by Rory Miller
(Side note: some weapons, like saps, are favored less because of the injury than because they leave so few marks--redness and swelling that entirely disappears in a few hours coupled with sometimes severe contra-coup brain injuries.)
Taking head blows even without ever getting knocked out, "microconcussions" have some very bad long term effects. I think everyone should try boxing, at least until they get over the fear of being hit, but I don't recommend anyone stay with boxing.
There are some possibilities for non-concussive unconsciousness or unconsciousness without significant brain trauma--strangles (sleeper holds, vascular restraints... there are a lot of euphemisms) the person goes out for twenty seconds plus, and unless there is a pre-existing condition (heart problem, arterial plaque or blood vessels weakened by excessive drug use) there are no ill-effects.
Theoretically, a strike to the side of the neck a little towards the front will induce syncope (fainting) by triggering the baroreceptors, the points where your brain reads blood pressure. I haven't seen that work, but I also haven't talked twenty people into letting me try to punch them close to the throat.
A light slap to the point acupuncturists call Gall Bladder 20 gets an immediate stun reaction. Put your hand on the back of your neck, cradling your lower skull. Now slide it to the side so that the bottom of your palm touches your ear and you are cradling one of the rear corners of your skull. Slap, lightly, in and up to that juncture of skull and neck. It's a fairly reliable shock stun (short term, no loss of consciousness but the threat freezes). The acupuncturist told me it worked because it dilated the blood vessels. If true, it would be a faint and a no-side-effects knockout. I'm skeptical because hitting directly over the brainstem and at that angle doesn't take a lot of power to do severe trauma to the very upper spine and the parts of the brain that controls stuff like breathing. Potentially lethal.
To be clear-- head trauma can definitely put someone down, but rarely, if ever, without some pretty severe other effects, like nausea, dizziness, seizures, impaired vision, impaired coordination ...
Recap
-Blunt weapons are common, cheap and easily improvised
-They can be simple to learn
-Blunt weapons can be used to swing, thrust or flail. Some can be used to entangle, joint lock or takedown.
-Head trauma and knockouts have specific effects and mechanisms of injury (MOI)
Chapter 10: Edged Weapons
A note from the late Carl Cestari (used with permission):
KNIFE DEFENSE MYTH
Instead of talking about a lot of B.S. concerning so-called unarmed "knife" defenses, let's reverse roles for a moment.
Let us assume the "role" of the attacker, instead of the "defender".
First, let's consider the "choice" of weapon.
A knife or any edged weapon is an "up close and personal" tool of ferocious and brutal mayhem. You have to close with your mark and physically, violently and with extreme prejudice stab, slash, and hack him to bits. It's not like a gun, which could have an element of detachment. No, a knife is about as personal, brutal and ruthless as it gets.
So what kind of "mind-set" does this entail? You are going close with your target hard and fast, using deception, surprise or simply a committed and brutal pouncing. You are going to be determined, ruthless, brutal, ferocious, vicious, and most probably filled with hate and rage.
You are going to seize the target with abject brutality and stab, slash, hack and eviscerate with totally committed rage, ferocity and hate. OVER and OVER and OVER.
NOTHING is going to stand in your way. NOTHING! You are going to DESTROY whatever DOES attempt to thwart your murderous assault. You will attack repeatedly with ALL the strength, speed, and brutality you are capable of. And THAT will be heightened even MORE by rage and adrenalin.
You KNOW that you MUST get this over with QUICKLY. Your attack will be a frenzy of hate, rage and murderous INTENT.
You WON'T "feint" with your blade, you WON'T "spar" with your blade, you WON'T "half-step" with your blade.
You WILL attack with brutal and ruthless rage. You WILL punch, kick, bite, gouge, butt, and do ANY and EVERYTHING that will accomplish you GOAL in as ferocious a manner as inhumanly possible.
Unless YOU are killed outright, NO injury will dissuade you from KILLING your mark. In FACT, anything LESS than your death, will ONLY add MORE FUEL to YOUR FIRE. NOTHING, short of your immediate demise CAN stop you. Rage, hate, murderous intent and adrenalin are fueling you to an almost superhuman state of FRENZY and FEROCITY!
Even when your man goes down, and DOWN you are determined to put him, YOU still continue the assault. You stab and stab and stab. You kick and stomp OVER and OVER and OVER again.
You DON'T even begin to "disengage" until your "blood" lust has been quenched, and your mark taken off the count.
THAT is what REALLY happens when one human being uses a knife on another.
Face that FACT squarely. Too many are "playing" knife gymnastics without EVER even realizing what the street has in store for them. It isn’t going to be pretty!
Are you REALLY preparing to DEAL with THAT? Or are you kidding yourself and others? REALITY sucks, as they say. But it is what it is!
Sobering? Carl had a way with words.
When Carl was writing, he was trying to wake up martial artists on the subject of defense. The difference between practicing against a training partner and someone trying to kill you is huge.
The knife-wielder isn’t always emotional. Knives work just as well with a detached mindset. There is still (except in sentry-removal style assassinations) this kind of fast, hard, implacable onslaught... but it can be cold.
