h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When nothing else is handy, one can improvise a bludgeoning (sp?) weapon by putting a few dollars (pounds) worth of coins into a sock, and using the concentrated weight to swing around and impact onto one's opponent.

This is most usefully used in attempting to knock someone out.

In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks, this weapon is also known as a "sap." "Foot covering filled with copper pieces" probably didn't have a good a ring to it as that name.

I imagine that this article is meant to be about specifically designed, traditional and historic weapons, as opposed to anything which comes to hand which will hurt someone if you wack them with it (e.g. the wooden chair of the slapstick genre).

But, as with the sockful of quarters, there are quite a few items which have become traditional in more recent times. The sharpened entrenching tool/spade was apparently just about the most efficient weapon in first and second world war close combat, presumably as it would not snap on first contact as a bayonnet might.

The steel sling, or garrot (sp?), should surely also count as a hand weapon and there's certain Highland Regiments who have been known to fix razor blades into the brims of their hats (though this sounds like a brawling device rather than anything which might appear in the front line).

Sure, the list will continue to expand...

-Dan-

Well, quarterstaffs have traditionally been made of broom handles, fallen branches, or just about any other long piece of wood that's available. Similarly pitchforks have been used as three-headed spears, and those nunchucka things were apparently improvised from rice fields.

I think it missed the simplest weapon, though - the clenched fist.

Actually, from what I hear, the spade was also preferred to teh bayonet because (hold on to your lunch) whiel a fixed bayonet gave you range, it tended to trap in the ribs of teh bayonetee leaving you stuck trying to remobe the thing before anotehr enemy bayoneted or (mor likely) attacked you with a spade. A spadel also did more damage and made a cleaner kill.

I made the list knowing full well that I couldn't cover all the weapons ever fashioned... so I certainly hope that the list will expand in the future. It's already been pointed out that I had forgotten to mention the mace.

As for the clenched fist, I'm sure there's an article somewhere on Martial Arts that covers that already.

I woudl actually not classify teh clenched fist as a hand weapon, I'd claa it, a hand used as a weapon. An knuckleduster however is a different story.

Take an aluminium bat cut a diagonal line across it so that one side has a point and sharpen it

is that the right spelling? A fork with elastic tied to the ends of the top of the y some wrongly call it a sling shot. I have one that is bulls-eye acurate at 200 feet.

Another weapon not mentioned was the caestus (cestus), which is a Roman equivalent of the Japanese nekote.

There are other variants on the bo, such as the jo (goes only to your chin rather than ten centimeters above your head) or the skrima stick (a Filipino weapon, wider than the average bo and just under a meter long). The yawara (named after the predecessor to karate) is a little stick that fits into the palm of your hand and gives lots of pain to your victim without doing a lot of damage (unless you want to).

~Gareis

A knuckleduster is indeed a different story. Widely considered the first step in fighting dirty, it is a name applied to basically anything readily available that you can quickly grab that will put the hurt on the other guy by adding that special something to a punch. (Saltshakers and rolls of quarters are generally always present in places where dirty fighting is ...not looked down on.) Eventually they began to come ready-made in many shapes and sizes, from a simple 4-connected-rings idea to more complex versions containing spikes, knives, even guns that fire when punched against someone.

In the hellish halls of highschool, a tried and true technique (3 times anyway) to fending off a sudden attack is to take the lock from your locker, place it in the palm of your strong hand with the arched bar thingy (think it's called a hasp...)around your middle finger. Then when all attempts at talking your way out of a confrontation fail, you drop the first punk with one punch and the rest of the hostiles just stare at you, allowing you to walk unscathed into legend. Or more often to chessclub. ...you ARE getting picked on for a REASON, you know that, right? Doofus.

NC*

"Darling! Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the f*** in! Ha, ha! "
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