Myth: Deadly Throwing Knives  The hero is cornered by the bad
guys! Thinking quickly, she pulls out a brace of throwing
knives. She flips the knives at two of her attackers. They go
down, one clutching the knife embedded in his chest, the other
lying still with a knife in his eye.  Stop doing this. Writers,
moviemakers, everyone — just stop. Unless your hero is also
wielding a magical get-out-of-physics free card, thrown knives
don’t work that way.  One of the most important aspects of a
weapon is its stopping power. That is, its ability to stop your
attacker in his tracks and render him incapable of hurting you
any more. Some weapons, such as pepper spray, do this by
inflicting severe pain and blindness. Others, like a sword,
inflict enough physical damage to make further attacks
impossible. Thrown knives are usually shown to be the latter
sort of weapon. In reality, thrown knives have negligible
stopping power because they lack three crucial elements: Mass,
velocity, and accuracy.  It takes quite a lot of f