MythBusters Episode 62: "Killer Cable Snaps"
Air Date: October 11, 2006
If a cable snaps, it can cut a person in two.
busted
A 5/8" cable at 30,000 lbs of tension was unable to cut a pig in two (or even cut into it), but did cause potentially lethal injuries. The MythBusters took the test even further by adding a smaller cable at the end of larger one to create a "whip" effect, and even pre-looped a cable around the pig itself. None of these methods could cut the pig by the pre-tensed cable’s inertia alone. The pig was cut in half only when Adam tied a cable around it and then tightened the cable. Also, after making inquiries with almost every safety organization imaginable, the MythBusters were unable to find any concrete evidence of a person being cut in half by a snapped cable.
Sounds can be recovered from old pottery.
busted
The MythBusters were unable to recover any recognizable sound from the pot using a record player with a glass needle (to prevent scratching the clay). Even with professional audio enhancement and the most advanced sound systems available, they were unable to recover any discernible sounds from the straw-made grooves on the pots.
In response to “If a cable snaps, it can cut a person in two” it obviously can happen. It just did. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/amusement-park-accident-severs-girls-feet/
A teenage girls shins were severed when she got hit by a cable on an amusement ride. Sad, but true.
June 23, 2007 at 4:09 AMThere’s a lot more mass with a torso of a human or a pig than a girl’s ankles.
June 23, 2007 at 3:51 PMIn training films for Merchant Mariners, most high strength cable (10+tons) simply parts and drops to the deck. However, Synthetic mooring lines are capable of cutting a man in two at the hips, as demostrated in a famous Navy training film and many recorded incidents.
June 23, 2007 at 5:41 PMI think the recent events at Six Flags in Kentucky shows a revisit might be needed, of course they should somehow show some sensitivity to the issue. Even if it can’t be reproduced we all know it can happen, at least in relation to the legs/feet.
June 23, 2007 at 6:00 PMThe girl at Six Flags was not cut in two. Only her feet were severed.
June 23, 2007 at 6:19 PMRegarding the girl at six flags. The cable might have wrapped around the girl’s feet, and then the ride dropped, severing the feet. We will know when the investigation is complete. Just a possibility.
-Brian
June 23, 2007 at 7:23 PMThe Cable At six flags would have cut thru the girls body just as quick as it did her ankles its a combination of tension and the speed the cable is moving as was shown in another episode a playing card can cut you if it is moving fast enough
June 24, 2007 at 12:23 PMDon’t pre-stress concrete cables have the same possibility of cutting one in half, as they unravel violently? I presume this would be before setting of the concrete, but I remember my uncle talking about some of the injuries he has seen.
June 26, 2007 at 10:38 AMI hate to contradict your findings and I LOVE your show. BUT….
I am an off-road enthusiast and an SAR volunteer.
My land cruiser has a 12K pound winch on the front and an 8k in the rear.
I have seen winch cables snap with very violent results! I have seen grilles and windshields shattered! When we winch, we keep all people away at a ratio of twice the length of the cable. The operator of the winch stays below the dash or farther away if the remote cable allows. We try to place blankets on the cable to slow the flow of the break just in case. I have seen fabric go everywhere but, because we demand such safety measures, No one has been killed. Look into The Fremont Hills OffRoad people in Hollister. I believe it can happen but it has to be because of user ignorance.
Just my two cents.
Peace brothers!
June 28, 2007 at 11:52 PMI guess I won’t be telling my dead 2nd cousin that the snapped cable, while loading an oil drilling rig for movement, shouldn’t have taken the rear of his skull off.
July 4, 2007 at 4:51 PMI would have thought that similar forces placed mid-torsoe on the body could sever a torsoe in half as well. From what I saw, I think there was something wrong with the design of the experiment. I didn’t see a test that would mimic my cousin’s accident. Although I concede, it would be very hard to duplicate precisely on any given attempt.
Just not enough tension. 30000 lbs seems like a lot, but compared to the ratings on really heavy cables- it honestly isn’t that much. I also agree with Andrew that a synthetic line might be a better choice to check though. Think about it like getting burnt- it’s not the temperature of the liquid, it’s how much energy is in it. A more elastic line stores a heck of a lot more energy before it snaps than one that is brittle.
July 6, 2007 at 2:17 AMAlso, I think we need to keep ‘rich’ away from high tension wire and fast: “We try to place blankets on the cable to slow the flow of the break just in case.”
With my favorite line: ” I have seen fabric go everywhere but, because we demand such safety measures …”
Such demanding safety measures as… (gasp) blankets! I for one, am SHOCKED to see a man go to such lengths as to see BLANKETS used by a civilian purely for safety. Haha- well, Linus felt better with one at least.
