So i was wondering . . . How does one describe stealth kills? With any weapon for example with a dagger. How do you describe someone jamming their knife into someones throat unnoticed? Or with a sword? How can i write someone stabbing their sword right in the other persons liver? Thanks in advance!
first up it's a Hollywood fallacy that people fall silently from a knife in the throat - if you open the wind pipe they make a loud gurgling noise while if you don't they are going to scream their heads off.... plus you are unlikely to get close enough without them hearing you. Assuming you do get close enough you have to slap your hand over their mouth, knife them and wrestle them to the ground and hold them quiet until they die... not for most people, not to mention that you are going to get covered in their blood The best way to drop someone quietly with medieval weapons is an arrow or crossbow bolt in the head. Failing that blunt trauma like whacking them in the temple with a mace. As to how you write it, it depends on style - you could just write "bob whacked the sentry with his mace" or you could go into detail about the crunch of steel on bone, the spray of blood and brain matter from the side of the head, and bob's mixed feelings of revulsion at what he'd done and elation at having survived.
There must be some other ways to kill someone quietly. If you greatly over-match them in strength and can shoot a rear naked choke fast and hard enough, you might be able to stop them from screaming. You just have to make sure they can't knife you while you're choking them. The arrow thing is a good idea. If you could puncture both of their lungs with one arrow, would they get anything out? That's partly researchable - see if you can find videos of hunters taking down dear that way, see if they make any noise. Even if they're quiet, you still have to worry about them ripping down the china cabinet before they die. The mace to the skull is a good idea, provided no one hears the clink of the weapon hitting their head. Would a wooden club be quieter? idk
I suspect they'd scream like a stuck pig ... head shots are pretty much the only way to drop someone silently at a distance .... of course it depends on how much background noise there is.
A director once told Christopher Lee to act out being stabbed in the back by screaming out in pain. Christopher Lee, a British spy who had killed people in WWII by stabbing them in the back, informed the director that when you're stabbed in the back, all you're able to do is gasp because your body loses air too quickly for you to do anything else. The director then allowed Lee to act out the death scene more quietly
Gross comment, trigger warning: Spoiler I don't know if that would do it either. I saw a fairly disturbing video of some people laughing over a dear they shot. They had buried an arrow in this dear's skull. It trashed around on the ground screaming for minutes while they laughed and filmed it, very proud of their hit. It did drop right away, but it was in no way ready to stop fighting. There are lots of stories of people getting spikes through their dome and walking away. I feel like to drop someone with a shot to the head, it would have to be with something that carries enough kinetic energy to actually knock them out.
Deer have hard heads - an arrow from a war bow or a quarrel from a cross bow would smash through a human skull from kinetic energy transfer alone
Actually, if you shoot a dear somewhere around the hips ( if i remember correctly ) they ( probably ) won't feel nor notice anything. And die silently, an archery instructor told me that once. And staying on the topic of archery. You can silence a traditional ( and a recurve bow if i remember ) with beaver puffs or with pieces of cotton
you don't really need to silence a bow if you are shooting from several hundred metres away from the target - also there's no way to silence the impact of the arrow In regard of snapping necks it can be done but its not as easy as Hollywood would like you to believe, particularly if the victim has decent neck muscles - and you've got to get close to do it, and if you can get that close belting them round the head with an axe handle or whatever is easier and more efficient
Weaponized flatulence: Silent but Deadly Don't forget to tip your servers, and I'll be here all week.
you know the bow makes sound when it shoots an arrow right? You could hear it from about ( i think ) 5 to 10 meters away . And if you are in a complex of some sorts, and you need to kill some enemies unnoticed those bow "silencers" would come in handy. And how would it go if you choke someone with a chain or some thick rope or something?
Choking's noisy - in regard of bow silencers point is that the arrow smashing in to the target makes a much louder noise and you can't silence that - bow is a range weapon, not one for 15m away - blowpipe and poison darts might be an option, or tranq gun depending on the level of available tech
Hey, I just noticed you're new here Welcome to the site! My understanding is that that's possible, but a lot harder than TV/movies make it look. Probably not if they've trained by people who know about the same idea and who trained them not to fall for it.
If you're stagging on (ie, standing guard) and hear a noise in the bushes you don't go to investigate; you perk up, get to cover if you aren't already in it and wait to put a few new orifices in anyone that shows up. If you seriously suspect you've got enemy out there rather than an abnormally clumsy hedgehog or something you call stand-to and get everyone else on alert. Sentries in films are usually the kind of unobservant, easily distracted dimwit that you would never, ever entrust with the safety of your unit or installation.
