"The World's Worst Weapons"
 

A book I picked up on a lark yesterday. I thought it would be of interest here because of two of the listings:

1) Nunchucks: Flashy but ineffective and very difficult to use. They were derived from an Asian farmer's tool and only existed because subjugatred farmers weren't allowed real weapons. (I remember reading on this forum that this was the case with the sai.) People who try to use them end up hitting themselves. (But I guess it wouldn't be a big problem for a Turtle for obvious reasons.)

2) Throwing stars and shuriken: Ineffective because they are difficult to throw, let alone hit a target, and could only stick if they hit the target just right. They turned out to be more of a distraction than a real offensive weapon.

By the way, on a non-ninja related note, another ineffective weapon was the dog mine used by the Soviets in World War 2. They were supposed to run under German vehicles and blow them up, but often the dogs would run under Soviet tanks as well, blowing them up. Poetic justice, if you ask me.

Interesting list, I still want to use nun chucks one day:tgrin:

Hope you're very strong and agile then. ;)

I'm working at it:lol:
They must be heavy

I'm going to agree with shuriken to a degree, because they weren't normally used with intention of killing/disabling, but if you're hitting yourself with nunchaku you're doing it wrong. Also they make great joint locks.

Do you have an ISBN or something for this book? I'd like to see what precisely they're saying about everything.

Isbn 978-0-7607-8581-2

The nunchaku isn't hard to use with the basics, it's when you get into the freestyle non-martial arts stuff it can get hurtful.

Danke.

Hmm... reading reviews across the web, it seems to be getting overall negative ones. The only ones that seem to be giving it anything over like, 2/5, are either idiots or conspiracy theorists.

Nevertheless, I might see if my library has it.

Some of the weapons that were listed really were terrible, as I've seen mentioned elsewhere (the Soviet KV-2 tank and the Seargeant York gun). So I cannot call it too inaccurate.