How does hanging oneself cause a broken neck?
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If you’re lucky your neck will break. Lots just strangle. There’s an art to a humane hanging. Enough of a drop with a proper noose will cause your neck to break. Tie a string around a pretzel stick. Proper height and noose will break it in half.
Typically self hanging doesn’t cause broken necks. Those are cause by asphyxiation.
It’s the ones where you’re condemned as they’ll take you on a platform, called the gallows, then when it’s your time, you’ll drop through a trap door and your weight will cause the broken neck when your neck gets stopped by the rope.
There’s calculations and everything involved for body weight too. Too little space to drop and they’ll suffocate, too much and you risk decapitation.
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In addition to the good explanations so far, an actual hanging done to kill has the knot slightly to the side of the spine, kind of between the spine & ear.
That gives an angular yank on the spinal cord, which is even harder to survive than one straight-on (knot behind the spine). Not as much structural support.
Unfortunately I have a bit of knowledge with this. Death by self hanging (suicide) usually causes the person to die by asphyxiation, though a small bone in the neck does break. The 3 I have the unfortunate first hand experience with, none had broken necks. One was found and put on life support, but only lived long enough for the family to donate their organs.
It can cause fracture of the odontoid process of the axis, the second cervical vertebrae. Posterior displacement of this fractured process can compress the spinal cord, which is at its thickest in the cervical spinal segment, which will cause death in the subject.
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