Why Do Climbers Trust This Simple Knot?

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Misinformation is old. It might feel more rampant, now. It might feel amplified with the advent of the internet. But it’s not new.

In the video, besides betting into how to tie the flat overhand bend (also known as the offset overhand bend), besides a discussion of the pros and cons, and besides a discussion of appropriate and inappropriate uses for the knot based on the circumstances of a rappel, we also get into a very brief history of how accidents attributed to the knot where misattributed. That led to some bad stories, and bad stories - back to our modern times - seem to be the ones that spread most easily.

Climbing stories have plenty of potential for spreading if tragedy is the the fuel of spread. But when we are telling stories to impart cautionary tails (like “don’t use that knot”) it seems pretty important that we get the facts of the story straight. From what I can gather, is seems a number of people had mistaken a flat overhand and a knot joining two ropes using a figure eight “starter knot (think the first part of the knot you tie to do a figure eight retrace to tie into your harness - the part you do before threading the rope end through the harness hard points). And it turns out joining ropes with a figure eight “starter” is considerably weaker and much more prone to having the knot roll.

So, somewhere a long the giant game of telephone that is word-of-mouth story telling, it became accepted that a flat overhand was not only dangerous but extremely so, when it was this figure eight variant that was the problem. But in this case, the misinformed story also got a catchy label: the European Death Knot. What an emotive moniker, right?

“Death” - well, that’s scary.

“European” - look, there is even a whole group of people who “know less than me” that I can blame!

Those are the kinds of monikers that stick. We had gone from facts to story to legend to symbol. My academic background is in political science and public policy, and I spent my master’s studies on messaging, political communication, and voting behavior. EDK (European Death Knot) is very much what we would call “symbolic politics,” the use of a simplified representation of a more complex thought to persuade other to some action: “don’t use this knot unless you want to be like those dying, stupid people that do.” Symbols can be words, too. In fact, all words are are symbols that represent more complex things like ideas and objects and people and such. Symbols don’t have to be pictures. The crux, though, is that because of their simplicity, symbols spread fast. Think of memes.

So, the EDK is a legacy burden for which we, as a climbing community, now have to fight misinformation. And the hard part about fighting misinformation is that the truth is often complex. Complexity doesn’t lend itself to the kind of easy, viral spread that simplicity does. For example, is the offset overhand appropriate for single-strand rappels? Many in the canyoneering community say, “no.” because we can exert higher forces on the knot with a single-strand rappel than a double-strand rappel. (On a double strand rappel, each strand takes half the force, and only one strand has the knot in it - we go into this in the video). So, we get some more complicated story like, the offset overhand (we don’t use the EDK moniker because it breaths life into the misinformation) is really good for double-strand rappels because it have enough strength margin and also is easy to tie and is easy to check and… but you might want to think hard about using it on a single-strand.

The best we can do, then, is try to be vocal about the complexity, be persistent, and be calm when those shout the symbol at us (and they are usually shouting).