Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[Brother Oni]

Would like to ask if any of the fellows here have opinions on stealth, and its portrayal in games. I'm attempting to design some stealth mechanics, and want to see if I have my head on straight in understanding how "stealth kills" work in reality.

Typically, sudden extreme debilitating pain is very effective in making people keel over without a sound, as the surprise stops them from crying out initially and the follow on pain causes them to lose consciousness.

Surprisingly, certain stealth kills in Assassin's Creed are actually accurate in this, as inserting a sharp piece of steel ~6 inches deep would be very effective, particularly into the brain (via the eye or the base of the skull where the spine connects) or the heart via the ribs.
Puncturing a lung would also be effective as often the goal of a stealth 'kill' is to incapacitate someone quietly rather than kill them.

I agree that stealth kills as generally depicted in media are either completely over the top (Tenchu series) or borderline ineffective as the victim would have a chance to retaliate.

- Strangulation might work, but again you've got to worry about flailing limbs hitting things and making noise. Also heavy clothing such as winter gear, or throat protection would make this trick difficult (I believe London police in the nineteenth/early twentieth centuries wore thick leather neckbands precisely for this purpose). And unlike the above methods, you can't step away from a victim immediately after delivering the strike, which means there's the potential for them to injure you. Somebody with a protected neck, or even just training and presence of mind could well pull a knife and stick it into your thigh, groin, stomach or over the shoulder into your face or neck.

A standing rear naked choke is usually quite effective combined with walking backwards which both pulls them off balance and adds their body weight to the choke.
As the article points out, when performed correctly, loss of conscious is very rapid (personal experience confirms this) so the target generally won't have time to draw a knife or otherwise sound an alarm.

About the only armour that would protect against this would be some form of rigid neck protection (padding wouldn't help), which I don't think is too common these days outside of bomb suits.

With details like slitting throats quietly... yeah, not sure if you can pull that off reliably with some technique and a lot of experience, or if it's just quite random.

Depends on the training. I vaguely remember this coming up in an earlier version of this thread and reiterating what a Royal Marine told me, you use the tip of the knife into the side of the neck, ripping out the front through all the structures in the neck (muscles, blood vessels, windpipe potentially).
Typically, you grab hold of their mouth and restrain them while they die.