As titled. If you grabbed somebody by the sides of the his head and slammed down your forehead on the bridge of his nose as hard as you could, would you kill him?
Just curious. If it helps, you can presume I’m writing a crime novel or somethin’.
I doubt that there are statistics on this sort of thing. BUT…it will require somewhere between 7 and 12 lbs of force to break the nose, and considerably more to splinter it and drive said material into the brain. That kind of blow is usually produced by a directed palm heel strike to the already broken nose. That type of strike is pretty powerful and it would be difficult to muster the requisite strength and flexibility from the neck and shoulders alone. Repeated headbutts could well do the job over time.
To sum up: Singly- probably so rare as to be “never”; in sequence- “possible but not probable”. I’d put the chance of a single killing headbutt at around >5%, ( allowing for chance, odd alignment of physics, and unknown medical anomilies in the opponent) multiples at >20% simply due to unlikeliness of performing such a task.
The only way you could kill someone by headbutting his nose was if he were standing with his back to an open window. That whole shattered nose bone thing is a myth.
To a degree. True the nose itself is cartilaginous, and the openings are too small, but it’s quite possible to fracture the area of the skull between the eyes and the base of the nose.
I doubt you could do it without causing injury to your forehead though, even if it was possible.
Come on, everybody knows you do it with the back of your fist and you need to be looking into the victim’s eyes at the instant of death so that you can steal his life force, or something. I learned this from watching that fine documentary Firestarter.
OK seriously, couldn’t you at least conceivably knock the person out with the head-but or backhand and cause so many broken blood vessels that he drowns in his own blood?
Sounds like a job for mythbusters.
Nitpick: I imagine you meant “<5%.”
Right, but that won’t drive any bone splinters into the brain. The brain is completely surrounded by its brain case, and even along the bottom (of the brain) the bone isn’t very thin.
I’m sure he meant you could only kill someone with a headbutt if you rolled a natural 20. 
Gah! math strikes again.
Years and years ago we had a fantastic thread asking about headbutting in a fight. It had a lot of posts and back-and-forths with some well-respected posters chiming in. One, whose name I’m pained to admit I’ve forgotten (Glee? Glue? Gnu?) was, I think, a cop (maybe) and was one of the board martial art authorities. I think. Maybe he was Wally-ing everyone and I missed the fallout. Anyway, that’s my almost useless contribution to the thread, but maybe someone out there knows what I’m talking about and can find it. It’s worth reading.
Please don’t headbut me. Or eat the daisies.
This isn’t what I was thinking of (though the report was written by a G-name), but it’s relevant.
Staff report:
Is head-butting for real?
Any chance someone can at least help me remember who I am thinking of poster-wise?
Note: the graphic referenced in this reply shows some blood and black eyes.
I don’t think so…of course, any blunt trauma to the head can kill you as the brain decelerates inside a closed space, but the idea of sort of driving the nasal bone in particular up into the skull strikes me as unrealistic. I’ve read novels (Eric von Lustbader, maybe?) where some sort of killing blow from a fancy schmancy martial artist consisted of driving a palm up into the face and shoving the nose up into the brain, but my observation is that on average the nose just sort of crumbles. The nasal cartilage and most of the nasal bone are frail.
Now if you are talking about a hard enough pile drive to shove the whole front part of the face into the skull, sure–that would do it. There’s nothing magic about the nose’s participation in that injury. And of course, late complications from a bad blow to the front of the face can include fracture into the cranial cavity with cerebrospinal fluid leak and eventual death from meningitis or something…probably not the instant killing blow you are looking for.
I would expect the specific mechanism you describe…“a forehead slammed down on the bridge of a nose” to maybe give the poor guy a Laforte III but probably not kill him. On the other hand, I’ve seen old ladies die from bumping their head on a cupboard and getting a lethal subdural, so feel free to have a really strong guy kill someone with his really brutish forehead.
By way of comparison, Rudy Tomjanovich suffered severe damage in the nasal area from a punch from Kermit Washington in a basketball game in 1977. He even tasted cerebrospinal fluid in his mouth afterwards, which prompted his trainer to get him to the hospital stat.
There is in fact a large plate of bone that separates the brainpan from the sinus cavity which is nearly as thick as the frontal and parietal bones of the skull. The only fenestrae in the human skull are the two tiny holes in the back of the eye sockets that admit (and are stuffed full of) the optic nerves, and the opening at the rear base of the skull that allows blood vessels to enter and the brainstem to extend and attach to the spinal cord. All of this is surrounded by a thick layer of dermal tissue and muscle, and would take considerable force by a deeply penetrating weapon.
The only way someone is going to die from a headbutt is if the concussive impulse knocks them unconscious and they aspirate blood until they drown.
Stranger
This being the Dope and all, you also got your various foraminae for optic nerves and such, including the holes in the cribiform plate for the olfactory nerves. A fractured cribiform plate is a common mechanism for cerebrospinal fluid leakage into the nasal cavities with a frontal injury.
In the early days of the UFC head-butting was allowed. There were many fights where the opponent was being pinned down (head against the floor) and was head-butted in the manner you suggest and no one died. I say not possible.
Rudy T and “the punch” were exactly who and what I thought of when I read the op. That was pretty much a “perfect storm” of what one human could do to another with a punch - Rudy was running full speed into the punch that Washington threw with a full 180 degree windup. His injury was horrific; doctors said the posterior portion of his skull was out of alignment with the rest of the skull by a whole inch, and that his facial injuries were consistent with someone who’d been in a 50 mph car accident.
Barring special circumstances like that, though, I can’t see a headbutt alone killing somebody except through a freak accident. Mind you, that’s the headbutt itself - after you get headbutted (or simply punched) you have the possibility of further injury when you fall. I know of at least one assault where the victim nearly died after striking concrete with the back of his head and neck, and narrowly escaped paralysis. Details spoilered:
Witnesses said it sounded like a bowling ball dropped from eye level.
Only if the headbutt knocked him unconscious, he landed on his back, aspirated his own blood and choked to death.
How did he know what cerebrospinal fluid tastes like?