Welcome to your corner!
As this is the first FightWriter’s Corner let me tell you how it works. You send in a question and the corner answers it. Simple as that. And, like any good coach, I promote my fighters. If yours is the featured question, you are the featured FightWriter. I will happily spotlight your picture and whatever professional info you would like after the post.
This month’s featured FightWriter is (cue Eye of the Tiger) Kristen Stieffel. She would like to know how long it would take someone to bleed out from a perineum stab. (Pause for cringe.) Yes, there is such a knife strike.
Oh, Kristen, folks may wince when they see you next. (Take it as a compliment.) I mentioned this cut in the FightWrite Podcast and I didn’t touch on the results of it. So, it’s a great question. Thank you for listening, Karen!
The answer to Kristen’s question is the same for all lacerations to arteries: depends on the cut.
If you look at the arteries in the thighs, they actually branch off from the abdominal aorta near(ish) the belly button. So, consider the distance between the groin and the navel. If the stab is straight up and the blade is only a few inches, the artery(ies) may not be severed. However, angled right or left, and you have yourself a colorful situation.
How long would it take the person to be dispatched from a perineum stab? Well, again, depends on if we have nicked the artery or gone clean through. According to Dr. Write, the name I will use for all the medical professionals I personally consult, it will not be an immediate death. It could take as much as 30 minutes – worse case scenario. However, because it would be nearly impossible to place pressure on this sort of wound, death would be inevitable. And, wether you make this cut a mortal wound or not, the results would be highly animated!
Here is a snippet from John Wick where he scores this cringey knife shot. Fast forward to 1:00.
Keep those questions coming FightWriters! Until the next round at FightWrite.net, get blood on your pages.
Karen is a seasoned writer, freelance editor and writing coach specializing in speculative fiction. She also has a head for business. For twenty years she wrote for the Orlando Business Journal, and for four more she wrote and recorded a radio show covering stock reports. (I don’t know about you, but I think that stinks of alter ego. Pretty sure she’s covering up some superpowers. Somebody check the trunk of her car for a lycra suit and cape!)
Choose her pic for a link to her site. It’s loaded with all kinds of writing and editing tidbits as well as some great Q&A.
I agree that a nick to an artery in this area could take 30 minutes or even a bit more to kill but would be normally fatal, barring a magical healing or advanced surgical center nearby. On the other side of what is possible, when I did US Army Combat Medic training in the 90s, I was taught that someone with fully severed femoral artery had 2-3 minutes to live but would lose consciousness after about a minute.
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Yup. I have a post coming on bleeding out. I have a friend that just about did, unbeknownst to her. She had no idea how much blood she had lost. She was gray! I was surprised at how long it could take to die. The medical folks I asked all gave a little different time but 30 was the average which is way longer than I thought. Thank you for the comments! You give great ones!!!
I only removed this post because it was the same as the first. It posted twice.