"My Card" - A gentleman's Weapon?

[neon_suntan]

Having read Carter Beats the Devil I was amazed to find out about this long out of print volume...

[Atterton]

On TV they got some adverts for poker sites. One of them has a poker player throwing a card and slicing the top off a carrot.

[Herr Döktor]

I remember, a long, long, time ago, I think it was on the magician David Nixon's TV show, an American whose act was cutting things with thrown playing cards: newspapers, clothing, and even into a water melon!  

'Carter Beats the Devil'- what a fantastic book, everyone should read it!

[ShredsnPatches]

One of my friends can throw cards. He hasn't mastered slicing the tops of carrots or anything, but the cards really sting!

[NazT]

Its a stonking idea!!  Cards as weapons and other things!! Imagine a steampunk tarot deck mixed with a survival kit for example!! 

Another ref to playing cards with more uses is in "Red Skies over Red Seas" (I think) number 2 in The Gentleman Bastard series by Scott Lynch http://www.fantasybookspot.com/node/1885 where the cards break down into a kind of glue substance (or maybe its an explosive? drat I cannot remember) when mixed with a certain type of alchohol. 

I must admit that it does appeal to my ninja side.... 

[T.Taylor the Third]

my brother does it. hes not the best so  he cant cut anything but dang it hurts

[markf]

The author of "Cards As Weapons", Ricky Jay, is quite a well known character on the talk show and stage/lecture circuit (he's a sleight of hand magician of considerable expertise) as well as a character actor (most recently in "The Prestige" and a regular on HBO's "Deadwood").  He acquitted himself reasonably well on Mythbusters a few years back throwing cards like knives although using unaltered cards as weapons was essentially a busted myth.  Also it is hard to differentiate fact from trickery, given he is an excellent magician, as he may substitute something like these commercially available razor edged playing cards in place of the traditional type with his audience never the wiser for it. markf     http://www.martialartsgear.com/ninjagear/ninjaacc/4446.htm

[theMadTinker]

My third and fourth grade teacher taught us how to throw cards so that they would stick into a watermelon, but that was a long time ago, and I never really got the hang of it quite in the first place.

[Nikola Tesla]

I can throw cards, but they don't cut anything.  You have to snap the wrist just so, it's a little like throwing a dart but "sideways"...oh, it's just not possible to explain in this medium... 

[OldProfessorBear]

I vaguely recall some story I read in which a character(s) was frantically tearing all the hearts and diamonds out of a deck of cards because the red ink could be used as an explosive ... what was that, anyway?


PS: Carter Beats the Devil is way cool.

[flimflam]

they tested card throwing on mythbusters and it wasn't lethal 

[A.G.Morgan]

they tested card throwing on mythbusters and it wasn't lethal 

Damn. Beat me to it.

[OldProfessorBear]

I vaguely recall some story I read in which a character(s) was frantically tearing all the hearts and diamonds out of a deck of cards because the red ink could be used as an explosive ... what was that, anyway?

Hmmm ... The Ætherwebs know everything ... more or less ...

http://gargles.net/suicide-at-san-quentin/

... which is probably what the story I read was based on. This was not it ...

http://www.totse.com/en/ego/on_line_zines/bhoa_3.html

... as I've never read Still Life with a Woodpecker. I'm fairly sure "my" story is considerably older than that one.


Anyway, there is a way to use playing cards as lethal weapons after all.

[Herr Döktor]

I remember the 'red ink as explosive' thing, but I'm damned if I can recall where from...

I'll let it stew, and report back.

[Think_Long]

sounds to me like gambit. i know it's something else, but how many times do exploding playing cards come up in fiction anyway?

[Jaqhama]

Yes...Gambit was the first character I thought of when the cards were mentioned.
Although he used his inherent psychic power to make them explode.

In the Trevanian novel Shimbumi the lead character practices and is lethal with, the art of using everyday objects as deadly weapons.
Kills a plane hijacker with a plastic cup, folded so that the point is stiffened.

I'm guessing that if Willie Garvin, knife thrower extradinaire, can't kill with a thrown playing card, then no one can.
(Willie is Modesty Blaise's henchman in the series of books by Peter O'Donnell.)

I can throw lots of sharp, pointy things and make them stick in. Never tried a playing card myself. I reckon one made of thin steel would do the trick though.
Would basically just be a kind of shuriken.

[Difference Engineer]

Having read Carter Beats the Devil I was amazed to find out about this long out of print volume...

If one searches parts of Usenet or certain distributed repositories of files of alll kinds, one may find a facsimile of this tome formatted as a PDF.  Sadly, there are no plans for bringing the original text back into print.

[Difference Engineer]

I vaguely recall some story I read in which a character(s) was frantically tearing all the hearts and diamonds out of a deck of cards because the red ink could be used as an explosive ... what was that, anyway?

Folklore in certain circles has it that certain old decks of playing cards were printed with a red ink that, when soaked in alcohol and mixed with potassium permanganate, would yield a contact explosive, suitable for blasting one's way out of prison or committing suicide via the chunky salsa technique.  I doubt that this has worked in several decades, at the very least.

[CapnHarlock]

As evidenced by "Mythbusters", a paper card can sting and cut a bit, but it is most certainly a diversion in a hostile engagement.

This is the essence of most shurikenjutsu, regardless of the chosen weapon(s) - if you throw something, (more is better) no matter what it/they may be, the opponent will duck and give you an opening.  If it hits and happens to do damage, that is "just gravy". While he ducks, get elsewhere, or strike.

Pointing over the opponent's shoulder and yelling "LOOK! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!" has also been known to work long enough to get away.

CapnHarlock
33rd Degree Master of Runjutsu

[Jaqhama]

A poison coated Shuriken worked nicely also.

Throw it, run away. Get the good news later.

[Sir Newton Bridges]

shurikenjutsu

Runjutsu

yes, but none of your techniques are useful against my..... (strikes ninja pose) squirrel-fu! guard your nuts!.....


(sorry, couldn't resist)

[Griffin]

The best card thrower i know can get the cards over an inch into a block of styrophoam. He tried to teach me but I'm not nearly as good as he is.

[JohnSix]

A quick tutorial courtesy of the chaps at wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_throwing
http://www.davidslife.com/funstuff/cards/technique.htm

[Randolf J. Strauss]

When you work the graveyard shift as a security guard, which I did for a number of years, you can get quite good at a number of useless things.  I can stick a card into a dropped ceiling.  I can stick a card into many different kinds of fruit.  I have never, with an ordinary card, been able to chop off the tip of a carrot.

My cousin, who was an amateur magician for a while, obtained a card made from very thin sheet metal.  He was able to put it into a piece of quarter inch sheetrock so that it protruded about an inch from the other side.

This is impossible to do with a regular playing card as the card stock doesn't have enough mass.  If you want to use playing cards as a weapon, I suggest throwing them all into the air to distract your opponent while placing a well aimed kick to the groin.

[Nigel Wetherby]

All this mention of playing cards as weapons and I've yet to hear anyone mention other gentleman's items like bowler hats, wing tips, or canes?
Who can forget the James Bond villain who decapitated a bust of Paris with his hat?