John Wilkes Booth leaps from the opera box of Ford’s theatre, surrounded by over 100 armed union soldiers and officers with pistols on their hips. Knife in hand. After expending his single shot killing the American President.
Who was the first to forge the deadly blade? From rugged steel his savage soul was made; By him, his bloody Flag Ambition wav’d; and grisly carnage thro’ the battle rav’d
—Tibullus, Elegy 11 (Trans. James Grainger 1759)
Part 1: Why the Knife?
What is the deadliest weapon on the modern battlefield?
FPV Drones are the new hotness; Nuclear Weapons hang like the Sword of Damocles; Airstrikes plunge like thunderbolts with Jupiterian Precision; Artillery rains like a storm God’s deluge ( or at least it does when you have a manufacturing base); IEDs and mines lie in wait for the unlucky traveler; Precision rifles take their silenced harvests; and chemical and biological weapons lurk like an emperor’s poisonous consorts.
But Yet… when you start adding up the bloody results of the full scope of the modern battlefield: Interstate wars, guerilla wars, Clandestine operation, Gang wars, Marriages… Shocking statistical realities reveal themselves.
The deadliest weapon in American history… Is the Handgun.
When you add up every official causality in every war the US has ever fought since the revolution, Including DISEASE depending on what you include as a war related disease… The approximately 1.2 million Americans who’ve died in all wars since the Revolution of 1776 is SLIGHTLY LESS than the 12000-15000 Americans who die annually to guns violence (90% of which are handguns) which very roughly averaged over a 100 year period would be about 1.2-1.5 MILLION Handgun deaths. (and the republic is 200 years old not 100, though populations do shrink dramatically the further back you go)
And remember… This is just Handgun deaths OUTSIDE of declared wars… Within wars presumably some percentage of those killed are via handguns (think of all the policing, executions, feuds, enforcements, assassinations etc. that occur which can end with a handgun death… Even conventional wars are quite irregular in the manner civilians, partisans and soldiers interact).
This is surprising… but it should not be.
The most likely way for someone to be killed by an enemy is the way that is MOST convenient, immediate, and offers the relative safety of speed and surprise. Rarely is a violent death delivered without violence of action.
However is the Handgun truly the deadliest weapon on the modern battlefield? Or is it just the deadliest in America? is there another?
Applying the logic which we have already seen, that outside of the most war-ravaged countries ordinary homicide, gang wars, feuds, and clasdestine actions are VASTLY more likely to kill people than high intensity warfare… You quickly notice a trend.
The 3 deadliest weapons in the world today in terms of body-count (your likelihood to be killed by them) varies between
Handguns in the New World where guns are plentiful but open carry of rifles is not the norm
Auto and semiautomatic (and previously bolt-action) rifles in the third world of Africa and failed parts of the Middle-East where it is perfectly acceptable for gangs to walk about with AK-47s in their arms
Knives and bladed weapons in Gun restrictionist jurisdictions (Europe), Asia, Prisons, etc.
If you die a violent death dear reader whether in the killing fields of darkest Africa, darkest Detroit, the trenches of forever war or the smuggling tunnels of Mexico, to an enemy you’ve never spoken a word to or to a spouse you said just one word too many to, it will almost certainly be to one of these 3… Even in the age of FPV Drones, IEDs, Cluster munitions, and Thermobaric rocket artillery… a super-majority of the time the person who decides you need to die will be within 2-200 meters of you see you with their bare eye or possibly a simple optic, and decide in sight of your face to end your life with the tool they have at hand. Knife, handgun, or rifle.
And it’s very hard to tell which of the 3 actually leads the pack globally.
In the US where guns are widely available knife homicides are only about 10-15% of what firearm homicides are… In the UK this is reversed, and firearm related murders are 10% of knife murders.
An Interesting map could be made of the world by most common killing weapon… but I don’t have the data.
However, it is the case that these 3 are globally the top 3 killers indeed its kind-of rare that any of them are unseated in a period or setting. You might think they’d be more common killers in low intensity warfare and would be unseated in major wars… but When you look at ww2 firing squads and executions were responsible for maybe a majority of violent deaths (Whether one is a Holocaust revisionist or maximalist, it is now widely accepted ad hoc firing squads and killings in Eastern Europe probably dwarfed in scale any “industrial” or “efficient” killings via oddities like gas chambers… Holocaust by Bullets) likewise the fastest most brutal genocide in living memory was the Rwandan Genocide, largely carried out with Machetes.
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However, notice something about these 3 weapons and modern warfare.
Every single soldier in every army in the world goes through some kind of Rifle qualification, a soldier with no idea how to use a rifle (at least at the rudimentary level non-specialized soldiers are trained to) can barely be regarded as a soldier. Likewise across a wide sections of Infantry and various occupations handgun qualification is a right of passage for much of military life as well as the police… and of course civilians, hobbyists, and irregulars of all sort take courses, read books, look up manuals, watch YouTube videos… etc. Regarding Handguns and rifles of all sort.
Hell my mother and her friends happily attend range days to fire rifles and handguns and familiarize themselves… So common is this a part of North American life.
And whilst I am certainly no expert on rifles or handguns, I’ve dabbled at best with both… and everyone can name countless experts on guns and call up wonderful video on YouTube…
Who can say the same of the knife? who are the experts on knife fighting?
Who studied the blade?
“The Spirit of the Bayonet”
This same argument [weight] would eliminate altogether any further issuing of the bayonet. That weapon ceased to have any major tactical value at about the time the inaccurate and short-range musket was displaced by the rifle. But we have stubbornly clung to it-partly because of tradition which makes it inevitable that all military habits die a slow death, but chiefly because of the superstition that the bayonet makes troops fierce and audacious, and therefore more likely to close with the enemy. I doubt that any combat officer of the last war below field grade would agree that this idea has any merit whatever. Their observations are to be trusted more than the most positive opinions of any senior commander who has had no recent experience with infighting. The bayonet is not a chemical agent. The mere possession of it will not make men one whit more intrepid than they are by nature. Nor will any amount of bayonet training have such an effect. All that may be said of such training is that, like the old Butts Manual, its values derive only from the physical exercise. It conditions the mind only in the degree that it hardens the muscles and improves health. - Brig. General S. L. A. Marshall “The Soldier’s Load and The Mobility of the Nation” (1950) (Warlord’s Reading List Entry 79, Section 13 Logistics) FULL TEXT
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75 years after S.L.A. Marshall’s call for radical weight reduction complete with inspections and weighing of soldiers kits before deployment (to avoid overloading and subsequent exhaustion and loss of combat effectiveness), Bayonets of course are still issued to soldiers and bayonet training or “training” is still a staple of western basic military courses.
Now since of course there have been several well publicized LITERAL BAYONET CHARGES from Iraq to Afghanistan which has solidified in the mind of traditionalists the centrality of the bayonet in even the most modern battlefields.
Though S. L. A. Marshall would (more or less rightly) point out that 2-3 bayonet charges in 75 years on its own hardly justifies the universal issue of the M9 Bayonet+scabbard and the associated weight of 1.9 lbs on every deployment PER MAN being sunk into a special purpose weapon rarely used and the associated loss of energy and alertness.
The “Spirit of the Bayonet” as a symbol of military willingness to close with and destroy the enemy, a final symbol of the dominance of aggression, will, and soldiership in the face of the technological and logistical complexity and hardship of the modern battlefield holds about as much sway in our day as 75 years ago under Marshall.
Seemingly taking Marshal’s criticism to heart the modern bayonet fights to justify itself: Above you can see The modern M9 bayonet mounted to a M4 Carbine. Notice the design is usable as a knife, mounted as a bayonet, and includes a notch that lets it double as a wire and metal cutter when mounted to a notch on the outside of the scabbard (where another metal bit is).
Seeing such a practical and mutli-use object one might wonder why I’m being so harsh on the bayonet? Why would I seemingly side with Marshall when I just opened this essay discussing why knives are indeed one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield?
Well notice the difference between the words “Knife” and “Bayonet”… For an object like the M9 the distinction might be purely semantic…
What is the difference between an M9 Bayonet and an M9 Knife?
Nothing.
But What is the difference between a “Spirit of the Bayonet” and a “Spirit of the Knife”?
Everything.
The fundamental feature of the Bayonet, the very word, is that it affixes to a rifle, and is made specifically to affix to the specific rifle (there is no such thing as a universal bayonet). A Bayonet is a piece of uniform issued kit for a uniformed military. And the Bayonet’s entire origin and history is tied up with this. It is irreducible from this. If the drill instructor’s cry “Squad Affix Bayonets” cannot be followed by the timed mechanical manipulation of the bayonet… It is no bayonet. Its origin is in the 17th and 18th century with the pinnacle and peak of drilled uniformed line infantry. The bayonet is not to be improvised, concealed, smuggled, plunged into the unsuspecting back, disposed of…
(not the least because bayonets are almost always treated as “weapons” and core kit, not as disposable tools… Ie. Soldiers are conditioned and taught that they will face ruthless bureaucratic and even legal reprisal if they lose one, just the same as if they lost a helmet or rifle. Sure these rules might be relaxed, but as Marshall notes many times: soldiers regularly fear bureaucratic consequences more than loss of fighting effectiveness, indeed inexperienced soldiers who need every edge to survive to become experienced soldiers fear such bureaucratic consequences and disobediences most of all (there’s a reason the cynical veteran is the stereotype))
The Bayonet is a proud uniformed part of a proud uniformed army. One charges the enemy with a bayonet, and as seen from 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and now 21st century battlefields the enemy pretty consistently runs from such charges such that many uproariously successful bayonet charges produce not a single bayonet kill… Rather a good percentage of the time (such as Afghanistan) they have a morale effect on the enemy similar to what the bayonet produces on southern civilians.
