Improvised Weapons

There are plenty of martial art and self-defence instructors teaching the use of  improvised weapons but most of them don’t have a clue how to use weapons in real combat, which is why they are so many idiots teaching people to use chairs to fend off a knife attacks. A chair is awkward, cumbersome, and has four legs protruding from it, which make it easy to grab and pull away. Phillip II weren’t wrong when he sent the Macedon phalanx into battle armed with aspides and not chairs.

Another martial art favourite is the chain, which can be a deadly weapon, but it’s also very difficult to control and use in a combat situation. Whereas a metal tray, which might not seem much, is light, maneuverable and hard, which means it’s easy to use as a shield or offensive weapon.

ice axe

Nearly anything can be used as an improvised weapon but if you’re going to carry one about for self-defence, it has got to be something that you could realistically carry and use effectively. You can’t carry an ice axe around a shopping mall on the off-chance that you’ll get jumped by a couple of stray polar bears on the prowl.

grappling hook

When I was in the Folgore,  I learned how to use a grappling hook as an improvised weapon because it was something I carried. But to be fair it’s not really something that the average geezer takes out on a Saturday night, unless he’s the sort of chancer, who takes a grappling hook out to help him sneak into a club without paying.

stainless steel spade

We’ve all got things that could be used as improvised weapons. Just take a look at what you got in your garden shed. If it’s anything like mine, it’s an armoury. I’ve got a chain saw, hedge cutter, axe, several sledge hammers, garden fork, couple of pick axes, a spade and a couple of shovels.

round point shovel

I also learned how to use a round point shovel as a weapon in the Folgore but if I was going to use anything as a weapon, it would be my stainless steel spade. Any of the three edges of the spade head could easily kill. But the point of an improvised weapon is that it’s something you can carry around with you and conceal. Now if you work on a building site, you might get away with that, but what are the chance that you’re going to get mugged on a building site?

brick layers hammer

Something that you might get away with carrying on the street is a hammer — and lets face it, cracking open someones nut with a hammer ain’t exactly brain surgery — although, having said that, it might well be on the NHS – a Polish builder with a hammer and chisel!

Unless you’re some sort of deranged, hammer wielding nonce, who attacks poor defenceless girls to get his jollies, I’m going to assume if you clump someone over the canister with a hammer, they’ve probably done a little bit more to deserve it than scratch your motor. In a situation where you’re fighting for your life, burying a brick layer’s hammer into an attacker skull is a reasonable response.

ice pick

But when it comes to using easily concealable improvised weapons, the ice pick, scratch awl or nine inch nail are probably amongst the best options because it doesn’t take a PHD in violence and mayhem to work out how to stab someone. Although, any weapon is only as good as the person using it. Would the average, untrained, Muppet, armed with an ice pick be able to defend themselves against a machete wielding mugger?

scratch awl

It all depends on whether they back off or go forward.

If they was trained in Sicilian stiletto fighting they would know that a machete is only dangerous when swung with force, and that if they step in and bury their ice pick into the machete wielding mugger, they can end the fight before he can attack. Although knowing and doing are two different things.

But what I don’t get is why anyone would want to carry an ice pick, scratch awl, or nine inch nail for self-defence when they could just as easily carry a stiletto or handgun.

There are very few improvised weapons that I think are worth carrying but one that I do is the garrote. My Grandad taught me how to use one when I was a boy (he was a partisan fighting the fascists).

garrote

Forget what you’ve seen in the movies, you don’t need to sneak up behind someone to garrote them, you can do it just as effectively front on. And if you garrote someone with piano wire or parachute cord, they’ll be out cold within five seconds. It’s a great equaliser because a 50kg girl can easily garrote a 100kg man, and it is only lethal if you want it to be.