July 6, 2007 at 2:22 AMBen, obviously you don’t wheel and do not know the safety measures we take during a recovery. I understand that it sounds silly to you. The blanket absorbs some of the energy when a winch rope breaks thus lessening the damaging/lethal force. This is a common knowledge safety precaution in our hobby.
This experiment was to only determine the plausability of a snapped cable cutting a person in two. A cable snapping is still a deadly force and can still cause much damage to a person or property.
July 7, 2007 at 10:08 PMBen…you sir are a moron.
I’d like to see you survive a winch cable snapping at 30,000lbs of tension without a counterweight. ARB specifically sells a product to weigh down the winch line just for this purpose. Are you going to call ARB stupid, too?
July 7, 2007 at 10:28 PMMANY of Myth Buster’s attempts at busting are flawed, deeply….so that myths are failed to be busted that should have, and that some “Busted” issues should be confirmed rather than busted, etc.
Some are ok…but…you have to take them with a grain or three of salt.
In THIS case, I think there’s confusion between a 5/8″ cable, and the diameters used in commercial settings…and the injuries caused by flying hooks and so forth, vs the injuries specific to the cable whipping.
The real whipping danger is the unravelling cable acting as a giant weed whacker..the strands, not the entire cable…are what cut.
July 8, 2007 at 12:32 AMI have operated tow truck for 10 years, its very simple to settle this, the cable needs to be overstressed. snap the cable,don’t cut it. the cop car rear axle myth is a perfect example. snap the cable in one clean jerk.
July 11, 2007 at 7:05 PMi have two remarks on this test firstly being a farmer i know that a pigs torso is much stonger becouse there is less of an area where there are no ribs in a human there is about a 6 inch area where the only bone that would be broken would be the spine and secondly a 30 k lb tension is not very much why dont you try something more like heavey machinery cables that are about twice that
July 29, 2007 at 9:31 PMRay is correct. Prestress cables for pre-cast concrete piles start around 30,000 psi. Do they snap and kill people? Yes, for an example, see the OSHA website for a fatality investigation (www.osha.gov/dts/shib/shib060204.html). The fatality described involved a strand stressed to 166,000 psi. When the restraint failed, the cable sprung losse and killed a worker. It hit him in the head, so who knows what it would have done to his torso? (Besides, precisely whose sex life depends on whether it would just kill someone, or cut them clean in two? Consider Scott’s comment above: The girl on the amusement park ride ONLY lost her feet and ankles. Dude, get a life!)
Look around the web at pictures where the boom of a crane fails. The energy of the impact allows latticed tube steel to conform to the topography of what it falls along or across. Sometimes the cable snaps, under tension. It’s difficult to believe 200′ of 1 1/2″ diameter wire rope(at about 2.5 pounds per foot) coming at you sharp like the business end of a bull whip couldn’t cut a pig in half.
August 1, 2007 at 10:58 PMalthough highly unlikely to happen to be there u did not test cheese or barbed wire
August 29, 2007 at 1:58 PMI think that you guys went the wrong direction with the “whip effect. My neighbor had half of her face taken off when the clevis pin broke sending the cable and clevis back at her. Just something to think about. It doesn’t have to cut someone in half to be very deadly. Also a 3/4″ cable will need much more then 30,000lbs to break, and most accidents of this nature that i have heard of were 3/4″ or larger.
October 6, 2007 at 12:15 PMI know this is a little old, but I am overseas deployed with the U.S. Navy. Did you try the Navy Safety center web site. Although it has only happened twice that I know of in the last couple of years, the arresting cable on an Aircraft Carrier has snapped killing people. This is a 1 and 7/16 inch cable with a sheer strength og 215,000 psi. something to look into
October 13, 2007 at 1:34 PMThe BUSTED rating is flawed. In physics and engineering a cable is accurately approximated as a spring. The energy stored in a spring follows the simple equation E=kx^2. That is, the amount of energy is equal to the “spring constant” multiplied by the length of the spring’s extension. The spring constant is the same for any length of the same material. But a longer length of cable will allow a longer extension. To increase the speed of the broken cable rocketing back, the MythBusters should have used a longer cable in addition to higher tension. They only used less than 100 yards… try the length of a big suspension bridge cable. That might cut a man (or pig) in half.
October 14, 2007 at 5:59 PMI was in the navy, I still don’t why but while we were mooring after we got the lines across, to the dock somebody messed up. and turned on the engine of the ship the lines stared, creaking, then smoking, all the wile we were running, on the stern or back of ship the lines did not snap, the bow or front was not so lucky it snaped breaking a friends arm in three places. and it barly touched him. Mythbusters did a few things
October 15, 2007 at 11:57 PMmythbuster did a few things wrong, first of all it won’t slice you in half but it would take off your head ,hands and legs anywere that has joint. also use a nylon mooring line for better results.
