"Battle Plate"

[simply RED]

I saw today some comandos training throwing battle stars, or battle plates.
<a href="http://www.1stopselfdefensesecuritystore.com/stars.htm" target="_blank">http://www.1stopselfdefensesecuritystore.com/stars.htm</a>
How i never before thought of that!
This is cheap, perfectly hided, avalable, non lawenforced and extremely harmful to people or animals!
It is easily made in home, you can make it heavy for more effect.
For more effect it will be good to add stoppers, like in fishhooks!
I'm gonna make dozens today...

[Zyklon_B]

Pretty cheap to buy too then make. But it seems like quite a bit of practice learning how to throw these with any real accuracy. In the hands of a well trained person I would think these to be quite effective weapons.

[Harry]

Non-lawenforced? OK, grammar aside, I know personally of one jurisdiction where they are banned for carry. You get caught, you going to be Sharif's hunny fo'while. Right here in the Land of Lakes, Minnesota. Yes, cheap to make, cheap to buy, a few impovements would be good. Hey, if they're not regulated in your neighborhood, go ahead and use. Practice on the squirrels in your back yard.
Even the surplus stores don't do stars around here. Sword canes, nunchaka, pen knives lead knuckles, yes. Stars no. I've tried the bought ones (mail order companies don't ask many questions), crap. Make 'em. Use good steel. Be a craftsman about it. Make your stars the way you make a rocket display--do it right.

Harry

[nbk2000]

ROK (Republic Of Korea) commandos use stars made from 5 railroad spikes welded butts together. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" />

Things will impale a tree at 20 feet a couple inches deep.

And we ARE talking about throwing stars here (AKA Ninja Death Doo-dads). :rolleyes: :p

Waste of time. They're not going to kill a person, only piss them off.

[Asger]

...Unless you coat the edges with cyanide or the indian poison curare or some other effective poison. Well clothes might scrape most of the chemical off but that could probably be taken care of by drilling small holes close to the edges to acommodate the poison.
The KGB succeeded in asassinations using very small quantities of ricin.

[zaibatsu]

True, but ricin isn't effective immediately, I think it causes death days later. Plus, I wouldn't want to be handling or even keeping an extremely sharp piece of metal coated in poison on my person. At best the small stars would be a distraction, a very effective one if you hit in the face :)

[probity]

Battle plates? haha. The ninjas did coat the edges of their shuriken with cyanide, they also used to crush apple seeds and place them in their victim's dinner. The seeds have a cyanogenic glycoside which turns into cyanide when digested.

[Jhonbus]

Just a note on the topic of ricin... There may soon be a vaccine against it. (New Scientist 14 sep 2002 p 22)
The article describes it better than I could, so take a look for yourselves.

<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992783" target="_blank">Shield against assassin's poison</a>

Edit: goddamn, I bugger up every single post in some way or another!

<small>[ September 16, 2002, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: Jhonbus ]</small>

[chemwarrior]

Those bastard weapons are extremly usefull. Not only are the legal most places, but are small, easily carried, and you can learn to throw them really well in less than a day. (I know because I did.) Coating them in a posion such as cyanide is a good idea, but I wouldnt advise it. You do tend to get little cuts on your fingers from prolonged use of them.

[Asger]

Well Chemwarrior. Sounds great that it does not take more training. Now if you have become experienced throwing them maybe the next step for you is to practice throwing them wearing gloves. Both to eliminate fingerprints and to protect you from eventual poisons. Then you have that skill too. Just a thought.

Besides I have had an idea for a throwing tool for these battlestars. A little like some, I think australian, indians use to throw extra power into their spears. I haven't recearched it yet (eg. google) as it is just a 'low state' idea for me (curiosity). It would be something like a stick perhaps 40 cm long on wich the star can be mounted on a locking arrangement. The lock can then relase the star from a trigger placed in the other end where you handle it. With a little practice you will activate the trigger and release the star when the opposite end of the stick, carring the star is at its maximum speed app. 1 m above your head (one armlength + one stick length.)
I think that could hit really hard - doing more penetration.

NB: Perhaps the stick could even have some mechanism providing the star with some spin to stabilize it during flight.

<small>[ September 17, 2002, 03:38 AM: Message edited by: Asger ]</small>

[nbk2000]

You're talking about an Atlatl thrower.

<a href="http://www.atlatl.com/mechanics.html" target="_blank">http://www.atlatl.com/mechanics.html</a>

That'd be an interesting way to throw a star and, if it worked, would GREATLY increase the injury potential since I don't know too many people outside of major league baseball who can throw objects at over 100MPH.

[A-BOMB]

Or maybe some type of Co2 powered launcher like those ones that shoot those foam rubber discs, and you could even add spin to it this way, and any shot to the neck or face would probably be fatal. And NBK what you said about the railroad stake stars reminded me about a rather dumbish movie called "Ghosts of Mars" where the posseced miners where chopping that space cops to bits with what looked like circular saw blades.

[Arkangel]

woom·er·a, also wom·er·a

n.

A hooked wooden stick used by Aboriginal peoples of Australia for hurling a spear or dart.

[Dharuk wamara.]

[Jhonbus]

That's right, the Australian Aboriginal name for the device is a Woomera, the Aztecs called it an Atlatl. Must be a good idea if two cultures separated by thousands of miles of antarctica both come up with it.
The south americans also re-adopted this idea to protect themself from spanish invaders - it gave their spears a great armour-piercing capability.