A writer recently called me asking for help with a fight scene. The genre is science-fiction with a military setting. The fight scene involves a knife. One fighter wishes to kill, the other to cripple [for capture I suppose]. That is all I know. Below are my tips.
1. Knife fights that are not duels [which is to say 99.5% of knife fights], are typically done in seconds—single digit seconds. 15 seconds is forever in any spontaneous hand-to-hand combat in close quarters, and the knife is the quintessential close quarter weapon.
2. Most knife encounters are in the 5 second range.
3. People who know how to use a knife rarely let the enemy/victim see it, and never make it a visual center point in the combat. Indeed real ruthless combatants are ‘visual averse’ seeking always to minimize their visual profile. The knife tends to amplify this trend. No non-ruthless fighter has a chance in a knife to knife encounter. They were dead before they picked the knife up.
4. A knife can be used to defend against the stroke of another knife in less then1% of encounters. Small blades have no defensive properties: zero! Any blocking or parrying of one knife with another is pure fantasy.
5. The knife is not a good incapacitation weapon as it delivers little or no shock and causes a lot of ongoing damage via bleeding. The only bones even a combat knife can break are the extremities, and broken, even severed fingers, to a ruthless combatant are not disabling unless he loses so many fingers he cannot hold onto the knife.
6. All of the ruthless vectors above will be amplified when military knife users are involved. Keep in mind that only special ops personnel can be expected to have knife skills, and that this skill set is focused on ‘sentry removal’ that is quick stealthy killing from behind. For my money, two military guys going at it with knives is likely to produce one dead and one dying. The fact is, if you have a knife, and he has a knife, and you both know how to use a knife, and he says ‘Oh hell, I just want to get at him’ than he is going to get at you.
7. The most realistic approach to crippling another skilled knifer with your knife, is to chop his hand or fingers off and then slash his Achilles tendons. The bleeding from one gushing hand can be managed more than from a half dozen slashes. The Achilles has notoriously poor blood supply and the severing of even one is crippling.
8. One final note. In no way should the victor—if there is one—walk away with all 8 pints of blood he started with.
If you are structuring a combat scene feel free to address me through the site.
