I have a character that needs to knock someone out. I have him sneaking up on him outside while no one is around, so it has to be sneaky and not where the victim will see it coming. I also need him to be knocked out for a pretty decent amount of time. Also, the story takes place in modern day America, so it can't be fantasy or futuristic technology. Any advice will be appreciated!
Is there any particular reason why they have to be knocked out specifically? IRL getting knocked out can be pretty dangerous and contrary to popular media, pistol whipping someone into unconsciousness usually doesn't result in that person waking up, rubbing their neck, uttering a pithy one liner to no one in particular, and then go about the rest of the story as if nothing else happened. Going down like that would probably end up giving someone a concussion, which itself has all sorts of nasty side effects, like nausea, vomiting, possible loss of motor skills, varying levels of brain damage, and even death. So for that reason I'd probably just drug them. A big enough shot of Dimethyl Tryptamine would knock them out in under a minute, keep them out for about 20, the liver is already so good at cleaning it out of the body there wouldn't be any evidence of it in a couple of hours (if anyone even thought to test for it) and the unexpected trip they got from it would probably give them an existential crisis that would keep them out of the way for at least a day. Maybe longer.
You might consider a tranquilizer. Run up on your opponent, jab them with a hypodermic full of some kind of sedative (like Haldol), and they'll go nighty-night for a few hours, depending on the dosage. You'll have an uncooperative victim for up to ten seconds or so depending on dosage, but they'll go down and stay down for a relatively predictable amount of time, depending on the dosage. Something like that would work best if you know your victim's medical history, weight, height, and so on. Alternatively, bonk 'em with a cricket bat or similar item and they'll go down, but that could kill them, and even if it doesn't, there's no guarantee about how long they'll stay down. Any sharp blow to the head could cause a person to go unconscious for anywhere from a second to a few hours, and I'm not aware of any real predictable formula that exists to predict X force equals Y sleepy-time.
In jujitsu, you can go up behind somebody and kick their knee out from under neath them making them lose balance, as you go for a rear naked choke whichdoes not need much time to knock someone out and it also cuts their windpipe making hard to make noise.... I really hope this is for your book soley.
Yeah. He needs to kidnap him. I like the idea of drugging him, but I don't know how he would pull that off. He has to sneak up on him at night (having stalked him) and I was going for more of a sneak attack, something he could pull off quickly. Do you know any drugs that could work like chloroform where the victim has to breathe in the substance? (I didn't want to use chloroform because I read the actual effects of it, and it wasn't the kind of thing I'm looking for.) Thanks for the response!
Yeah, I was thinking that, but from what I read about chloroform, it takes it a while to knock the victim unconscious (much longer than the movies portray anyway), and he'd actually have to put up a fight (characters sort of a whimp). I was looking for something quick. Thanks for the response!
Haha, yeah it's solely for my book. I promise Good idea, but this character is not much of a fighter. He wouldn't know jujitsu. Thanks for responding!
You know what's really effective? A good old fashioned movie pistol whip. Knocks 'em out every time, without any real complications. You can minimize the side effects if you drop a lampshade on them by saying, "Oh, wow, being knocked out is super bad for you!" ...Seriously, this is not a big deal. Worst case scenario, it's worth between 0.5 and 1.0 movie sins.
What about heroin? It’s cheap, easy to get, will render someone docile almost instantly and unconscious after a few seconds (With a high enough dose.). Only downside is that it has to be injected and can kill.
I'm also leaning towards a drug of some kind. Choking someone out with a chokehold won't necessarily make them stay out long, and even if that happens... I think that'd be very bad for the brain. The victim could be incapacitated for a moment and tied up, his mouth taped over so he can only make muffled sounds, and thrown in the back of a car -- even if he was conscious most of the time. He might still be disoriented and groggy, making him easier to handle.
They'll wake up as soon as blood flow returns to normal, unless you held it for too long. There's also no real lasting damage unless you hold it for too long. If you do hold it for too long, you're basically causing a stroke and killing bits and pieces of their brain. A choke hold works by cutting off the flow of blood to the brain by compressing the carotid arteries. (I may have the actual name of the arteries wrong. /shrug)
I agree with the kill part and heroin also takes up to a minute to take effect. There's also a good reason why junkies prep their solution just before shooting up. Unless you have a medical grade of heroine, leaving it in solution can result in some of it turning back into morphine, causing different effects, as well as giving the drug an opportunity to precipitate out of solution while in the needle. Attempting to shoot little bits of opiate grit into someones muscle isn't going to be good for anyone. Sodium Thiopental is what hospitals use to quickly knock someone unconscious and even it takes 30seconds to a minute. It also has to be injected into a vein, as opposed to into a muscle, like some other sedatives, and can have some serious ill effects if administered wrong.
Yeah, I remember when I was still taking BJJ, the instructor explained the basics to us. Not that we ever choked anyone out because people had the good sense to tap out.
Two of my buddies (both in the same business as me) are into Brazilian jiujitsu. They absolutely insisted on demonstrating some of this crap at work. I was amazed at how quickly my vision went dark, although I was never quite insensible. Seemed like it didn't even take a second once he had that rear naked choke thing going. Programmers are dumb as shit sometimes.
I believe that. But we just sparred, so I guess there was less pressure to win. I can think of two other occasions when someone actually got knocked out in a training situation, once in muay thai when a knee-kick sent the pad into this girl's face. She came to in seconds, though. Another time in regular boxing when most of us wore the headgear when sparring, there were a couple of guys who didn't, so one of them got punched out. He remained groggy, but didn't stay blacked out for very long. Just a few seconds.
