The neck and eyes would be the obvious places to aim for, I’d think, but if those are unreachable, maybe you’d have a stab (heh) at getting the femoral artery on the inside of the upper thigh? That slows him down, and the blood loss should drop him quickly, however, probably not quickly enough for him not to fire a couple more bullets in your general direction.
Yeah, but the trench coat would get in the way of that.
As the venerable tome Black Medicine: The Dark Art of Death said, there are basically three things you can do to end a fight:
- Distract your opponent. If he stops thinking about hitting you, he’ll stop hitting you.
- Interfere with his control over his body. If he can’t make a fist, he’ll stop hitting you.
- Destroy the integrity of his body. If his arm’s broken, he’ll stop hitting you whether he can make a fist or not.
The neck is a great and vulnerable target, but if you can’t make much of a slash or your aim is sub-par, he’ll still have plenty of time to beat the snot out of you before he even notices he’s hurt. Eyes are best, I’d think; they go with #1 and #3 on the above list (while he freaks out about the eye, you can run like hell), and even if he does somehow recover and come after you, the loss of an eye is pretty staggering; he’ll lose depth perception, for one, and using ranged weapons will be pretty damn difficult.
In a fight for your life, anything goes. You won’t believe how fast someone will let go of you when you jam your fingers all the way up his nose.
Maybe you want to start carrying a bigger knife. 4 or 5 inch blade stabbed repeatedly in the soft spot in the chest under the armpit or just right into the kidneys will incapacitate, if not kill, many people outright.
And I would not want to show up to a knife fight with a folding knife that doesn’t lock. It would suck to spring your attack only to find that your knife has closed across your fingers.
I’d say go for the eyes. 1.5 inch blade is too short to have reasonable chance of damaging his spine or reaching major artery.
The typical office has bunches of stuff around that can be used more effectively as an expedient weapon than one of the smaller, non-locking SAK’s. Still, sometimes you got to run what you brung.
- Remember that the SAK isn’t your only weapon. You still have feet, knees, elbows, fists, etc. Use them.
- Such short blades can only be realistically deployed in slashing attacks; don’t expect any individual slash to be a fight ending blow.
- Keep fighting no matter what; even if you get shot. Most people who are shot with handguns survive, you can too.
That said, I’d prefer a mop or broom to a little SAK if I had to use it as a weapon…or a chair or a fire extinguisher or a good many other things I see right here around me.
There is a videoout there that describes specific techniques for fighting with small 2"-3" knives. Maybe there’s something beneficial to the OP in there.
In terms of eye shots, it’s worth bearing in mind that, as anyone who’s dissected an eye will know, the sclera is pretty thick; I susect your chances are higher of skimming the eye and piercing the socket, above or below it than hitting the sweet spot in the middle to pierce it. It’s still going to be a pretty unpleasant blow no matter what.
Stabbing the assailant in the aorta would be extremely effective. Unfortunately you have to chainsaw open his rib cage first.
I would think that kidneys would be an apt target as well (assuming you were behind you target). It is a relatively big and soft target and you probably could get full blade penetration.
I’ve always thought the most effective tool on the Swiss Army knife for a fight would be the corkscrew, anyway. Open it, put the body of the knife inside my closed fist, and garner an instant increase of about 3000% in damage caused by punches.
I was going to suggest kidneys. From what I have experienced just being punched in the kidney, it hurts a whole hell of a lot. A stab to the kidneys might render someone pretty much useless.
I think **crazyjoe **should win, just based on his username and the thread topic. 
(How come I’m always the only chick in these threads?)
Lorena Bobbittdidn’t seem to have much trouble but she used a longer knife.
Good thing I mentioned the kidneys in my post. 
My guess would be the neck area, specifically the cartoid artery, but anywhere in the neck/throat should be good. I would attempt a jabbing and then twisting motion, once the knife is lodged in the neck/thoat, to scramble as much as possible.
A pithy statement if I’ve ever seen one.
Thrusts to the eyes, throat, kidneys, brain, etc. are difficult as hell to pull off without the element of surprise and with a tiny knife one can’t even grip securely and that may well fold shut during a thrust.
I repeat: if you are attacked by an armed person (and there is no option to flee) and your only weapon is a SAK, your best bet is to be a slashing, kicking, punching, kneeing, elbowing, biting, spitting, grappling, screaming, hitting with furniture, whirlwind. You need to overwhelm your opponent as quickly as possible before he can pump you full of lead. Screwing around trying ninja instant-death maneuvers with a pen knife is going to get you killed for sure.
Yes and no… Guys have a very strong protective reflex for anything in the general area of the crotch, so it’s hard to actually land a blow there. On the other hand, that same protective reflex can make a groin attack a very good feint for some other more effective attack elsewhere: In this case, that might, for instance, be a knee to the groin followed a split second later by a stab to the eyes (or rather, a stab to where the eyes will be), since many groin-protection maneuvers will result in the face being more exposed than usual.
This is the most perceptive response in this thread so far, and tends to highlight why a short-bladed knife is a very poor weapon for defense.
The problem with most of the recommendations in this thraed is they ignore the fact that a 1.5" blade will barely penetrate sufficiently to reliably hit any major artery or significant ligament or tendon. Even the common caritod arteries–so visible on the neck–are largely protected from a slash or side thrust by the thrust of the jaw and the sternocleidomastoid muscles of the neck; in order to hit these arteries you must come straight from the front or underneath, right through the inner swing of the arms and to an effective target about the size of a euro coin. Ditto with effective attacks to the face or head, and even the anterior of the skull and spinal cord are better protected than most people think. This is decidedly not easy against a resisting, flailing, dodging target, hence why most defenders from knife attacks have multiple cuts on their hands and lower arms. As far as any attacks to the kidneys, aorta, temple, et cetera, forget it; there simply isn’t enough length to penetrate and reliably do any kind of damage that would incapacitate someone. 4" is really considered the bare minimum for effectiveness in penetrating attacks; 6" or better is really necessary to guarantee an effective wound even with good placement.
You also have to contend with the fact that unlike blunt contusion attacks, cuts and stabs cause relatively little immediate pain in the subject. It is entirely possible to be stabbed and not even notice until you feel the blood flowing from the wound. For a knife attack to be effective in immediately stopping an attack it has to result in either major blood loss or disabling injury to a joint or ligament. Probably the single most effective place to disable (not incapacitate, but make the perpetrator incapable of attack or defense) is to stab at the shoulder from above or under the clavicle. This is the densest collection of muscle, tendons, and ligaments in the human body, and it is virtually impossible to make an intrusive attack here without hitting something significant. The tendons at the elbow joints and wrists are also possible, too, but just as hard to hit as the arteries.
Scumpup has it right; rather than trying to make a blade that is scarcely more dangerous than a toothpick into your single defense weapon, you should apply hands, feet, elbows, knees, and any heavy or freely throwable objects to play, raining down blows until the attacker is incapacitated, runs away, or offers you an opening for escape. If you want to see what a real knife fight between ‘professionals’ looks like, go to the bathhouse scene in Eastern Promises; an absolute bloody mess where nobody gets out unscathed.
Stranger