  A classical system cannot escape out of a metastable state at zero
temperature. However, a composite system made from both classical and quantum
degrees of freedom may drag itself out of the metastable state by a sequential
process. The sequence starts with the tunneling of the quantum component which
then triggers a distortion of the trapping potential holding the classical
part. Provided this distortion is large enough to turn the metastable state
into an unstable one, the classical component can escape. This process reminds
of the famous baron Muenchhausen who told the story of rescuing himself from
sinking in a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair--we thus term this
decay the `Muenchhausen effect'. We show that such a composite system can be
conveniently studied and implemented in a dc-SQUID featuring asymmetric
dynamical parameters. We determine the dynamical phase diagram of this system
for various choices of junction parameters and system preparations.