This is one thing to be careful of: people who write fight scenes sometimes make the character sound like a chess master, with moves and countermoves.
A killer kills. He allows no countermoves. That mindset can be cold or hot, but it is there.
Here’s the deal about knives: using a knife is more of an emotional skill than a physical one. If you ever use a blade you will feel the different layers of tissue. You might feel the signs of life, the heartbeat, the muscles contracting in pain, transmitted right up your blade. You will feel stuff gush over you and you will smell it, the coppery blood and sharp, stomach-acid polluted shit smell of open guts. You will be close enough to look in the eyes and see the intelligence and life fading from them. If you ever see that fade, you will probably come to believe in a soul.
And some will revel in it. Killing with a knife is profound. Profoundly sobering and sometimes, for some people, profoundly empowering and liberating. You have to decide for yourself if that emotional response is automatically evil.
If I could assign homework for you I would ask every one of you to find a local farmer and help out at slaughtering time. To wield the knife yourself. To take the life of a big, human-sized animal and watch and feel it die. To know that things rarely die easily.
There is a lot of technical stuff with blades. I’m going to start with knives. Here’s the big shocker. Knives are not used to win fights. Knives are used to kill people. You get as close as you can and you stab (usually) or cut. A lot. Often holding an arm or the head so that the victim can’t move.
Do knife duels happen? Maybe. But one of the more qualified people I know once said, “I’d rather be unarmed against a knife, because knife on knife I know there are two crazy stupid people in the room.” Or, in the immortal words of anonymous: “There is one thing worse than coming in second in a knife fight. Tying for first.” People smart and vicious enough to use a knife tend to be too smart to use them stupidly, and that includes dueling. The knife-on-knife training is just bullshit macho fantasizing (my opinion, of course. Feel free to disregard.)
With a knife, you can thrust or slash. The thrust is to get to organs. Heart, liver, kidneys, bowels, bladder, stomach. There are some specialized thrusts—behind the collarbone to get to the ascending aorta is a classic assassination. Thrust behind the trachea an
d then pushed out through the front of the neck used to be taught. Into the femoral artery/nerve. Through the pelvic gap (Directly at the bottom of the crotch you can stab upward through the soft spot. Hits the bowel and large intestines. Ugly way to die. Not quick.)
Slashes are aimed at muscle. If you can sever a muscle completely, that limb is half useless. People in medieval times regularly survived slashes, which led to the belief that thrusts were more dangerous. It was definitely true before antibiotics. I’m not sure today. Most of the survivors I know were slashed and most of those that died had thrust wounds, but a lot had both.
In either case, slash or thrust, bone near the surface is a bad target.
A lot of people don't notice any pain from a knife assault. Several have said after being stabbed repeatedly that they thought they were being punched. A friend didn't know he was stabbed until he noticed one of his sneakers was full of fluid. He thought he stepped in a puddle, but it was his own blood filling his shoe. Seeing your own blood and realizing it is yours tends to make most people panic. The fear turning into a righteous rage "I will make this bastard pay!" seems to be the survival mindset with the best track record (See Sanford Strong's "Strong on Defense").
Swords. I have a fair amount of training in swords but have only ever used them to kill goats. I’ve been trying in these chapters to stick with stuff that I know and avoid speculation. You can get speculation for free in other places. So some observations:
-Fencing has vastly changed how we think about swordfighting. With the advent of guns, the advances in metallurgy and the decline in armor, the small swords and rapiers changed the fighting world. For the first time the same tool could be used for offense and defense without being irreparably damaged.
-Specifically, up until the advent of fencing, you tried to avoid blocking with your sword. It was better than dying, but if a heavy sword hit another heavy sword, both would be too damaged to be reliable.
-Older European weapons were balanced to cut, not to defend. They feel completely different than a modern replica.
- In Europe especially, defense was based on the shield and armor.
-In older Japanese systems, the same was true, but never having developed the shield, defense relied on continuous movement and quick killing.
-Older Japanese systems look and feel very different from systems that were influenced by kendo.
-Dueling systems (post-kendo and post-fencing) emphasize a balanced offense and defense and layered strategy.
-Pre-kendo/fencing systems were simpler, more brutal and emphasized closing and cutting
-These older styles were also much more comfortable with using body crashing, sweeps, strikes and environmental opportunities than later styles.
-The few times I have played with armor it has been hard to slash through and disturbingly easy to thrust through (but I’ve never tried it with metal plate)
-A good sword is a three-foot razor blade. It doesn’t take any power. While butchering the goats without adding any strength, just letting the blade’s weight fall from my shoulder it went through eighteen inches of spine—eighteen inches of bone—and I never felt any resistance.
-Stiff or set targets are easier to cut than limp targets.
-Swords are not just for cutting. They are often heavy enough to break bones and some can shear through bones.
-I’ve played with some old Filipino weapons. I believe that the reason they emphasize flowing draw cuts so much is because the handles were attached so poorly that a heavy stroke would have snapped the hilt off.
-Which means that technology drives technique: the reason Japanese blades are curved is because of the folding process. Japanese swords were straight before that was introduced. The Vikings were able to figure out how to do something similar with a straight weapon, but never (as far as I know) discovered differential tempering.
