A common action movie trope is someone gets behind someone else, puts one hand on their neck, one on their chin, twists, and then the person falls down dead.
Is this remotely realistic?
No, it’s not really realistic. The TV Tropes page on the subject sums it up pretty well:
[QUOTE=TV Tropes]
Note that in Real Life, it takes a considerable amount of strength and/or training to snap a person’s neck 1 , especially if the character getting it snapped is considerably big and strong. It’s possible if you know where to grab and twist, and can pin your opponent to get leverage.
Also note that in Real Life nothing dies instantly from a fractured neck unless it sends vertebrae fragments into, or contorts, the brain-stem in such a way as to shut down all lower brain functions. A broken neck is no guarantee of a “silent kill” either as, if the aforementioned brain-stem damage is not inflicted. All you are left with is a quadriplegic victim, dying, but not yet dead, and still able to speak and scream.
[/QUOTE]
Wouldn’t the person with a snapped neck lose control of lungs and vocal chords?
You have to sever the spinal cord at I believe the second cervical vertebra or higher to decisively disrupt respiratory function if so yes, no lung control = no breathing or screaming. You have to hit high and if something else gives first, you will not be able to “rebreak” higher.
It’s sort of a lift-and-twist motion. Apparently you can practice on animal carcasses.
As already stated, a broken/snapped neck is not a guarantee of instant death or even complete paralysis.
I experienced an anterior ruptured disc between C5-C6 back in '89 that caused paralysis from my neck down. :eek:
Granted, the injury was not from a ‘twisting’ action, it was more of a hypercompession/extension type trauma. The injury prevented me from moving any of my lower extremities but didn’t inhibit movement of my head or induce unconsciousness.
The paralysis was short lived thankfully (50-60 minutes), and after a cervical fusion with a piece of cadavers bone, I made a full recovery.
I can’t believe it. Hollywood lied to me!
A “neck snap” is a common chiropractic “treatment”. It can cause a rupture of an artery, and death. That’s one chiropractic treatment to avoid!
I would avoid all chiropractic treatment.
One way is lift by the chin, literally lifting the opponent off the ground. The other hand balances the head … hair makes this easier. The snap is carried out by the hand under the chin in a rapid upward motion, the other hand tugs sideways at the temple.
This sounds unlikely, but considering that I’ve seen weekend baseball players break the handle of a wooden bat by flicking it in the air with one hand, I’m inclined to accept the possibility of a fatal or crippling neck break this way. I’ve never seen it done, but some commando types I’ve known insist they have first hand knowledge. War is hell.
Uh huh.
The neck, as a unit, has both the overall widest range of motion and the strongest integrated musculature of any joint in the body. (The wrist and ankle has greater angular range in a particular direction but cannot turn and flex as much; the hip joint is stronger, but only because of the compound leverage of the gluteal muscles which are anterior to the iliopsoas and therefore not technically part of the hip joint.) The neck can actually accept loads in excess of bodyweight without additional support. Yanking on someone’s neck could potentially dislocate vertebrae and stress connective tissue, but to literally break the spinal column or sever the spinal cord would take both tremendus instantaneous force and particular leverage. A penetrating striking blow from a highly conditioned attacker could potentially do this kind of injury, but to apply this load via twisting or leverage is implausible to say the least.
It is, however, and easy way to bloodlessly demonstate “commando kill skills” on film, and therefore is repeated endlessly in television and film. Like firing a pistol sideways, hpwever, it doesn’t actually work effectively in what we like to call “the real world.”
Stranger
:eek: cite?
A chiropractor did this to my friend just a few years back despite my warnings to stay away from these people. His neck had been a little stiff and wanted it loosened up a bit for his golf tournament.
When he went to the chiropractor, he snapped his neck so hard, he damn near blacked out, or did black out (it’s been awhile so not sure now). But now his neck was much worse. The pain wouldn’t go away. A week later, he goes to a real doctor that also does some x-rays, and notices bone fragments that would literally be sawing away at his spinal cord, and called for immediate surgery.