The Knife however have been killing for 10s of thousands of years… from battlefields to sacrificial alters, sleeping spouses to ascendant emperors, old women to newborn babes… All have fallen under the merciless indifference of the knife. Fatal knives have been made of stone, glass, wood, bronze, steel, plastic, fiberglass, graphite, and shell. Knives are anything but uniform varying from dozens of inches to under 1 inch, curved in every way imaginable, bladed and unbladed, concealable and disguised or ostentatious, bound and fashioned in every way…
Reconstruction stone-age knife
If the Spirit of the Bayonet is fundamentally one of order and structure amidst chaos, the institution and the logic of the institution, the order and the charge and the uniformed combination of two uniform weapons across a unit of uniformed men striking in uniform order and institutional will and determination across the chaos of the battlefield…
By contrast the Spirit of the Knife is chaos itself… Individual, clandestine dishonest, opportunistic, obscene… more suited to a prison shower than a parade.
The Spirit of the Knife indeed breaks the bonds of the word Knife by many definitions… Is screwdriver a knife? Is a Toothbrush? is an axe? a Wood Splinter? A hammer? A pencil?
By my estimates hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million some years, are killed by knives, blades, and interchangeable melee weapons annually around the globe. And this of course represents a per capita historical low. The further back we go the more dominant the knife and sword become in the story of man being a wolf to man.
Of these fewer than 1000 maybe are killed by bayonets, and only a minuscule fraction of those are killed by fixed bayonets (most bayonet kills are better characterized as knife kills).
And yet whereas the removal of the bayonet, or the cutting of bayonet training would bee met with outrage… even removing the bayonet from drill (and thus saving maybe hundreds of thousands of man hours of training over the course of a decade in pure ceremony) would be met with outrage and think-pieces, and great odes to tradition. And yet NO such care, concern, or sentimentality is given to the vastly MORE traditional, historied, and lethal consideration of blades as whole. A 400 year old weapon system is centered in ceremony like no other weapons system save the rifle (there is no Antitank-guided-missile drill) yet the wider topic of the 50,000 year weapon category is quietly ignored.
with the Exception of Don Pentcost’s brutal and often hilarious 1988 classic “Put Em Down Take Em Out: Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison”(ENTRY 6 on the Warlord’s Reading List) Shockingly little interest has been exerted studying the actual world of Knife violence and murder as a combat reality instead of a hypothetical or vehicle for eastern mysticism (or vehicle for the UK nanny state). And that which has been exerted has been largely squandered on Self-Defense from Knives, disarming techniques, and Knife vs. Knife fighting… All of which is largely a mix of fantasy, eastern mysticism, and goofy ww2 era combatives attached more to Hollywood and fictional morality plays completely divorced from how the hundreds of thousands killed by knives every year die bloodily, scared, alone, surprised and begging for their lives… and how their assailants effect their deaths via ruthless unity of action and forsaking of those moral hypocrisies.
The problem of course is the reality of real world knife fighting cuts through (I won’t apologize for this pun) many of the moral confusions, hypocrisies, and fairy stories for children, voters, soldiers and officers that define the modern west and discussions of warfare and combat specifically. Indeed, as you will see, breaking these taboos is the essence of effective knife fighting instruction.
Any honest discussion of the devastating effectiveness of this ancient technology must break through the Hollywood depiction of Knife fighting which Don Pentecost so aptly attacked in his work.
It must accurately convey the reality of Knife violence, without illusion, and it must accurately convey the mindset and values that makes an individual knife-fighter more effective.
Collection of WW1 Trench Melee Weapons
Understanding Different Knives
And always keep an edge on your knife, son. Always keep an edge on your knife, 'Cause a good sharp edge Is a man's best hedge Against the vague uncertainties of life. Yes, a good sharp edge Is a man's best hedge Against the uncertain vagaries of life.
Melee weapons are one of those things War-games and tabletop gamers had actually abstracted and modeled out almost perfectly and accurately back in the day… And then immediately abandoned and redesigned in a way completely divorced from reality because it was no fun and in no way resembled the fiction the average person wanted to play.
The average short melee weapon (one that doesn’t parry or have sword styles)… be they knife, shank, entrenching tool, club, hand axe, machete, fighting pick, household hammer… Anything you might use as melee murder implement, but doesn’t have a sports-league associated with it (long-swords and rapiers are weird and vastly more complex as they’re designed for fencing other melee weapons and thus irrelevant to modern combat)… but anything you’d use in modern combat is defined by a few key attribute… these are their damage attributes and ergonomic attributes, which you should be familiar with and able to judge at a glance once you know what to look for.
The Damage attributes should be familiar to most gamers, these are: Stabbing, hacking, bludgeoning, and cutting.
Stabbing is effected by concentrating the weight and force of a strike (often shockingly little) onto a point that punctures through some armor, clothing, flesh, organ, vein, and with enough force (depending on the qualities of the weapon and strike) even bone. The sharpness of a point is useful, but is largely irrelevant very dull points with simply a small surface area and rigid structure (such as a screwdriver) will puncture a skull. The rigidity of a stabbing implement, not its sharpness, is mostly what defines its effect.
(Warning: All linked Examples are highly gory and disturbing. Read their description. T
Hacking is theeffect of a thin surface a blade or edge hitting an object or flesh with the momentum and speed sufficient to split it. The sharpness of the weapon is useful (it does increase damage) but largely irrelevant if the weapon is capable of hacking. axes, shovels, the nail puller of a hammer, heavy machetes… all of these will inflict grievous hacking wounds even in states of complete dullness given enough speed and momentum. Sharpness radically reduces the amount of momentum needed… but ultimately the ability of a weapon to hack is determined by weight and momentum. It’d be vastly preferable to be hacked with a sharp knife to the face than a dull axe. Many unusually shaped roughly machete length blades such as the Cowboy Bowie knife, the Egyptian Kopesh, the Grecian Kopis, the Gurhka Kukri, etc. Are shaped with the weight aggressively forward to maximize their hacking potential.
Bludgeoning is the damage inflicted by the raw transfer of energy. Your fists deliver bludgeoning damage, but weapons such as hammers, trench clubs, rifle butts, brass knuckles, the pommels or guards of trench knives… All are designed to either apply leverage or concentrate the force of your arm onto hardened points and surfaces which magnify the damaged into the target (whilst protecting your hands). This turns the, what is largely, less than lethal force of a man’s fists from something that might concuss an opponent to something truly maiming. Many modern trench knife models include a specially pointed “glass breaker” out the bottom of the knife for smashing safety glass and skulls (gloves and sleeves strongly advised).
Cutting is the effect of a sharpened blade sliding with incredibly slight friction across a surface. Of all forms of knife damage this is the most efficient in terms of energy expenditure, the hardest to block (since the opponent’s hand doesn’t have to be free enough to build momentum) and is devastating for crippling or killing opponents since the long surface injuries they inflict can easily severe tendons, nerves, veins, and arteries causing instant and complete disability of limbs or squirting bleeding wounds that can incapacitate and kill in mere 10s of seconds or less. This is HIGHLY dependent on the sharpness of the blade, as the difference between a semi-sharp and a razor sharp blade can be the difference of many millimeters if not centimeters of wound depth with the exact same force.
This is doubly dramatic because the most likely spot for a knife blade to incidentally find itself is the inside of the arms of someone defending from a knife attack. The natural defensive instincts of the victim to try to block with their hand or grab and hold the attacking limb exposes them to the extreme risk of cutting damage and disability. thus the knife with a sharp blade gains incidental bonus strikes on the arms, wrists, neck, thighs, and stomach with no additional arm movements but the cruel cocking of the wrist as it withdraws for another stab.
A sharp blade will “Glide” through paper with less effort than writing your name upon it. If it snags that denotes a point on the blade that is less sharp. The effect of a sharp blade on flesh is no less dramatic.
Many exotic or specialized knives and weapons will try to combine various aspects of these 4 types of damage in an individual strike, thus you’ll get weird pick shaped weapons that wield like an axe but come to a point, but also include a dramatic blade beneath the point, or the Karambit, which is now mostly known as a mall ninja weapon but does combine cutting and stabbing at a talon point in a small package (especially if it folds), in a way that almost makes up for its bizzare and awkward ergonomics
Again, mall ninja. to wield it with the seemingly intended icepick (reverse) grip (yes you’re shortening your reach even more) you almost need to be bear-hugging your opponent. Note also the icebreaker on the finger ring.
Which brings us to ergonomics Attributes.
There is of course the eternal struggle of single-edged vs. Double-edged. Which hasn’t resolved since double edged cross sword crusaders faced single edged Saracens. The double edged blade allows the knife to easily cut on the retracting pull and gain additional cutting opportunities… While also aiding deep penetrating stabs. Whereas on the other hand single edged blades need not be symmetrical and tend to gain a cutting and hacking advantage via more interesting weight distribution and curvature. Both have been staples from antiquity to modern militaries. Though note there is more risk of cutting one’s self with a doubled edged blade, though negligible.