-Toughness refers to durability, the ability to take a beating. Hardness refers to how hard something is to scratch. High hardness holds a better edge, but tends to be brittle (shatters or chips) while tough swords don’t break (but some bend) tough swords tend to dull quickly.
-Hardening, annealing and tempering are the combined art form of trying to find the right balance of toughness and hardness.
-The longer a sword, the harder it is to get these good qualities evenly along the whole length without weak spots. That is why they were so expensive and a good, tested sword was so prized.
-If used against flesh, you can sacrifice a lot of toughness. Less so against armor.
Infighting With a Sword:
A lot of weapons, particularly swords, can be used infighting. Very few train it, but it is devastating. Infighting with a sword is easier to show than to write about. Let's give it a shot.
Hacking is swinging a blade to hit the target at 90 degrees. Slashing swings the weapon in a similar way, but with the weapon angled back from the swing so that slightly more of the blade gets drawn through the wound channel. A draw cut uses either of these mechanics and then, on impact, you draw your hands closer to your own center to pull the blade through the wound. A press cut does the slash or hack dynamic and on impact the hands push out, pushing the blade through the wound channel. You could play with these geometries on a piece of Hunter's Sausage or dry pepperoni to see the effects.
Infighting with a sword depends a lot on an ability to close and to cut angles and is done almost all with the legs and waist. Imagine a katana coming straight down at your head. A modern, dueling system fencer would dodge back, dodge to the side or parry the weapon to one side and counter-attack. The infighting solution, which is common to battlefield styles (and very different from dueling) is to charge, angled slightly off from his center. Where a dueling system tends to lead with the point, an in fighting system tends to lead with the hilt.
For the downward slash, if my timing (as an infighter) is poor, his slash will connect with my sword, which is angled back and down, hands/hilt in front, above and to one side, tip trailing over my shoulder. My weapon glides his weapon. If he can't control his slash and recover, I'll be behind him.
If my timing as an infighter is decent, a similar motion will happen but it will be his arms, not his blade that impact and slide on my weapon. I'll be behind an armless man.
If my timing is good, I'll be so far inside the range of his slash that my edge will go into his torso or armpit (if I know I'm faster, I may have dropped my blade lower to belly level). I lever the blade against his body and step away with a twist, which gives draw cut mechanics plus the effect of pressing directly on the back of the blade. You know when you cut frozen meat how you push on the back of the blade with your hands? Infighters wind up doing that a lot but often with their own hips or shoulders.
It has a lot of the mechanics of rugby, because there is a lot of rush and body impact. Some elements of wrestling, because you find that there are ways to control the threat's elbows with your shoulders. It integrates with some sweeps, throws and locks (battlefield era systems weren't big on punching and kicking, since they were ineffective against armor. Throws and locks work just fine on armor, though).
The battlefield/infighting was based on the idea that one of you was going to be dead in the next instant. Using dueling techniques on a battlefield could easily end with someone else sticking a spear in your side or back. That made continuous movement critically important. Staying really close to the enemy helped shield you from his friends. It's another example of the huge difference even in a fight between fighting and killing.
Spears, axes and other cool things:
The spear, not the sword, was the primary weapon on the battlefield before firearms. It had superior reach; thrusts were generally more effective against armor than slashes; and spears were far cheaper to make than swords. Use in battle required team planning. Used solo for dueling, the spear could become quite acrobatic and there would be opportunities to use the butt and shaft. If you see a staff form (kata) with a lot of thrusts, it often desc
ended from a spear form.
Spears varied in length, from pikes that could be over twelve feet to the short stabbing spears of the Zulu, the assegai. The longer weapons were used in formation, turning the whole unit into a lethal porcupine. The shorter ones were individual weapons—even in well-coordinated mass battle, a Zulu warrior wanted to make a name.
There have been a lot of spear-based and combination weapons, usually trying to add slashing versatility (an edge, either like an axe or a short sword) armor piercing (putting a spike at 90 degrees to the haft) or disarming/dismounting abilities (hooks).
Common to swords, axes and spears—big swings make you vulnerable to closing attacks. A good fighter would attempt to rush inside the arc of the swing. That gave some short weapons an advantage and made even swinging weapons, like an axe, something that you held in a thrust position to defend (unless you were using it with a shield.)
Axes have a lot of the advantages of an impact weapon, like a mace. They put a fearsome amount of force on a small surface area. I have not used an axe against armor myself, but have read that it crushes through. They are also extremely useful tools, cheap to make and maintain (notice that expense comes up a lot in weapon descriptions- that's important) and versatile. Even big axes can be thrown and they can be used to hook over shields and yank them out of the way (an arm strapped to the shield will result in the whole body spinning, probably exposing the back) and can sweep legs. Some of the head configurations increase the versatility with a thrusting spike on top and an armor-piercing spike on the back.
A bayonet allows a musket or rifle to be converted to a spear. Remember that the spear was the superior weapon on battlefields. The bayonet/musket combination played a large part in making pikemen obsolete.