I agree with this thesis. First lesson I had at Wing Chung and I got the rubber knife through to the instructor many times and I'm no good at fighting. His defences were only viable against big sweeping and leading knife attacks and well, who does that?

A good time to use your parkour ability? i.e. run the fuck away?

all the language is *NSFW

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by Morganth.

Seems like the thing to do is to bring a gun to the knife-fight

In all seriousness though, what about improvised weaponry? It seems to me you could grab something with more reach, even if it's just a barstool or pool cue or whatever. Hasn't this guy watched any Jackie Chan? >> ^maestro156:

Seems like the thing to do is to bring a gun to the knife-fight

He talks about the rage coming at you. That happens no matter if armed or unarmed so I guess all self defense is pointless since that rage coming at you is so impossible to deal with?

I was taught to run if you can when unarmed against a knife. Bruce Lee himself said something similar... We were also taught disarming techniques and the guys who were good could do this stuff real-time. Filipino martial arts are great for armed/unarmed combat with knives, sticks, longer knives and swords. The armed forces there still have to use their skills in real encounters and they train hard so it must help them.

Watched a guy get stabbed once....hardly knew what I was looking at until it was over and the guy was dead. Right in front of my studio in San Fran...@6th @ Market, heart of the tenderloin-Happened too fast for the victim to even react.

Knives are a motherfucker and everyone should have at least one, high-carbon folder with a tanto tip!
cold steel, benchmade, etc....get you a good one and it'll last you yer life

Also, I don't know about you but when faced with rage I get sharp and angry, I don't wilt or freeze. If there is danger then time slows down for me giving me plenty of time to react appropriately.

Yah I think you're right. Being in good shape and able to run fast and for long distances is probably the best overall defence against something like this. If you're cornered then I think doing front/push kicks to keep them at a distance while you manoeuvre to escape is the most logical thing to do.>> ^KnivesOut:

A good time to use your parkour ability? i.e. run the fuck away?

I like to run whilst telling unfinished jokes. You can't kill a man with a hanging punchline. It's science.

Have a leather jacket...wrap it around your arm and use it as a shield. It's not perfect but maybe it'll give you a chance.

I would probably have to use my heat vision.

>> ^chingalera:

Watched a guy get stabbed once....hardly knew what I was looking at until it was over and the guy was dead. Right in front of my studio in San Fran...@6th @ Market, heart of the tenderloin-Happened too fast for the victim to even react.
Knives are a motherfucker and everyone should have at least one, high-carbon folder with a tanto tip!
cold steel, benchmade, etc....get you a good one and it'll last you yer life


Also, vote for politicians who don't desire to keep a squalid ghetto in the center of the city.

If China can build a sky-scraper in 15 days, San Francisco should be able to figure out how to clean up a ghetto in less than 30 years, right?

>> ^cosmovitelli:

I would probably have to use my heat vision.


I would have thought you'd have gone with the poop throw.

pffttt...Just have Indiana Jones tech you how to deal with a person with a knife.

http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/indiana-jones-finest/indy-best1.gif

I'll bet this guy could weigh in a little on this conversation.

"basically, if your attacker has a knife, you're fucked"

In general, I'd agree with this, with two additions:
1: if your attacker has a knife and knows how to use it, it's next to impossible to disarm them.
2: you can't disarm something you can't see. If the attacker really wants to harm you, they won't show the knife until it's in you.


>> ^Kofi:

I agree with this thesis. First lesson I had at Wing Chung and I got the rubber knife through to the instructor many times and I'm no good at fighting. His defences were only viable against big sweeping and leading knife attacks and well, who does that?


It is possible to disarm someone with a knife, it's just bloody difficult. After several years of training, I would still rate my chances of disarming an attacker with a knife at about 50% and that's assuming the attacker is just some punk with a knife. In all honesty, most of the time I wouldn't even try, I'd just hand over my wallet.

I'm a 4th degree black belt and an instructor. My best technique in this situation is "abandon your ego". Apologize, bargain, beg or buy your way out of the situation. If that fails, run. Final option, fight.

If those options offend you then you're watching too many action movies or you're young and stupid.

When the guy told me $2.50 is -way- to expensive for a shot of jack, I never expected anything like this in the six years of my bartending. Punched in the neck -- so odd.

