#improvised weapons

[howtofightwrite]

Obviously weapon substitutes are poorer than actual weapons and don't work the same way, but when characters are cornered and without a normal weapon (or don't even know how to fight, like in self-defence or just lashing out at someone), how do I have an idea of which objects make better weapons or how they actually might work? I don't want to write something that looks ridiculous even if the fights are going to be sloppy anyway. Any tips on how to approach this sort of stuff?

It's probably worth splitting characters into multiple groups when you're thinking about this. You have characters without combat training, characters with basic training, and characters with a sophisticated understanding of combat. Each one is going to look for something distinct.

For an inexperienced character, when they look for an improvised weapon, they're likely to prioritize items that they think, “can be used as a weapon.” Usually because it looks like something else. Sometimes, this overlaps, and you'll see something that, kindais a weapon, like a claw hammer, or can effectively function as a weapon, like a crowbar. Even then, because this is a character who doesn't have combat training, they're not going to be using it effectively, and they'll be vulnerable in a straight up fight against someone who knows what they're doing.

Inexperienced characters are also likely to look at any sufficiently heavy object as a potential one shot blow to the head with the intention of knocking their foe unconscious in a surprise attack. In spite of what you're used to seeing, this isn't likely to do exactly what you want. Knocking someone out is a very fine line between, pissing them off, and maybe disorienting them, without really incapacitating them, or outright killing them. There isn't much in between these outcomes. An inexperienced character is likely to expect this will end the fight, and unless it's lethal, it usually won't.

Someone with basic training and experience is more likely to look for items that can be effectively weaponized. This may include things like being able to take a broom handle and use it effectively as a short staff, or turning a pair of scissors into an improvised dagger. Basic training will probably lead to recognizing potential weapons that an inexperienced character might overlook.

Someone with a lot of combat training and a fairly advanced understanding of physiology, is when you start seeing things like, “I can turn anything in this room into a lethal weapon,” though, granted, boasts like that do tend to overstate the steps necessary to turn something like a lampshade into an improvised garrote, or gloss over just how precise you need to be to turn a ballpoint pen into a lethal tracheotomy. In some cases it's not strictly untrue, you can turn a lot of household objects into weapons, but you're basically never going to be in a situation where a thumbtack is a more viable weapon choice than the bulletin board it was attached to.

In the case of experienced or sophisticated fighters, they can probably realize that bringing a weapon to bare against your foe doesn't always mean moving the weapon, sometimes, it's more than enough to simply move your foe into your improvised weapon of choice. Anyone might realize that the blade off a paper cutter could make for a pretty good improvised machete, but an inexperienced fighter might not have the ability to get a foe under an intact paper cutter to use it against them. Sophisticated fighters will have probably mastered putting the U in “industrial accident.”

Weaponizing the environment is something that can get really out of hand, but can also offer an effective way to sell a character's efficiency with violence. It is the kind of situation where having an actual weapon would always be a better option. For example, “why don't you just shoot them?” But, it works to keep a fight interesting, especially if the actual weapons aren't an option, for whatever reason.

-Starke

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[bobauthorman]

No weapons?

No problem!

[theoutcastrogue]

To illustrate (pardon the pun) the point, behold our blessed and "tragic" duels:

and their barbarous, "savage", and "terrifying" duels:

(illustrations from Le Petit Journal & Journal des Voyages, 1895-1911)

A note for the ladies' duel: The title is "Duel au sac de sable", and sac de sable (literally "sandbag") is an improvised weapon consisting of a small bag filled with sand or gravel or something, which is wielded like a bludgeon and is generally assumed to be used by criminals. I think the closest English translation is "sap" (the only weapon with which you could sneak attack and deal non-lethal damage back in 3.5). We're basically in the "brick in a sock" category. Here the ladies appear to be wielding soft boots filled with god knows what, which I, for one, find impressively inventive.

[spacevixenmusic]

Source: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2005]

[defire]

Drabble with my OC's; boy is caught by abusive man.

Content: abusive parent, yelling, hiding, caught, conditioned whumpee

"Chase?"

Chase scrambled away from the front door toward the back of the stairs, pressing himself into the gap with the rest of the stuff Merc hoarded. He froze as Merc opened the door.

