly from people who don’t really know what they are doing. No, not chiropractors, but people like physical therapists, or massage therapists, or medical doctors who’ve taken one or two seminars and think they know how to crack a neck.
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It’s impossible to die from manually cracking a neck from physical causes. When people are hung to death, their vertebra is broken and it snaps the spinal cord. That’s how death occurs. There is not enough power in human wrists to do this, well, maybe if your victim was a 90 year old osteoporotic woman.
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Anyway, if you’re at risk for strokes, don’t crack your own neck or let anyone else do it.
I do it all the time. I have twisted my neck a little to far, and that hurts.
You are missing the point, guys. It’s very possible to die from neck cracking, but only if the injury is caused externally, by another person or environment. It is impossible to crack one’s own neck. (Attention, PC crowd: it would be a very hamane method of judicial execution: it’s very fast, a person is dead before the pain is felt. As a matter of fact, widely used hanging accomplishes this. A quick jerk by a skillful executioner could easy replace the noose and the scaffold.)
Compare: it’s very easy to put a noose on the neck, attach it to a nail, and jump down. It’s impossible to strange self by pulling the noose.
Perhaps, theoretically it’s possible to destroy one’s pain center in the brain(if it exists as an anatomically defined structure) and then manipulatete own neck. But we are talking about normal (more or less) people here.
peace: You have to read other people’s post before you post. No one has strong enough hands to crack a neck to kill someone, unless they’re a 90 year old osteoporotic woman.
While it’s doubtful that you could break your own neck by cracking it manually, I recommend that you only crack your neck by flexing it, don’t use your hands. You might not kill yourself but you can overpull your neck muscles, resulting in a really sick headache.
My chiropractor would advise you not to do this yourself and to never let anyone else do it for you, the potential for injury is good here.
When my chiro has adjusted my neck he is very precise and demonstrates great control as too much force could result in pulled neck muscles.
I am aware of a technique whereby one can break another’s neck (bare handed) but it relies on more than just grabbing someone’s head and giving it a good hard twist. Other students and practitioners of martial arts might be aware of certain techniques but this is all I will say as this isn’t the Straight Dope Murder Board and I would hate to see someone try this at home.
Major, I do read other people posts before I post. Other people make mistakes, as I do:hamane=humane. You were tactful enough not to “notice” it. I preferred not to notice that one (about 90 yo osteoporotic woman; BTW, vertebral fracture does not equal lethal brain injury and 90 yo female osteoporotis bones are equal to male ones. Women are a weak gender, but not their bones. Their bones might be smaller, not feminine). A strong or an average man (and not only Mike Tyson) can SKILLFULLY twist an average neck to cause death. As many posters noted, a skillful or amateurish manipulation can cause injury.
Finally, when you READ other people posts, read ALL words, they might be crucial to understand the meaning. In this case, SKILLFUL was the key. One does not need sheer strength in this delicate profession :-).
peace:
Women are not a weaker gender (just ask my wife), but their bones do become more osteoporotic with age, i.e. their bones are weaker. I’m a retired medical professional, if you don’t believe me ask your GP.
A skillful or average man cannot skillfully twist to kill an average man to cause death. Please do not mistake your fanciful notions as fact. It just cannot be done. Go ask your local friendly chiropractor.
Fact 1) You may very luckily fracture a spinal vertebra, but that is very unlikely since your neck is protected by muscles and ligaments, much stronger than your wrist muscles.
Fact 2) Just fracturing your neck will not kill you. There are people walking around with symptomless fractured neck bones, and congential anomalies that are structurally the same as a fracture.
Fact 3) In order to kill the man, you will need to severe the spinal cord after fracturing the vertebra.
Fact 4) There is no instance in medical journals and records of that ever happening.
Fact 5) Let me repeat this again, do not post your fanciful notions as fact, you will confuse a lot of people.
Major, we do not have to display our shingles here (Good Lord!) and I do not want to be identified by my hyperactive children, but I know a bit about neck injury. In fact, I taught more than GPs on the subject of the neck injury. This BB is mostly for my RR, I do not want to lecture you, I put my remarks for the curious folks who deal with more pleasant things daily and would like to know about killing themselfes by twisting their necks and other fun stuff. Some day they, perhaps, will teach me about computers and other more serious stuff. So, I won’t get into arguing the points we both know too well.
Probably, I misinterpreted you phrase as meaning that it takes less force to break the neck of 90 yo osteoporotic woman than that of 90 yo osteoporopic man. Sorry.
By **skillful[/] I meant a professional who knows how to hyperextend the neck, i.e., fracture/break the dens. After that very little force is needed to cause the fast lethal injury (kind of coup de grace) to the upper cervical neck/lower medulla.
Let’s leave to Menjoa “cracking” the neck.
