History ImprovisedWeapon / Literature

* Slippery Jim [=DiGriz=], in ''[[TheStainlessSteelRat The Stainless Steel Rat Goes To Hell]]''. Not to spoil too much, but there's a need to go to an area that doesn't let electronics or machinery work. So Jim arms a company of Marines with three-foot-long salamis. After they are used to smack down the bad guys, a secondary, peaceful application is found.

** In the novella ''Literature/TheLangoliers'' (also in the screen adaptation), Albert (teenage violin player) not only uses his cased violin as a weapon at one point, but improvises an even more destructive one from a tablecloth and toaster. At another point, Nick ponders coins/keys between the fingers as improvised brass knuckels. The character in question is basically [[Series/BurnNotice Michael Westen]], though.

* Slippery Jim [=DiGriz=], in a ''[[TheStainlessSteelRat Stainless Steel Rat Goes To Hell]]''. Not to spoil too much, but there's a need to go to an area that doesn't let electronics or machinery work. So Jim arms a company of Marines with three-foot-long salamis. After they are used to smack down the bad guys, a secondary, peaceful application are found.
** Plus there's the time he's on the [[BigBrotherIsWatching Big Brother]] planet and can't smuggle in weapons. He improvises a sap by stuffing coins in a sock while hidden from prying eyes under his bedsheets.

* In Creator/MercedesLackey's ''[[Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar Winds of Fate]]'', Kerowyn makes a point of training Princess Elspeth to think of anything around her as a weapon, which promptly proves its value when an assassin attacks her and she breaks a vase and cuts his throat with it.
** Later it becomes a bit of a joke between the two of them.

* Julio Poertena from the ''Literature/PrinceRoger'' series carries a big wrench, which he uses to [[PercussiveMaintenance adjust the attitude of malfunctioning gear]] and enemies in close range with equal fervour and precision.

** A badly constructed Entropy Curse will do this. Bees? Electric shock in a pool of your own blood? A car, ''while you're jet-skiing''?
*** And, in what may be the single funniest scene in the series, a ''frozen turkey falling out of the sky.''

* In Manly Wade Wellman's short story ''O, Ugly Bird'' John uses his guitar to kill the monster. [[spoiler: It's strung with silver, and when he smashes it onto the creature, the silver kills it. John removes the strings and puts them on a new guitar.]]

* From the Old Icelandic ''Literature/SagaOfGrettirTheStrong'': When two partys start fighting over a stranded whale, things get violent:

* Creator/RoaldDahl's ''Lamb to the Slaughter'' involves a woman using a frozen leg of lamb on her philandering policeman husband, to lethal effect. [[spoiler:Then she feeds it and the rest of the dinner to his colleagues who come to investigate.]]

* At one point in TheLegionOfTheDamned, a group of human miners are trapped on a small asteroid by a ''massive'' armada of alien warships. They utterly shatter the fleet my destroying all their battleships (and thus eliminate their ''entire'' command and control capability) by ramming them with the mass-driver launched drones they use to scoop-mine the local star for dust that glitters in a very pretty way.

* JohnVarley’s ''Literature/TheGoldenGlobe'': “‘You’ve got to stop this business of assault with a deadly musical instrument.’” Which isn’t completely accurate: In the second encounter, after the sousaphone melee, Sparky attacked Isambard Comfort with a violin ''case'', not the violin itself.

* Valeriy Yantsev's short story "A Million Years Later" starts with humans discovering [[SubspaceOrHyperspace subspace]] travel that allows them to get to any place in the galaxy in a matter of months (the time being used to accelerate and decelerate to and from near-light speeds for the instantaneous jump). However, there is a nasty side effect, if a ship happens to exit subspace near a large stellar body, resulting in an EarthShatteringKaboom. Ninety years later, a solution is found that allows for safe subspace travel, signaling the start of a Golden Age of interstellar exploration. Another TimeSkip, and the top brass reveals the existence of a potentially hostile alien race, which has been observing humanity for decades. Humanity's only advantage is FTLTravel, but the aliens have many warships, while humans have only a small number of civilian ships, none of them armed (there has been peace on Earth for centuries). A starship is sent in the direction of the alien scout ships' departure to obtain intelligence on their homeworld at Altair. Another TimeSkip (10 years later for the crew; 40 years later on Earth), and TheCaptain and his NumberTwo discuss the possible plans of action upon finding out that the aliens have a massive armada preparing to depart for Earth. There is no possible way Earth can be ready go meet it, so TheCaptain suggests disabling the subspace drive's safeguards and jumping into the heart of Altair's sun, which would trigger a supernova, ending the threat for Earth at the cost of their lives. A million years later, an organization back on Earth dedicated to studying supernovae determines that the Altair supernova was not natural and that the aliens, whose remains have been found on one of the planets, did not see it coming.