"Chase. Get out here right now!" The man's voice boomed loud enough to be heard outside the house. Maybe he couldn't see Chase.

The boy's hopes were dashed as his father stepped toward him and he stiffened.

Merc's hand caught him by the back of the shirt and yanked him out of his hiding spot.

"I'm sorry sir," was all Chase could whimper as he was dragged backward.

"Oh, you think you can talk back?" Merc shook him. "You think you can hide from me? You've got another thing coming."

He grabbed the metal bottle off the kitchen counter, throwing Chase into the water containers to the side as he clubbed the bottle.

Chase cringed down between his arms, flexing his back for the beating.

Let me know if you like it/want more of the story

[teratodentata]

Finally finished my husband’s new Loxodon Cleric, Phiir Phantalos for our upcoming DND campaign (:

[tenth-sentence]

The drawer came loose suddenly, strewing stationery over the floor, and the man was left holding an empty drawer.

"The Hungry Moon" - Ramsey Campbell

[dougielombax]

*brandishes a cucumber like a sword*

*grabs a bin lid and holds it like a shield*

“Don’t come any closer!”

[dndcontext]

Context: Xena Warrior Princess

Understand: Improvised Weapons

No weapon? No problem. Grab anything nearby that you can "wield" (pick up and toss around) for 1d4 damage per attack. Throw it up to a normal range of 20ft. DMs may choose to use other stats and bonuses if the improvised weapon is similar to an existing weapon stat block, such as a club. Double check with your DM to confirm if you should use your proficiency bonus for improvised weapons.

Full clip:

[sukiretto]

NOV- Digo, peleas de primos🥰

No, no es por los terrenos, es porque Angst m4to a su otra prima🥰

[thatdudemaan]

This is from one of my main projects.

THE MOUSE CHRONICLES

It´s a story about a young mouse named Timbad, who goes on an epic adventure to save his village before the evil Rat King destroys it and kills his family and everyone he knows. And as if this wasn´t bad enough, he accidentally started a new disaster, that destroyed the old ones centuries ago and is now threatening to do the same with the new world.

His adventure takes him all around the world. He will meet many different characters. Some will help him, others will try to use him. But he will learn that all his ego and tiny problems are nothing compared to the greater good he will have to face.

[papa-squat-89]

Watch "Ukraine's Improvised 'Minigun'" on YouTube

[magicknightraytheon]

An Autopsy of Roguesci: the coolest way to lose an eye in 2005

If you've been online since the 2000s, you'll have noticed a shift from a web of many independent forums and websites to everything being concentrated on a few social media networks. The content grab started long ago, so many storied subcultures are being lost to digital decay. It's with this in mind that I want to tell the story of the Explosives and Weapons Forum.

Many websites served to dispense advice on gray area or outright illegal activity. There were the pyro forums, specialized toward both legal and illegal fireworks. Beyond fireworks forums there were sketchier places that dealt in more weaponized explosives, drugs and petty crime: Totse, Rorta, Bombshock. They attracted many a fan, but few a practitioner - everyone knew that the information was not the best. Try anything and it would be a dice roll between making something that can go pop, making a dud and blowing your fingers off in an accident in the midst of a felony.

In 1998, megalomania established Roguesci: The Explosives and Weapons Forum, a site to rule above all of these trash boards...or at least that was the expectation.

Roguesci, like others, grew from the mid 90s BBS subcultures and seemed to have been inspired by the writings of an Aussie who went by the name of "Lowry". Lowry was an Aussie pyro who made a little how-to file of various improvised weapons and fireworks (very dangerous to mess with, for chemistry reasons, so just don't). He resurfaced at some point with an obscure partial reup of his site, not knowing that a more complete PDF was going around and that there was another pyro forum with his old contacts.

But these BBS and Usenet lists had a problem that would carry on through the years: Low quality posters and files spread dangerous misinformation. Even widely published and famous books were full of information.

Roguesci would be the site with standards and the go-to for conversations about explosives, chemical warfare, improvised firearms and collection of historical chemistry texts.