October 16, 2007 at 12:04 AMIn 1996 while having the winch and cables on our work 4X4’s checked, the technitian who was carrying out the tests showed me a cable from one of the dock cranes in Durban harbour. It had snapped and almost completely cut one of the dock workers in half. Judging by the blood, fragments of tissue and fabric he had been hit by the end of the snapped cable. They were trying to figuer out why the cable snapped.
November 18, 2007 at 2:04 AMI don’t recall seeing the episode, but one difference is that they use pig flesh to simulate human.
There are a couple of potential problems with that. First, is the thickness and toughness of the skin of pigs. It appears to be very thick and tough compared to our own. The second potential problem with simulating human flesh is the temperature. Pig flesh is going to be harder due to, well, being dead. The fat and other components are harder and more inelastic due to being at whatever temperature the surrounding environment is; or harder still if it has been refrigerated.
November 22, 2007 at 4:34 PMHere is the real problem. The pig was not anchored like a human would be. The weight of the pig was not on its legs, like a human would be, and therefore, the body of the pig “gave” when the cable hit.
November 30, 2007 at 9:14 AMThe test was flawed. Pulling stopped in just a few feet. Look at moving the Trump condo sales office in Toronto in Jan. 08. Huge steel I beam cut. R.Y. Mike
January 30, 2008 at 9:04 PMA friend of mine used to work as a sailer on one of the largest tug boats in the world and he witnessed a colleague get cut in half when in a storm the tow line connected to a tanker they were towing snapped like a piece of string. These are huge cables, but mother nature was stronger. He quit not too long after that.
February 25, 2008 at 2:10 PMThere have been many instaces of arrester cables in the navy severing body parts. I am sure that if one of those struck the torso of a human it would cut him in two.
March 2, 2008 at 9:41 PMThere were several major limbs lost during the vietnam era. And even the Nvy has guidelines on where to stand on a carrier flight deck to avoid just such injuries.
Big difference between a dinky ass cable like they used and a 3″ mooring line.
March 17, 2008 at 11:22 PMCheck navy safety films for the guy that lost a leg. Or as Matt C pointed out arresting wire on aircraft carriers. I did tours on CV 63, 64 and short stints on a couple others. If an arresting wire can snap and flip a huffer. it can kill and has killed flightdeck personnel
I spent 8 good years in the service of my beloved U.S.Coast Guard and as any seaman will attest, there is a significant difference between the “snap-back” of a metal cable and a nylon hauser.
March 17, 2008 at 11:45 PMCoast Guard (as well as Navy and Merchant Marine) training films showing the results of a 5 inch double braidled mooring line snap-back is unforgettable. It will absolutly cut a man in half.
Granted, this nylon line was not cut while under strain. Instead, a load was applied until it failed. A very large load, like a battleship underway.
Remember, every action has an equal opposite reaction. Energy cannot be lost, only transfered or converted.
I use winches and cable just about every day ranging from towing to retrieval and yes demolition I have used cable to pull and cut when I demolish trailer houses, small home’s and garages cable makes a great saw.
March 18, 2008 at 11:58 AMThe flaw that I think in your test was the barrel that was welded to the floor, (remember the sparks?)
If you put the pig near the middle and hook the other end and hit the winch. It might work out better.
The pottery recording story got a boost today from the BBC news website. In 1860, an inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville tried etching sound into soot covered paper using a device he called a phonautograph. There was no way to play the sound back. He was just interested in the patterns the sound made into the paper. However using modern analysis, it is now possible to try to replicate the sound.
Here’s the BBC website link. You can hear the sound. The recording quality is terrible. However, it is now the oldest voice recorded ever.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7318180.stm
March 29, 2008 at 2:15 AMI agree with Andrew C. After attending the Marine Institute of St. John’s NL. I have learned that using some synthetic rope of any size would have a deadly outcome.
June 23, 2008 at 5:10 PMFirst of all…LOVE…the show.
July 26, 2008 at 1:19 PMAnyhoo…..Many moons ago, early sixties I think, there was an incident that made news in the “Kyles of Bute”, part of the River Clyde estuary. A steamer called “Queen Mary ll” (no…not the big new one)was moored at the pier at “Tighnabruaich”. One of the mooring cables snapped and lashed across the pier, severing a woman`s leg. Nasty!!
So, the myth of the killer cable must be at least plausible….Hmmm?
I was in the Navy in the late 80’s and have seen training films showing a CDP (cross deck pendant, AKA arresting gear cable) snap and sever a flight deck worker’s body just above the waist. Completely in two pieces, guts hanging and the whole thing. They showed us this film at least 5 times while at A school, and I saw it several more times throughout my 6 year enlistment. I don’t recall the name, but it was always shown with “The man from LOX” and the forrestal flight deck fire film. Surely there are some former ABH’s out there that have seen these films!
September 28, 2008 at 12:08 PM