Desperate circumstances

Finally, the point of considering hypothetical situations, perhaps very improbable ones, seems to be to elicit from yourself or someone else a hypothetical decision to do something of a bad kind. I don't doubt this has the effect of predisposing people--who will never get into the situations for which they have made hypothetical choices-‑to consent to similar bad actions, or to praise and flatter those who do them, so long as their crowd does so too, when the desperate circumstances imagined don't hold at all.

-- G.E.M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy."

... The relevance to the "ticking bomb" rationalization for torture is evident.