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Is It Possible To Kill Someone With The Ninja 'Touch Of Death'?

Is It Possible To Kill Someone With The Ninja 'Touch Of Death'?

Technically the answer is a yes, but it's virtually impossible to achieve. Please don't try this at home - or anywhere else, for that matter

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

After Uma Thurman's character uses a Hattori Hanzo samurai sword to butcher dozens of people in Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2, she finally reaches her arch nemesis (Bill, duhhh) and kills him with a move he thought was impossible: Pai Mei's 'five-point palm exploding heart' technique.

But we all know there's tons of stuff that can exist in the realm of fiction - what about the real world?

Cecil Adams wrote in the Straight Dope that while Dim Mak specifically might be out of the realm of possibility, there are circumstances where people have died as a result of quick injury or trauma.

A commotio cordis is when a person suffers a blow to the chest area, causing a lethal disruption of the heart's rhythm. The blow doesn't cause any damage to the organ or surrounding organs, but the change in rhythm induces cardiac arrest.

It happens a bit to teenagers as they play sport, most frequently with baseball.

The reason why this doesn't specifically link up with the Touch of Death is because the attacker wouldn't know when their opponent's heart is at its most vulnerable.

via GIPHY

While they could punch, karate chop, poke or whatever with enough force, the gap to induce commotio cordis is roughly 10 to 30 milliseconds.

The only other way you could kind of perform a Dim Mak would be to cause significant trauma to the carotid artery, the two vessels that supply the head and neck with oxygenated blood. If you managed to inflict enough damage on both arteries for the cell wall to break, there's a chance the person would die.

While some people might think pressure points and disrupting qi is bullshit, a 1999 study revealed some interesting findings.

Spock using the Vulcan Nerve Grip to incapacitate people in 'Star Trek'.
Star Trek

The aim was to find 'physiologic changes occurring during 'knockouts' produced by application of pressure point techniques during martial arts demonstrations. A dozen volunteers were hit in different parts of their bodies while machines monitored their heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation.

They found that while none of those essential bodily functions were impaired, some of the subjects entered a state of unresponsiveness, while others couldn't remember words that were spoken before the jabs.

The study's conclusion reads: "The exact mechanism for this phenomenon remains uncertain."

But please, don't take this as an invitation to go around trying to perform the Touch of Death on people.

Featured Image Credit: Miramax

Topics: TV and Film, Interesting, Community