Stun gun, like a tazer or similar - you need to hit bare skin for them to be really effective though. Once you've got them down with a stun jolt then you can either drug them or tap[e them up
That'd work if it doesn't matter that they make noise. But if you need to be stealthy then it's not a great idea, even if you could actually knock someone out with a stun gun, the sound they'll make crashing to the ground isn't especially sneaky.
Hi BSM. I'm really not looking to nit-pick here but all conducted energy devices will be effective even through very thick clothing. The only barriers to a stun gun when compared to a taser is that it is less effective when used against leather and virtually non-effective when used through a rubberized and hence non-electrically conductive coat. Taser barbs however will normally penetrate those insulating materials to deliver their (usually) debilitating effects. I say usually because they are not always effective. Neither are 100% safe with tasers being understandably less safe than a non-penetrating two pronged stun gun. The use of a taser has been cited many times as being causal in the deaths of normal, healthy people and not just those fitted with pacemakers or in a state of health which predisposes them to suffer an idiosyncratic physical response to the stimulus.
no they really won't - most clothing is an insulator to some extent or another, fleeces are essentially made of plastic - when I was working door security someone hit me in the chest (fleece over a tee shirt) with a two prong pulsar, and I got a bit of a shock but nowhere near enough to knock me out. The type that shoot barbs (as used by the police) will penetrate some clothing to a greater or lesser extent, but the contact sort are a dead loss unless they are pressed against bare skin
Stun guns do vary greatly in quality of build, cost and effectiveness and many (if not all) earlier and less expensive versions offer very poor performance through clothes or even when placed on bare skin, but later model high quality high frequency stun guns will work through even thick clothing whilst the earlier cheap versions will do little more than tickle. You said that you were hit by a two pronged pulsar - I am assuming you mean a basic stun gun. I don't for one picosecond doubt your statements and for what it's worth I really do enjoy reading your posts. Hollywood has a lot to answer for in their depiction of the immediate and total efficacy of the stun gun to immobilize a person just as they depict that chloroform will render a person unconscious in mere seconds. Poetic license at its finest Many people are not aware of the working differences between a stun gun per se and a taser and believe the terms are interchangeable and synonymous which they are not. I'd expect you to know the differences, but many don't. A taser can be and usually is much more efficient in delivering a fully immobilizing current through clothing. Umpteen thousand police men and women swear by them as being effective non-lethal weapons. Would I rely solely upon one for SD or whatever - hell no. But I have the luxury of not having to. I am reminded here of the 'one shot stop' arguments that crop up very often on firearm forums. Remembering that an argument is a discussion between two people who are both right I favour the the conclusion that the empirical evidence presented by individuals to support their POV/belief varies greatly according to their personal experience together with a good helping of anecdotal 'evidence'. Even experts in any given field often disagree. Again, I believe this to be due to the (necessarily so) limitations in their personal experience and knowledge. No one knows or is right about everything - it's all shades of grey in the end. But isn't it that very fact, when all is said and done, that makes life and writing so interesting To intellectual freedom ... and peace.
Knocking someone out by hitting them in the head works pretty well. Teenagers routinely knock out grown men on the street with single blows. A moderately fit person who can throw a baseball, is capable of winging a punch that will knock out almost anyone caught unaware by it. A grown man sneaking up on someone and superman punching them in the back of the neck will put them out quickly. If you watch the UFC, people get knocked out cold all the time, but they are still up in time to hear the results of the fight. To stay out from a head injury usually requires severe injury, the worst kind of concussion. If you're out for a while, you might not be back to 100% for a really long time. There are all kinds of terrible ailments that come from a bad concussion. Same goes for choking someone out. If you choke someone until they pass out, they'll be up in a matter of seconds or minutes. Once they are out, you really don't have to hold the choke much longer to kill them. Cutting off blood flow to the brain is considerably more damaging than holding your breath.
