a knife thrust into the lungs...
 

I've been told that a knife thrust that punctures a lung will leave the recepient unable to scream...

anyone know if this is true? I can see how you would think that, but I am just not sure if a knife would make a hole big enough to prevent the lungs from pushing air out the windpipe past the vocal cords...


I hope I am not scaring anyone, I'm not planning to kill anyone, honest, I'm just curious :lol:

i don't usually post here...

but people have two lungs. to make it physically impossible to scream, you would have to do one or more of the following:

1. have to puncture both lungs to the point where they could produce no sufficient air pressure.

2. block or cut the airway.

3. put them in to sufficient shock that they don't breathe.

4. have them lose consciousness immediately.

my grandfather was in the OSS in WWII, and they taught them to cut the neck, which accomplishes #2.

OSS?

It was mentioned in a Tom clancy novel (which I don't know if this is true or not), but cutting some one's throat isn't a particularly quiet way to die as they keep making the noise of air going in and hour, but it's mixed in with possible sound if their voice box isn't cut off from it and with blood that's spurting out.

OSS was a U.S. special forces/intelligence agency during World War II. Agreed on neck-cutting is unsilent though. Plus the body still flails around while they're dying.

As to the inability to scream with lung puncturing, they could still scream, but it might hurt too much to do it, but endorphins might allow them to anyway. In any case, ick.

suave gets it...it was one of the side effects of being a Yalie..."Wild" Bill Donovan was tasked with setting up a special ops/intell force, and recruited from Yale b/c he went there.

Anyhow, that's how a US citizen ends up with a commission to Her Majesty's Royal Navy. He was on the intell side, so i suspect the training he got wasn't super advanced. Nor did they say that any of this was silent...just less than than the noise that it might otherwise be.

If the wound is big enough, you get a sucking wound. A sucking wound is when the diaphragm contracts and expands, it sucks air into the chest cavity through the wound instead of sucking it down the throat into the lungs. The lungs collapse and you die from suffocation. A gunshot wound is big enough, but I don't think a knife wound from a stab would do it. Being long and skinny, the flesh would swell and close the wound.

Now if you think about it, something like a knife entering the chest cavity should put someone into shock pretty quick. Once that happens, the chances of a scream are remote.

From all that I have read, and my talks with military personel that have had to kill with a knife, it is damn hard to get a silent kill, most of them are just noise reduction, kind of like a silencer is not really silent- but it is a hell of a lot better than the full noise of a gunshot- from my anatomy and physiology class, it might be possible to silence someone by cutting the diaphram, thus preventing the lungs from drawing air at all, likewise the way the oss did the throat cut it was supposedly more of a stab and tear (can anyone confirm that) the idea being to destroy the air pipe and the vocal cords, so all you got was the gurgling sound at most......

hmm, so what is it, will puncturing the lung stop all noise?

i was under the impression that since one lung draws air and the other releases it, if u puncture the one tha releases air they wont be able to force air through their voice box, hence not being able to speak?

WTF? The lungs don't work like a heart's chambers. The lungs are essentially two independent bags in a cavity. They are both connected to the same whole (the throat) and when the diaphragm expands (i.e., the bottom of the cavity) the expanded cavity size causes a drop in pressure, thus sucking air into the lungs. To exhale, the diaphragm contracts, causes the cavity's size to shrink, increasing pressure, and forcing the air out of the lungs.

See here for details.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lung1.htm

The only why to stop the lungs from sucking in air or expelling it, is to close off the wind pipe, or destroy the chest cavity. As I stated above, unless it is a really big wound, it is doubtful that a stab to the chest will stop one from making noise.

hmm... interesting topic.

having taken care of people both shot and stabbed in the chest in the e.r., i guess i'll add my 2 cents...

1st, i've never seen someone immediately after being shot or being stabbed in the chest, so i really can't answer what happens immediately.

as far as what happens shortly after the wound is created... everyone so far has neglected the role of emotion, more specifically anxiety... the wounded person's heart rate and breathing rate would go up... and thus it would be hard to scream very long with that going on...

mrtuffpaws has said:

adding to that, it already becomes difficult enough with a sucking chest wound to talk, let alone scream. you have a punctured lung, filling with blood (as its viscera has been compromised), being pushed over to the side from the air filling the cavity (the chest cavity is "sucking" in air), and the other lung is being compressed by the air filling the cavity as well.
in short, you have a hemo-pnuemo-thorax, as the thorax has blood where it shouldn't (outside the lung, and inside the lung but outside of the blood vessels that run in the lung) air where it shouldn't be (outside the lung).

while the person may scream when initially stabbed (i imagine it would hurt like hell)... i'd find it hard to believe that one would be able to scream a few minutes later. i'd imagine the person would be concentrating on trying to breathe, which would be hard enough given the physiologic processes going on in the chest cavity.

Categorically untrue. I've been stabbed in the chest back in the 1980's, leading to a collapsed left lung. I managed to walk to the emergency room, which was around half-mile away. And before I walked to the ER, I put the bastard that stabbed me down. True, I wasn't enjoying myself, but I made it, and I still have the knife in question.

