5 Hacks To Survive A Knife Attack
You’re walking home on an otherwise nice brisk evening with your family
or loved one when, out of nowhere, you are surrounded by aggressive and
intimidating people that want to harm you. They may just yell and/or push at
first. They may grab you, or swing or threaten you with a gun or a knife. What
would you do? Would you know what to do to protect yourself and your family?
How would you feel? How would you react?
Any of these scenarios are scary at best and deadly at worst. Over 1500
people die from injuries involving knife attacks each year; 5 times as many as
those killed by rifles. Statistics aside, the brutal reality is that knives are
prevalent and dangerous, knife wounds are nasty and becoming a victim is
totally preventable. It is wise to train to defend against threats and attacks
with knives, and the best time to think about this is not when the attack is
imminent and real. I highly recommend that every reader get some training. For
the purposes of this article, I will address 5 hacks that could save your life
in a knife attack scenario.
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1. Understand the
Threat
Knives are a real threat! They are common, easy to carry and conceal, and
can inflict severe wounds and damage, up to and including death. I really don’t
think that most people understand how nasty slashes and stabs of the knife upon
human flesh can be. This is a mistake. Awareness of the seriousness of the
threat is an important step in preparing to deal with it. Awareness can also
help you to pay attention, noticing who around is carrying a knife well before
any threat exists.
On the other hand, it’s very important to know that it’s very possible to
survive an attack if you know how to. In the best case, of course, you have trained
in advance. The time to condition to react correctly is when the threat isn’t
real; I often remind my students that, “it’s a good thing to get stabbed with a
rubber knife all day long”. What can be a painful or deadly mistake in real
life is, in training, only feedback.
With or without training, it is important to understand that fighting
back aggressively will more likely improve your situation. We know from the
defensive wounds of attack crime reports that the victim will not often be
killed by the first, second or even first several attacks. Most attackers are
not trained knife fighters, but rather an angry person attacking viciously with
an overhand (ice-pick) stab, underhand upward vertical strike, stabbing or
slashing, and probably repeatedly, but probably with more aggressiveness than
accuracy. It is for this reason that actively defending is so important, and
this leads us to knife hack number two.
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2. Aggressive
Counterattack
As I alluded to in number one, the victim that tries to defend without
fighting back is the most likely to be killed by a knife attack. Of course, if
the scum bag threatening you with a knife just wants your money, you should
give him your money because, as I have also already suggested, a knife fight
situation is not something that you really want to get into. The variables are
many and the stakes are high; so, if he wants something that you can easily
replace, the right play is to give it.
My teacher once told me, though, that when you are dealing with a terrorist,
you should consider yourself already dead, and that any move that you make to
improve your situation improves your situation. While I am certainly not saying
that every knife attacker is a terrorist, I am saying that not everyone with a
knife will leave you alone just because you give them what they want. You will
have to make the call of which one you are dealing with and act accordingly.
This decision only applies to a knife threat, of course. Once the knife
is in motion towards you, your decision time has been ended. This is the time
when, as I say, you must deal aggressively with the problem. In my system, Hap
Ki Do, we will use a block and a simultaneous counterattack. While the block
will hopefully stop the first attack and, if not the first then the second; the
aggressive counterattacks address the problem. The problem isn't the knife but
rather is the attacker wielding the knife, and that problem must be dealt with
aggressively.
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3. Control The Weapon
As soon as we block and counterattack, we should also attempt to control
the weapon. The exception to this rule would be wherein we counterattack
strongly enough that we make enough distance to completely disengage and get
away so quickly that we don't have to, which is even better. In close proximity
to the attacker, however, by necessity or because we can’t move quickly enough,
we must control the weapon hand as soon as possible, stopping its ability to
continue cycling the attack. We need to control long enough and well enough to
affect knife hack number four.
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4. Disengage or
Neutralize
As stated in number 3, making distance and getting away from the attacker
and attack is the best case of all. The disengagement can happen directly after
the initial defense and counterattack, if you made sufficient distance to
escape and are fast enough to do so; or it could be after you entered and
controlled the weapon, have already struck multiple times in the correct areas
to slow down the attacker and then you disengage and exit the area while
scanning for more attackers. Still other times, the situation may dictate that
you can’t leave the scene; perhaps a small child or elderly parent keeps you
from the ability to flee quickly. In this case, one must be able to neutralize
the threat to ensure that he’ll be able to get his family home safely.
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5. Prepare Today
At the risk of being redundant, the very best thing that you can do to
survive a violent knife attack is to start preparing for that scenario today.
Be aware, of your own abilities and limitations, and also of your surroundings,
including where you are, with whom and who else is in the area. Practice doing
this always. At first it will feel funny, or even awkward; but like all new
skills, awareness will become natural when practiced over time. If you can, get
some training from an experienced instructor trained in a reality based martial
art including knife defense. If you already train, practice seriously. I
believe every Hap Ki Do student should have their own training knife and training
gun. The combination of proper instruction on how to best defend yourself, with
significant repetition and practice under stress, is the very best way to
prepare today to defend tomorrow.
I hope that nobody
reading this ever has to defend themselves against a knife attack. In the best
case, should you decide to take my advice and get some training, all the
preparation will be only insurance. In a great school, the training will come
with some bonuses including fun, fitness, friends and family, as well as the
confidence to walk in peace. I pray every day that none of my students ever has
to use the self-defense that I teach them because, by definition, somethings
gone really bad and someone’s going to get really hurt. The only thing worse
than having to defend, though, would be to have to and not be prepared for it.
This is why we pray for the best, but train for the worst today.
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