Actually no, it's the other way around. Cutting off blood to the brain will almost immediately make someone black out, which in turn means you don't need to choke then hard or long to disable them. If you choke someone by restricting their airflow then it takes much longer and requires cutting off air for a much more extended period. This is why almost no martial arts teach air-chokes; because they are damn useless compared to blood chokes. You have to really choke someone hard to cut off their air supply. Your throat is really hard to restrict enough to stop someone breathing. But your neck veins are not really protected by anything but skin and are conveniently placed so your thumb and fingers will wrap around both sides at once when you grab someone's neck. Just as a matter of reality; way more things can go wrong doing things really hard than doing things reasonably soft. If you try to choke someone's airway then there's a pretty good chance you'll crush their trachea and that'll kill the shit out of you unless you get an emergency tracheotomy. On the other side; you probably could physically tear out someone's jugular vein (definitely with your teeth and probably with your hands if you really tried) and yet this is not common because when you choke someone's veins you aren't squeezing hard enough to seriously injure them even if you do it wrong. Your brain is fine with momentary interruptions in blood flow. This is why you can have really traumatic injuries that incapacitate you via some massive drop in blood pressure, say your legs were fed into a threshing machine and you've lost half your blood volume, without also getting brain damage, assuming that the flow is returned. This is also why if your heart stops during a surgery you may well be totally ok, there's a couple of minutes there where they can get it started and you'll just be fine. This is also why it's possible to have heart and heart/lung transplants. Because your brain will be fine for a little while. Not forever. But long enough that they can put you on total bypass. Your body can handle getting it's limbs removed via explosives as long as it lands close to a medic; it can deal with momentary interruptions in blood flow. People are squishy meat bags, we are fragile compared to machines but we are really quite robust considering what we're actually made out of (FYI - mostly water; if blended people turn into a slurry not a paste). As a matter of practicality; if blood-chokes were bad to do to people why would martial arts let you do them in training? And (while not strictly part of this discussion but while we're on the subject) if you've ever seen anyone get choked during an intimate, naked, sweaty moment, or perhaps even done it to someone or had it done to you because you're a pervert and you like that sort of thing, then you saw them do a blood choke and you can literally just do it with a finger and thumb on their neck squeezing as hard as you would hold a child's hand crossing the road. You never stop them breathing when you choke someone like this so they don't panic, you just restrict the blood flow to their head which makes the ultimate moment very special for them. They get to feel choked and helpless without doing anything actual dangerous or giving them brain damage. You don't want to be doing this to yourself, especially not with a ligature because seriously autoeroticasphyxian is a really undignified way to die but done to another person? No big deal. Your body can handle it. Seriously; restricting someone's breathing is way more dangerous then restricting their blood flow.
@LostThePlot: Small point. A neck pinch is done on arteries, not veins. Arteries carry oxygenated blood to organs etcetera whilst veins carry it back to the lungs where it is re-oxygenated and waste CO2 dispelled - both functions occurring due to the differing partial pressures of O2 and CO2 between the air in the lungs and that in the atmosphere. Another small point. You said : if blood-chokes were bad to do to people why would martial arts let you do them in training? By the same token, football players, boxers and those who take part in all contact sports do training sessions, usually under well-trained supervision, and yet some deaths do occur both during training and whilst performing in public as a direct or sometimes indirect result of their activities. The human body is, as you say, a very resilient entity but the unexpected can, and probably more often than is realized, does happen and not always at the time of an incident but frequently during some time period following it. Contact sports, by their very nature, carry inherent risks and the effects of trauma, cumulative or otherwise, will more likely than not become symptomatic eventually. A few days working on-call in ER would provide more than a few nasty surprises and be a wake up call for most people not employed in the medical profession. Source: Not being snotty or holier than thou (or anyone else for that matter), but I do hold a medical degree and speak from fifteen years of practical medical experience. Just passing some of it on.
True - martial arts training provides (or should provide) a controlled environment in which to learn techniques of combat, but this doesn't mean that those techniques are not bad to do to people. Quite the contrary: it is because they are 'bad' that they have value in combat.
I agree with you. Sorry I wasn't clear. Normally when people say choke, they mean a blood choke. Read the last quoted line in what you said as if I were talking about blood chokes the whole time. Holding an RNC for another thirty seconds after someone is out is really bad for their health.
Chloroform One-handed chokehold Applying pressure to the carotid arteries Japanese Stranglehold But why does your character need to know someone out? Surely it would be really awkward to manoeuvre with an unconscious body? You could just as easily threaten someone with a pistol or would that be OOC for your character?
MC wouldn't posses a pistol. He's just a 17 year old nerdy kid trying to get revenge on his bully, and I don't think he'd have the guts to do that either. I had him knock his victim out with a bat (at least that's what I have now, anyway). While he's emotionally a wimp, he's pretty hefty, plus his victim is pretty skinny, so he doesn't have too much trouble moving him. Thanks for the advice!
A decent hook to the jaw will do it. Tap him on the shoulder so he turns around and wallop him right in the jaw so that the head whips sideways , stops suddenly and the brain bounces around the skull. That'll put him down for a few minutes and even when he wakes up he'll be incapacitated with a concussion so he won't be fit to come after your protagonist. It's the same mechanism as using the bat but without the fractured skull.
If the mc is that much of a wimp he would hire (work out a deal) someone else to do it. Having someone else do it opens up a world of subplots to play with.