Retention and Protection are maybe the two most important attributes in a knife. Already Possessed of a knife, BY FAR the most likely way to lose a knife fight is to either lose the knife or have the knife hand disabled. An ergonomic grip that resists slippage, a pommel or similar curve to catch the bottom of the hand (or top of the hand with an icepick grip), and a cross-guard or notch to keep the hand from slipping down the blade are extraordinarily valuable.
Ideally one should be able to stab the knife into a hard surface without losing one’s grip on the blade, that the retension features are that good, this of course prevents one from losing their grip if they hit a rib, skull, shoulderblade, or a hard object the opponent attempts to block with or redirect a strike into. likewise protection such as cutlass grip found on trench knives and some machetes as well as short swords from antiquity to the age of pirates, protects one’s hand from other blades, but more importantly jamming injuries when faced with shields (as in antiquity) or more likely jamming injuries against hard surfaces like walls, doors, and furniture as found on ships or in buildings.
Aside from this there are many odd and interesting variants and properties across knives meant to give some advantage in a fight, act as a tool outside a fight, and/or be decorative.
Knife making is a storied craft with many interesting rabbi-tholes and anecdotes…
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However the thing to understand is:
NONE OF THIS MATTERS
This is all interesting, there are advantages, and disadvantages to all of them… But NONE OF IT MATTERS
Weapon selection, skill, quality, variants… None of it matters for 99+% of real world melee combat encounters
Just as all the nerds in the 70s and 80s realized: Short range melee weapons are so devastatingly effective that basically every single early war game to represent them accurately immediately reverted to representing them inaccurately as every complicated system meant to randomly simulate a melee combat encounter all produced the same horrifying gruesome game breaking result.
Part 2: “Self Defense” is almost entirely Bullshit, even MMA
Anyone alive has by now been exposed to MMA and UFC and has come to pretty much accept that wide swathes of traditional martial arts and self-defense are bullshit.
You can look back at the 90s and early 2000s PRIDE fights and see the goofier traditional martial arts go up against full resistance martial arts and just get shredded.
Fights such as sumo wrestlers vs. kick-boxers, tai-chi vs. Boxing, Aikido vs. Judo ended in predictable results, with the reality of the first publicly distributed mixed martial arts tournament immediately destroying the reputations of certain martial arts styles whilst propelling the reputations of others… Olympic wrestling, Brazilian Jujitsu, and Muay Thai have had renaissances from their surprisingly strong performances, whilst others like Kung-Fu have entered long and dramatic declines… Jackie Chan movies now serve more to advertise gymnastics classes instead of Chinese martial arts.
But the central conceit of Martial Arts, the idea that popularized them, the central conceit of every Karate and martial arts movie from the 70s to John Wick… is that via strengthening and training the body in the techniques of a “Real” martial art one can attain a level of mastery which is nigh superhuman, whereby a person vastly lighter, weaker, and shorter of frame and body can defeat a vastly larger and stronger opponent with skill and technique. And… invariably, that via that superior technique, an unarmed person can defeat an armed attacker.
Of course gun instructors and others can tell you how deadly stupid basically every martial arts disarms is compared to a gun, where compliance is basically always preferably except in cases where you expect life, liberty or honor are going to be permanently taken from you no matter what you do, and therefore you should risk it.
But there are martial arts and knife instructors who only teach disarms…
So it is widely believed, assumed, and/or culturally inculcated that knives are different and can be disarmed by sufficient martial arts techniques whereas guns probably cannot be.
This is the part of my Lecture where I ask you to use your eyes:
(Note the xX counter isn’t the total stabs, its total stabs + the 5-8 slashes (yes they change halfway for some reason))
20 Seconds.
These are skilled Martial artists. You might object to some specific styles, or that your favorite UFC fighter could take them… But they do impressive stuff in the midst of this. These are fit guys. These aren’t the fat senseis in the strip mall your parents took you to to tell you to do pushups…
Yet almost all of them are stabbed more than once per second. many over twice per second. Even the ones who do INSANELY well and even pin the attacker successfully receive stab wounds in the process that would be fatal in real life.
The exact ONE and only round someone arguably survives, he received fatal wounds a split second after the bell rang. And that’s on his Forth and final round, after losing and being killed and refining his technique in the first 3.
Just 20 seconds.
These are not actual fights, where you have to somehow disable the attacker or otherwise escape… real life violent encounters can last many minutes. A knife fight in ukriane recently lasted 8 minutes as the victim wrestled and bled out…
But athletes, trained and mastered in their martial arts, actively volunteering for a battery of force on force martial arts contests… Could not last 20 seconds without receiving dozens of wounds that would be fatal.
And note they have several massive advantages…
They’re not actually being wounded. You get stabbed in the neck, or have the tendons of your arm severed, or have metal puncture your lungs, that’s not a fatal injury, but that tends to take some of the fight out of you. That makes it exponentially harder to avoid subsequent stabs a half second later.
Likewise they know that they’re about to fight a knife attacker, they’re gassed up and hyped and eager… They’re not unaware, or drunk, or groggy or tired, or just confused and unable to put two and two together in the 2 seconds it takes to get stabbed 4 times. They aren’t being attacked from the back or by surprise or by a knife they didn’t know was there… They aren’t trying to keep themselves between an attacker and a girlfriend or child or elderly family member.
And note that the Ergonomics of a felt-tipped marker is considerably worse than 99.9% of knives. There is no cross-guard to keep the “knife” from sliding backwards out of one’s hand, nor a pommel or other ergonomic feature to catch the rear of your hand, no bulk or texturing for the muscles of the hand to manipulate…
It should be vastly easier to make your opponent lose their grip on an unaltered piece of stationary than even a prison shiv they’ve wrapped some tape or torn bits of clothing around. A marker is the easiest “blade” to make someone drop… And yet none did.
Beyond this there is no extension to the blade granting any reach or penetration, and there is no blade itself to cut and disable the opponents arms in any tangle of limbs (for their purposes that’s just a non-lethal injury) or to slash the body should grappling begin.
If any fake martial artist tries to teach a knife disarm… Simply look at their arms. If there are no horrifying scars there then they have never defended unarmed against a knife attack and have no idea what they’re talking about to say that the disarm works, or heaven help you, is “simple”. In this example the Knife attacker is using an awful leading overhand icepick technique without blocking or setting up with the offhand… (icepick is mostly used for offhand or surprise attack (either to crowd control or deny a grapple, or deliver a more immediately lethal surprise attack from behind to the neck. rear of the head, and/or soft of the shoulder (from which its easy to plunge down into the lungs and heart, killing quickly and largely silently— you can’t scream without lungs or blood pumping) This fake attack is incredibly bad and set up for fake guru disarm… AND YET EVEN IN THIS PERFECTLY SET UP FICTION: The knife is perfectly positioned to flay the defender’s arm with very slight friction if it's sharp. ITS PRESSING INTO HIS ARM.
The mythology of modern martial arts, the modern morality play of Hollywood knife fighting, was obvious in the 1980s and spelled out and ruthlessly mocked by Don Pentcost in “Put Em Down, Take Em Out”. That a morally upright, spiritually centered, balanced, trained, disciplined, and merciful unarmed good-guy can- with cool confidence and a reassuring smile- take on a knife wielding opponent unarmed and effectively disarm him, even without hurting the assailant.
A bad-guy tough of some failed moral character will brandish a knife at a morally upstanding hero, say or demand something, hold the knife way out in front of him leading with it instead of keeping it close to the body, then the hero will either disarm him, or say something morally upstanding, provoking the attack (in which the attacker will lead even more, and then disarm him… At which point the villain will be shamed in front a girl he was trying to impress or his friends or simply god… And run away.
This makes highly marketable TV. Little boys, their minds wired to look for warriors to imitate and desperate for role models, get to admire and latch onto some Hollywood hero for his competence at violence. And no mother will complain about her boy seeing such a toothless morality play philosophy of violence. Likewise no parents will get pissy and take their child out of a martial arts class that teaches such a toothless idea of violence…
The Hollywood executives get their market, the Fat Sensei gets his cut of the family’s sports budget, mom doesn’t have to worry about Junior getting violent ideas or developing any of the honor culture or aggression that has marked every single group of boys actually trained in violence in history… And Junior thinks he’s learning real skills and becoming a man… Until he either gets disillusioned and embarrassed by his childhood Karate lessons if he’s lucky… or doesn’t, and becomes an interracial crime statistic when a thug shouts something obscene at his date and he tries to be a morally upright, spiritually centered, balanced, trained, and disciplined gentleman… You know: like a retard.
He might as well try to pull a Micheal Jackson and Jesus the rifle away.
Remember… Talented, trained, fit martial artists… Trained in the more violent martial arts that actually get used in UFC and other full resistance MMA fights… Were stabbed twice per second.
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I’m going to tell you the golden rule of knife fighting right now:
A KNIFE FIGHT IS WON BY THE MAN WITH THE KNIFE
repeat that into the mirror.
Understand every variant of its meaning. Contemplate this. Go through your questions on knife fighting and sub in the golden rule.
“What if both men have knives?”
A Knife fight is Won By The Man With The Knife. two men with knives facing eachother basically never happens, anymore than high noon quickdraw duels. It is vastly more likely 2 men with knives will attack someone then 2 men with knives will fight eachother. Even when both men have knives one of them will be faster, angrier, have the element of surprise, and be initiating the conflict… And the other will be unaware or caught off guard or struggling to draw the blade. This will be decisive 95% of the time. 2-4 stabs per second is the rate in the vital first second when the defender doesn’t know what’s happening
If however two men with knives do fight… 2 stabs per second was the rate for defending martial artists. And it takes a dozens of seconds to bleed out, so both would be screwed if they actually went at it.
