Pics of real sword death wounds

[Jay Vail]

For those of you who wondered what effect sword cuts have on the human body, check this out:

http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20604

The wounds were caused by katana, but could just as well have been made by a one-handed or tw-handed Euro sword. Nasty.

[Randall Pleasant]

Jay

Nasty! The left-to-right cuts on Richardson's left shoulder fit with the account that he was on a horse. I would think that those cuts were made as he rode by swordsmen on foot.

Thanks for posting this.

[John_Clements]

Interesting. He was struck mortally several times by katanas yet survived long enough to flee from that many attackers and later ask for water?

Actually, I found the photos hardly gruesome, take a look at the machete deaths in Rawanda (personally witnessed by ARMA member Andy Mair), much more horrid.

JC

[Randall Pleasant]

John

I think you have lead us to the old firearms issue of <u>stopping power</u>. One can certainly make a "killing" blow on a horseman. However, these picture suggest that it is much much harder to make a one-cut-stopping blow on a horseman due to the height and movement of the target. We can only wonder about the fate of some of the swordsmen if Richardson had been a hard core military man with a lance and had chosen to fight rather than flee.

I both agree and disagree with you about the pictures. I take that the pictures were taken after some clean up and they are from very bad angles. The French officer seems to have taken a cut right on the nose that cut deeply into the head and his chest was opened to the heart, that is enough for me to call it gruesome. If the picture had been in color before any clean up and from good angles I think they would have indeed been very gruesome pictures.

By the way, are any of the Rawanda the machete deaths pictures online?

[JeanryChandler]

As far as lethality and "stopping power", you read about a lot of incidents like this in military anecdotes (the military site on medal of honor winners, of which at least half were awarded posthumously is full of this kind of thing), where people with 'mortal' wounds continue to function for some time. I believe this has a lot to do with the individual. People can be both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult to kill. I've read studies which showed that long time prison inmates at Angola Prison and experienced combat veterans in World War II were statistically far less likely to die from wounds than 'ordinary' civilians. The human factor is always unpredictable and freaky things can happen. A .45 pistol is supposed to have terrific lethality and stopping power but I read an anecdote where a kid who was shot 7 times during a mass-murder at a McDonalds in the 80's with a .45 caliber Mac-10, and survived and even managed to stagger away like half a block before collapsing.

Also, attacking one guy on horseback from another, it may have been difficult to aim the cuts well enough to say, sever the spine ...

My basic point though is no matter how precise your cuts and how good your weapon, there is always the intangible 'spirit' of the other guy to contend with.

JR

[Casper Bradak]

Well, that's why it's martial arts and not martial sciences in my opinion. You can use the same attack, whatever it may be, and rarely get the same results. The human mind and body are unpredictable things to a degree.
I've personally seen some machete wounds myself. They didn't look as devastating as those sword wounds, but they were lethal none the less.
Heh, as for stopping power, I'd wager Mr. Richardson (respectfully) wasn't using his seft arm after that cut to his shoulder <img src="http://www.thearma.org/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[JeanryChandler]

Yeah, I know what you mean about the shoudler injury, literally. I think breaking bones (and cutting tendons ala Jarnac) is the one sure way to defeat that "adrenaline freak out" factor. I myself have been in a lot of bar -fights, you might say I considered it a kind of recreational sport in my day..

I'm a big fat guy with a high pain threshold and I seem to get very strong adrenaline surge. My main strategy in a fight is to close to short range where I can either grapple or power punch my way to victory. People over the years have made many attempts to stem my rush. I have been hit in the head with bats, pepper gassed, maced, zapped with stun guns, cut with knives, struck and beaten with nearly every method you can imagine by boxers, martial artists and cops, with bats, pipes bottles, police batons and flashlights, and none of that was sufficient so stop me.

The one thing I distinctly remember stopping me other than being grappled by large numbers of people, was once in afight at the Abbey Bar in Decatur Street around 1989, when a really big skinhead hit me on my neck with brass knuckles and broke my collar bone.

That made me instantly helpless and at his mercy. If my friends hadn't had been there in fact I would probably not be writing this, as my big mouth had already ensured that boot party eagerly awaited by his friends would not have been characterised by tenderness or any likeleyhood of mercy...

JR

[JeanryChandler]

in case that sounds too much like bragging I also one time got beat up by a 15 year old goth!

[Jay Vail]

On the question of stopping power, I have been reading the London coroner's rolls for 1300-1374 (on which I am planning a paper for the forum). In one incident, a man was attacked by another with a staff. Man 1 pulls his knife and fights back, stabbing Man with Staff. Man with Staff does not drop dead immediately but pursues Man 1 down the street where he finally collapses and dies. There are also accounts of men who suffered sword wounds to the head but lived on for a day or two.

[Jay Vail]

Also note that the left arms of both men were severed.

[Guest]

ooh, those are some nasty blows,
and like he said, it really gives some respect to the sword, and what it can do.