#I've even learned how to make both abuttted and riveted mail

[jeanjauthor]

nice fake knife story, but EMTs will never pull out an object that's impaled in somebody on the scene. Stab Wound 101 is literally "do not pull the object out".

As I said in the original post, it literally was NOT impaled in his body. It was stuck in the chainlinks, and it was OBVIOUSLY not embeded in the man, because I'm quite sure the EMT could see the curve coming to the point. Chainmail links are usually a circumference that fits around a pencil, which is then further taken up by 4 to 6 links interlinked with it, depending on which pattern the maker used (I don't know which one he used; I didn't ask).

The majority of that tiny pencil-thick space is taken up by the thickness of the OTHER links' wires. You literally cannot put a pencil through chainmail once it's been woven together, because there is no room. The most penetration you'll get with an average-sized knife is maybe a third of an inch / 1cm tops. What you WILL get is a knife tip that is very thoroughly wedged in the links, but ONLY the tip of the knife.

Here is an image of non-riveted chainmail with human fingers in the picture for scale:

This stuff would not let more than the tip of a knifeblade through unless you were in a position to really drive home the blade. Reaching over a counter does NOT give a person a massive amount of leverage force, because they cannot put their full weight behind the blow (most folks will hit the counter with their waist or hips, which will absorb some of the incoming force).

Of course, it is true that abutted (not-riveted) chainmail CAN pull apart if you thrust with enough force. However, what the guy had made was RIVETED chainmail.

Literally, riveted chainmail is made up of rings that have flattened ends with holes through which a rivet has been set and hammered into place, so that the links CANNOT come apart so easily.

You can absolutely wedge the TIP of a knife in that stuff without actually penetrating deeper than a mere scratch...but you'd practically have to be charging at a dead run with the full weight of your body at the back of the hilt to have any hope of breaking through riveted chain deeply enough to penetrate with a mere knife. That dude had a convenience store counter in the way.

A regular shirt, man would've been shanked.

Chainmail under the shirt, absolutely not.

But it would look like he'd been shanked.

And did it not occur to you that when the EMT put his hands on my fellow SCAdian's back when trying to hold him still to exam the supposed wound...that he would FEEL THE CHAINMAIL under that work shirt?

Because abso-damned-lutely, you CAN feel chainmail through a shirt. Hell, you can even feel it through a puffy down jacket! Especially when you are trying to touch the body to stabilize a potentially injured person who is moving around, trying to demonstrate what had just happened.

EMTs don't diagnose patients hands-free. It's not a video call of a doctor's visit. They're very much hands-on-the-patient.