Two men with knives engaging will either result in a standoff and game of chicken as both try to swat at eachother’s arms inconclusively terrified of the other’s knife, or one will simply overawe the other and strike with more confidence and will, invariably causing the other to hesitate and drop their knife, or hesitate and be disabled (thus dropping their knife…) or the one lacking in courage and determination will successfully flee… or rarest of all, both men will attack at full force and butcher each other, each enduring maiming and fatal wounds well before they lose the strength to keep stabbing.
The simply fact is even a Knife vs. Knife fight, the rarest type of fight, is going to be determined 90+% of the time by preparation (size of knife, clothing, pre-arranged conditions), the strategy that produced the engagement( who’s ambushing who, who has surprise , who struck first and how, who shouted and unnerved the other), and finally the will and aggression of the attackers.
Decades of Technique, martial arts training, military discipline, harsh conditioning, fanatical faith… All of it is ultimately worthless at the moment of conflict in a knife fight compared to nigh-suicidal psychotic will.
Many a special forces soldier, black belt martial artist, ancient hero of legend, boxer, bodybuilder, etc. Have died when they were stabbed to death by their psychotic wife or girlfriend who thought they were cheating.
THINK ABOUT THAT.
The most advanced training in the world, decades of discipline, years of physical refinement and competition, the pure spiritual certainty of eastern enlightenment or Monotheistic crusader/jihadist faith, the favor or even blood of the gods themselves… Does not consistently defeat a jealous 4’10” girlfriend with a kitchen knife and a psychotic rage.
This overwhelming, unavoidable logic of knife fighting basically drove the development of swords, since the only defense against a knife is being outside of its range, this has driven since time immemorial the development of longer blades that could out-range each-other, shields to block, and techniques to hack the blades and limbs of your opponents to create openings.
If you want to truly “win” a knife vs. knife fight (which again basically never happens) the way you do it is by having a longer better knife that can more easily and more devastatingly strike and disable your opponent’s limbs or body from a range where they cannot strike you.
However because this never happens, and weight is a valuable resource, modern soldiers rarely carry a long or heavy knife or machete or axe… Though when buying one for a vehicle or survival kit this dual use is an important consideration.
Such dual use tools: Hatchets, Entrenching tools, machetes, sickles, pitchforks… are thus a staple of raids, revolts, and massacres from Medieval Europe to the trenches of the Great War.
This brings up the second point.
Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight. But likewise a Gun is massively disadvantaged in a Knife-fight. If a knife is SUCCESSFULLY out ranged it is not a knife fight and the knife will almost always lose.
Every other weapon ever developed in history exists first and foremost to out-range a knife. If they can do this, they win. HOWEVER If they cannot do this, they lose. Modern police pistol training revolves around this paranoia of knives getting closer than a police officer can draw or employ a pistol.
None of them that I know of teach unarmed knife disarms.
And I can guarantee you right now, that in the next 1000 years we will see a major head of state with Nuclear Weapons at their beck and call stabbed to death, 2-4 stabs per second, by an untrained unfunded assailant… Probably with a steak knife at a fundraiser or a ceremonial pen at a signing.
“What good’s a knife in a nuke fight? All you have to do is push a button?”
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How you defend against a knife is fighting for and creating that range: you run, jump, scurry, crawl if you have to… And throw whatever you can, until you can get to something (even a stick or chair… but hopefully something better) that will allow you to strike at the knife and assailant from a distance (maybe even just arm’s length + 1-2 feet) without being stabbed. And then beat them to a pulp with your weapon to make them drop the knife.
And if you get within range of the knife, or you’re successfully ambushed in a dead end… 2-4 stabs per second.
By contrast The art of knife ambushing is to attack someone where there is nowhere to run, nothing to grab, and ideally they aren’t wearing a thick coat or anything that might give them some protection… and then closing the distance to zero range as fast and hard as humanly possible. Every second the defender has increases their likelihood of escaping. This is why so many knife attacks happen in prison showers specifically: They’re unarmed, there’s only one way out, they don’t have any coincidental armor, and there’s nothing they can grab to protect themselves… And without shoes its more difficult for them to run.
Note that the full length pencil is not even sharpened to a point. Many prisons actively restrict the length of pencils and pens. Contrary to the awe in the John Wick films “He killed him with a Pencil!?”, employing a writing implement as a shiv is not difficult… simply unideal. A staff member may have forgotten the rule, or a prisoner may have thought the deniability would protect him from punishment. The challenge of course is that pens and pencils are unbladed (stabbing only) and their lethality comes immediately from their length, which is dramatically inversely related to their durability (wooden Pencils and plastic pens flex and break). The trick is to grip them in such a way that you gain decent penetration whilst maximally creating rigidity, then working to strike only soft parts of the body where no bone will break it (Stomach, below the ribs, thighs, neck). This is highly doable.. but it makes an already unergonnomic weapon even less ergonomic. However this matters little if you already overpower your opponent or have such surprise as makes no difference. Even the very worst unimproved improvised shiv trivially maims and can kill with a modicum of effort and an unsuspecting or surprised target.
Philosophy of the Shiv
The defining feature of the knife —compared to every other weapons system that is still used at any scale —is that it can be improvised and fashioned by basically anyone from basically anything. This alone should make it one of the most important weapons to teach proficiency in (likewise woodsmen can make bows in a few hours, and this skill is taught and studied by survivalists). No matter what happens to a downed airman, cutoff soldier, captured POW, or disarmed and tyrannized civilian or partisan… They can ALWAYS fashion a lethal weapon from available materials in a few minutes or hours, even (as we see in prisons) whilst being aggressively surveilled. These can be fashioned in any shape or form to maximize conceal-ability or disguise them as some other object… And then just as quickly they can be disposed of, hidden, destroyed, planted, or left within their target…
This renders the knife the ultimate weapon for employing lethal force in controlled environment, heavily patrolled cities, and at the extreme limits of survival and the balance of force. Indeed their obscurity, size, maneuverability and silence does an extraordinary amount to mitigate what are invariably extraordinary differences in firepower and force strength wherever they are successfully employed intentionally.
This combined with the extreme close range of the weapon regularly allows assailants to get within the Minimum range of more powerful weapons, even handguns, before launching their attack… Rendering even extreme differences in capabilities either void, or a tossup.
It is a truism within firearms training circles that a knife wielding assailant can charge 21 feet (~7 meters) in the time it takes an officer to draw and fire their sidearm (which is often within a holster specifically designed for such quick-draws)… however of course for surprise attacks the odds that a firearms holder would even process such a charge, or notice it if it is occurring from a direction anywhere but directly in front of him is negligible.
Every type of firearm is a test of fine motor-movements and snap judgement under extreme stress to manipulate, aim, and fire without missing the opponent. Hitting a standing enemy who is firing back is extremely difficult for the obvious reason that such stress and danger makes such manipulation incredibly imprecise and creates the kind of flinches and rushing that results in “pulling” a shot (instead of squeezing the trigger) which will sends rounds consistently high and in random directions. When one has been physically tackled by a knife wielding assailant and is now being stabbed at a rate of 2-4 stabs per second… such manipulations become almost impossible. If the pistol is not already in hand it is remarkably difficult to recreate the muscle memory draw from this position merely with the weight of the assailant upon you. Once one realizes they are being stabbed (this is not obvious, in the violence of the moment it’s not something you notice and feel til seconds or even minutes later)… panic, terror, and focus on the knife can set in causing one to naturally try to protect themselves with their arms instead of drawing their weapon (and as established unarmed defense against a knife in a confined position is basically a death sentence).
Every Single Instinct, subconscious reaction, and involuntary muscle spasm works against the fine motor action of drawing the handgun or manipulating a rifle, chambering a round if not already chambered or taking the device off safety, and then firing a shot in an odd angle to their body they’ve never fired before unless it has been ruthlessly trained… and even then the knife-wielder will probably be in an odd position that wasn’t trained… And even then 2-3 stabs per second are each threatening to disable the gunman’s arms beyond functionality.
A shooter struggles to perform complex motor functions under stress and cannot pull a trigger if the assailant has hacked the tendons in his arms, cut the spinal column near the neck, or plunged a screwdriver into the motor cortex of his skull.
By contrast every single instinct, subconscious reaction and involuntary muscle spasm works IN FAVOR of the knife attacker. The instinct to death-grip with every muscle of the hand WORKS to retain the knife, the instinct to move faster than conscious thought and swing as fast and hard as possible WORKS to stab the enemy as fast, hard, and rapidly as possible. Every instinct that is unadaptive for fighting with a firearm has been adapted across tens if not hundreds of thousands of years specifically TO fight with rough primitive melee weapons. Whereas firearms and even later swords like rapiers and sabers can be counterintuitive in their technique or require developed muscles and fine muscle movements… Just “Going Crazy” with a knife almost always works with horrifying effect.
Thus the endless stream of horror stories about wives, girlfriends, crack-fiends, ‘scholars”, drugged out politicians and other denizens of the 9th circle flying into a rage or meth frenzy and killing some poor productive citizen or cheating boyfriend who refused them by stabbing them 20 times with a kitchen knife or broken bottle after a lifetime of never even getting in a fist fight.