So mega brought in his friend nbk2000, a lifetime hobbyist weaponeer, who self-identified as a psychopath and a Nazi to deliver HED, "hot electrion death" (bans) to all "kewls": Kids and young men who spread "cool" dodgy instructions for making dangerous chemicals. Advice was to be peer reviewed and unskilled members expected to lurk and study before posting. Using "crapbooks" like the Anarchist Cookbook was also a quick route to a ban.

(the joke "NBK likes to give HED" was prohibited on the forum)

Under their rule, the site thrived. It hopped from free hosting to its own dedicated domain with official explosives guide to explosives and their synthesis, written by mega himself.

The site thrived throughout the mid-2000s but ran into some scandals with an early user killing several people with a bomb, and whispers of users getting injured in lab accidents (I can't tell who but one user was said to have lost some fingers).

Dangerous content was its draw and vague connection to murders weren't going to slow it down. But its weakness was in a cult of personality around the vice admin, NBK.

To roguesci users, NBK was a mysterious, charismatic drifter who held the highest subject knowledge. Sometimes hated for his debates about the worthiness of non-white people. Usually respected because he had the most entertaining posts. His famous work was a pdf file and website of his name that mixed his own advice with reprints of a few books and contained "rules to profit by" for criminals. NBK had spent most of a decade writing what he said would be an encyclopedia of improvised weapons and advice for criminals.

NBK maintained one of the most popular non-technical threads, "Why I Hate Rent (rant)" detailing his beliefs that paying rent or property tax was slavery. He escaped this slavery by squatting at abandoned houses, and he blogged about his experiences in the thread.

One of his actually brilliant ideas came in handy when a guy robbed his squat: he kept his money in a safe made with a pipe and padlock. It was mistaken for a pipe bomb and dropped by the burglar.

Then one day, mega announced that NBK had died. There was no elaborating. Users poured out performative mourning (sentiments of respect and resentment were mixed, but the latter not shown as much).

Later on it turned out that NBK was alive but needed legal help: he was being charged with the murder of a guy who he was living with, and had fled to Canada where he tried to stay with another forum member (who promptly turned him in).

NBK2000, or Arthur Charles Carnes, was later convicted after using his history in weaponry to argue that he would have done a far better job of murdering the guy than whoever did (most likely nbk in a less composed, dumber incarnation of himself than he presented online).

NBK2000 unmasked: nerd

According to a forumite's investigation, NBK's friend (the victim) had falsely converted to Judaism so that he could sell kosher meat to the local Jewish community. NBK had decided that this was race treason.

The forum went down and reopened, with some in-house web crawling to preserve the information for the final shutdown that we knew was inevitable, and the inevitable came in 2009 with the site disappearing forever. Rumors of a reopening circulated but it seemed like there was too much heat on mega, and its heyday was long past.

A few users and mods tried to open successor sites and bring the community back together. They also disappeared.

Another of the old Roguesci mods, fierce opponent of seatbelts after a few near miss accidents, died after being thrown through his windshield in a car crash.

Another one lost an eye in an explosives accident.

Roguesci prided itself on having higher standards of accuracy than all the other pyro and weapon freak boards. But it fell short of its own self image and its prided top dog that the user base looked up to (in public at least), NBK, was actually a bit of a dumbass. Many forumites were dumbasses posting things they'd regret, but at their high point, they also distributed information on how to produce illegal weapons that could have killed thousands of innocent civilians if the wrong readers took interest.

In its wake, I've found nothing that is even similar in scope. The condensation of the internet to big social platforms and the ruining of search engines makes it almost impossible, and ironically with less conspiracy-riddled eyes it's obvious that if you wanted to engage in such hobbies, you could just get an ATF license and use explosives legally without resorting to hardware store chemicals that will blow your hands clean off your body as your skin melts off. That's right: explosives and munitions are legal if you fill out ATF forms and pay a fee.

[redlegumes]

The doodle

The draft

@steddie-week Prompt: Here Come the Tears

[nightwere-mojo]

If your car gets a Petpet, would it look like this, or like this?

Context under the cut

If you own a Kia or Hyundai in the U.S. there is a goddamn TikTok car theft challenge targeting you. Because the U.S. decided we didn't need the "mandatory for all cars to have ignition locks" regulation that other countries have, and Kia said okay, cool cost cutting measure.

If you get a letter in the mail for a "Steering Wheel Lock" GET IT. It's FREE but only happening until December