I’ve often heard and read the claim that it is possible to kill someone with a punch to the nose that would drive the “nose bones” into the brain. This sounds off to me:
a) what “nose bones”? The nose is cartilage
b) the nasal bones that cartilage connects to are placed such that driving them into the brain with a fist seems well-nigh impossible
c) if it were possible, why do boxers and martial artists and school kids and morons in bar fights not get killed more often?
It has always sounded implausible to me, but I read it again just the other day in a recent book. Thoughts?
While not completely impossible, it isn’t common.
Here is a side view of the skull. You’re right that most of the nose is cartilage, as you can see in the picture, there is a bony prominence near the rest of the skull.
Significant blunt facial trauma from the frontal direction usually results in one of the LeFort variations of fracture lines. In a LeFort 3 the anterior face is unstable, but how much trauma there is to the brain depends on fractures and blunt trauma sequelae elsehwere. The nasal bone is small and thin, but in theory a substantial enough force could have as an end result some fragments of it penetrating into the brain along with fragments of the other bones forming the anterior elements of the skull. Such an injury might result in death.
This is not quite the same as killing an individual by driving the nasal bone into the brain.
If you think of the face as a crumple zone, you might make a car analogy. In a head-on collision, if the license plate ends up in the compartment of the car (let’s pretend it’s a 911) and causes injury, was it the license plate per se or was it just that the blow was so severe the license plate ended up in a protected area?
As to whether or not a human could deliver a severe enough frontal blow to the face with a fist to cause death, I’d say yes. There are too many variables to say no. However even if bony fragments of the nasal bone end up inside the cranial cavity, the mechanism of death would be better described as blunt trauma to the anterior skull than “killing by driving the nasal bone into the brain.”
The heroine of Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel A Civil Campaign tries to do this to a man who won’t let go of her. She’s quite disappointed that she only bloodies his nose, and is about to try to find out if “the knee to the groin thing works better” when help arrives.
With proper follow-up, at least. A knee to the groin is unlikely to actually land, since guys have very strong instincts for protecting that part of the body, and will usually notice and block a blow aimed there. But that also makes it a very effective feint for an attack to some other part of the body, such as the eyes.
The blow to the groin IS the followup. You begin with keys to the throat, then kick or knee the groin multiple times. If these connect properly (which they may not) you then should have time to find a stick and administer repeated blows to the kidneys and/or side of the head. And don’t be afraid to bite in the neck if you must.
All you can say for certain, is that if you attempt this on purpose, you will certainly fail, BUT if you are NOT trying to hurt someone (badly), you will drive his nose-bone straight to the seat of his soul.
A lot of what happens in trauma depends upon luck, both good and bad.
Even more bizarre, the author is Jonathan Maberry, who has written a large number of zombie novels (and other kinds of novels, too, but I haven’t read them).
I was showed the ‘septum’ punch in about 1970, by a guy who had learned that, and a load of other filthy tricks between 1940 and 1945.
He certainly reckoned it was lethal, and few would wish to debate the matter with him.
Personally I reckon that you need to be too accurate, the risk of splitting knuckles with the victim’s front teeth is one downside, the other is skimming the nose and hitting thin air.
Boxers wear boxing gloves, which are rather large, other ‘experts’ would use the far safer straight chop to the throat.
I was always led to believe that the heel of the palm, driver hard into the nose, would cause considerable distress, if not actual death, with minimal damage to the hand.
An old friend of mine was in the midst of the end of his marriage. His wife, a dancer (both ballet and the type done nekid) totally lost it and threw the hardest kick she could muster into his groin. And he just stood there glaring.
She ran. They were never again in the same room without lawyers being present. He had a horribly bruised thigh. She truly believed she had landed dead center and he was a total badass.
To be fair to the character in A Civil Campaign, she had planned to begin by using a fireplace poker as a weapon, but hesitated over whether to hit him over the head, or jam it…well, you get the picture. But that was before he grabbed her. Sadly, she had no keys.
