Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Found some interesting research numbers on knife attacks. These like factiods come from a study of police reports, medical examinations of knife victims, and a few experiments with police.

The most popular assault technique utilized by the attacker was found to be the hammer strike — either straight down or diagonally

The victim tends to squat in an effort to take a path which offers perceived escape
Many people seldom saw the edged weapon that penetrated their body. They failed to recognize the danger cues due to faulty perception

Knife attacks were found to be exceptionally accurate, to penetrate deeper that some bullets, creating remarkable permanent cavities and rip through numerous organs in one stroke

Typical death of a stab wound in homicide cases is 1 inch to 1.5 inches through the rib cage

In most edged weapon attacks the victim received multiple knife wounds. The usual cause of death are usually the last few wounds of the overall attack

Even short bladed knives can penetrate the abdomen by 8-10cm

3cm allows penetration of the ribs

4cm allows penetration of the heart

because of the small surface area of a knife, the amount of force per unit area is TONS per square inch

In most edged weapon attacks, the defender is already involved in the physical encounter before he or she even has time to realize that a knife is being used

Most defenders see a thrust or slice with a knife as just another punch or kick and not an edged weapon assault

It was difficult if not impossible for the defender to differentiate between an attack with an edged weapon or an attack using hands of feet. This was especially true when the defender was not aware from the start of the assault , that the attacker had a knife

In this article Siddle and Breedlove sated: " research by numerous studies provide two clear messages why people will place themselves in bad tactical situations. The common phenomena of backing away under survival stress results from the visual systems deterioration of the peripheral field to attain more information regarding threat stimulus. Since the brain is demanding more information to deal with the threat, the officer will invariably retreat from the threat to widen the peripheral field. Secondly, the brains normal ability to process (analyze and evaluate) a wide range of information quickly is focused to specific items. Therefore, additional cues, which would normally be processed, are lost. This explains why people can not remember seeing or identifying specific facts which were relatively close to the threat."