* In the Creator/StephenKing novella ''Literature/TheLangoliers'', Albert (teenage violin player) not only uses his cased violin as a weapon at one point, but improvises an even more destructive one from a tablecloth and toaster.
** Carried over in the screen adaptation. Albert swings a mean toaster.
** Also, at least in the novel, coins/keys between the fingers were pondered as a weapon. The character in question is basically [[Series/BurnNotice Michael Westen]], though.
* Another King example is ''Literature/TheMist'', where apart from one handgun, the protagonists have to scrounge monster-fighting weapons from the supermarket in which they are trapped. One elderly woman has great success using cans of Raid.

* ''Literature/MrMercedes'' and ''Literature/FindersKeepers'' bring us the Happy Slapper, made of ball bearings in a sock. In the latter, a character uses a whiskey decanter as a makeshift weapon

* In the Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman novel Good Omens, Crowley grabs a tire iron to fight Beelzebub with. Ironically, this would be better than an actual weapon, because "It wouldn't be any good, but then, nothing would. In fact it'd be much more terrible facing the Adversary with anything like a decent weapon. That way you might have a bit of hope, which would make it worse."

** One soldier mentions the time he once saw TheBigGuy of his squad use a zombie as ''a club''.

* In TreasureIsland, [[HandicappedBadass Long John Silver]] throws his cane at a man to knock him down so he can finish him off with a knife.

* ''WorldWarZ'' has the Lobotomizer, essentially a bladed shovel made of old car steel. At this point, the government is so badly reeling that it accepts the "Lobo", and it becomes a signature anti-zombie weapon.

* Specialty of BND agent Karl Hahn in ''PhoenixForce''.

* In MercedesLackey's ''[[Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar Winds of Fate]]'', Kerowyn makes a point of training Princess Elspeth to think of anything around her as a weapon, which promptly proves its value when an assassin attacks her and she breaks a vase and cuts his throat with it.

** Also, at least in the novel, coins/keys between the fingers were pondered as a weapon. The character in question is basically [[BurnNotice Michael Westen]], though.

* RoaldDahl's ''Lamb to the Slaughter'' involves a woman using a frozen leg of lamb on her philandering policeman husband, to lethal effect. [[spoiler:Then she feeds it and the rest of the dinner to his colleagues who come to investigate.]]

* In the Creator/StephenKing novella ''TheLangoliers'', Albert (teenage violin player) not only uses his cased violin as a weapon at one point, but improvises an even more destructive one from a tablecloth and toaster.

* Another King example is ''TheMist'', where apart from one handgun, the protagonists have to scrounge monster-fighting weapons from the supermarket in which they are trapped. One elderly woman has great success using cans of Raid.
* [[TheMillenniumTrilogy Lisbeth Salander]] uses a nail gun and a golf club to save herself or other people, at different points in time.

* In the ''[[DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]]'' based ''{{Dragonlance}}'' novels, Tika the barmaid defeated a Draconian with a frying-pan. Although she only did it once, it's now seen as [[MemeticMutation her defining characteristic]].

* In Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", Zula Forthrast uses the broken shards of a DVD of the film "Love Actually" to kill a terrorist.

* In MercedesLackey's ''[[HeraldsOfValdemar Winds of Fate]]'', Kerowyn makes a point of training Princess Elspeth to think of anything around her as a weapon, which promptly proves its value when an assassin attacks her and she breaks a vase and cuts his throat with it.

* In an explicit shout-out to ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', Harry [[DresdenFiles Dresden]] tries to turn his recently-broken blasting rod into two stakes for fighting vampires. It doesn't work. He's also been known to hold mouthfuls of garlic and let vampires tackle him, and use a (steel) letter opener and nails to ward off Fae. He's killed a demon with an elevator. He was much more fond of this earlier in the series.

* Julio Poertena from the ''PrinceRoger'' series carries a big wrench, which he uses to [[PercussiveMaintenance adjust the attitude of malfunctioning gear]] and enemies in close range with equal fervour and precision.

* In MatthewReilly's ''IceStation'', gas-powered grappling hooks are used as weapons at one point. ''Very'' effectively.

* In ''[[MatthewReilly Ice Station]]'', gas-powered grappling hooks are used as weapons at one point. ''Very'' effectively.