Knives are easy for us to underestimate. They don’t have the range or thunder of a gun; they don’t have the reputation of a sword. When you’re writing, the knife can easily become a tool instead of a weapon for your characters, if not just an accessory. After all, most of us aren’t going around knifing people. The knife, however, is a weapon. Knives are dangerous, and in order to write about their use in combat, we need to understand roughly how they are used and how they stack up against other weapons.

I am not an expert on knife combat. What I’m giving here is a general guide to ‘how most people use knives’, gleaned from experience learning unarmed defenses against knives (don’t worry, we’ll discuss this), historical knowledge, and anatomy. If you want to write a character using a knife as an expert, go look up how an expert knife-fighter fights. If you’re looking to write somebody using a knife without being a specialist in it, though, this article series will provide a basis. We’re going to go over the basic idea and psychology of knives, the prime and secondary targets for a knife wielder, unarmed knife defenses (what they’re good for), and how knives line up versus various weapons.

Knives Are Dangerous

They are ubiquitous, nearly always accessible. If you don’t have a knife within a few steps of you, you’ve probably got a knife-like object or something that can be turned into a knife. Some of these substitutes are extremely non-ideal- a pencil, a toothbrush you can grind to a shiv, paper-¹ and some are quite effective- a hand screwdriver for instance. Most often they are stabbing implements, lacking the edge of a proper knife to allow cuts, but that makes them less dangerous, not unusable. A screwdriver to the throat and a knife to the throat are both death.² Anything with a point, some durability, and a place to grab is a potential stabbing implement. Do remember, though, that in any weapon the wielder’s ability to hold on to it will affect their ability to exert force through it, which is why purpose-built combat knives are going to have different handles from kitchen knives, handles designed to allow more force transfer through the grip without damaging the hand.

Knives are also concealable. As we’ll show in a moment, you don’t need more than a few inches of blade, and especially in a society without metal detectors (though ceramic knives are a thing) or an expectation of disarmament, you can’t really know whether a person has a knife or not, if they’re trying to conceal it. In a low-light situation or an ongoing brawl, too, even an already drawn knife can be missed, with potentially fatal consequences.

What makes the knife a real terror, though, is how fast it can kill you (we’re assuming no more armor than standard civilian clothing for the era). Knives are light, and a determined, aggressive attacker can cut and stab really, really fast. Try it out; grab a butter knife and see how fast you can slash with it, remembering that you only need small motions to kill. Stabs too: think like you are a sewing machine, putting the needle (the knife) through the cloth (the imaginary enemy’s gut). In-out, in-out, in-out. Remember too that somebody with experience will be even faster and that it may come out of nowhere.

Nor can the victim rely on the sudden wounds being manageable. A cut throat, a split artery, a perforated organ, a lost eye, any of these can be a matter of a single swing or stab, and with every extra attack the knife-wielder gets in the chances of one of these goes up. Of the four listed, two are immediate fight enders, given that they kill really, really quick, one (partial blindness) removes significant amounts of your combat ability, guaranteeing more wounds, and one (holey organs) is survivable in the short term, depending on the organ, but still quite probably lethal without immediate medical care. If you’re in a setting with less than modern healthcare, the gut wound is even more of a death sentence.

Don’t be fooled by how short a knife blade may seem. A few inches is enough to slash a throat wide open, after all. More, a short blade can actually inflict a disproportionately deep stab wound. When a knife goes in, the hand and hilt of the knife won’t just stop when they touch the skin. No, the blow will continue, if the attacker is sensible, pressing the flesh back. To understand why this allows for a deeper stab wound, try pressing your hand into your stomach without tensing the stomach muscles. You can easily get a few extra inches just from that pressure, allowing a short blade to get much deeper in than it seemingly should.

Knife Psychology

Knives are personal weapons. Now, take this with a grain of salt; this section is all about generalizations. They have value, however, in writing, whether you follow the trend or write an exception.

When you hurt somebody with a knife, it’s visceral. You get the feedback. The blood is right there, probably on you if you hit something gushy. The effort of putting the knife in and getting it out, the sounds, the closeness. You’re close enough to hug the guy you just hurt, close enough to see him in detail. This is not to say knives can’t be used impersonally, but the general implication is there. Killing with a knife is an act of passion, of hate, of emotion, particularly in non-military situations. Even in military combat, though, killing with a knife is close in, dirty business that should probably have effects on any uninured combatant.

Knives are also weapons mean to kill. They can inflict three types of damage: not worth mentioning in a fight (scratches, missed blows, stuff that might need a band-aid at most), dangerous (muscle damage, blood loss, survivable stab wounds, almost mortal), and deadly, possibly immediately deadly (throat, head, gut). In a fight, the first is an accident, the second and third all that can really be aimed for. A knife fight means that one person is trying to hurt the other really, really badly; it means that death is a hair’s breadth away at any given moment.

Knives can be used as deterrents, yes, but not in the same way a fist or a stick can be. Sticks, fists, and other blunt impact weapons can stop at bruises, broken bones, and pain. This type of damage hurts, but in most people it doesn’t risk death, apart from unforeseen complications. This type of damage warns people off, discouraged them, while keeping some distance from murder. Knives cut; knives stab; knives make you bleed. Knives are always on the edge of murder. So if a knife is a deterrent, it’s out of fear of murder before the fight. You can hit somebody in the gut and tell them to back off; stab them with the knife, and you just made it a fight to the death.³

The only circumstance where a knife can be relied on to cause pain but not death (or lethal damage), leaving aside controlled, non-combat situations like having steak for dinner or testing the edge, is torture. In a fight, only an expert with a knife can afford to hold back enough to not risk killing their opponent while also inflicting actual damage. The difference between ‘bad,’ ‘really bad,’ and ‘lethal’ is slim, the frenzy of combat entirely contrary to the care necessary to tread that line. If somebody is in a knife fight without accepting that life is on the line (particularly for the person without a knife), they’re superhuman, suicidally ignorant, or delusional.

Conclusion

We’ve hit two of the five points of this series today. Knives, authors must remember, are everywhere, especially if we count knife-like stabbing implements. Knives can cause catastrophic damage in moments, can be hidden much easier than an axe or sword. They have connotations of being personal weapons because they are close-in, because when you cut somebody with a knife, you can feel the flesh part. Further, because of how fast they can inflict damage as well as the small distance between complete failure and murder, knives are killers, not dissuaders, capable of threat only before they are used on the one threatened. If you’re interested in the matter, you probably noticed that there are exceptions to each of these- armor, impersonal killing, etc. That’s good; learn the general, learn the specific, and use both in your writing.

Next week we’ll run down priority and non-priority targets.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Here’s proof.

2 – Admittedly, the knife will probably leave a larger wound and damage more stuff, but a busted artery is death either way.

3 – Yes, you could use the butt of the knife. There are always gray areas; the point persists.