Featured Image Credit: NBC
Topics: Film and TV, Life
Emily Brown
If you find it hard just to watch James Franco pretend to chop off his arm in 127 Hours, wait until you hear the real-life details from the man who inspired the film.
In his 2010 film, Franco portrayed many of the real events that took place after adventurer Aron Ralston set off on a climbing trip in Utah.
The events that followed are truly stomach-churning:
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The climber had ventured out by himself in May 2003 on a canyoneering trip in Blue John Canyon in Utah, but three days into the five-day trip he found himself pinned by a boulder which crushed his right forearm.
Over the course of six days he experienced sleep deprivation, blood loss, dehydration and starvation, among other things. In order to save his life, Ralston had just one option: cut off his own arm.
He made a makeshift tourniquet, and armed with nothing more than a dull pocketknife, the adventurer worked to break his bone and cut through skin, nerve and muscle.
After escaping from the canyon he recalled the horrific events in gruesome detail, describing one of the nerves in his arm as 'this little strand of spaghetti'.
"I had to take the knife and pry it up, and even just when I touched it it felt like... sticking my arm into a pot of liquid metal," Ralston said.
The adventurer told reporters he's 'not sure' how he handled the experience, explaining: "I felt pain and I coped with it. I moved on."
He went into further detail in an interview with GQ years after he set off on his adventure, when he said the 'actual cutting was a different kind of pain'.
"There are nerve endings in certain parts of your arm tissue. So when I broke the bone it hurt of course, but for me it was a happy moment because that was what was trapping me. It was the first time I realised I would soon be free.
"I broke the top then the bottom by bending my arm in the configurations I knew would snap it," Ralston said.
"That moment was the key to it all. If you can put yourself through all that and you're smiling a big beaming, pearly grin, you know you're winning. That stayed with me for the next hour. I was cutting through the skin, hacking through the muscle, breaking the tendon in my arm. I would feel the pain then I would smile because that pain meant impending freedom."
After successfully cutting off his arm, Ralston's ordeal still wasn't over. Still far from civilisation, he had to crawl through the canyon, rappel down a 60-foot cliff and walk approximately six miles down the southeastern Utah canyon to find help.
Ralston recalled being told by the physicians who treated him that he had less than an hour to live by the time he arrived at the hospital.