Part 3: The Man With the Knife
Christophe Thomas Degeorge, “ulisse e telemaco uccidono i pretendenti” (Ulysses and Telemachus kill the suitors), 1812
Now stripping back his rags Odysseus master of craft and battle vaulted onto the great threshold, gripping his bow and quiver bristling arrows, and poured his flashing shafts before him, loose at his feet, and thundered out to all the suitors: “Look —your crucial test is finished, now, at last! But another target’s left that no one’s hit before — we’ll see if I can hit it —Apollo give me glory!”
With that he trained a stabbing arrow on Antinous . . . just lifting a gorgeous golden loving-cup in his hands, just tilting the two-handled goblet back to his lips, about to drain the wine —and slaughter the last thing on the suitor’s mind: who could dream that one foe in that crowd of feasters, however great his power, would bring down death on himself, and black doom? But Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out — and off to the side he pitched, the cup dropped from his grasp as the shaft sank home, and the man’s life-blood came spurting from his nostrils — thick red jets — a sudden thrust of his foot — he kicked away the table — food showered across the floor, the bread and meats soaked in a swirl of bloody filth. The suitors burst into uproar all throughout the house when they saw their leader down. They leapt from their seats, milling about, desperate, scanning the stone walls — not a shield in sight, no rugged spear to seize. They wheeled on Odysseus, lashing out in fury: “Stranger, shooting at men will cost your life!”
“Your game is over —you, you’ve shot your last!”
“You’ll never escape your own headlong death!”
“You killed the best in Ithaca —our fine prince!”
“Vultures will eat your corpse!”
Groping, frantic — each one persuading himself the guest had killed the man by chance. Poor fools, blind to the fact that all their necks were in the noose, their doom sealed.
—Homer, The Odyssey (Robert Fangles Translation)
The oldest continuously read existent texts, works that never needed to be truly rediscovered (older than all but small 4-32 line poems and fragments included in later books of the Bible; and continuously read, unlike lost epics or records such as Gilgamesh or the Egyptian Hieroglyphs) are of course Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Composed sometime around 800-700bc.
And at the center of the Odyssey, “the Greek New Testament” is something rather shocking: A mass casualty terrorist attack.
The massacre of 120+ people… 108 Suitors, 12 of Odysseus’s traitorous servant girls, and some number of the suitors personal servants… In a manner that resembles nothing so much as the Virginia tech massacre, right down to the pre-planned barring of doors, and exits, and the removal of weapons or tools that might serve as such.
Famously Odysseus carried out this massacre with the bow only he was able to string during the famous trial of 12 axes his wife Penelope had arranged… but a close reading of Homer shows that’s not half the story. There simply weren’t enough arrows. Within the Quiver of arrows brought for the trial there could only have been 20-40ish arrows…
Rather the point of attaining the bow, as Homer shows, was to attain a suppression of the suitors hiding behind cover, so Odysseus’s son Telemachus and his remaining loyal servants Eumaeus the Swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd could raid the armory to attain spears, swords and armor.
4 men: 1 Veteran, 1 Novice Aristocrat, and 2 Slaves… Massacred 120+ people almost entirely BY HAND. Via the use of slightly longer knives and knives on sticks. A ratio over 30 per person evenly split or probably over 60+ for Odysseus if we assume he had to pick up a lot of the slack from these green fighters.
Don’t assume this is mythological and can be ignored… Homer’s description of his non-magical fight sequences are highly tactical and gritty detailed, such that many commentators and soldiers since have speculated that he simply HAD to be a veteran to get so many details correct, or to have gotten incredibly detailed input from soldiers. Whilst archeologists have pointed out his accounts do not reflect 11th century bronze age warfare that predominated at the time of the historical Troy (Homer doesn’t understand how chariots archers work)… They agree he REALLY understands how warfare worked in the 8th century Iron Age when he was composing the Iliad and Odyssey.
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“Sure” you might say “but this number has to be exaggerated, doesn’t it?”
No.
The effect of blade length, extended handles, and the armor is to radically reduce the minor injuries and risks to the knife assailant. Whilst the man with the knife functionally ALWAYS wins against the unarmed defender… Across multiple unarmed defenders such injuries add up and the risk of being pinned and mobbed increases… Armor and increases in blade length and reach reduce this to an incredibly tolerable level.
And as we have seen from mass knife attacks such things are done today, to horrifying effect.
The 2014 Kunming station Knife attack in China saw 31 killed and 143 injured when 5 knife wielding assailants began slashing and stabbing train passengers at random in the name of Uighur independence, in what seems almost an numerically exact parallel to Odysseus’s massacre 3000 years earlier.
Many controversies and interesting details surround the attack… (not least western media coverage) but the one that jumps out at me is the speed of the police response. 10 minutes. 31 dead and 143 injured… In 10 minutes.
This raises the disturbing question: If the police response time is accurate at 10 minutes, how many would have died had no officers been present or if the sole police officer with a pistol had failed? Indeed the load-out for the attack seemed improvised using “knives and cleavers” instead of more specialized bladed weapons like machetes, short swords and the like… One gets the distinct impression that were it not for the Chinese police intervening so successfully so quickly that they could have beaten Odysseus’s record in less than an hour.
Mass stabbings are shockingly common… Indeed one gets the impression that they are profoundly under-reported in the west due to the political battle surrounding mass shootings and gun control. The dramatic thing about them however is how dramatically fat the tails of the distributions are. Given a weapon with effectively “infinite ammo” one can immediately see the effects of will, fanaticism, ideology, clarity of malice, and the contrasting lack there of. Many of the attacks are plainly pathetic and you can see the attacker’s hesitation and lack of focus with 3-10 injured and none killed, almost certainly mental illness related… With others you can see the premeditated malice. The Chinese in particular seem to produce people who can produce knife deaths that dwarf most US mass shootings… This may be due to the population, something about the Chinese condition producing more ideological extremism, or simply Chinese culinary practices producing vastly more people experienced with turning living creatures into severed meat…
However this is not the upper limit of knife violence.
Vast piles of Machetes and hatchets were abandoned or confiscated from fleeing and hiding Hutu Militias in the Aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Think of what a single bladeless prison shank can do… Now contemplate this image.
Of course the deadliest mass blade attack in history was the Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 were slaughtered within 100 days by Hutu “Extremists”… Who I feel the need to air-quote not because their actions weren’t extreme, but because if they managed to amass the manpower to kill 800,000 people in a country of 8 million at the time… They can’t have been that non-representative of the Hutu Population… They might have indeed been “Hutu-Centrists”.
10% of the Pre-war Rwandan population, killed in 100 days. 8,000 per day. Each day the equivalent of a major battle in antiquity.
If we assumed one murder per man, that’d be 20-25% of all surviving men in Rwanda having killed someone… however of course, we can safely assume most of the militias were killing vastly more than 1 per member.
I don’t want to get off on a tangent here… but its dramatic how both factions of the various genocide and Holocaust discussions have not internalized this reality… Revisionists will insist numbers don’t add up when close to a million people were killed in vastly less time in living memory with simply hand implements, whilst of course the official holocaust story will insist on including elaborate wartime atrocity propaganda killing methods in the official narrative, justifying various elaborate rituals with appeals to efficiency, or attempts to spare Soldiers the psychological effects of the killings… when we know how you commit a mass genocide efficiently, you just kill them the way you’d kill one person, but hundreds of thousands or millions of times over. “Hutu Grindset” to quote a friend. Killing a million people with pistols, knives or rifles remains the most efficient way to do it just as it is the most efficient way to kill one person. You simply are’’t going to get more efficient than than 10 seconds of aiming and pulling a trigger or swinging a blade per person. The labor an material cost comes to less than $10-20 per life. (of course the tortured discussion is because of the conceit of postwar life… That somehow Nazis killing millions of people in the 40s was qualitatively different from the Soviets killing millions in the 20s and 30s… It wasn’t. All mass slaughter and genocide is almost entirely carried out with the same ordinary available weapons or intentional starvation or both. Be that swords in antiquity, or firearms, machetes, and Arial bombing in modernity. Most holocaust literature is quietly acknowledging this).
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Again… Horrifying as it might be, you are adapted to hack your enemies bits with blades. Unlike manipulating a firearm which becomes dramatically more difficult to do under stress and requires a great deal of training and familiarization, let alone more complex weapons systems where stress and the slightest shake, or the sudden inability to do mental math might render your fighting capability non-existent… Your subconscious spastic high stress muscle reactions are adapted specifically for wielding short melee weapons. Adrenaline makes the untrained hand shake specifically because it wants to start swinging aggressively and wildly.
A literal PERCENTAGE of the Rwandan male Hutu population was going through their life aware of politics and impassioned, but otherwise ordinary people at their various social and life stages in their various conditions and predicaments… And then somewhere between 4-20% of the hutu male population hacked members of their enemy tribe to pieces with machetes.
They didn’t need basic training… They didn’t need mental conditioning… they didn’t need technique or martial arts classes… They didn’t even really need a coherent chain of command, many were directed by AM/FM radio.
This is simply what hominids are adapted for as the most basic form of violence and warfare. You can see little boys discovering sticks or pool noodles, without being shown anything, will intuitively start sword fighting and feel compelled to practice these exact muscle movements the same way kittens and puppies and other carnivorous animals will intuitively chase each-other playing hunt and wrestle each other playfighting when they’re young.
