Force and Velocity of a Metal Clothesline

I'd believe either about equally.

Which is to say, not at all.

If the wind was strong enough to decapitate him with a clothesline the wind is strong enough to kill him on its own. You're talking Mach speeds here.

How does the wind wrap the clothesline around his neck? Unless it's a sentient wind that's just not going to happen.

Lots of other debris you could decapitate him with, if that's your choice. Have a stop sign tear free. those metal edges are sharp enough to do the job at a few hundred miles an hour. Plus you get the wonderful image of the body sitting against a wall, stop sign imbedded at the neckline.

Thinking about towing cables - as in tug towing ship - if one of those snaps that can whip around and cut someone in two. Maybe, just maybe, you could have something big held down by cables, the wind blows on the big thing to the point a cable snaps and lashes round the person.

For a cable to snap with any force it has to be under tension. Prestressed concrete plants regularly have cables that slip or break, and they occasionally have injuries, but the cables have a few hundred pounds of tension. Clotheslines have slack, so they wouldn't do anything, unless they were haunted by demons. I haves seen tensioners for clotheslines, but they just keep them from sagging too much, but you might play with one, if you need to.

Entirely unlikely and extremely improbably. But, unlikely and improbably things happen in stories all the time.

jennontheisland said:

unlikely and improbably things happen in stories all the time.

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Yes. Usually right before the reader groans and sets the book aside, thinking, "I won't be buying the next one in this series."

What makes a whip pop? It's the tip moving fast enough to break the sound barrier. The end of a wire clothes line under the right circumstances could also reach that speed. (760 mph give or take)

standard clothesline is too stiff to wrap around a neck. Oh, you could force it around by hand, but the moment you let go it'll unravel and straighten out.

IMO, without some outside agency (demon? curse?), or using something non-standard for your clothesline, that would be a book-tosser.

jimmymc said:

What makes a whip pop? It's the tip moving fast enough to break the sound barrier. The end of a wire clothes line under the right circumstances could also reach that speed. (760 mph give or take)

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What makes a whip crack take a person's head off?

Nothing.

Oh. That kind of kills that theory, doesn't it?

In fact your mind experiment shows exactly why the clothesline CAN'T take a person's head off, even at incredible speeds. It just doesn't have the mass to edge-thickness. Same reason the whip breaks skin, but doesn't cut a person in half. All the momentum dies almost instantly upon contact.

I've heard of arrestor cables on aircraft carriers snapping under the tension of a landing and separating a crew member, but those cables are under a bit more stress.

I think to pull this off, you'd have to have tornado-strength winds that are moving a heavy object through the air. Think EF-1 winds of above 86 MPH, and probably closer to 110, and maybe even in to EF2 territory of 111 - 135, with something heavy to put tension on the cable.

As others have said, it's just not going to happen I'm afraid. If you've got a bulldozer towing a truck or something and the cable snaps then yes that could cut someone in half, but it's a totally different situation.

How about having a big window blow out and a shard of flying glass take him in the neck or something instead? That probably wouldn’t take his head off either but I could buy death from blood loss in that scenario.

Although if the (now sharp) very end of the cable catches the person on the carotid, things could get messy.

ClareGreen said:

Although if the (now sharp) very end of the cable catches the person on the carotid, things could get messy.

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Agreed. There's lots of ways to be killed by flying debris, but that's really part of the problem. At the wind speeds required to propel a clothesline like that everything is a deadly missile. If decapitation is the requirement, then the object has to have a decent amount of mass and a sharp enough edge to get the job done.

Sheet metal roofing could be flying in 60-ish MPH winds. I can see a piece of tin roofing come flying along and doing the deed.