"Never chop your rope" makes sense to me, and seems like a no-brainer, but accidents do happen in that dangerous line of work. My grandfather was a logger up in northern Washington State as a young man. He lost his leg in a work related accident, but it was that he was crushed between 2 rail cars of the train they used to haul the logs. I'm thinking safety has come a long way in the past 100 years.