# Arm dismemberment **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 6, 2001, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053 "2001-08-06T00:02:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ninja\_rydr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8491ac/32.png) [@ninja\_rydr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninja_rydr)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053/21 "2001-08-08T15:12:31Z")
I saw a .mpeg on [http://www.nutz.org](http://www.nutz.org) of a man who had both arms tied to back to back jeeps. When the vehicles drove off one of the man’s arm was ripped off. OUCH! ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2001, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053/22 "2001-08-08T17:42:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Traveler \* > \*\*I remember seeing on a site somewhere about a man having his arm torn off in a tug-of-war contest and they had photos too. I can’t pinpoint the source at this moment though. \*\* Not sure whether it would be OK to post the link, but you can find this by searching at Snopes. (There’s a picture that you can see only by putting your mouse pointer over a blank area on the page, so you don’t have to see it if you don’t really want to. It’s not that bad, as gory pictures go.) ---
**Author:** ![Gollum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@Gollum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gollum)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2001, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053/23 "2001-08-09T02:18:50Z")
Ive seen the tug-of-war arm loss pic. Unfortunatly, it comes without technical data. But it is good to be reminded of, and demonstrates that if you fell very far off a bridge with a rope around your arm it would probably come off, which was the point. It, and a lot of other grusome stuff can be found at [rotten.com](http://rotten.com) ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2001, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053/24 "2001-08-09T03:03:49Z")
I’m not an engineer but I think you are possibly making a major error in one premise of your setup. Unless you are using steel cable a standard, high quality mountain climbing rope with 81 meters played out is going to have a fair amount of stretch if shocked with a 70kg weight falling at 31 m/s coming to an abrupt halt. Dynamic ropes (used in mountain climbing) have a static stretch of 6% to 8% under load which means that the rope will be acting like a spring and stretching during the sudden deceleration for approximately 5 to 6.5 meters beyond of its total, non-loaded, 81 meter length. It may have enough stretch, in fact, to completely prevent the dismemberment you are concerned about. [http://www.sportextreme.com/Se\_Shop/HTC/Climbing/Rope/Rope.asp?KategoriID=211](http://www.sportextreme.com/Se_Shop/HTC/Climbing/Rope/Rope.asp?KategoriID=211) [http://spelean.com.au/BW/specs.html](http://spelean.com.au/BW/specs.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arm-dismemberment/75053.md?page=1)