While being hanged

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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