How Does a Tug-of-War Accident Sever Somebody’s Arms?
I recently learned that the game of tug-of-war can sever arms when the rope snaps. How is this possible? What does that look like? What physical mechanism makes this possible? Wouldn’t everybody just fall backwards?
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Ropes don’t seem like they stretch, but they do. They are like a spring, a spring holding the combined weight of everyone on both teams.
If the rope snaps, all of that force is released at once, which can cause the rope to recoil violently.
You know how much it can hurt if you snap a big rubber band against your skin? Ramp that up 1000x or more and it does a lot more than hurt.
When a tug of war rope snaps it has the energy of 24+ people pulling stored in it, and the weight of that big rope. So imagine a 2 inch thick rubber band, being pulled back by 2 dozen people, and they let it go. Together that’s enough energy and mass to kill people *if* it hits them.
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Ask yourself, could 14 people pulling you oposing sides sever your arm? The rope is holding all that energy, and when it snaps it releases it all at once as a superpowered whip.
My coworker lost tip of finger right before my eyes in a team building challenge of tug of war
Here’s a nice little (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3GsSMfLYIQg&pp=ygUcQ2FibGUgd2lyZXMgd29ya3BsYWNlIGluanVyeQ%3D%3D) about the dangers of lines under tension in the workplace. I never imagined tug-of-war could generate comparable forces but I guess I was wrong.
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It takes a lot less force than most people realize. There’s a girl on YouTube (Kristie Sita, fitness content creator) who lost a hand (was completely severed) being towed in an inner tube on a lake. Was unable to be reattached.
Ideally you would use UHMWPE (ultra high molecular weight polyethylene) rope like dyneema or spectra. These are rapidly replacing steel cable because they are very light and have almost no stretch – meaning that they store little energy under tension.
Despite reading many explanations here, I still can’t fathom how a guy had his arm torn off in the picture I saw on Reddit yesterday.
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