I totally agree with this guy on "your brain panics." I bartend, last night I was jacked by a customer. I escorted out (he was drunk, I refused to serve him, his buddy was cool). I didn't touch him and I walked him outside as I turned around to walk back into work the guy punched me (in the neck). Totally awkward. I shoved him away and he went down. But, someone pulls a knife you're f'ed. You think about it know how you would handle it, and you think I could do this or that, but you don't. You don't have time to think about things. You have to react. I really understand what he says, I will take last night's experience and learn from it, but things can get scary really fast. So up vote on what he says.

A guy was stabbed to death in my apartment building last night, apparently at a drug-fueled party. I live in an upscale area (heart of downtown Santa Monica), so it's not just an issue of "cleaning up a ghetto". Crazy passion knife rage can happen anywhere.

I had a lot of time to think today about what I'd do if I'd been at that party. I say appease, beg, bargain and run.

Okay, but what if he was armed with a banana?

>> ^00Scud00:

Okay, but what if he was armed with a banana?
1: if your attacker has a banana and knows how to use it, it's next to impossible to disarm them.
2: you can't disarm something you can't see. If the attacker really wants to harm you, they won't show the banana until it's in you.

I remember this one time in the Tenderloin of SF I was at a corner store of the infamous sixth street. I was walking out of the store when a bummed out crack head came rushing around the corner. He hit my beer as he walked by, not on purpose but because he was fucked up. He yelled, "watch where you're fucking going!" And I yelled "YOU watch where YOU'RE FUCKING going". And then all of a sudden I had all of these fucking idiots coming out of the woodwork at me. So, I kept walking and they kept following.

I crossed the street and I don't remember what I said but one of the guys just came up to me and quickly arranged a razor blade to my neck. And I just kept saying "DO IT, DO IT, Let's see you do it!"

I'm not sure if that is the way to handle it but it freaked the guy out.

The guy you're fighting has a knife? Maybe you're fucked, maybe you aren't.

The guy you're fighting has a friend sneak up behind you with their knife? You'll be lucky to wake up in intensive care stripped naked and no longer the owner of a car.

"The energy and the rage is crippling, not the move."

I like this guy. Sounds like he's been attacked more than a couple times.

I would also suggest he move to a better neighbourhood.

This video confirms what I already suspected.

Back in high school me and a bunch of other students who got high enough PSAT scores got invited to go down to the Naval Academy in Annapolis to experience a weekend orientation of the academy. I bunked with a guy from Texas who was a black belt in karate. At the time I was really into Tae Kwon Do and we got to talking about martial arts in general. One of the other guys in our room asked us how to deal with an attacker with a knife and the karate guy without pause answers, "Run."

Everyone laughed until he lifted up his shirt and showed us this ugly red scar that goes from one side of his belly to the other. Apparently, some guy had talked trash to him out on the street one day and instead of walking away he faced off against the guy. The knife came out so fast he said he never saw it coming. He got hella lucky in that the slash wasn't deep enough to hit his internal organs and that the other dude just took off running after getting the one hit in, but he was still bleeding everywhere. Some other people nearby called an ambulance and got the kid to the hospital.

Years later, my brother and I got into mixed-martial arts and used to practice defending against knife attacks. We'd wear cheap white clothing and used red markers to simulate the knife. What we learned really quickly is that even if you successfully disarmed the simulated attacker, when you looked down you had probably been cut in at least 3 different places during the attempt.

So I agree with everything in this video. Someone comes at you with a knife, you're not necessarily fucked but you need to accept that in all likelihood you're going to get cut... and that even if you succeed in incapacitating the attacker there's still a good chance you'll bleed out from the cuts you took in the process before medical attention arrives.

>> ^SDGundamX:

Years later, my brother and I got into mixed-martial arts and used to practice defending against knife attacks. We'd wear cheap white clothing and used red markers to simulate the knife. What we learned really quickly is that even if you successfully disarmed the simulated attacker, when you looked down you had probably been cut in at least 3 different places during the attempt.

I've done the same thing. Managed about a 30% success rate, where success is "cut, but probably not fatal". Of course, even that isn't real. Regardless of what you see in the movies even a small cut will change affect your defence.

Agreed with most of everything said here and I'd add :

• In any confrontation on the street start off thinking your opponent has a concealed weapon : keep your distance as much as possible
• If distance is closed in, immediately evaluate improvised weapons and protection (leather jacket wrapped around forearm, stick, sand, ...) before things get ugly and tunnel vision kicks in.
• The aim is to get the upper hand with accessories of your own and anything will do to hit, blind, surprise, distract...
• All this with one objective : a clean line of escape.

