I rented the non-canon Bond film Never Say Never Again the other night—it helped pass the time between bouts of vomiting so hard the blood vessels in both my eyes burst—and something intrigued me…
Early on in this film, Bond is attacked by a thug/assassin who produces an odd weapon…a baton-like springy thing, somewhat resembling a short length of a sewer snake, that the thug uses like a club, but that somehow seems to slice through several things Bond tries to parry with, including a kitchen knife.
Now…what, exactly, is this weapon supposed to be? I’m assuming the movie was exaggerating it’s “slicing” ability—Hollywood is known to make anything with a sharp edge out of Adamantium—but otherwise, I have no idea what this thing was, or what it’s actually supposed to be able to do. Can anyone help me out?
That’s not what the thug had, though - it was much less rigid than that, and he pulled it out of his belt buckle, using the buckle part as a handle. Ranchoth described it pretty well - it’s about a foot-long piece of metal, grooved like a sewer snake, and just as flaccid.
It’s probably some variant of a monomolecular filament line or something. It’s a fantasy weapon, since monomolecular line doesn’t exist, AFAIK. Basically, the idea is that the cutting edge is only one molecule thick, making it superduperhyper doubleplus sharp.
Yes and no. Monomolecular line does exist, and it’s quite common. But “one molecule thick” can be a lot thicker than most people realize. Most plastic items are a single molecule for an entire object.
That said, you could in principle get a pretty fine strand of Kevlar or the like. And the technology isn’t quite there, yet, but we’re getting pretty close to making nanofiber practical.
Biggest problem I can see with a slice-all is the weighted tip (I assume you’d need one) might bounce off something and send the line careening back, possibly cutting through your own arm. Heck, even missing your target invites the weapon to come back on the return swing and get you. Unless you’ve got an armoured sleeve and keep the tether short and were really really really careful, even practicing with the weapon could get you the nickname “lefty”.
An RPG I used to play had monomolecular blades that were suspended between the handle and a small, spherical anti-grav motor that moved in line with the handle and kept the blade rigid. It allowed some amount of flex as you swung it, but had enough rigidity to prevent the blade from arcing around and slicing up the wielder. Plus, you could control the length of the blade with a control in the handle, alternating it between a short sword and a long, semi-rigid whip.
Growing up I always understood the weapon as being called “piano wire” and it was composed out of some sort of amazing razor wire and so titled because of its resemblence to the wire used in piano “cords” [I don’t know the actual terminology].
At the time I dimly recall believing it was based on a very large exageration of actual existing very-sharp wire which was called “piano wire” and not created entirely out of whole cloth.
No idea of what the basis was for this belief but I don’t think I invented it myself so there must have been some pre-existing fictional convention.
IIRC the scene, Bond has a kitchen knife snap when encountering this weapon, which is actually likely considering that a kitchen knife is not designed to flex. From what I remember, it was like a coiled spring made of sharp wire. I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I think this is a great question.
