What is the most efficient way to kill someone ...

A difficult but effective method is to insert a length of piano wire through the ribs and puncture the pericardium. It's hard to detect since there's a very small wound and not much blood.

Efficiently: Grab some rubber gloves and the nearest sharp object. Aim for the vitals (throat, heart, lungs, stomach). Genitals are also good, provided you have time to let them bleed out.

Inefficient, but cool: Jury rig a garrote and go to town.

Cyanide.

He's asking for fast, people. Not "inventive", not "undectectable", not "badass".

For fast you want to almost but not quite sever a major artery — the carotid in the throat or the femoral in the groin (If you sever it completely, the ends will pull back a little bit and the muscles surrounding them will contract and act as a pressure pad. It won't do enough, but it will slow the bleeding a bit.); destroy the brainstem (back of the skull, at the very top of the neck.); or put something large into the heart muscle to interfere with its beat.

Crushing the larynx is slow and might not be fatal (asphyxiation is not fast), same for the "drive the nasal spine up into the brain".

Sticking a knife into someone's liver is nearly as quick as a major artery. If you jiggle it around or cut, it would be just as quick.

However for the ultimate in fast you want to be able to manage a single thrust, between the ribs, into the heart. It's not very convenient, however, as you're pretty likely to hit a rib rather than pull it off.

edited 23rd Aug '11 11:15:29 AM by Night

Sodium cyanide. Quick, effective, extremely painful. This or hydrogen cyanide is what the suicide pills given to spies are made of. Very, very easily traced. (You can smell it when you open the body for autopsy).

More complex explanation:

(Na CN)- normally used in gold mining (don't ask...). When ingested, in the stomach hydrochloric acid (H Cl), one of the components of stomach acid, reacts with the sodium cyanide:

Na CN + H Cl = Na Cl + HCN

Na Cl is typical table salt.

HCN is Hydrogen Cyanide, an extremely toxic gas. This gas exits the stomach via the esophagus and is then inhaled into the lungs where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. Once in your cells, the hydrogen(H+) separates from the cyanide ion (CN−).

The cyanide ion then binds to the cytochrome c oxidase protein (or is it an enzyme?), stopping its function and resulting in cell death.

If you have a longer knife you could try to get it in at midriff height in direction of the heart. Even if you don't reach the heart you still fuck up the lungs and the diafragma (if getting stabbed in the diafragma feels anything like being hit at that spot it also would hurt like fuck)

If we don't know what weapon is being used and, by extension, the situation it is being used in, it will probably take several more pages to thoroughly give an adequate explanation on the most efficient way to kill someone quickly.

For quickness, severe acute trauma to the head or spinal cord, such as neck breaking or auto-exsanguination (loss of blood).

It depends on what type if weapon you have, how much noise you can allow, and whether it is from behind (by surprise) or a face-to-face fight.

With a knife, the throat is messy. From behind, off-hand covers the mouth, use an ice pick grip to stab downward and across behind the collar bone to sever he sub-clavical artery. Less external bleeding or chance of cutting yourself than when going for the caratoid. A proper kidney stab will be fatal but might take as long as thirty seconds.

There is also the "rag doll" where you grab the target by the hair, push their chin to their chest, hand then insert a knife at the base of the skull with a twist.

Unarmed, cup the fingers of both hands around the front of the target's throat. Pull backwards and down, and bring the back of their head to your chest, then fall on top of them. Your knuckles act as a fulcrum against their chin and their skull acts as a lever: your weight combined with theirs will be enough to break the neck and sever the spinal cord.

A squirt gun full of prussic acid is quick and deadly: just one blast in the face and they are done for.

The human body does not have a conveniently located self destruct button, so If you're looking for some sort of fist of the north star pressure points it's just not gonna happen.

Just repeated blows to the back of the head can pretty much kill anyone

edited 23rd Aug '11 5:51:29 PM by joeyjojo

There's one place in the spinal cord I hear, where you can impact it hard or stab it such that it severs all bodily functions, including heart and respiratory systems. Very painful as well, but by then the meng wouldn't react much, just slump to the ground like it's sleeping gas.

Are you sure that this is for a book? What context is this even in?

Anyways, depends on a lot of factors. For example, can the person defend themselves? That can make a big difference. So can taking them by surprise. Is this a book with supernatural elements or characters that do not have human biology? If you give context to the situation, then maybe I can help out a bit more...but a lot of tropers seem to be helping right now, so you might not need my help.

Still, this is a squicky question. Even for me.

Oh, and to whoever was saying the stuff about smashing in someone's nose...umm, I'm pretty sure the "bone" you may be thinking of is the area between the nostrils. That's actually cartilage, and easily breakable which will hurt like hell if you do so. It won't kill but it will be painful. Not that I endorse this kind of behaviour.

...Yikes.

Yeah the femoral artery is one of the largest arteries in your body; it's a bitch to retrieve if it retracts into the pelvis. Not fun.

edited 23rd Aug '11 5:01:13 PM by Kino

At least once per Halloween I will joke with a female vampire about the femoral artery. It's been years since one got the joke.

So, just really fast? Stab them in the face/head... I would think that would be obvious. I mean, knife + face = death... perhaps multiple times, just to make sure...

Unless you have to be secret. In which case, I would say take a blade and shove it through the back of their neck. Can't scream (windpipe is severed) and you just opened a plenty big hole, so they'll bleed to death fast enough. And then you walk away, if it's in a crowd (which would be optimal...)

(Please skip this. Thank you.)

edited 23rd Aug '11 7:24:45 PM by JHM

I am somewhat surprised that as of yet no-one has mentioned giving the victim a sharp hammer blow to the temple or the base of the skull, both of which are very quick and extremely deadly.

Barkey mentioned it.

*...*

How did I miss that?

Assumes surprise, to a degree. 'course, a lot of these do.

The proper use of a hammer renders surprise irrelevant.

Sometimes.

About a year ago I saw a news headline about a sleeping man being beaten to death with a claw-hammer on a subway. Irreverent and unworthy, I know, but my first thought was "how the heck do you sleep through being beaten to death with a claw-hammer?"

...he was killed when the first hit came?

I mean, if the person took a hard enough swing, it probably sent the front of his brain through the back. At that point, he might not, you know, have been able to feel anything, for the short time he would have been alive afterward...