Can the person not just hold on to the rope and pull themselves up and grab whatever the rope is hanged from and free themslves? I read a post about suicide survivors, and they usually regret it mid way before killing themselves. So hypothetically can’t a person just pull themselves up from being hanged if they regret it mid way?
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Most of the time, prisoners have their hands (and sometimes legs) tied together, so that they don’t have any way to interfere with the execution – and so that they don’t twitch as violently.
But even if that wasn’t the case, a hanging is designed to break the neck instantly – the drop they take is calculated to snap the spine. Even if you survived the initial drop, you’d be taking an enormous impact to your spine and you’d be choking for air – it wouldn’t be likely you’d be in any condition or have the strength to pull yourself up.
And of course, even if everything went your way…. you’re surrounded by guards, and the prison has decided that you’re going to be executed. Even if you managed to free yourself, they’d just grab you, drop you again, and they’d make sure it went right this time. You’d need a crazy Hollywood setup to make it out of your own execution, once they pull the lever.
Technically, assuming you are not killed upon the fall, and assuming you are strong enough to do so, and that you have the free hands to do so – then yes, you could climb the rope and potentially free yourself.
However, in practice it just wouldn’t happen that often. First, “death by hanging” is usually not from suffocation. A hangman’s knot is designed, when placed in the proper position, to snap your neck when you reach the end of the rope. So most of the time, people who were hanged didn’t die from suffocation, but rather from cervical fracture (and the spinal cord severance resulting from the fracture).
But say that didn’t happen. You would still need to be strong enough to climb up the rope far enough to remove the force around your neck. Depending on the design of the platform, that may be relatively easy, but it’s not a given.
Even in that case, though, if you’re being hung, you’re likely a prisoner facing execution. Your hands are likely bound so that you can’t grab the rope, and you are likely surrounded by people who are committed to the act of making sure you die by being hung from the neck.
So it’s theoretically possible, but in all likelihood you would never be able to test that theory.
The person being hanged used to pay people or ask their friends to pull on their legs to make death faster of their neck didn’t break.
I’m very experienced with rope climbing.
tl;dr yes it’s possible but more difficult than you think. You need some serious physical strength to do it.
Let’s say I had a hangman noose around my neck and I just kicked off the chair. My feet can’t reach the chair or any surface. I’m hanging.
I’ll be panicking because of my body firing off alarm bells. I need to raise both my arms up, grab the rope, and pull myself up. My oxygen is cut off. I have limited oxygen and time before I go unconcious and die. Muscles use oxygen. A lot of oxygen.
If I used a thin rope, this could make it very difficult to grip and pull upwards, and could slice into my neck.
Let’s say you used some nice thick rope fibre that is easy to grip to do this.
Most people can’t even do a pullup. I’ve heard estimates that only 20% of men can do a pullup. And gripping a rope and heaving up requires tremendous body upper body strength and strong hands. I can’t use my legs to help me climb the rope. Its purely arms.
Now even if I pulled myself up, what now?
I need to free one of my hands to remove that loop off my neck!
And what if that loop is tightened? How do I untighten it?
Do I need to use of my hands to loosen the rope and take it off?
Can my one hand and arm have enough strength to hold on and keep myself up and stop myself from choking to death?
If you don’t have some serious grip and upper body strength, you’re going to die. You will not be able to recover in time.
Hanging may or may not result in breaking your spine. If it does, you’re finished.
If not, death comes not necessarily from air being cut off, but the blood supply to the brain being interrupted by the rope compressing the big arteries in the neck. This causes unconsciousness and death *far* faster and it isn’t realistic to try to extricate yourself with the few seconds of useful consciousness you might have available.
You can’t grab (even if you arms weren’t tied which is normally how professional hanging executions were done) if your neck is broken and your spinal cord severed. And the point of professionally done hanging is exactly that – it’a not meant to suffocate the person and put them in agony, slowly turning blue etc. it’s meant to be quick, and was considered more reliable than decapitation….otherwise there’s no need for gallows, the drop etc, garrote suffocation works reliably with less equipment.
Do a pull-up with a ball gag in your mouth, your nose plugged and a venomous snake in your pants.
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