I should have said - "Rigged properly it is not likely that cable will recoil". Won't was too strong of a word.
In the breaks I have seen, read about, or heard about that HAVE recoiled; they all had one thing in common. Improper rigging. Either pulling the cable against the fairlead at a sharp angle from the winch, attaching to a weak point on a vehicle and actually having that break off, using a d-ring wrong, using too small of a d-ring of a load, etc.
If the cable was pulled straight from one vehicle to another or a tree, AND it was the cable that broke, the cable just dropped to the ground.
I have witnessed a couple of breaks firsthand. All with wire rope (cable). First one, my 8274 with a new spool of Warn wire rope. About 150 feet. I was attempting to pull a stuck 5 ton flatbed loaded with logs up a muddy incline. My kid had cut, split, stacked this truck for three days with this load, and then couldn't get it up the hill. I drove the CJ over, thinking it would just pull it up the hill. Wrong. So I tried to winch it up. Wrong. So I drove to the top, tied off the jeep to a tree, and tried to winch. Wrong. Frustrated, I snatched it, with a Warn brand snatch block. Using 16000 pounds of pull, tied to a tree, and pulling straight line, I had 5 remaining wraps on the drum when I started. The wire rope was new, other than one test pull when I tensioned it on the drum.
The wire rope failed mid span. Neither near the winch or near the snatch block. It failed mid pull. The truck had travelled nearly half the length of the cables pull (about 1/4 the distance needed overall). The motor of the winch had not stalled out (like it did when I tried a single line pull). The rope just broke. I had not had a winch weight or blanket or coat on the cable, and the cable sprang back slightly, yet nowhere near the Jeep. I credit the snatch block for this, as the long end of the cable had to go thru the snatch block. However, remember, that the hook on the winch cable was hooked to my own bumper (due to the snatch) and that section of broken cable did NOT have the energy to spring into my jeep.
I blocked off the truck mid hill, drove to Tacoma, got another section of cable at the NW Wire Rope in the tideflats, drove back, rehooked the exact same way, and finished the pull.
The second time I witnessed a cable snap, was a TTC in Cali. In the early TTCs, not everyone had winches (now mandatory) so we had judges rigs in the Tank Trap to pull out the unlucky fools. Anyhow, I was judging, and a Mog 404 with a PTO got stuck and used my CJ for a winch anchor. I was tied to a tree (thankfully) on my back bumper. The Mog PTO winch does not have a Power Out function. To power out, you push in the clutch, select reverse, and that powers the winch in reverse. BUT, when you power into a bank, it binds the transmission in gear, and you can't get the gear selector to pull it out of low low gear. So he was stuck in forward, and had winched himself to a embankment and couldn't unhook or move or anything. And I was the anchor at the end of his cable. His cable was metric, but about 1/2 sized. It too snapped (also thankfully it didn't tear my CJ in half) and had little recoil. He repositioned his Mog, tied a knot in the end of the cable (don't ask me how) and rehooked to my CJ. This time, he pulled my CJ forward, causing the tree I'd anchored to fall on my Jeep. However he made it out of the hole. And we chainsawed my Jeep out from under the tree. No damage.
Moral of the stories. Never help your kid with a load of firewood. And the tank trap needs lots of wheel speed which Unimogs don't have.
Anyhow, neither time did the broken wire rope damage anything. Neither time did I see any substantial stored energy released.
And to this day I run wire rope. However, I still hide behind something during winching.
