Nut Crushers

[Hobbes' Choice]

Morning star and mace. Nasty on the head. But I'll warrant that the bayonet was a worse way to go.

No way.
A nice clean cut and bleed out. A mace would cause contusions multiple internal bleeding and far more pain.

Bayonets were not "a clean cut." Not at all. They were used "stab-twist-pull." And that groove along the blade created suction with the intestines. Used to full effect and directed at the torso, everything inside came outside. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Soldiers in WW1 were in abject terror of the bayonet because of this.

Have you ever hit your finger with a club hammer? Or had some blunt force trauma?
Levels of pain
1 Burn
2 Crushing
3 Cuts

[Immanuel Can]

Have you ever hit your finger with a club hammer? Or had some blunt force trauma?
Levels of pain
1 Burn
2 Crushing
3 Cuts

You forgot one: "being disemboweled." Now, how would you rank that?

[thedoc]

Have you ever hit your finger with a club hammer? Or had some blunt force trauma?
Levels of pain
1 Burn
2 Crushing
3 Cuts

I've done all 3 at one time or another.

1. I used to work in a machine shop on a drill press, holding the work with one hand, and working the drill with the other. When a hot chip flies out and burns your hand, you don't stop, you just finish the drilling and brush it off when you are done.

2. I've hit my hand with a hammer several times, usually on the top knuckle while holding something that I am driving with the hammer. After a few times it really doesn't hurt much. It hurt more when my finger was caught between two large pieces of log that I was loading on my truck.

3. Cut myself several times, once with a knife I cut the end of my left thumb off, including part of the nail, I found it the next day on the floor, and a small sliver of bone was included. I also caught my thumb on the blade of a table saw, while it was running, bled a lot but really didn't hurt much.

Apparently I have a relatively high tolerance to pain, and I passed it on to my daughter. She developed appendicitis, and after the operation the doctor said it was a lot farther along than they thought, based on what she was saying about how much it hurt.

[thedoc]

Have you ever hit your finger with a club hammer? Or had some blunt force trauma?
Levels of pain
1 Burn
2 Crushing
3 Cuts

You forgot one: "being disemboweled." Now, how would you rank that?

Wouldn't that be part of being cut? I haven't experienced that yet, so I really can't answer.

I watched a series on the American Civil war and the comment was made that a casualty would often rip open their clothing to determine where they were shot. A gunshot to the upper chest could be survived, but a gunshot to the abdomen was usually fatal.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Have you ever hit your finger with a club hammer? Or had some blunt force trauma?
Levels of pain
1 Burn
2 Crushing
3 Cuts

You forgot one: "being disemboweled." Now, how would you rank that?

Wouldn't that be part of being cut? I haven't experienced that yet, so I really can't answer.

I watched a series on the American Civil war and the comment was made that a casualty would often rip open their clothing to determine where they were shot. A gunshot to the upper chest could be survived, but a gunshot to the abdomen was usually fatal.

Generally wounds to the intestines would be the worst way to go, if the wound missed a major blood vessel. When the contents of the GI tract empty in into the body cavity, the resulting blood poisoning and infection would last for agonising weeks before death.
There was little they could do for mashed up guts.
As for a punctured chest, as long as you found a medic that knew about the need for a vacuum between the rib cage and the lungs you might stand a chance.

[Immanuel Can]

Wouldn't that be part of being cut?

No, a cut would be only the start. The stab would put the metal in you; the twist would wrap your intestines around the blade, where the suction would hold them; then the pull...

As I say, everything inside comes out.

But you don't die right away, of course, unless you were hit dead in the heart. You grovel in the mud with your guts in your hands...

I'm thinking that's pretty bad.

[thedoc]

Wouldn't that be part of being cut?

No, a cut would be only the start. The stab would put the metal in you; the twist would wrap your intestines around the blade, where the suction would hold them; then the pull...

As I say, everything inside comes out.

But you don't die right away, of course, unless you were hit dead in the heart. You grovel in the mud with your guts in your hands...

I'm thinking that's pretty bad.

I think I'll pass on that one, it doesn't sound like something I need to experience.

[TSBU]

Let's see... they had guns, if they didn't have guns, they could use those things, ok, but having a gun (and ammo), you use a gun unless you have lost your mind, that's reality, it doesn't matter if the other one has the best close combat weapon in the world, bang bang and bye bye. Maybe in a small place a bayonette is not a goog idea, specially if it has no ammo, I can accept that... but you use a nut crusher? that needs even more space.
Guns have been improved, but the mechanism of a revolver etc and how deadly it is at close combat is almost the same in the last 50 years, soldiers are sent to fight with a gun and a knife, they don't carry a lot of weight in an old weapon because they need it for food, ammo, water, etc.
Even if they couldn't have guns, they could have built crossbows or things like that (with enough time). Or, if it is for close combat, a fucking sword, that needs less space and kills no matter where it hits. If they didn't do that, that's probably because they didn't have time, and that's probably the reason for the poor design of that weapons (I have axes (I use them as tools) better made than those weapons). But I really doubt it has been used.

I'll ask my weapon freaks though, but freaks tend to exagerate curiositys.

About wounds... if you are fighting, you can't choose between a bullet and get burnt or whatever, or what to inflict to your enemey, you do what you can to avoid everything and cause anything, if you get hitten your chances are not very good.

[Walker]

"Let me say no danger and no hardship ever makes me wish to get back to that college life again." - Joshua Chamberlain

Seven score and fourteen years ago, at the southern tip of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, Colonel Chamberlain’s Maine boys ran out of ammo, and here come the Alabama boys moving up Little Roundtop, after hiking for 24 hours in the summer heat to get there. By now they are hallucinating. If they get behind the Union line, all kinds of trouble.

Back home Chamberlain ran a university and could teach every subject except one, he was that kind of guy. So with the Alabama boys charging up the wooded hill with their rifles, and with no ammo, Chamberlain and his men did what any group of maniacs with a mission would do. They fixed bayonets and charged, screaming down the hillside. This freaked out the Alabama boys so much that they forgot how to reload, and they surrendered. When it comes down to clubs, the end of man is like the beginning.

The Kentuckian (when you don't want to be late)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItmoXncdURQ

[Immanuel Can]

Seven score and fourteen years ago, at the southern tip of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, Colonel Chamberlain’s Maine boys ran out of ammo, and here come the Alabama boys moving up Little Roundtop...

There's an awesomely good portrayal of this battle in the movie, "Gettysburg." It's not to be missed.

[Walker]

Seven score and fourteen years ago, at the southern tip of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, Colonel Chamberlain’s Maine boys ran out of ammo, and here come the Alabama boys moving up Little Roundtop...

There's an awesomely good portrayal of this battle in the movie, "Gettysburg." It's not to be missed.

I saw it. Then I went to Gettysburg and relived it.