Best way I found to get out of a choke hold is to reach back and shove your thumbs into your attackers eye sockets. Most people slacken off instinctively.
I've posted in here too much already, but the one thing I think everyone should take away from this thread is this: You don't need to actually do this to someone. You don't need any assurance that it would actually work. In real life, it probably wouldn't. Humans are incredibly, stupidly, galaxy-conqueringly tough animals. Our cardiovascular system is designed to absorb catastrophic damage--up to and including the loss of limbs!--and yet continue functioning for at least a short time; our vital organs are protected by layers of soft padding and hard armor; our vision is more specialized for the hunter/killer role than that of every other extant land predator; and we have hunted other apex predators to extinction for the fuck of it. ...You just need to avoid having your audience members roll their eyes. This is a very low bar in terms of realism. We've been shrugging and reading on after pistol whips and Vulcan neck pinches for hundreds of years now, so don't worry too much about physiological accuracy. It really doesn't make any difference as long as you don't do anything egregious. I will bet you five dollars that pretty much any suggestion put forth in this thread will work fine. For future reference, and I don't mean this for just the OP, the fact is that you can get away with murder in a book as long as you dress it up in a nice suit.
That's the one. Unconsciousness can also be produced by striking the carotid artery, which is quicker than choking and doesn't require any special strength or finesse. Following a strike or choke the victim needs to be placed in a recovery position to ensure that blood reaches the head quickly, else it'll go very wrong. Probably looking at 15-20 seconds' incapacitation, which sounds like it might be too short for @Odile_Blud's needs. I'd go with a chemical. Maybe ketamine, which takes a couple mins intramuscularly and would cause useful confusion/amnesia in the victim.
God help any poor sod we all decide to collectively hate. They're going to get clubbed, choked, kicked, drugged, thrown in a car, and Lord knows what else.
I could not agree more strongly with archer88i. Thank you for the reminder that taking poetic license and writing well enough to allow the reader's suspension of disbelief are part of the craft of writing. Literary un-truths that are both professionally acceptable and morally defensible take nothing away from the story. Rendering a person unconscious by any means whatsoever carries inherent risks. These risks may range from leaving the person with seemingly mild after effects to causing actual physical death. There is no 100% safe method for an anaesthesiologist to deliver a general anaesthetic in a hospital operating theatre, even when using level one anaesthesia which is the lowest possible level and used for minor and more superficial surgical procedures. Levels two, three and four carry increasing risk to the patient and these are clinically defined levels that are chosen and used according to the depth on anaesthesia required for a given patient in a given surgical procedure. The minimum level possible is always used. No anaesthesiologist likes to go to deeper level three or 'play' with level four no matter how well experienced he/she might be. I really don't want to scare any reader here, but you would be surprised to learn just how many patients do not make it through even a level one GA procedure. GA agents have come a long way even since the sixties and seventies, but they still require great skill in their administration. Risk versus benefit is always an issue in pre-op considerations. Onward to other considerations of rendering a person unconscious. ANY blow to the skull may have serious consequences. No injectable general anaesthetic is considered 100% safe even when an injectable reversal agent is to hand, and they are always to hand in surgery. No gaseous inhalation general anaesthetic agent is 100% safe, again, even when forced oxygen and a variety of other recovery agents are available. No interruption to the blood supply to the brain, however temporary and short-lived it may be is safe. In this last case, without going into unnecessary detail, there are always possible sequelae that are either unknown or little understood by the layperson. Depending upon the age and state of health of a person an endothelial detachment may occur which can completely occlude arterial blood flow to the brain and cause immediate and unexpected death. Even the most physically fit people have died in this manner. Cats always land on their feet - everyone knows this and will accept it without knowing why. You could tell the reader that it is because a cat has a self-righting reflex, a longer than human vertebral column and no clavicles but IMHO they really wouldn't be too interested in hearing all that in a story of fiction unless it served some specific purpose.
This is the most important thing to remember. Being knocked unconscious is super bad for you. There's ways that are less traumatic (like that literally involve less brain trauma) but really it's not a good thing. The only reason we do surgery under anaethesia is because we kinda don't have a choice. Any procedure they can do without general anesthetic they do without it. So it is worth mentioning. Since we're talking about fiction though I guess it doesn't matter too much how realistic this stuff is; it's a fictive trope that you can just knock someone out and they'll be fine. And really your character's choice of approach will tell us a lot about him. If he's very physically capable then he probably would feel comfortable just overcoming someone with his bare hands; either punching them or choking them. If he's a normal guy then he'd probably use an implement of some sort and give the guy a good wack. If they are less capable than the average person then that's when they'd use a tranquilizer or chemical or something so that they won't have to fight. Look through the characters eyes; how would they approach it? And remember they don't have to do this at all; they can trick or persuade someone or lie or really anything else. You can kidnap/disable someone without needing to hit them. That said, I second choke hold as probably the best way to knock someone out; there the risk is mostly from you choking them too long which is on you, rather than that you fracture their skull or poison them or something. You need to IV heroin to have it hit quickly; into a vein not into any other part of the body. It's hard enough to hit a vein when you are just doing it on yourself when you want to do it and even then even the most experienced junkies pull back on the plunger before they shoot up and wait to see the blood come back up the barrel to be certain they have the needle in the right place. Plus typically people shoot up with the finest syringes they can find, 29 or 30 gauge; half inch long and hair fine, so fine that people break them in their own arms. You could use something more rugged then remember you're jabbing it into someone's blood carrying parts and it quickly becomes 'stabbing someone' rather than 'injecting someone'.
