# "I'll tear you limb from limb!" -- Possible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 27, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526 "2009-04-27T17:45:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526/21 "2009-04-28T16:06:57Z")
> [@Panurge](#): > > The famous case of [Robert-François Damiens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens) shows that it is not an easy task at all. Must be an ancestor of Vincent Gallo. I love that portrait of him! ---
**Author:** ![Backcountry\_Medic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Backcountry\_Medic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backcountry_Medic)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526/22 "2009-04-28T18:03:48Z")
I work in an emergency room and have seen a handful of dismembered limbs, but they are always caused by some type of substantial mechanical trauma. Even an extremely strong person just wouldn’t be able to apply the force needed to rip through all of the muscles and tendons (Assuming an average adult ‘victim’). We regularly have teams of 3-4 people pulling people in multiple directions attempting to relocated dislocated joints and it isn’t uncommon to fail even then and have to send someone to the OR for deeper sedation. Still have yet to pull off any arms or legs, even on little kids or 90 year old grandmas. It’s simple force, most often limbs are taken off in car accidents or some similar mechanism, where hundreds or thousands of newtons of force are placed on the body in a fraction of a second. Even really strong bodybuilder couldn’t throw a person 20 feet into the air, but a pedestrian getting hit by a car going 50 mph can easily be thrown a hundred feet down the road. This is when limbs start getting detached. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526/23 "2009-04-28T20:12:36Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > Slight hijack but…are chimpanzee musculoskeletal systems so different from ours?? I would have thought that other than around the butt/hip area, we were really close. But if we were, there wouldn’t be a 5x pull difference. What’s up? A chimp’s muscles attach further down on the bones than ours do which gives them more leverage. Chimp muscles are also stronger than human muscles. Humans have a defective gene that controls certain aspects of muscle growth. Chimps have a different version of this gene. A kid in Germany was born with a defect in this gene and has been labeled the German “Super Kid”. More info about him here: [http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/01/liam\_hoekstra\_3\_is\_all\_muscle.html](http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/01/liam_hoekstra_3_is_all_muscle.html) Neanderthals were supposedly much stronger than us, but I don’t know if they figured this out just from muscle attachment points or what. We’re weaklings compared to all of our close relatives, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526/24 "2009-04-29T00:20:48Z")
My theory is that a person strong enough to tear another person’s arm off would have to be just about strong enough to tear their own arm off trying. Imagine grabbing onto someone’s arm and pulling–which arm is going to come off first, your arm or his arm? I suppose if you get to use two arms you’ve got only half the force per limb. But even so the stresses on your own body would be severe enough to HALF tear your arms off. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-tear-you-limb-from-limb-possible/494526.md?page=1)