I don’t know how fringe, the footman’s flail was fairly popular in Europe through the middle-ages. Nunchaku if I understand their history correctly were essentially the Asian equivilant. From what I have understood, the European version as developed(originally was until someone decided to make it more lethal)from a wheat flail, used by peasant for threshing wheat. Nunchaku were, also from what I understand essentially a rice-flail used for the same purpose as its European cousin.
In either case it makes great sense to outfit peasant militia with them. They are definitely a step above rakes and pitchforks, and most likely weapons with which they are highly-proficient in usage, without the need of excessive training. I would see the training going something like this, “First you knock the Knight/Samurai/footsoldier off his horse or down, and then you treat his helmeted head like an exceptionally stubborn sheaf of wheat/rice.”
Nunchaku might not be the best weapon imaginable but if you’re going to just go and clock someone unexpectedly you can get a lot of torque and I would not be surprised if you managed to kill someone if you hit them in the head.
You can also choke someone with nunchaku. It seems to me like you’d get a pretty nasty nutcracker-like choke that way. Certainly capable of killing someone.
I was actually going to say it’s the most likely way to kill someone with nunchaku, since they’d have to be fairly heavy to kill by actually hitting with them, and it’s take a good few shots to do it IMO.
That was one of the most poorly written stories. that was my point. If you read my first sentence, the actualy events are sad, but I think the use of nunchucks were used to write an otherwise un-news worthy story. for some reason nunchucks hold this romantic (exotic) way over people who would otherwise not be so irrational.
It’s perfectly clear that this was one nasty Bastard…I hope he’s jailed for a looong time. An 18 year old versus a 15 year old…so he’s older, probably bigger and certainly stronger…and a Bully.
Then he’ll cry at night…but for himself - never his victim. Bastard.
There’s a significant difference between a european flail in that it had a very heavy head on a long chain. It seems to me that chuks are too light with too short of a chain in order to take advantage of the benefits of a flail weapon. I can think of few weapons I wouldn’t choose over it if given the choice. I’d rather have a knife or a baseball bat.
I definitely disagree that it’s a step up from a rake or pitchfork. Both of those are crude polearms. They have range, which can be very effective when used by large numbers of folks, like an untrained peasant army. They can be used to knock someone off a horse, hold them down, or even beat/stab someone to death.
The attack took place outside a “pimps and whores” fancy-dress party in the West Sussex town.
The modern Nunchaku according to many sources(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunchaku) was in fact designed almost strictly for the Movie industry, while its ancestor(what it is derived from) was in fact a martial flail of Asian origins. Much like the early European flail. See here for original agricultural version(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail_%28agriculture%29) and here for late Middle-Ages martial verison(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail_%28weapon%29). While I have no doubt that original version of the Asian martial flail exist in Museums somewhere, it is important to note that peasant weaponry came to a grinding halt in Asia as China and Japan were among the first nations to have standing professional armies, in China going back to the Qin Dynasty and in Japan going back to the Taika Reforms in the 6th century. This would have lead to much more standardized equipment and tactics. The way battles were eventually fought in those countries also would have heavily influenced the development of weapons. For instance late in Japans fuedal history battles, while fought by large armies primarily consisted on one on one contests of skill, essentially a game of human chess(and you wonder why Karate doesn’t work). Where as Medievel weapons in Europe were designed in large part to do as much damage as possible, many Japanese weapons, becuase of warfare doctrines were designed to be more “sporting.” This also lead to the development of Jui-Jitsu, as a Samurai art. If an opponent was dis-armed the honorable thing was to also drop your weapon and go hand to hand. Hence the many joint locks necessary to defeat an opponent in armor. European warfare by contrast was focused around giving each combatant the best possible chance of survival while enabling them to kill or maime as many of the enemy as possible, it was just a complete paradigm shift from Asian fuedal warefare. I am not saying that fuedal Asian warfare makes sense to the western mind, but it is what it is.