Don't take a knife to a gunfight. You'll lose.

If it weren't on such a serious and real subject, I'd say that story deserves an "owned" pic. Glad you're still around to talk guns with us though. :D

I'll bet the most silent way to kill someone is to break their neck. Aside from the snap, they'll die almost instantly I believe (assuming you get the right vertibrae).

I have among my friensd a lot of ER people, cops, ex and current military, and martial artists, and over the years have come to the simple conclusion that we human beings are at times both remarkably tough and fragile- one guy dies of shock from a wound that was only potentialy fatal (but not a sure thing), and another survives stuff that should certainly have killed them- thus you get a lot of conflicting stories and I witness reports on what will and wont do what to who- all it seems to come back to is "in general" and "should" - this should teach us that overkill is not only justified, but a great idea- so cut the throat and then quickly stab both lungs through the back.....

Nah, the fastest way to kill someone is to run them over with a nitro'ed steamroller.

Hate to go off-topic here, but wouldn't you get a great "pop" - like when you'r running over a large frog?

My guess would be to decapitate - hard for the brain to react when "offline"

This is gross. Carry on.

some say it would make a difference if you saw the knife coming or not... your perception of inury, and the level of anxiety that occurs, or not, with the perception of that injury... that's not to say that i disregard your story, not in the least bit, but as fire has pointed out, some people sustain massive injuries and make it through relatively smoothly, and others have smaller injuires and die... :shrug:

not true...

Yeah. The brain doesn't "die" until a few seconds after it is separated from the body. However, it would still separate it from the lungs and likely the larynx, removing (no pun intended) any possibility of a scream.

Stab in near the back of the neck. Tear the blade foreward through the arteries and out through the windpipe. It's not silent, but generally not too noisy either.

If you stab to the lungs, make sure you twist the knife while it is still inserted. this will seperate the ribs allowing both an air space to break the vacuum in the chest cavity and to help prevent the suction that sometimes traps the knife in the person. Then, while the person is dying on the ground, stand over them, sniff the knife, and state "Smells like... Victory!"

It also depends on how you are attacking them. If you approach someone and try to stab them and they see you, they will probably scream. If you sneak up behind them, then you have a better shot. Either cut the throat, or place you hand over their mouth, and jab into the kidneys and small of the lower back. This should incapacitate them for the thirty seconds or so it will take them to die. Jus keep wiggling the knife back and forth in the small of the back.

Jab upward through the small of the back near the spine with the blade flat, to fit between the ribs. This is to puncture the diaphram. After penetration, slice outward toward the side. This will slit the diaphram and render them breathless and unable to scream.

This thread is getting horribly tangental...

pfft, I love it...


more finer points on technique for me plz :D

Okay, you can also come up behind them, stab your knife into their side, just below the ribs, then pull it horizontally across their body to spill out their entrails. As you are doing this, take your other hand and gouge two of your fingers into one of their eyeballs.

That goes without saying.

On a less serious note, if the cut was deep enough, i.e.- all the way through, I don't think this would be an issue. Therefore, it's really just a matter of "how much effort are you willing to put into it?"

If you can attack from behind, I would suggest a direct stab to the back of the neck (at the base of the skull) while pressing the head forward with your free hand to restrict air coming out of the lungs.

Then go back to watching the movie, free of interruptions until the body is discovered.

Stab the side of the neck with the blade vertically, twist 90 degrees and "punch" through to the other side cutting both arteries and cutting through the throat.

Now this will make a gurgling sound (spec ops friend taught me this), so to keep it "silent" you immediately press his head down so that the top of the throat covers the opening of the thorax and muffles it.

Even muffled, you'd be dealing with a very unhappy person thrashing about noisily. I suppose if the person was restrained to the point that they were completely immobilized, (IE duct-taped to a wall like this except moreso: http://www.collegehumor.com/news/duct_tape_ch3.jpg ) it might work.

clavus, you're brilliant. That being said, you sound like you've practiced this move more than a few times... I'm keeping a lookout over my shoulder from now on to see if you're coming up behind.

that reminds me... what about that scene at the end of 'saving private ryan' where the german slowly shoves the knife into the US soldier's throat... that makes me cringe more than any other death scene that i can think of right now.

anyway, on topic... if i remember correctly, he's screaming for help before the knife goes in, but after it does... it's simply a gurgling sound.

An employee of my fathers', who had once been a SEAL during their early years in Vietnam, only made one combat-related comment in the four years that I knew him, and it was on this subject. I quote:

"Cutting throats sucks. The neck's tougher than hell, you've gotta hold the guy down so his thrashing doesn't give your position away, blood gets everywhere, and his guts cut loose, so it stinks like shit."

Jack then turned around and walked away. This single statement was precipitated by a group of RAMFs who had served in Vietnam ( as truck-drivers and quartermasters, most likely ) discussing sentry-removal, a topic with which they were toally unfamilliar. After Jack said that, they not only cut him a wiiiiiide berth, they never discussed killing again.