Wasn't there a study/experiment/stunt where the researchers hid the amount of weight being used from the lifter(s) who then exceeded PB (s) unknowingly? Maybe I read it in one of the columns written by that Starr guy from Johns Hopkins that wrote articles for MuscleMag...
(Or do I need to lay off the mushrooms...?)
I think I first heard of that as being a method the russians used as far back as Vasily Alexeev's (spelling?) hey day in treaining, where they'd load up a bar with some odd combos of smaller plates so that the lifter wouldn't know what precise amount they were lifting on that lift, and weren't obviously given the luxury of enough time to stand there and mentally catalogue the plates and do the math, and often as not (obviously they went for small increments over PBs) they'd get the lift, and then be told what it was which would also be a good morale booster.
I've 'heard' of the stories of people lifting cars off toddlers (almost always the mother) but I've never actually seen one that is even 'reasonably' documented, it's always a third hand (probably 100 and 3rd) account. Even if it was better documented, I'd suggest there's also just as many stories (with witnesses) of alien encounters. It's BS.
No doubt an adrenaline spike and a loved one in trouble will enable a potentially greater output than a sedate gym lift setting, but there's still limits to human physiology, you won't get someone who struggles to lift their kid into the bath suddenly lifting a car off of the same kid, life and death situation or not.
As for sri chimnoy, or however it is spelt, all that was impressive about his 'feats' were the rube goldberg devices to support the weights and the dodgy idea of the way it was measured (iirc something like any movement of the bar itself near the centre and that was considered to be supporting the whole weight, in reality he probably supported maybe a few hundred pounds on his back at the peak of the 'lift). It's no surprise he didn't enter any powerlifting meets and knock off an 'easy' 2000 lb squat or anything, which would have been piss easy if he was even remotely capable of his ludicrous lift claims. Despite that being blatantly obvious he had more numerous and seemingly far more unshakeable nuthuggers than jason blaha
The comparison to chimps isn't super valid, imo, because we evolved differently (possibly a common ancestor but a drastically different path). If we (as a species) evolved as anything it was more toward endurance as far as physical stuff goes, and as far as being predators, we didn't get to the top of the food chain through physical prowess, it was our brain power that allowed us to hunt collaboratively, make tools/weapons and utilize them that set us apart. and for the love of god (heh) I hope this doesn't push this into a tangent about evolution.
