I don't know what the particular incident is, but have been thinking about this stuff recently.
Basically, fighting with weapons is dangerous. If you do it properly, people die. But, of course, we don't want people to die.
So we try to reduce the risks. There are broadly 4 ways to do that, dealing with the 4 main areas of risk - make the weapons safer, make the attacker safer, make the defender safer, or make the environment safer.
One approach, often the one chosen by re-enactment, blunts the weapons, does lots of training & weapon competancy tests, insists on helmets & padded gloves and normally fights on flat open ground. One approach, from the SCA, is to use wooden weapons, train lots, wear lots of protective armour including full face protection and normally fight on flat ground. The LARP approach sometimes focusses on reducing the weapon risk but not on dealing with the other 3 areas - we fight with foam weapons but the attackers often don't know how to fight, the defenders aren't wearing decent armour, and we're skirmishing in trees... This means that if a weapon is unsafe but no one picks up on that, there sometimes isn't anything that's stopping it becoming a complete clusterfuck. The other approaches have tried to tackle multiple areas of risks, so there's more redundancy?
I think all of them have something to learn from each other, but ultimately each system has to decide where the acceptable risk line is.
I've seen many more injuries from people tripping over in re-enactment and larp battles than from being hit, though - I think that terrain is the real risk to tackle if we want to reduce dangers. But woodland is so pretty and atmospheric to fight in, I'd hate to lose it. And the risk of tripping on top of a dead person, battlefield awareness risks, would still be high.
no subject
Basically, fighting with weapons is dangerous. If you do it properly, people die. But, of course, we don't want people to die.
So we try to reduce the risks. There are broadly 4 ways to do that, dealing with the 4 main areas of risk - make the weapons safer, make the attacker safer, make the defender safer, or make the environment safer.
One approach, often the one chosen by re-enactment, blunts the weapons, does lots of training & weapon competancy tests, insists on helmets & padded gloves and normally fights on flat open ground.
One approach, from the SCA, is to use wooden weapons, train lots, wear lots of protective armour including full face protection and normally fight on flat ground.
The LARP approach sometimes focusses on reducing the weapon risk but not on dealing with the other 3 areas - we fight with foam weapons but the attackers often don't know how to fight, the defenders aren't wearing decent armour, and we're skirmishing in trees... This means that if a weapon is unsafe but no one picks up on that, there sometimes isn't anything that's stopping it becoming a complete clusterfuck. The other approaches have tried to tackle multiple areas of risks, so there's more redundancy?
I think all of them have something to learn from each other, but ultimately each system has to decide where the acceptable risk line is.
I've seen many more injuries from people tripping over in re-enactment and larp battles than from being hit, though - I think that terrain is the real risk to tackle if we want to reduce dangers. But woodland is so pretty and atmospheric to fight in, I'd hate to lose it.
And the risk of tripping on top of a dead person, battlefield awareness risks, would still be high.