I do not want to quote professional references here, so people won’t get unnecessary knowlege and will stick to old, time tested metods of suicide, homicide, etc. I’m sure, you know where to find them.
Actually, you can kill yourself by “cracking your neck”; although the expert opinion here seems to be that you can’t break your own neck.
Several years ago there was a news story about a man who habitually cracked his neck my twisting his chin with his hand. One day as he was going into a church he craked his neck… and died not too long after. I don’t remember exactly what he did (something about spinal fluid leaking out, nerve damage, or something like that, sounds familiar). He didn’t break his neck, but cracking his neck was the cause of his death.
He didn’t break his neck, but cracking his neck was the cause of his death.
Johnny, is the above your opinion, or “self-cracking the neck” was written on Cause of Death …
line in his death certificate? What was the manner of death? Suicide or Accident?
You said “news story”. If you do not have personal knowlege, let’s leave at that, you do not have to answer. I read much better stories in my life.
In spite of your rudeness, I’ll answer you. This was a story that I heard on the radio. I also heard the story on the local television news. The report said that the man cracked his neck on the way to church, damaged something in his neck, and died. The “personal knowledge” I have is that I heard the report myself. I have not heard of it happenning again since then, as I’m sure it’s extremely rare. I did not fly back to Mississippi (or wherever it was) to view the death certificate myself. Maybe you write down every detail of every news report you hear or view, but I don’t. Sorry I didn’t know a few years ago that someone will be asking for specifics about a minor story.
I was not making a personal attack. I only posted the story as I remembered it. You may ask why I remembered the story. Well, here it is. I crack my neck occasionally. While I was on a solo cross-country flight in about 1984, I cracked my neck in the airplane. (Since you want specifics, it was a 1970 Cessna 172, registration N84573.) Being of a morbid humour, I wondered what would happen if I paralyzed myself by my action. I thought about being motionless and unable to control the aircraft. I visualized the descent as I made my way to the firey end of the flight. Hey, sometimes I think strange things.
Flash forward a decade or so. I heard this story on the news. It reminded me of the flight. And as a pilot, I think about flying. The flight reminds me of the news story. Such reinforcement makes me think of the story every time I crack my neck or see someone do it. It also makes me think about what a freakish way to die that was.
Are you going to say I never heard something that I actually did hear? Do you have proof? Written documentation that the story was never broadcast? I thought not. My “personal knowledge” of this particular incident is better than yours of this particular incident. Could the autopsy have come to the wrong conclusion? Yes. But that’s the way the news broadcast it.
Sometimes people just die in very strange ways.
peace: I didn’t “put out my shingle” on my first post, if you noticed.
And by the way, you’re still wrong:
“I meant a professional who knows how to hyperextend the neck, i.e., fracture/break the dens”
You should know better if you are a teacher. You CANNOT fracture the dens by hyperextending the neck, please don’t tell your students that 
They will fail their exams! The dens can only be broken by a shearing force. When you hyperextend the neck, C2-C3 and below are doing the extending. C1/2 cannot and will not extend. The back of your head will touch your back before any force is put on C1/2.
I’m sorry to correct you, but I think we would be doing SD a disservice if inaccurate facts were posted.
Dear Sirs and Madams:
Any rudeness perceived in my posts is inintentional. Here and in other threads.
Johnny, I never questioned your truthfulness. Media truthfulness and objectivity is another matter. The reason I asked about the death certificate is because I took the story as factual, while as it was only a media story. This poor man did not die of self-inflicted neck injury. He probably was habitualy cracking his neck when a heart attack happend. Sometimes cardiac pain irradiates in unusual location (neck/chin?) and he felt uncomfortable there. Or, perhaps, he had a carotid sinus tumor…etc. I do not want to speculate. I’d like to comfort you all, neck crackers: one has a better chance causing injury to oneself by picking one’s nose.
Major, I do not think that we should continue our discussion here; this BB has different purposes and the SDoppers will be bored by technical details and unavoidable Latin/Greek terms. Suffice it to say that disruptive and compressive hyperextension occur. The anterior arch of the axis is typically fractured in the former. The injury itself may be a part of a whiplash injury, although the two are not the same.
Finally, as a historic trivial piece, it was speculated (by the medical profession!), that Joseph Gary Merrick, the “Elephant Man”, died by dislocating his neck in his sleep. The “ponderous skull had fallen backwards”. Please do not ask me questions about the details of his death: like Johnny, I only relate to you a srory which was published (in the scietific literature, though, not by the media).
Almost all af us are pros, in this or that field. We can help each other to learn something here and there. I don’t think, Major, that we have to conduct professional discussions here. Of corse, I might be wrong; the mods will corrct me.
Of course we should discuss it here. We can’t let erroneous facts stand. Why don’t you just admit you’re wrong.