Knowing where to stab and slash is important. Today we’ll go over the various targets a knife wielder will go for, giving an overview of the attacks that target those areas and the expected effects of the wounds over the long and short term. Note that I’m assuming a knife, not a sword, and that venom/ poison is not involved in the equation. The combatants are presumed to be relatively healthy adult males; damage will be worse the smaller or less healthy the person receiving it is, and more muscle (or a LOT of fat) can also reduce damage by making it harder to reach the fight-ending targets.

Stabs

Stabbing comes first. The easiest target of a stab is the gut. There are lots of organs here, not many bones if you come from the front, and a lot of room for repetition. Moreover, angles of attack include a swing upwards, a straight in-and-out sewing machine stab, or swinging in from the sides. The fact that these attacks are generally done repeatedly just makes it worse (in other words, if they stab you once, they usually pull the knife back out and stab you again). People can absolutely survive gut wounds, even multiple wounds, but recovery isn’t going to be particularly easy, and the outlook depends on precisely where the knife went, which organs got damaged and how. As a non-doctor, I’m not going to offer specifics here, because I don’t know them. Also remember that a rising stab can get up under the ribcage, especially with a longer knife.

Despite what you may think, gut wounds are not fight enders in the short term. People have taken multiple stab wounds to the stomach, finished the fight, and only then sought medical treatment. With some pain tolerance and  a lot of adrenaline, actually, it’s entirely possible that the wounds won’t register as anything more than gut punches until after the fight is over.¹ Some people will be stopped in their tracks by a gut wound; some people won’t. Take this into account in fight scenes.

The next target is a little less obvious: the neck and collar bone area. This is a smaller target but still very viable. For the neck, the stab will probably be from the side, swinging in, though a straight stab is also viable. As for the collar bone area, a stab down into this area will probably involve an icepick grip or odd orientation of the two combatants, such as on the ground. Needless to say, a stab into this area is really, really bad. Major blood vessels run through it, your windpipe is involved, and the damage of the stab itself is easily compounded by the exit process, as the attacker can yank the knife out at a different angle or through other parts of the neck and shoulders. Getting stabbed here is either a very close call with death or ‘you have time for one punch before you go unconscious permanently’. A character stabbed here needs luck, superpowers, or extremely quick medical care (and luck on top of that).

Of course, we also have the classic ‘stab them in the back’ (or chest). The target environment here is similar to the gut or chest, except that the rib cage and spine are even more in the way. Unless extraordinary force is applied, the ribs themselves won’t just let the knife through (though the effort of stopping it may bruise or break them); what’s likely, however, is that the knife deflects off of them. This may mean the stab scrapes down the side, outside the ribcage, better than a punctured organ if far from comfortable, or it may mean the knife sticks between two ribs, too broad to pass between, or the blade may be oriented so that it can slip between the ribs. It might just slip between them in the first place, without deflection. Thankfully the ribcage will still help limit penetration by stopping the attacker’s hand from pressing the knife deeper. The damage from this can be the ‘survivable but terrible’ of a successful gut stab, a manageable flesh wound (when the knife cuts open muscle outside the rib cage rather than organs within), or fatal in the short term (if the knife gets at your heart or lungs).

Stab wounds to the face are a tricky matter. The attractive target for a quick elimination is the eyes in hopes of getting to the brain, as well as blinding them victim. The eyes, however, are a small target and awkwardly placed for stabbing, assuming similar heights.² That doesn’t mean people won’t stab each other in the head, just that the neck is right there and so much more attractive. Unlike the neck, the head has a skull protecting much of its important stuff, and most people aren’t getting a stab through the skull. Note, however, that deflecting a knife with your skull is going to hurt, leave a nasty flesh wound, and possibly include a concussion or disorientation. Head wounds bleed, too, and can easily impare vision if the blood trickles in the wrong direction.

The cheek and jaw are a target of opportunity here. Neither one is likely to end the fight immediately, and both have a decent chance of healing, barring the lost teeth. Two factors should be of concern, though. One, both cheek and jaw are right next to the neck and the jugular, meaning a knife through the cheek is two or three inches from death.³ Two, the wounds will hurt. A knife (or screwdriver, in one movie scene) through your cheek is really, really distracting, especially as it’s going to be partly in your field of vision. There’s also the question of how it’s coming back out; especially with the knife there’s a possibility it comes out in a different direction than it went in, tearing or cutting your mouth a few inches wider. Needless to say, we have an instinctive desire to prevent that eventuality. Such wounds are effective control points the attacker can use to control his victim’s motion, though sometimes, depending on location, the victim will have the experience or adrenaline to power through the control.

Limbs are targets of opportunity, not choice; stabbing a muscle will cause a lot of problems, but for most major muscles it will inhibit, not stop, the function. Bleeding out is always a problem.

Slashes

Knives aren’t really ideal for cutting, as a rule. Machetes are good at it, but machetes are the tool version of swords. The problem with knives is that they are light, and therefore they lack the mass and leverage which makes the sword decent at cutting, the axe incredible. Still, knives can cut open human flesh pretty well. We are, unfortunately, not actually that durable beneath sufficiently sharp, sufficiently speedy steel. Again, remember to presume a lack of armor.

