Excerpt from an excerpt of Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place, his account of self-amputation in a box canyon:

"An epiphany strikes me with the magnificent glory of a holy intervention and instantly brings my seizure to a halt: If I torque my arm far enough, I can break my forearm bones. ... There is no hesitation. I barely realize what I'm about to do. ... I put my left hand under the boulder and push hard, harder, HARDER! to put a maximum downard force on my radius bone. As I slowly bend my arm down to the left, a POW! reverberates like a muted cap-gun shot."