well i saw an interview of the guy that amputated his own arm last week and he stated he twisted his are a certain way to make the bones in the lower arm (radius, ulna)break.  how did he do it?

I'm not sure, but I think if you crush your arm with a 250 pound rock, the bones are going to break anyway. No twisting required!![:P]

800 LB bolder and the bones didn't break.  he had to break them before he could start cutting.  the question is HOW!  

[shock]

i'm sure 3 days staring at his arm he could figure it out. That damn guy was hardcore, he probally gnawed through it!

he said once he broke the arm he knew he would bleed to death so he quickly started cutting with big sawing motions.  then he realized the knife was dull!!!

when i go into the woods i am going to make sure my knife is razor sharp

I don't want to be gross,
or say thats what this guy did,
but If you had cut alot of the tissue from your wrist area,
and twisted with your other hand on it
it wouldn't be that hard to twist it off
(i mean purely physically not what kind of brass ones you'd have to have to actually do that!)

I dont care what he did...he has some balls>>

Would a serrated edge cut thru bone..hell with it bring alond a battery perated MAkita sawzall...

He said his pocket knife was very dull. He cut all the tissue one day, did the bone the next, Don't know how, I didn't pay close attention. Seems he is/was/in training to be a nurse, maybe Doctor or surgeon. Really an amazing feat..I'd prolly be laying dead up there with an 800 pound rock on my arm, and a sharper knife in my pocket. [:D]

THEN he walked out God only knows how far.....

Hopefully the book and movie rights will set him up for life. He doesn't seem like the type to try and sue the rock manufacturer!! [snoopy]

Not to detract from the sheer weight of this guy's feat, but the forearm has two bones in it - the radius and ulna. Depending on the level at which he tried to amputate, the cross-sectional area of those two bones is not that great. The cortex of those bones can withstand less than 8 lbs/in direct lateral force before failure. A torquing motion will usually be the easiest force to break a bone however. Bones are strongest in compression, weakest in torsion and direct lateral bending.

The forearm also has just two main arteries - ulnar and radial- which are both muscular cell lined arteries. If severed cleanly they will both eventually self-constrict and seal the ends to avoid bleeding-out.

If in a hypothermic state, the body will have less sensation and less peripheral bloodflow as well.

thanks ClayP

that was the answer i was looking for.

OOOPS  I thought this was a thread on how to properly use your hand lotion while you do the "DukeNukem" shuffle......my apologies :)

Leverage

I want that guy on my "team"  He does not know the word quit!!!! He is a a true MAN!!!!

If it was me, I'd still be there.  Unfortunatly, I'd be dead!

I know there will be people on the board who are RAMBO and would have moved the 800lb rock or cut their arm off as well.......you know what,  I call B.S. before anyone even says it!

I'm feeling a little sick now.

That boulder was a pebble compared to the stones that guy has. He said the knife was a cheap Leatherman copy that was free with a flashlight.

My arm hurts from reading this thread. I hate that.

That guy's got more guts than I do. Saws through the muscle, breaks the bone, walks out. And then in the News Pics thread there he is joking around with the Press. Good Christ, somebody put that guy on an Eco-Challenge team.

DAMN, OUCH that had to hurt!!!!!

I broke my rigt wrist in 87 so bad that the back of my fingers were touching my forearm, oh man the pain, well not right away but after a bit, it started to hurt like a mofo...

That guy is one hard core tough man, my hats off to him

I was attacked by a dog once and had a large
gapping hole on my lower leg. There was some tissue hanging out that I thought was just skin, but when I tried to remove it, I could feel pain, I think it was muscle or nerve tissue?, so I stuffed it back in, then I cleaned it out and stitched it up with a regular sewing needle and thread and wrapped a t-shirt around it, Im lucky I didnt get an infection. The wound took about a month to heal because of all the scar tissue. By the time I could get to a doctor they said it was too late to give stitches, and they removed the ones I did myself, and gave me some antibiotics.

If he had a Swiss Army Knife like mine he could have used the crosscut saw to notch the bone, then breaking it would have been easy.

I wonder how many times he passed out from the pain???

Crap I'm about to pass out thinking about it!

so i'm sitting here at my desk up at work taking a break and listening to some nice classical music and i kind of put my right arm along the edge of the desk and my left hand just sort of lays on top of it.  the fingers wrap over the forearm and the thumb under the arm and table kind of like a "C" clamp.  i am not realy thinking of anything as i begin to raise my sholder and.  WOW the bones in my arm flex!  that's suprizing.  i bet if i pop my arm hard it will snap.  wonder what that sounds like.  then thinking i bet it's easier to get a little rock to put under the arm and use as a fulcrum to snap it on.  then you can raise up and just fall on the rock and SNAP!  then i think.  you pussy, your fat ass will die on the side of the mountain holding a sharp knife!  

 I don't know how he did it, but your impending demise would probably be a pretty good motivator.

 I don't think anything hurts worse than  broken bones or burns.

One thing to consider is he was probably under the influence of his body's own endorphins from the crushing injury,  so it might not have been perceived to be as painful as you would expect.

The guy's obviously survival oriented.  I really think that most people would sacrifice a limb if it was trapping them and the alternative was to die slowly.    I think I could do it but of course I really don't want to find out.

Whatever you have to do to survive is the right decision.

CJ

I heard on the radio today that authorities have retrieved the hand and lower arm fearing, if they didn't, it would end up on e-bay! No shit.

I'll admit this guy has the will to survive, but I wouldn't call him survival oriented.

He made too many stupid mistakes (which eventually cost him his arm) to make him any kind of outdoorsman like the media have proclaimed him to be.

Serriously, how many of you are going hiking in the wilderness alone with little more than a cheap Leatherman knockoff that isn't even sharp?

Besides, didn't he have access to an 800 lb shapening stone?

He certainly did what he had to to survive, but I wouldn't want to have to trust on someone like him for my survival.

The first of which was going mountaineering alone.

I read in the paper that he said that the knife was one of those (to paraphrase) that "comes free, with a $15 flashlight". THIS is the kind of tool this guy is going to bring with him, when he goes mountaineering ALONE?

He has balls, to be sure, just not a whole lot of brains.

I posted this story on the Survival Forum a few days ago:

When I was young and had 'no fear' I was ice climbing one winter (alone and unroped -- didn't have a partner to go with) and fell about 30 feet to the bottom of the verticle icicle, then tumbled head-over-heels another hundred feet down a 60 degree ice slope. My ankle snapped at the initial fall because the crampon stuck hard before the rest of the tumble. My ice axes were scraping me all the way down. I am lucky I did not impale myself on one. Anyways... after coming to a stop I then took several minutes to calm myself down (started to panic) and take stock of my situation (one of the lenses in my glasses popped-out, had one broken ankle, and many cuts and bruises). After crawling around and actually finding my lense, and gathering up my stuff -- I used my short ice axes as crutches and hopped out of there. It was about 30 degrees below zero that morning, so I am lucky I only had to hop (half of it up a steep hill) about a mile to my car.

My point is not to look brave, it's to say that one does what one has to do to get the job done and survive. You guys are obviously the type of guys who would do the same thing if in the same circumstances -- SURVIVE. This story reminds me always to have my Gerber multitool handy with the VERY sharp serrated blade. Never know when you're going to have to amputate a limb...