How to Escape Duct Tape on Your Wrists: Jason Hanson's Method

The quick answer: if duct tape is wrapped around your wrists with your hands in front of you, former CIA officer Jason Hanson teaches raising your arms high above your head and then driving them down towards your stomach while pulling your elbows apart, all in one fast motion. Done correctly, the force tears the tape at its weakest point. Below is who Hanson is, how the technique works, and its real limits.

Who is Jason Hanson?

Hanson spent six years as a CIA officer focused on security, according to a 2014 NPR report, and afterwards founded Spy Escape & Evasion, a company that runs civilian courses in escape and personal safety. He also wrote Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life, which became a New York Times bestseller. His two-day workshops, then priced around $1,000, included lock picking, slipping out of handcuffs, escaping duct tape and a final exercise escaping from a car trunk in the dark.

The short video originally shared here, in which he demonstrated the duct-tape escape, is no longer online, but he has explained the same method in later interviews and live demonstrations, including a 2020 CrimeCon event reported by Oxygen.

How the duct-tape wrist escape works

Duct tape tends to be strong along its length but much weaker once a tear starts at the edge. The technique uses speed and angle to load the tape sideways all at once:

1. Hands in front. The method is designed for tape wrapped around the wrists with the hands in front of the body, which Hanson says is how criminals most often use it.
2. Arms up. Raise your bound hands high above your head so your arms form a triangle.
3. Down and apart, together. Bring your hands down hard towards your hips while forcing your elbows out to the sides. Hanson calls this finding the “magic angle”.
4. One motion. The most common mistake, he says, is pulling down first and apart second. The two have to happen at the same time.

Hanson says the move relies on technique rather than upper-body strength, so it can work for people of different ages and fitness levels.

Taped to a chair or at the ankles

For tape across the chest and arms holding someone to a chair, Hanson describes jolting the upper body forward and down so momentum snaps the tape. For taped ankles, his advice is to point the feet out in a V and drop quickly into a squat. If you are not flexible enough for that, he suggests freeing your hands first and then simply unwrapping your ankles.

Limits and common myths

• Not a guarantee. The number of wraps, the tape’s quality, whether the hands are behind the back and how much room you have all change the outcome. A demonstration shows the method working under favourable conditions.
• Practice matters. Like any physical skill, it is far more reliable after supervised practice with a partner who can cut the tape if needed.
• Escape is not the first priority. Getting free is only useful if you can then reach safety and call emergency services. In a real threat, your judgement about timing matters more than any single move.
• The risk is low. Survival author James Wesley Rawles told NPR that the odds of being abducted are “downright infinitesimal for the majority of Americans”, though he still saw such courses as a reasonable step towards self-reliance.

Why people take these classes

NPR found that most of Hanson’s students were ordinary people rather than wealthy executives; around 70 percent were men. For many, the appeal is less about expecting a kidnapping and more about confidence: knowing that a frightening situation might have a way out. If you want to learn, look for in-person training with a qualified instructor, practise safely with tape that a partner can remove quickly, and never practise alone.

Sources: Oxygen: Hanson's duct-tape escape tips; NHPR / NPR, Aug 2014; FOX 13 Utah, March 2016; Why Don't You Try This (original share).

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