Everything with a gut slash depends on how deep it is. Did it split the skin, hurt a few muscles? That’s bad, but doable. Are your guts falling out? Hope you don’t need to move, much, because you really need those inside. It’s not impossible to survive that, with help, but your odds in a fight are bad, bad, bad.

The real natural choice for a slash is, you guessed it, the throat. A knife doesn’t need much force to get through the throat, and once the jugular is opened it’s all over but the funeral. The slash can be from the right or left (one of them is backhanded); it can be from arm’s reach or very close in, with barely enough space between attacker and victim for the attacker’s arm to swipe the knife across his victim’s throat. This last kind of attack in particular is incredibly hard to see coming and consequently very hard to defend against. Even if you do catch it, things are real squirrelly. Similar warnings go for any slash to the neck, including the back of the neck, where paralysis becomes a possibility (though the spine provides some protection, depending on angle).

Slashes can also target the face. A cut to the face is unlikely to be immediately lethal; knives generally lack the force to get through the skull (stabs may be able to get through, though only with difficulty). This doesn’t make them harmless by any means. The knife could take out an eye (or both). It could remove bits of flesh- an ear, a nose, sections of facial skin and muscles, etc. The blood loss and the effects of the blood on vision are not to be underestimated either. The force of the blow could also snap a more fragile section of bone, the jaw perhaps, or simply dislocate it, similar to a punch, with a similar if lesser potential for a straight-up knock out (a very bad thing in a knife fight, as I’m sure you see). The pain and distraction value too must be remembered. Especially for the unprepared, a searing pain where they lost a chunk of flesh on their head is a real distraction and deterrent. Finally, attacks to the face with a knife, particularly outside of combat, have a connotation (and intent) of mutilation; such attacks often correspond either to intense personal hate or to calculated desire to terrify.

Cuts to the limbs and torso are quite possible, if less favored. Depending on angle, force, timing, and skill, the cut may or may not be able to inflict disabling damage. In many cases, however, the wound will be shallow enough to keep going despite it, particularly on adrenaline, though the individual muscle may be disabled if the cut is deep enough, and tendon damage can be permanently crippling (again, depending on medical tech and how long after the wound the character survives. Here the rib cage really helps, as unless the attacker is lucky and skilled enough to get just the right angle on the attack (and slip between ribs), the knife isn’t getting through the ribcage. After the fight, though, these wounds are still dangerous, still bleeding. Just because they can have to be ignored for a minute or two to keep worse from happening does not mean the character can just walk them off (unless they are literally scratches). Thick clothing can also retard the knife’s progress.

These Didn’t Quite Fit Elsewhere

There are two targets I didn’t go into detail about above because, while legitimate, they’re less commonly considered. First, we have the inner thigh, the near-groin area. There is an important artery here, similar to the jugular; opening it up is within-a-few-seconds unconsciousness, shortly followed by death. Groin damage, even apart from this artery, is somewhere between very demoralizing and very infuriating, depending on circumstances and individual. It also hurts a lot. Unless it hits that artery, however, a stab or slash to the groin, while painful and possibly very dangerous in the long terms, even apart from castration, is by no means immediately fatal. Once again, this may result in scaring him or infuriating him or both, so he may run, be distracted, or even more focused than before.

Further, we should note that there are different types of slashes and stabs. A slash can be shallow, dragging the blade across and relying on the edge to deepen the cut, a draw cut, or it can be a chop, forcing the knife through. A stab can be quick in-out or it can involve some wiggling and prodding while it’s in, exacerbating the internal injury. The pull-back can also increase the size of the wound channel by taking a different angle, perhaps coming in from below and pulling back towards above. With a double-edged knife in particular this can be effective. An even more brutal variant of this is simply pulling the blade out at a right angle to its entrance, tearing or ripping open the flesh that’s in the way. This is not easy, and it won’t go through much flesh, never through bone. Where it does work is if a character stabs an opponent in the side of the neck, then tears the blade back out through the windpipe. Stabs can also involve hammering or forcing the blade in slowly, using body weight or the impact of another object, though this usually requires the victim to be somehow immobilized, whether by weight, positioning, injury, or unconsciousness.

Conclusion

I’ve gone into a lot of (sometimes disturbing) ways of injuring people today. These are all real-world possibilities, and that’s how I learned about them (which is why I’ve spoken of them as real world possibilities in this article), but because they’re real world possibilities, they are also possibilities for your characters. When you write a knife fight or a knife fighter, knowing what targets are open and what targets people prefer is absolutely necessary. People go for the throat and the gut first for a reason. In light of today’s article, the emphasis I placed on the lethality of knives in last week’s article here should be more understandable; next week, when I start going over counters to knives, beginning with unarmed, you’ll see again why knives are not to be trifled with.

God bless.

Footnotes:

1 – I say this in part because a teacher of mine told a story of precisely this happening to an acquaintance of his as part of explaining why you should expect to be stabbed in a knife fight.

2 – My guess is that stabbing people in the head or face is unlikely to be an opening move (though possible); it’ll happen in the midst of the fight, possibly once the fight hits the ground.

3 – I don’t know whether a knife could penetrate through the roof of the mouth under normal circumstances, in a fight, but it’s likely not impossible. It’s not by any means an easy thing, though, and the knife would need some length due to the jaw being in the way.