Now think of your ethnic rivals in your own country… would they do this to you and your people given simply the right spark and direction? Would your people do this to them?
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Of course even more bloody events have occurred in history in terms of concentration of blade violence if not duration. The ancients record dozens upon dozens of battles in which armies of tens of thousands have been ruthlessly massacred in the course of a few days or hours, when the subtle and ruthless logic of crowd dynamics and concentration of force turned against them. Whether Hannibal’s Victory and massacre of 50,000+ Romans at Cannae or the decisive performance of the Spartans and Greek Allies at Thermopylae…. This Generation Zero: warfare of the Blade and its decisive effects remain highly relevant in the modern world and is a vital threat and last avenue of survival to understand.
Knife Targets
A knife can stab at 2-4 stabs per second… Yet it is truism that “In a knife fight you’re going to get cut”. Even setting aside the fact that this truism is only meant to apply to knife vs. knife fights (Ie. less than 5% of knife fights), this still points to an important fact:
The average knife stab is non-fatal and non-disabling and even those which are fatal are very rarely immediately fatal. Cops train aggressively to fire multiple times because of how less-than-immediately incapacitating handguns are especially against hyped up or drugged out aggressive psychos filled with adrenaline. All but the most effective knife stabs are less effective than those handgun rounds to the body.
This means the default in a knife fight is for gruesome blows to be struck in the first few second, then the wound party to have tens of seconds or even minutes of wrestling or fighting the attacker, in which it is possible for them to acquire a knife or weapon (remember how many such objects are around you at any moment) or draw one already on their person and inflict equally devastating wounds on their attacker before losing consciousness… For someone completely surprised or not otherwise expecting any combat, this is unlikely… But for many: Prisoners, criminals, soldiers, high-T Men… This is a serious and potentially devastating risk. Remember 2-4 stab wounds per second. A surprised opponent acquiring a broken glass bottle, or ripping a shard of glass from a window, or a piece of porcelain, or pulling a pocket knife can result in horrifically maiming or even fatal wounds very quickly.
This means in any knife fight the optimal strategy for the attacker is to either disengage as quickly as possible (if the objective is wounding, like most prison attacks) or quickly progress to more lethal blow that will incapacitate faster than the initial stabs.
There are 3 ways for an attacker to quickly escalate from disabling to incapacitating (assuming the attacker doesn’t want the defender to live):
Striking the Vital Organs. Any major damage to the lungs, heart, or brain will quickly cause loss of consciousness from either directly physically stopping consciousness, or denying oxygenated blood to the brain. Lesser lung punctures will causing sucking injuries which won’t immediately cause loss of consciousness… But will cause such a gasping lack of breath of the defender as makes little difference, since merely staying breathing and conscious becomes a full body battle. All 3 of these require a fair bit of force and significantly more rigid weapons… The Heart Lungs, and Brain are the 3 organs most protected
Striking the Nervous system. A person cannot fight if they cannot move their limbs. Strikes to the spine are devastating, immediate, and life ruining if not fatal… Even strikes to the spine that don't severe the spinal chord often cause swelling which can take weeks or months to heal and restore full sensation. However note the same problem applies as with vital organs, the spine and vertebrae are bones and naturally set up to protect the delicate nerves that control the entire body. Bad or improvised weapons will struggle with this.
Striking the Circulatory system. The only “unguarded” parts of the body whereby a non-rigid or improvised blade can kill quickly without having to penetrate bone is the arteries and veins which cycle blood throughout the body. These are found in the Neck, armpits, wrists, inner-arm, and the femoral artery and great saphenous are found on the inner thigh. There is also the central Vena Cava the trunk of the tree of the circulatory system, but that’s almost more guarded than the spine. You will notice all of these are likewise strategically placed on the inside of limbs, the interior of the trunk of the torso, and the neck where a person naturally aggressively guards them, and a random melee strike is extremely unlikely to hit them… but whereas the organs and spine are protected by bone, even broken glass can severe these vital pathways of the circulatory system
The deliberate striking of these hard to hit vitals is extremely unlikely in the initial phase of a knife attack (unless complete surprise is achieved and the attack had free range to target the neck), however the longer a knife attack goes on the more vital it is for the knife attacker to hit them… if the knife attacker does not hit them the target can survive minutes and has a genuine opportunity to fight back or acquire an improvised knife or blade of their own from the immediate environment. Likewise the defender needs to protect these above all else if they are to successfully evade the attacker and acquire those means to defend themself.
Part 4: The Operation With the Knife
WW1 Trench Raider dual-Weilding a Revolver and Butcher Knife (no it is not just video game technique). In this case the revolver is a nightmare to reload in the midst of a trench fight and the knife gives the trench raider a silent option at the start of a trench raid, and more importantly a backup in the tightly packed confined space of the trench. Knife and Pistol dual wielding is useful in any confined space where an unknown number of enemies might be present, the pistol might get pinned by an assailant, and backup might be unavailable. Such combinations were also used by “Tunnel Rats” in Vietnam where the ultra-tight confines of VietCong tunnels might leave a pistol arm completely pinned or reloading impossible at the moment of contact… The individual Tunnel-Rat might be fighting in crawling only flooded caves, or underground barrack complexes.
“No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.” ― Thomas Sowell
The knife as a weapon at the strategic and tactical level exists to create and exploit extreme differences in will.
EVERYONE has knives, the vast majority reading this could, if they were possessed with sudden life or death urgency and clarity of purpose, dive out of their seat (send their laptop or device flying) and grab a knife from within arm’s reach or run and grab one from the next room over in less time than it takes to finish this sentence. Those who do not have a knife near them could very quickly fashion one by smashing a window, or their device, wrapping their hand around an article of clothing or torn cloth, and grasping one of the shards.
Within just my eyesight i have a kitchen block of knives, a display sword, an office sorter of pens and stationary, some crossbow bolts for a cheap target shooter (stored with the stationary), a camping knife, a pair of scissors I should put away, 3 glass bottles that could be broken and would form a good shank with handle, several display plates that’d have a sharp edge if broken, several windows, and my laptop screen. It is truly a rarity that you are ever more than 10-20 seconds from a knife if you moved with determination, purpose, and creativity…
Of course it is easy to say that, quite something different to think that through, wrap your hand in your jacket, smash a window, and rip a long shard out of the frame, whilst a methed out hobo is bearing down on you with a blade of his own.
The knife is a symmetrical weapon… the will, clarity, and malice to wield one is not.
Indeed, taking Sowell far out of context, even the same man does not have the same will, clarity, and malice mere hours apart.
The knife radically magnifies these differences to tactically devastating effects.
Probably the greatest tactical espionage operation that has ever or will ever be carried out, in human history, was John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
In the single most militarized city to have ever existed on the North American continent at that point (or maybe in world history?) Booth successful entered Ford’s Theater (where he was a staple), slipped into the president’s Opera Box, sealed the door with a hidden brace he had prepared (even if Lincoln’s bodyguard had not been negligent and slipped off to drink, it is likely Booth would have been permitted to enter as a celebrity, and the brace would have let him seal the box). Now secure Booth looked through the second door through a peephole he had prepared waiting for his moment, And then at the right second he entered the opera-box and shot the president in the back of the head.
Booth’s small concealable Philadelphia Deringer
Booth knew the play well, and timed the shot to coincide with one of the largest laugh lines in the humorous script, muffling the shot and creating more confusion than panic… Many in the audience later said they thought a prop or large object had fallen backstage.
Major Henry Rathbone an Veteran infantry Officer of Antietam and Fredricksburg was Lincoln’s sole male guest in the box and turned to see Booth pistol in hand (its single shot now empty) and attacked Booth only to be stabbed and seriously injured. Booth may have shouted “Freedom!” as he attacked Rathbone.
Booth then leapt from the operabox 12 feet onto the stage (landing awkwardly) Knife still in hand. Many later commented they thought this was part of the play or a theatrical stunt (Ie. Part of theatre politics, the theatricality of the feat is undebatable), at which point Booth lifted the knife above his head, In front of hundreds of people including DOZENS of armed military personnel and officers with loaded revolvers on their hips and shouted “Sic Semper Tyrannis” and “The South is/will be avenged” (the exact phrasing is contested) Before running off the stage, knife still in hand, and out a pre-planned door where an unwitting boy was waiting with his horse.
Some thespians who’d scurried out of his way at the sight of the blade later recalled hearing him say “I’ve done it”.
When Mrs. Lincoln’s scream upon realizing her husband’s state broke the confusion… Booth was already mere steps from his exit.
Countless men and officers, many otherwise very daring heroes who’d charged positions and engaged in hard fighting, were later distraught and commented despairingly that they had had loaded weapons on their person and an extraordinary amount of time to shoot Booth, yet had done nothing.
It is speculated Rathbone’s efforts might not have been in vain, and that his attack may have caused Booth’s Stumble as he leapt, thus leading to the leg fracture which would catch up to him and ruin his otherwise perfect escape (Booth lost his incredible lead across the subsequent days trying to get medical assistance for a leg he lost the ability to walk on)… But this did not assuage Rathbone who blamed himself for Lincoln’s death and Booth’s escape… his mental state would deteriorate and He would die in an Asylum after murdering his wife in a psychotic episode and attempting to commit suicide by stabbing himself 5 times with a knife.
