I commented on this one before. The Navy has had cables and synthetic lines snap and cut people (sometimes in half). You will not be able to obtain safety investigation reports because the Navy deems it "Privileged Material." (I attended the Navy's Aviation Safety Officer school and am well aware of such mishaps). Releasing his info is BAD PR FOR RECRUITING.

i just posted something about this but i want it to be heard..
if any1 has watched the 100th dirty job special hes training to become a mechanic for the army and one of the trainers in explaining that if you were to step on the winch cord you can be cut in half vertically so i dont know if this is true but i think myth busters should revisit this one and try it with different circumstances.

Yes, this needs to be revisited. I would think Jamie would know better: Bigger is not necessarily better. Cheese cutters utilize a thin wire to cut the cheese; a thicker wire would not work very well. It's like the difference between a dull edge and sharp edge on a knife. They should have used extremely thin wire (piano wire stretches). Also, the bench test only used string. If they'd used a guitar string and had a cheese model for the wire to strike, they'd have an accurate model to see if thicker or thinner wire is better. I wonder if the girl with legs cut off saw that episode and thought, "That wire won't cut me."

This needs to be be revisted....Just think logicly...If a cable snaps and goes hurtleing at you,you won't kust stand there.Your body's first instint is to run.
Getting hit while moving maybe one of the keys of doing this myth again.

Hi all,

First i have to say, that cable can and will cut if its stressed over the limit 2-5x what it can hold on the paper.

The story is..
Its winter, we have a dumpster which is moved wiht a big truck using cables.
One big dumpster is frozen on the ground pretty hard. Truck cames to get it and puts the cable on it. Driver starts to pull the dumpster up, but its so hard on a ground that the trucks front end rises up in the air. Driver gets out of the truck to see whats going on, still starts to pull on a remote control out of the truck, suddenly HUGE bang, both of the cables snaps same time. Stress on a cables were so insane, that both cables went over the cabine slices the cabine all the way down to the ground, creating 2 massive marks on the asphalt.
Reason to why all this happens, is that normally there is a pull limiter on the truck that it cant pull only so hard that cables can hold. In this case the limiter has taked off cause the service of it.


Think about it...

When I was in the Coast Guard, I investigated a fatal accident on a container ship in the port of Houston. A deck hand was cut in two when a nylon mooring line snapped.

I agree that this myth should be revisited, not because of tragic accidents or the thickness of pig skin, but because the original test had an in my opinion major flaw.

The pigs were set up for the cable to snap and wrap around them, like Indy with his whip. This gives a tremendous impact force, but little of the friction needed to slice a body in half. As anyone who's used a bread knife knows, it's the sliding motion that gives a good cut. Pressing the knife into the bread does not give the same result as drawing the edge across it, and the same thing goes for cables and pigs.

As Adam's frustration with the failed experiment built up in the episode, he finally used the forklift to tug the pig in half. Looking at the slow motion images, we can actuially see the cable slide over the skin, and that way easily slice it cleanly in half.

So what should have been done differently?

In my opinion, the pigs were placed wrong. They should be placed so the cable lashes past them - the tip slicing them open on the way - and not so it wraps around the cadaver. Having the pig replace the barrel, for example, would have made the whole thing a lot more bloody.

Precision cutting is more important than the force in this case, and I think there's still a hope for Mr Savage to get the gory results he was originally hoping for.

I agree with mattis and aryd.