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.

Why would the older brother refuse to translate ?

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.

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.

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.)

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)

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.)

Don't think so. I think it'd be the same force as it would be anchored, just distributed along more of the rope.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plunge_for_distance

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

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...

> 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.

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.

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/

Too serious, too serious. I like the best the version in which each participant starts with a can of beverage in one hand and has to finish it before pulling with both hands.

I remember hearing about how one of my track coaches in high school, years before my time, wound up with a javelin through his shoulder because some dipshit wasn't paying attention and wanted to show off. After hearing that story, I never really liked being near those things.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Or with a nice game of Quake.

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

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.

OK, I'll drop it.

It could be confirmation bias, but I've noticed lots of posts (from a variety of sources) which accumulate several tens of votes before the first comment. I've attributed it to a subtle shift in HN users where more people vote things up and refrain from commenting until it looks like the post will hang around on the front page for a while. But, that's just speculation.