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Now really CONTEMPLATE this: John Wilkes Booth was an actor with no combat experience. He was assassinating maybe the most important man in the world, right next to a skilled and veteran infantry officer, in a room with dozens upon dozens of veteran officers and soldiers, in a militarized city with THOUSANDS of officers and soldiers… Controlled choke-points at the bridges of the city…
And not only did he succeed, not only did he successfully get away, not only did he avoid being shot or even drawn upon… but he did all of that whilst arranging to also get center stage, make his statement, and take the equivalent of a theatrical bow after just making himself the most wanted man on earth.
A veteran Delta Force Officer with 20 years combat experience could not do this… Yet Booth was not an elite veteran, he was untrained civilian thespian.
Staging of the Assassination of Julius Caesar “Sic Semper Tyranis”
Near the dead center of western culture is a knife assassination. Indeed, the Assassinated Julius Caesar was named a martyred God decades before the birth of Christ. 1300 years later Medieval Italian National Poet Dante Alegeri would depict 3 souls at the very center of hell eternally being gnawed in the mouth of Satan: Judas Iscariot for the betrayal and murder of Christ, and Casius and Brutus for the betrayal of Caesar.
“Sic Semper Tyrannis” is of course an ancient phrase in Roman history sometimes attributed to Brutus’ ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus who overthrew the last Roman King and established the republic, but was more famously invoked by the descendant who assassinated Caesar. Unlike Dante, early Americans admired Brutus and Casius, and the phrase was commonly used by almost every faction of American life, the founders, George Mason saw it included in the Flag of Virginia, in the lead up to and during the civil war it was used by both Southerners and Abolitionists, and since it has had a storied history… Timothy McViegh was arrested with the phrase emblazoned on his T-Shirt.
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But of course it is most associated with the Assassination of Julius Caesar, the most staged and restaged assassination in history. Booth himself played Mark Antony in a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (ironically playing not an assassin but the aggrieved friend and avenger).
However these bottomless layers of theatricality and symbolism can miss the base fact of the Assassination itself… The original assassination was an act of theatre itself.
Caesar was unaware of it, but the assassins themselves had plotted and elaborate script to their assassination choosing the senate because his many armed friends (Caesar had no official bodyguard) would not be present, and the political statement of Caesar being killed as a tyrant on the floor of the Senate would bolster their new regime… By doing so a few conspirators acting decisively (their total number is contested) could create the illusion the whole of the Roman Senate, nay Rome herself, had slain Caesar in a pure Republican act of patriotism…
Many of their political “mistakes” following this such as allowing Mark Antony to live were in pursuit of creating this narrative…
Caesar was the star of the first staging of his assassination, the sacrifice on the altar of an elaborate ritual… Just as Booth would later exploit the ambiguities of a literal stage to assassinate his tyrant in a manner confusing enough for him to escape.
A gun has exactly one meaning. It quite literally speaks for itself.
Any meaning attributed to a gun, any illusions, is immediately dispelled under the thought (and eardrum) shattering sound of smokeless powder detonating and rapidly converting to various carbon gasses. Indeed the invention of the firearm changed theatre forever, the loudness of a blank firing so immediately rips an audience out of their comfortable passivity and they take long uncomfortable seconds to remind themselves they are still watching a play. Of course when such a sound is heard in real life no one turns to such reassurances…
John Wilkes booth’s knife used to stab Rathbone and intimidate any who’d tackle him during the Lincoln assassination. Notice how Booth selected a knife which looks like a prop? The double edged dagger style design with overly round point (common in the theater to prevent dull blades from still stabbing true) and rustic handle looks more like a theatrical prop aping an achaic dagger than the single-bladed heavy Bowie Knives common during the civil war and on the American frontier… It could easily be assumed to be a dull theatrical prop to an audience member or stagehand, however not so confidently that any would test Booth and risk trying to tackle him. It simultaneously looks too real to wrestle against and too fake to simply shoot the weilder.
A knife however only has the social meaning its visual and weilder builds arround it… A knife cannot fire a wide warning shot to scare the incredulous into compliance, but likewise it can have almost any look or take on almost any meaning.
As we’ve covered pens, shivs, kitchen knives, dining implements, and sharpened toothbrushes have all been used to kill within the past 10 years…. A knife can be formed from just about anything, But the social meaning of these knives can be just as important… The 9/11 Hijackers (if you believe the official story) were able to hijack the planes with box cutters which were not restricted at the time.
By contrast the 1960 Assassination of Inejirō Asanuma by Otoya Yamaguchi, the chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party was done with a Wakizashi a traditional Japanese Short Sword… Chosen specifically to communicate the idea of traditional Japanese cutting down the communist threat to Japan.
Likewise in the annals of who-done-its and murder mysteries true and fictional, almost every blade under the sun has been used to kill to some dramatic irony or bloody message or clever over-coming of obstacles. Men have had their throats slit by the barbers they paid to place a blade to their necks.
That man’s most ancient and fearful weapon is also man’s most basic and useful tool ensures that such confusions, manipulations, and creations of meaning are inevitable.
the same blade with which an ancient mother might cut the umbilical chord, or prepare a family meal, might also be used to murder the father or perform the sacrifice.
Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis.
Final Part: The Only Defensive Knife Fighting is Aggressive Knife Fighting
The best defense against a knife attack is anticipating it and avoiding it. A knife is a zero range weapon. Even if you are in a country which doesn’t allow you to carry a gun, simply anticipating, avoiding, and running is enough to avoid random knife violence. Thugs don’t like to chase their marks. If they weren’t lazy, they’d get jobs instead. By contrast if you think someone might try to stab you, go armed, move through space paranoidly, choose clothing that provides protection from knife attack, secure your home, apply bolts, hide out in your vehicle… secure your phone where you can’t be tracked by it. Etc.
It would be the height of Hollywood folly to train for a handgun fight expecting to stand and shoot your opponent’s bullets out of the air. Even quickdraw duels are largely fantasy. Gunfights are decided by who gets their weapon trained on the other man first, who has the element of surprise. The one initiating the gun fight almost always has his weapon drawn, ready, and knows where his opponent is before his opponent even knows there will be danger.
Sure sometimes store clerks surprise robbers with hidden guns, but this is the exception where some thug was using the gun as a prop and the clerk surprised them with a hidden weapon… Gunfights are decided by who shows up with the gun, and if their would be victim is anticipating them, they aim not to be there when they do.
Knives are the exact same.
Sure there might be a scenario where a guy out with his girlfriend ever so cleverly starts removing his jacket, getting it over one arm and then when threatened with a knife. ever so cleverly smashes a window with the protected hand and comes back with a shard of glass of his own… There are a million one of tricks that might work in a million fantasy scenarios… But it doesn’t change the fact that your odds of survival, once you are unarmed and someone is at hand with a knife, are pretty-much as bad as the man held up by a gun.
If you don’t have an equivalent weapon of your own at hand immediately, the odds are wildly deathly against you, and even if you do the odds are extremely against you because your opponent controls the engagement. Unless you are heavier, stronger, more aggressive, and get a blade of your own as fast as possible, your will get horribly injured.
The only time I have EVER seen an unarmed man defeat an armed man, the unarmed man was twice his weight the armed man seemed exhausted from drugs, and he still got a dozen attempted stabs that could have been devastating. Also the races were exactly the races you’d think could be that wildly different in skill.
The Hollywood fantasy of heroically coming away unscathed after winning a violent encounter that impresses your girl is just that… a fantasy.
It appeals to you because you’re a loser who’s alienated from any sense that you have a right to commit violence, and so simply impressing a girl by bullying a guy at a bar or threatening a homeless person who looks at her funny (which would actually get her going though she’d never admit it) has been drilled out of you by your teachers and Hollywood.
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The reality is that any meaningful defensive knife fighting… Is OFFENSIVE KNIFE FIGHTING.
BTW Oldboy is a great movie.
Let us imagine you have been kidnapped by a terror sect or criminal gang or enemy forces, or you are trapped in a room as a mass casualty attack is occurring around you, or you are trapped on a Tyrannical Totalitarian Island which has banned almost all possible weapons and who’s government is setting up the genocide of you and your people…
Whilst it is almost impossible to reliably defend against a suitably aggressive knife attack by even one person… given any significant period of breathing room, it is VERY possible, Just like Odysseus, to launch a Knife counter-attack against even an extraordinary number of people and come out on top.
In all our scenarios we are going to assume you have minutes, hours, or days to prepare unobserved by your foe, that you can strike with a modicum of surprise, and you cannot secure a firearm except via violence of action… Also that you have access to THINGS. Mostly duct-tape or thread.
We’ll also assume you have no martial arts skills, and haven’t done any “knife training” aside from maybe occasionally swings a stick around (swing sticks around, your body wants you to do this, it is what your muscles and mind are adapted for).
Note I’m Going to use demonstration images of real knives, but in most scenarios where you might ever have to do this on the fly, you’d be using shivs, or stationary, or screwdrivers, or whatever you can get your hands on. Mindyou if you have access to real knives select them well and make modification (texture the grip to increase retention if need be, sharpen the blade as sharp as you can get it… Etc.)
Rapier or Hammer style grip. Whatever combination of thumb pressing on the back of blade or wrap around grip is optimal will depend on the individual knife, shiv, screwdriver, etc.
For such a premeditated breakout, the optimal number of bladed to have is MORE… However the real number is 3. One to grip rapier or hammer style pointing up in your dominant hand (whatever grip gives the best retention) if you have a longer blade (axe hammer, machete. etc.) It would go here… the Second Knife or blade you grasp in your offhand ice-pick style.
