All theatrics aside, the answer truly is 'none.'

Everything you train to do to people--and really, pick any one thing, shattered, torn, crushed, ruptured and otherwise useless for the very important function it used to perform before you got hold of it--has got to hurt, right? The gouged eye, especially, must be a unique kind of agony, more intense and horrible than anything you'll ever (hopefully) experience. How it feels has got to count for something, right?

Maybe.

And because it's just 'maybe,' you can't bet your life on it.

The problem with pain is that it is subjective--it's experienced entirely inside the brain of the individual. Because it's a subjective experience, it can be dampened or magnified depending on the person's mood, state, and/or current circumstance.

The physical fact of pain is that it is a signal elicited by the deformation or destruction of tissue. (And cold & heat--in short, the signal is supposed to impel you to move away from things that are doing you harm.) And that's where the facts end--it's how the brain processes that signal that makes pain so 'iffy.' How many times have you received a minor injury or wound that you had no idea how it occurred, or even when? Because you were distracted, you processed the pain signal as something else, as pressure, or an itch. On the flip side, if you held still and watched yourself get cut (for example) it might end up being more painful than if it happened without your direct knowledge. Both of these situations illustrate just how subjective pain can be.

It's important to note that spinal reflex reactions are NOT in response to pain, in fact, they are usually triggered ahead of the pain signal reaching the brain. The reflex happens outside the 'feel pain, decide what to do' loop--and we should all be glad it does. That way we don't waste any time registering that the stove is hot and then deciding whether or not to pull the hand back. The hand hops off the stove on autopilot, THEN it hurts.

Can pain do anything for you in terms of violence? It can--through two effects: vasovagal syncope (fainting) and encouraging the man to capitulate. I've heard direct anecdotal evidence of both of these at work in violence (viewing a deformed limb and passing out; curling up into a ball ('going fetal') once injured and on the ground), but because both of these are situational and subjective you can't bet your life on them. If you start tearing a man apart and he faints--terrific, now it's time to take full advantage of what you got. If you break him and he quits, likewise exploit the hell out of the gift of his lack of resolve. But don't count on it.

If he is 'feeling no pain' or has iron-willed resolve or simply has a high pain tolerance, how bad it hurts will literally make no difference. This is why we don't care about whether or not it hurts--only whether or not it works. And by 'works' I mean that thing you broke doesn't work anymore. If his torn-out knee agonizes him into fainting or quitting, great--if not, it still doesn't work. He can't get up and run around. He's down and crippled and now you get to set to work on a downed, crippled man.

This is the difference between what we at TFT train and 'pressure point' or joint-locking techniques. Both of those things hurt like an expletive in all caps with three exclamation points after it when we do them on each other in a controlled environment, especially if we've been told ahead of time that they are excruciating. Get out into the real world and you'll have mixed results--those who are susceptible to pain will writhe and cry and submit; those who aren't feeling it will keep on trying to kill you. And should they get loose, they will.

This is why you want to hew to the idea of 'broken is broken' instead of 'this is gonna hurt.' Does it hurt? Maybe. Can it hurt? Sure. Do you care?

Not one whit.

Labels: self defense, self protection