Originally published at: Something to try if a would-be murderer garrotes you at a bus stop with shoelaces | Boing Boing
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Turns a vid of a person withstanding an attack and turns it into an ad for his own business 
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But how is it against a pointed stick?
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I’d be curious to see what the statistics are for what percentage of murders are committed in this fashion outside of a prison environment. It’s not like knives are hard to come by, even in countries where other weapons are highly restricted. My guess is that the odds are low enough that it’s not worth anyone’s time to learn specific defenses against it when that time could be spent doing things like checking the function of your smoke detectors and confirming that your vehicle doesn’t have any outstanding recall notices for defective airbags and whatnot.
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Its unlikely she learned this specfic defense. One trains martial arts, dance, etc to become physically intelligent.
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So business opportunity, Oh boy oh boy…
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Sure, and she obviously handled herself well. I’m speaking more to the title of this post.
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To be fair, I expect nothing else from one of the Gracies. They are marketers first, martial artists second.
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From a purely objective cost/benefit analysis, training anything for self defense is almost certainly not worth it.
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Anybody with an older sibling likely learned this specific defense when they were 5.
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Good analysis. Glad she got away. I hope they got the guy and put him away for a good long while.
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The part that has a good chance to pay off is learning how to fall without hurting yourself.
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Well, her kicks would smoosh a bahnahnah. And we could just look at it.
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Though you could also learn that from gymnastics or parkour… if you want to learn how to fall when being thrown though, probably judo is your best choice, followed by aikido.
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Sorry, only the Daily Fail and similar agencies have this info, but it appears this is Quinones’ typical M.O.
If it doesn’t work, why keep doing it?
not meaning to be combative, but what do you mean by this statement? If the outcome is death, and the benefit is avoiding death, what cost is “not worth it” ? I understand you need to consider the likelihood of an attack against an individual.
I think what they may have meant is that the chances of ever having to use any of that training is slim to none. That’s similar to my car insurance. I’ve been paying into it for 30 years and yet to make a claim. And yet the insurance continues to extract large sums from me so that can continue to make stupid, nonstop TV commercials that are stupid and nonstop.
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Jeezus, blaming the victim? Expecting people (always other people, of course) to be 100% “vigilant” all the time? That’s something that gets talked about as a symptom (and cause) of PTSD, not something that human beings can actually manage in a healthy way…
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Yeah, the situation I described with death as the outcome is a “divide by zero” case but I think there is probably a point greater than “almost certainly not worth it” and what I described. I don’t have any formal martial arts training but I’ve always thought it benefited those among my friends that did pursue it. Fitness, attitude, socialization… I guess if what you’re measuring is the actual need to defend yourself (and maybe the actual effectiveness of such training in this context, which I don’t know) then yeah, granted 
Pretty much as you surmised. Basic cost/benefit analysis is [value of benefit] - [cost]. I suppose you could do it in terms of time or money, but I would expect similar results. On a time basis, the benefit would be the expected increased lifespan, which would be something like:
([average life expectancy in your demographic] - [your current age]) x [probability that you encounter a situation where your martial arts training makes the difference between life and death or serious injury]
The cost would simply be the total amount of time you spend training in martial arts, also in years. (i.e. if you train 10 hrs a week for 10 years, then your total training cost in time is 0.59 yrs.
We have no idea what the probability in the equation is, but we can calculate what the probability has to be to make us at least break even in this cost/benefit analysis. If we set the cost/benefit to break even or be equal to 0, and we say we are 20 years old, the average life expectancy is 79 years, and we train 10 hrs a week for 10 years (for a total training time of 0.59 years) then the probability comes out to be 0.59yr/(79yr-20yr) = 0.01, or 1%.
So if training in martial arts for 10 hrs a week for 10 years allows us to survive a situation that would have otherwise killed/maimed us, and the chance of that ever happening in our lives is > 1%, then training will overall on average increase our life expectancy.
The problem is that the situations that are most likely to be deadly (i.e. assault with a firearm, bladed weapon, or multiple attackers, etc.) are also situations where martial arts training is unlikely to make a difference between life or death. Things like gun and knife disarms are almost complete fantasy and are rife with bullshido. Guys that do realistic training with weapons (my favorites are Logan Lo and Chad Vasquez at Scenic Fights) will be the first to tell you that you should avoid fighting someone with a gun or a knife at all costs: give them your wallet, de-escalate, run away, etc. are all better choices if possible. Your chances of escaping from such a situation without being shot or stabbed are not good at all.
Aside: you can test this easily with a friend: one of you puts on a tight white t-shirt, the other has a big permanent magic marker. The person with the marker is the attacker, and their goal is to make a mark on your t-shirt (i.e. stab you), and the other’s goal is to take the marker away without getting any marker on himself. It’s practically impossible.
So what are the chances of us being killed by violence? The CDC states that the homicide rate in the US is 5.8 per 100000 per year. To calculate the odds of this ever happening to us, we set the probability of one occurrence in a year to p = 5.8/100000 = 5.8e-5. The odds of this ever happening to us over our expected 59 years of remaining life expectancy is
P = 1-(1-p)^59 = 0.0034
Or, a 0.34% chance. This is less than the 1% chance we’d need to ‘break even’ on our cost benefit analysis, so even if training martial arts guaranteed you the ability to survive a deadly assault (which it doesn’t, most deadly assaults are with guns or knives which are almost impossible to defend against), then it still wouldn’t be worth the time investment from a purely objective cost/benefit point of view.
If we instead looked at situations where learning to fall safely protected you from serious harm, I think the analysis would more likely show a benefit, esp. if you were able to quantify the benefit from avoiding injury from falls as well as death. I don’t have a good way to estimate those statistics though.
However, I still train martial arts regularly and have for several decades now (judo for the past 5 years, aikido for 10 years before that, karate for 5 years before that, a little bit of kendo and iaido training as well). When I was younger it was because I had some fantasy of it making me into an invincible warrior (i.e. relevant Snow Crash quote), but now that I’m older I just do it because it’s a fun activity that keeps me active and healthy. And staying physically fit and active definitely has benefits for both quantity and quality of life.
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