After his surgery, the doctor goes out and tells his family it was much worse than even the x-rays showed, and there was about a 90% chance he would be paralyzed from the neck down. He said it was a worst case scenario. They even called in his priest.
He does awake from it, and Mike, who had been out all of this time, was wondering what all the fuss is about and why is his mom balling her head off. He got lucky and didn’t show any signs of paralysis.
Fortunately, he had the x-rays that the chiropractor took, and also those that his real doctor took all within a week’s time. I had assumed this would show what the chiropractor did to him, and would be a slam dunk case. When he sought out legal help, he only went to one lawyer, and he told him it was extremely difficult to prove such cases so didn’t want to take it. He didn’t bother to pursue it any further, and just wanted to get his life back on track.
To collapse suddenly after a cervical injury would require a very high spinal cord injury–level of C2 or higher if you want sudden respiratory compromise (with a secondary inability to vocalize beyond an initial passive exhalation).
This is not quite the same as instantaneous death, although brain death would follow within minutes.
I have no idea how to kill people on purpose by twisting their necks but I don’t think it would be hard to do by a strong man and frail opponent. I don’t think killing a sturdy opponent would be an easy task.
To get the spinal cord injury, you first have to destroy the integrity of the vertebral column, and then once the vertebral column is unstable, it’s pretty easy to get enough leverage to disrupt the spinal cord itself. For this reason, potentially unstable neck injuries are handled very carefully even for simple events such as intubation.
I wonder if the specific disruption caused by the description in the OP would most likely be an atlanto-occipital dislocation; alternatively perhaps a fracture of the odontoid process or bilateral pedicle fractures of C2. Either of these followed by additional torquing or hyperflexion/hyperextension would injure the spinal cord at a high level. Many other fractures of C1 and C2 are possible, I suppose.
As Stranger mentions, the neck is pretty tough on an average person. Deceleration mechanisms in various types of blunt trauma (especially vehicular) do disrupt its integrity, though, and occasionally relatively low-speed collisions cause the head to flop around enough to cause fatal neck injuries. It’s all about leverage and physics, I guess.
I guess if you’re bigger and stronger, it can happen.
In the case of the lift/twist, the concept is to put the neck in a position where the neck muscles can’t exert enough strength in an awkward position to counteract the twisting force.
On the first morning after our arrival we met ‘Dan’ Fairbairn and ‘Bill’ Sykes …
Their speciality was close combat fighting and silent killing. They had learnt their trade on the waterfront of International Shanghai. They had absolutely no respect for the Geneva Convention. They said, “If you think our methods are not cricket, remember that Hitler does not play this game!”
… they taught handgun and knife work and neck breaking.
From this article-
An MMA fighter got his neck broken by a different technique.
Glad you made a full recovery! Scary stuff!!
The whole badass walking up behind somebody and killing the with a quick twist of the neck stuff is pure Hollywood. As Stranger notes, necks are much tougher than that - if it were that easy to kill somebody we’d probably have fatalities in every football game and boxing match. It is possible to “break somebody’s neck” in the sense of causing serious damage to the vertebrae and possibly the spinal cord with a spinal lock or neck crank, which is why they’re frequently banned from wrestling and grappling competitions. A good friend of mine had to have surgery on some cracked vertebrae from an overly vigorous neck crank (and I had a pinched nerve from one that took over a year to heal). That’s a lot, lot different from walking up behind them and killing them instantaneously with only your hands, neck cranks are applied to somebody you already have on the ground, use a lot more leverage than just a quick twist of the palms, and aren’t quick and silent.
As a side note, I do have an old WWII Army Combatives/CQC manual that describes a method of killing a sentry by applying a chokehold from behind and slamming his neck into the ground with your entire bodyweight, but I doubt many people are alive who can credibly attest to the efficacy of that.
Previous threads:
Are necks really that fragile?
On a human, does neck snap = instant death?
I’m glad she was able to distract herself sexually in that difficult situation, although it is a bit odd. Many moms would be bawling.
I shamefully LOL’d. 