HOW TO SURVIVE A KNIFE ATTACK

A thread, by The War Father

Having spent weeks now in the warm bath water that is manliness/self-improvement/finance Twitter—

I have come to realize that most of your feeds are spilling over with vague, promotional self affirmations, but missing one crucial element:

Nobody is talking about knife attacks.

Therefore, being The War Father, it appears incumbent on me to fill this desperate gap.

After all, what could be more practical than learning about knife attacks? I’m here for you.

Well, then. Let’s begin.

Let me start by running a few scenarios by you.

Scenario 1:

You’re at a gas station, filling up your car, when a bum walks up to you, asking for change.

You try to wave him off, but he’s not in a right state of mind; he makes you nervous.

Suddenly, he pulls out a knife.

The pump hose is behind you, impeding your flight.

Scenario 2:

You’re traveling abroad and are at a market. It’s later in the day; most people have left.

A guy comes up to you and grabs your arm. “Mr, want to buy? Come, good prices for you!” He pulls you.

You sense a figure on your other side, with something in their hand.

Scenario 3:

You’re at a club. The music is loud. You weave through the tight crowd.

You become aware of shouting and crane your neck to see.

You suddenly feel soft punches on your side. There’s people all around; it’s hard to turn. You reach down and feel wetness. It’s blood.

What do all of these scenarios have in common?

More on that at the end, but first, the obvious: you are about to be, or already are, the victim of a knife assault.

There’s not time to think; you need to act.

Pictured: someone who didn’t act quickly enough.

Let me preface this by saying,

1, You should never rely on Twitter threads for self defense.

2, Most pictures in this thread come from an Army field manual that I find wholly unrealistic, and so cherry picked the images I thought were useful.

Let’s continue.

Knife attacks don’t happen overhand, like in Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

1. It’s awkward.

2. It draws unwanted attention.

A knife attacker will be quick. He doesn’t want you to grab his arm. He is going to come at you underhanded.

If he can, he will attack you from behind.

You should keep in mind that he may use his other hand to try to grab you.

If you’ve seen a prison stabbing, you know that they’ll almost always grab at the shirt or around the neck to prevent you from escaping.

Getting into ways to break the secondary grip is beyond the scope of this thread.

Suffice to say, don’t be a standstill target and watch his hands.

Now, you’ve probably seen a film or two where the good guy snaps the attacker’s wrist and stabs him with his own weapon.

I’m telling you right now, that’s not going to happen. You will get stabbed.

Fights are messy and you’re probably not good at them.

The key to surviving a knife attack is to put distance between yourself and your attacker.

But how, when someone is charging you?

You need to use your arms as a frame.

If something will get stabbed, better your arms than your torso.

All of your best stuff is in your torso.

Here’s what I mean by using your arms as a frame.

Do a wall push-up.

When you lock out your arms, you create a frame that makes it relatively easy to hold a person at arm’s length.

If you keep your arms bent, it’s harder to hold your weight and maintain the distance.

So, you want to use your arms like a NFL blocker, and keep the bad guy away. But where should your hands go?

You don’t want to get stabbed, after all.

First, let’s talk about hand orientation.

Your fingers are weak, and your hands are full of joints that will easily get injured.

If you make a fist, that removes your ability to grip, which will allow your attacker to slip past your hands.

Lay one hand over the other and overlay your thumbs to create a strong L shape.

This L is going to be the end of your frame. Now, where should it go?

You might imagine, grabbing an attacker’s hand is not so easy. The hand is a small target, and if you’re being stabbed, his hand is moving back and forth rapidly.

The elbow, however, moves much less.

Take those hands and aim them for the elbow pit where the arm and forearm join.

The elbow pit is a feasible target, and as an added bonus, you gain control of a major joint in his arm.

It’s surprisingly easy to jab your hands into the elbow pit as he attempts to attack.

The initial goal here isn’t necessarily to grab his arm, but to literally strike him in the arm.

Imagine your arms are poles and you’re jabbing his arm to keep the knife away.

Use your arms as a frame and keep your torso away. Unless he has a sword, his blade won’t reach you.

Here’s an image I found that shows some weird arm crossing maneuver which is WRONG—

But demonstrates using your arms as a frame to create distance, which is CORRECT.

As previously stated, your fingers are weak. Keep them closed and out of the way. Keep your thumbs overlapped so that he doesn’t bust through your grip.

You’re using the “blade” of the hands, not the palms, to strike, and you’re hitting his arm as hard as you can.

Eventually, you need to grab that elbow.

Fortunately, since you’ve been jabbing, your hands are naturally there to wrap around his arm.

There’s not a “right way” to do this. Just make sure to slide your hand down to the wrist and wrap up his arm.

Now, you can gain control of his arm and try to push him out of the way, side step, trip him, or flow into another movement.

I’m not promising you it will be easy. This is a fight for your life. But you’ve already accomplished the most important part: making it hard for him.

Once you have the arm, it is not extremely challenging to throw him around.

What’s important is that you wrap up the arm tightly, control the wrist, and put as much of your weight on his arm as you can without compromising your ability to stand.

What if he grabs you with his other hand?

Creating a frame is still your best option. Your pushing muscles are much stronger than his pulling muscles.

Jab the elbow while creating a frame to push him away from you.

What if he comes at you from behind?

The bad news is, you’re probably going to get stabbed. The good news is, you don’t have to be stabbed more than a few times.

Even if he grabs you, your torso is a strong muscle and he won’t be able to stop you from twisting to face him.

Another point of note, about these pictures.

I’m not a fan of them because of how lazy they make it seem.

Look at the weak grip in this picture. Do you think you can just grab a wrist like that?

This is a fight for your life. He isn’t going to make it easy.