Oh and about having a knife of your own all the time .... you do realize that means you're going to kill someone ? Either that or someone else will kill you with it. No bringing it out just for show.

>> ^maestro156:

Seems like the thing to do is to bring a gun to the knife-fight


Not necessarily.

>> ^TheFreak:

I'm a 4th degree black belt and an instructor. My best technique in this situation is "abandon your ego". Apologize, bargain, beg or buy your way out of the situation. If that fails, run. Final option, fight.
If those options offend you then you're watching too many action movies or you're young and stupid.


This is just brilliant. It's funny to think of all the people who can break a bat on their shin, or take a KO punch and stay standing, who will never have the ability to "abandon the ego" for even one second. But what's really funny is that this is what smart people do instinctively when confronted with a situation like this, even if they always thought they would do something completely different.

>> ^fuzzyundies:

A guy was stabbed to death in my apartment building last night, apparently at a drug-fueled party. I live in an upscale area (heart of downtown Santa Monica), so it's not just an issue of "cleaning up a ghetto". Crazy passion knife rage can happen anywhere.
I had a lot of time to think today about what I'd do if I'd been at that party. I say appease, beg, bargain and run.


The range of outcomes is the same in good neighborhoods and in San Francisco's incompetent urine-soaked ghettos, but the averages are very different.

It wouldn't be possible for a smart person to be murdered at that party, because smart people wouldn't be at that party.

>> ^fuzzyundies:

A guy was stabbed to death in my apartment building last night, apparently at a drug-fueled party. I live in an upscale area (heart of downtown Santa Monica), so it's not just an issue of "cleaning up a ghetto". Crazy passion knife rage can happen anywhere.
I had a lot of time to think today about what I'd do if I'd been at that party. I say appease, beg, bargain and run.


Also, when I visited Santa Monica, I was expecting a beautiful California paradise, but I was surprised to find that the only areas I saw seemed like a dirty ghetto.

If you live in close proximity to that, you're at an elevated chance of some of that dysfunction bleeding over.

People are morons. it's best to avoid them.

"Look behind you, a Three-Headed Monkey!"

Worked against sword wielding thugs, ought to work equally well in these cases. Problem solved.

I saw a guy get stabbed with a pen at my old high school. It looked like he was just being punched a bunch of times. Knives are bad, but shanks -- fuck, you don't even know there's a weapon in their hand.

So is there still usually a wild conga solo in the background or..?

>> ^radx:

"Look behind you, a Three-Headed Monkey!"
Worked against sword wielding thugs, ought to work equally well in these cases. Problem solved.


Unless your opponent happens to be a coked out schizophrenic, in which case he says "I know, that's Bob, Bob gets you when I'm finished". Might as well stick with the classics, like "Your shoelace is untied".

Unlike everyone else here, I don't know anything about knife fights.

during combat self defense training i did in the military, one of the instructors told us first thing in knife defense, "10 times out of 10 in a knife fight, you will get cut. better get used to that idea"

this dude is pretty spot on with his real world applications. i'd like to learn more about this guy

>> ^chingalera:

Watched a guy get stabbed once....hardly knew what I was looking at until it was over and the guy was dead. Right in front of my studio in San Fran...@6th @ Market, heart of the tenderloin-Happened too fast for the victim to even react.
Knives are a motherfucker and everyone should have at least one, high-carbon folder with a tanto tip!
cold steel, benchmade, etc....get you a good one and it'll last you yer life

"Knives are bad, so buy one and carry it with you"? Dude, WTF.

Exactly. Bringing a deadly weapon to a fight (or assault situation) probably just increases your chances of fatality; it is quite easy to turn a noob's knife against them, and worse, an assailant who might've let you free will see your weapon-weilding as legitimating lethal action against you (heck, it's self-defense after all).

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

>> ^chingalera:
Watched a guy get stabbed once....hardly knew what I was looking at until it was over and the guy was dead. Right in front of my studio in San Fran...@6th @ Market, heart of the tenderloin-Happened too fast for the victim to even react.
Knives are a motherfucker and everyone should have at least one, high-carbon folder with a tanto tip!
cold steel, benchmade, etc....get you a good one and it'll last you yer life

"Knives are bad, so buy one and carry it with you"? Dude, WTF.