And then the 3rd and additional blades and shivs are kept in a belt, pocket, or otherwise at hand HIDDEN on your person in-case on is dropped or there is a risk of being disarmed. (you generally don’t want a backup knife to be visible though, in a grapple an opponent might grab it, and then you’ve armed them)
Icepick grip in your off-hand. This hand is going to jab like a boxer’s lead hand and manage/strike at the arms of opponents. Do not power-stab downward with this hand… This is the easiest strike to block and opens you massively, though having the other blade in the main-hand mitigates this risk.
Per Don Pentcost, the most efficient and hard to block way to attack someone with a knife, the way prisoners themselves really have never developed a counter to, is to hold your primary knife hand back close to your body like a spear whilst holding your blocking hand forward like a shield… Similarly to how a boxer leads with his non-dominant hand, holding his dominant hand back.
Then the attacker alternates between jabbing with the forward hand to distract, block, and bind up the opponent, then stabbing for the body with the primary knife hand while they’re unable to defend themselves. Repeat 2-4 times per second, be aggressive.
However you don’t have a shield, you just have another knife or shiv.
However this has several advantages:
1. Your opponent has to take the jab seriously, even if you are weak they need to take a knife jabbing for their face deadly seriously and block their eyes.
Yes the only example I could find of people doing this hold properly is Knives.com, so they’re doing something right.
But the largest advantage of having a second knife in ice-pick grip is you are immediately ready to prevent a grapple. The knife is an arm’s reach weapon, and an icepick-grip makes that less than arm’s reach. The grip is at full force stabbing towards the body. This makes it awkward and vulnerable to use for what people consider a normal in overhead power-stab, but it makes it devastating in a grapple.
In our hypothetical scenario where you are prisoner to multiple assailants, avoiding being tackled and over-powered by their numbers, crowd control, is the the second most important concern.
The most important is striking hard and fast to prevent them from obtaining weapons. Just like Odysseus you need to have it strategized out what weapons they could reach, what weapons they have, what weapons they could improvise and then move and strike to deny them the opportunity to gain a firepower advantage over you. Knowing how many your opponents are, what weapons they have, if they have support nearby, when they are at their greatest number, their fewest, where their avenues of escape (and thus access to other weapons or backup), and when they are most alert and least… All of that knowledge and planning will greatly increase your odds. Likewise social manipulation or manipulation of perception, (tossing something to create noise a distance from you, or socially manipulating them out of position before the attack begins) will gain you the drop on an individual. Remember Odysseus set up the suitors to be maximally drunk, tired, unarmed, bunched up, and with the doors barred to block their escape… And even then, had he not struck their leader first, with their numbers they could have probably organized a counter attack and overwhelmed him.
You’ll have seen bracer before in Medieval and fantasy films, these are wrist bands meant to protect the wrist and forearms from slashes by bladed weapons. These are a MASSIVE advantage in any melee fight as they effectively extend the reach of bladed weapons vs. an opponent, You can slash at their exposed veins, tendons, and nerve endings, whereas they struggle to cut through the protection.
Obviously you’re unlikely to ever have these lying around (though if you’re in a non-state sub-culture with lots of knife combat they might a good investment), but these can be very quickly improvise by tearing and tying extra clothing, or by taping torn paper in thick bundles (Remember paper is thin wood, 10-20 pages of newspaper, magazine or book will block most incidental or press cuts, 20+ will stop all but strong hacks and stabs).
And finally if you have the parts you can make a Durham Warpick or Prison-Shiv Warpick as the case might be. A knife/Shiv on a stick. These are devastatingly effective, and instantly proved UK Machete and Sword bans completely ineffective.
This is the fastest way to quickly upgrade a prison shiv or or common knife to something that approximates a medieval weapon or short sword
(this is just held together with tape… Earlier in the video a crappy kitchen knife breaks and the tape holds)
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I want to emphasize… These are items available in controlled environments. A broom handle? Tape? Screwdriver, kitchen-knife or chunk of metal?
Any prison cook could make this… And it’s as effective as a medieval short weapon.
Any person, in almost any scenario can become very deadly very quickly if need be…
An average person, given preparation, surprise, and the time to equip themselves could very easily take on 5-10 kidnappers, criminals, tyrants, etc. Given simply the time to produce shivs and the element of surprise… And with proper premeditation and planning… well Odysseus made it to 120 without injuring himself.
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In Conclusion
Of course this is far from comprehensive… There’s tons of stuff to do with stab-vests and knife resistant clothing, riot control, and once you get up to longer blades with more reach technique comes back into the matter as the longer blades employ various tricks to overcome shorter blades.
Again this was warfare right up to the 1600s… People have iterated a LOT on how to hack each-other to pieces.
But I hope you have seen what I wanted to emphasize.
The blade is one of the most important and useful weapons on the modern battlefield, not for the legacy of the bayonet and uniformed charges, but in spite of it.
Knives and edged weapons are amongst the 3 deadliest weapons in the world today, not as a last resort or final holdout tool, but an aggressive implement of deliberate planning and premeditation.
They are extraordinary force multipliers, all the more extraordinary because they often have wider political effects than conventional weapons in the hands of people who otherwise are not considered to have ANY force to them.
John Wilkes Booth was an Actor. Otoya Yamaguchi was a 17 year old high-school student. Odysseus right up til the moment his arrow was loosed, was assumed to be a wandering beggar.
None of them appeared in ANYONE’s balance of forces calculation… And yet they irreparably altered the history of their nations and kingdoms.
And yet even as knives and shivs alter history, define prison life, define crime and non-state and irregular warfare in much of Europe and Asia… And remain historically the most relevant and important weapons to maybe ever exist… Conventional militaries teach little except incredibly antiquated bayonet drills, and the popular conception and understanding of knife fighting is driven by Hollywood morality tales and crappy self-defense course lies.
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Long before Samuel Colt “made men equal” this was the actual tool that made a 90lb girl the Equivalent of 6ft 220 lb man if she struck deliberately and ruthlessly, knives and bladed weapons actually do what most martial arts promise: allowing a weak man to slay dozens of foes… And for the crime of actually delivering on that promise, knives have never been forgiven.
To this day you can order books on Tanks, rifles, handguns, etc. and no one cares! No customs agent will stop you, there’s no country that restricts them. You’re fine. Likewise you can order all kinds of books on martial arts right down to the Mythical Dim Mak the legendary Death Touch.
Yet Don Pentcost’s "Put ‘Em Down Take ‘Em Out” is STILL banned from several major Commonwealth and European nations.
You can read how to punch people, you can read how to death poke people, you can read how to shoot people… But stabbing them? That’s a banned book right there.
The intersection of lethality with ordinary household capability is something the total states of western “Democracy” are deeply frightened of their populations understanding.
Outstanding essay! It warmed my heart you referenced Don Pentecost. So much to unpack here. I’ll definitely save this one for the archives. Two things that came to mind, Booth succeeded in spite of being a civilian because he had the will, and he rehearsed. He planned, and he prepared, and he set the literal stage,
His training as an actor: rehearsing until it’s perfect, thinking through blocking and moving, and keeping calm/ improvising under pressure, are all skills crucial to successful operations, when militarized.
Lastly, on improvised weapons in a totalitarian state, I immediately thought of this quote:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Fantastic essay, thank you, much appreciated. I'm an knifemaker, and sure appreciated the images of the imprivsed knives.
One small point...smokeless powder doesn't "detonate" it "deflagrates" which is a technical term that means it burns very quickly. Generally, we just say it burns. It's related to subsonic vs supersonic speed of propagation.
If your smokeless powder charge detonates (ie explodes rather than burns quickly) then it will probably blow your gun to pieces in your hands.
I hope you don't mind me mentioning this...I'm a lifelong shooter and ammunition reloader.
![Knife and Sheath: Horn-handled dagger used by John Wilkes Booth to stab Major Henry Rathbone after shooting Abraham Lincoln.] Artifact in the museum collection, National Park Service, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site,](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Hu-z!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ae54756-6f47-4fdd-ac93-d1066c3e993b_580x946.jpeg "Knife and Sheath: Horn-handled dagger used by John Wilkes Booth to stab Major Henry Rathbone after shooting Abraham Lincoln.] Artifact in the museum collection, National Park Service, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site,")
Outstanding essay! It warmed my heart you referenced Don Pentecost. So much to unpack here. I’ll definitely save this one for the archives. Two things that came to mind, Booth succeeded in spite of being a civilian because he had the will, and he rehearsed. He planned, and he prepared, and he set the literal stage,
His training as an actor: rehearsing until it’s perfect, thinking through blocking and moving, and keeping calm/ improvising under pressure, are all skills crucial to successful operations, when militarized.
Lastly, on improvised weapons in a totalitarian state, I immediately thought of this quote:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Fantastic essay, thank you, much appreciated. I'm an knifemaker, and sure appreciated the images of the imprivsed knives.
One small point...smokeless powder doesn't "detonate" it "deflagrates" which is a technical term that means it burns very quickly. Generally, we just say it burns. It's related to subsonic vs supersonic speed of propagation.
If your smokeless powder charge detonates (ie explodes rather than burns quickly) then it will probably blow your gun to pieces in your hands.
I hope you don't mind me mentioning this...I'm a lifelong shooter and ammunition reloader.