
A History of Tug-of-War Fatalities - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/a-history-of-tug-of-war-fatalities/
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spatten
I saw a tug-of-war disaster happen once. I was working at a summer camp, and
we had a giant tug-of-war with around 50 kids / side at the end of every two
week session. I was refereeing and the rope snapped right in front of me.
Sounded like a gunshot.

There was one serious injury: the first kid on the left side had his arm
broken -- it was bent to a 45 degree angle, but luckily didn't break the skin.
Nothing else, though, which was extremely lucky. Someone could easily have
lost an eye. Heck, I could have seeing as I was standing right where it
snapped.

I remember that the kid was from Mexico and didn't speak English at all. I
think he was eight or nine. He was freaking out, and I figured out that he was
asking if they would have to remove his arm. His older brother was refusing to
translate anything for me, so I had to reassure him in my non-existent
Spanish. (I'm Canadian so we learn French, not Spanish)

That was over 20 years ago, but that post sure brought back the memories.

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johnchristopher
Why would the older brother refuse to translate ?

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spatten
I really can't remember, but we were all in shock at the time. My vague
recollection is that he was trying to protect his brother. People react
strangely in situations like that.

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drpgq
My favourite weird old Olympic event was the plunge for distance.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plunge_for_distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plunge_for_distance)

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tjsnyder
A 13,000 pound rated rope for a world record where some subset of 2300 people
were pulling on it means there was only enough room for each person to
generate between 5 and 25 (500 people) pounds each before the rope would snap.
I would expect a heavy weight construction company to be able to handle basic
math.

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klodolph
If 500 people pull on a rope with 25 pounds of force each, the tension is
6,250 pounds, not 13,000. Your math would be correct if one end of the rope
were anchored.

(Or put another way: if two people pull on a rope with 50 pounds of force, the
tension is 50 pounds, not 100.)

~~~
DrStalker
Wouldn't two people pulling in opposite directions generate more tension than
one person pulling a rope with the end anchored? (Assuming all people are
equal)

~~~
klodolph
The anchor pulls on the rope too, that's what you have to remember. You can
swap one person out for an anchor and the rope wouldn't "feel" any different,
still 50 pounds of tension.

Or put it this way: when there's 50 pounds of tension, that means that there's
fifty pounds of force at one end and fifty pounds of force at the other end.
It doesn't matter whether that force comes from an anchor or from someone
pulling. Or you could have a pulley with a fifty-pound weight at each end. Or
a rope tied to the ceiling with fifty pounds at the other end.

(The simplification here is that the rope mass is negligible. In reality, the
tension will vary across the rope's length.)

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aaron695
> Our intention isn’t to sensationalize these mishaps

Fail. It's put me off Tug-of-War. And lets be realistic, it was the intention.

But an enjoyable article none the less.

~~~
electromagnetic
Tug-of-war is fun, I used to be the 'anchor' for my form high school team.
However it's one of the few games where you're potentially pitting the total
exertable force of a group (in our case 8 adolescents) against the minimum
resistance of your opponent.

Our instance: we were the best team all through highschool because we were
well coordinated. One of our last games we faced a decently weighted team, but
their anchor was neither strong nor heavy. Flag dropped, we heaved and charged
back. Their anchor had wrapped the rope around him and twisted it (basically
knotting himself in. We caught them off guard and dragged him between his team
mates. He was really cut up from being dragged between people's legs (and
everyone wears cleats).

It's fun, but it really punishes anyone who's stupid. Our teacher used to walk
around and whack anyone who wrapped their hands in the rope due to people
getting broken hands.

It's the exact same as the idiot who goes on field when people are throwing
javelins, discus and shot put.

~~~
dwd
Another example of exertable group force would be a Rugby Union scrum where at
the top levels they generate around 16.5kN of force(1). The ARU coaching
manuals recommend only selecting players with short, thick necks for the front
row and drilling players how to react instantly when there is a "mayday" call.

(1) [http://opus.bath.ac.uk/32592/](http://opus.bath.ac.uk/32592/)

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Fuzzwah
Worth the read if only because the photo of Harvard’s 1888 tug of war team.

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hudibras
I remember when the Taiwan accident happened because my local paper decided to
publish a picture of some guy's severed arm lying on the ground.

Not exactly what I wanted to see first in the morning over my cornflakes...

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BrandonY
I did not expect that article to be nearly as long nor as interesting.

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Dru89
I expected an article commenting on fatalities on some tug-of-war metaphor —
for instance, a power-struggle between two countries. I was surprised (and
possibly delighted) to find that this article was actually about tug-of-war.

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iandanforth
Please let us know when you have determined your level of delight.

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darylteo
Surely these are all casualties, as not all resulted in fatalities.

In fact, the only fatalities listed in this article were 2 boys in Frankfurt
Germany.

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Kittynana
I've seen something similar: in middle school a classmate tied the rope around
themselves to anchor the back of the line. He was pretty badly injured when
the other team pulled him over and dragged him across the field, pulling the
loop tight. I never thought about a rope snapping, though.

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omilu
The subject matter was interesting, but because of my squeamishness I couldn't
bring myself to read the actual description of the injuries or fatalities. I'm
one of those types of people that can't stand seeing broken bones or reading
about them, horrifies me

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tempestn
Good words of warning. The pun at the end seemed a bit much to me though.

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DustinCalim
Imagine if political disputes were settled this way instead of real war

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Cthulhu_
Or with a nice game of Quake.

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anon4
There's no chance of officials dying or suffering grievous injury that way.
Unless they start throwing keyboards.

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sixQuarks
I've always felt Priceonomics is gaming HN. How does this post have 28 upvotes
and no comments (other than mine)?

And what does tug of war fatalities have to do with Hacker News? Why not a
story about people dying from vending machines falling over on them? (7 on
average per year)

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dang
If they're gaming HN, they're fooling both the software and me, and I've spent
a ton of time working on this.

Please don't dilute the threads with meta complaints. Instead, do as the
guidelines ask and email us at hn@ycombinator.com; or flag the post; or both.

~~~
sixQuarks
OK, I'll drop it.

