Survival and Emergency Preparedness

When I was a kid, I loved the old movie, The Last of the Mohicans. The great white trapper relied o throwing an tomahawk. I guess that it had an impact because people buy great quantities of Cold Steel tomahawks and break them, just like throwing knives. Not a good way to handle tools.In a sense, it is a poor idea like buying a cheap "Japanese sword"(made in the PRC) instead of a machete and trying to chop things.

I make and/or restore hatchets and axes in retirement. I have learned that two inexpensive commercial tomahawks would qualify as good home or car defense tools. One is from Estwing. The other is purported not currently available, the Schrade Model 4. They come with sheaths. If you have a background in escrima or knife fighting, the length of tomahawk gives more distance from the target than a knife and cutting edges that are not on an escrima stick. If you are retired and have grandkids, it safer for them if you a tomahawk available in your home rather than a loaded firearm.

There are places where you can go and throw axes. There are even axe throwing leagues around the country.

A hatchet/tomahawk would be near the bottom of my list of self defense items except maybe in a zombie apocalypse.

I agree with Mac, a tomahawk is not on my list of top weapons. It would only be useful against an unarmed opponent and even then you need to get close.
I wholeheartedly disagree that it's safer than a gun. Any gun in a house with children should be securely stored. Quick access safes are inexpensive and reliable nowadays. Having a loose bladed weapon is absolutely not safer. Any child will gladly play with a tomahawk if possible.
This is like the fantasy of the knife fighter. Everyone wants to think they will be a ninja in a defensive situation. If a bad guy has a gun, your knife/tomahawk/krav maga is next to useless. Life isn't like John Wick. Even if the bad guy only has a knife, the blade and hand to hand classes you took at the Y ten years ago are probably not going to be the answer. I'd rather have a hefty walking stick or bat than a knife or tomahawk if a gun wasn't available. However, the idea of prepping is to not get caught gunless.

There is a lot of objective facts in which Mr. Ronin says. Without citing the laws, you will not receive a carry permit, cannot carry a gun that is loaded, must keep any gun locked up at home at all times. No, I did not have a hatchet sitting out when my kid was living at home. Yes, I had knives posted up high on doors when he lived at home. Yes, I have at least 7 walking sticks and cast iron escrima sticks. Continue to make them.

I live in a different world from I was a child. We had a high school rifle team. I had permission to have a gun on the college campus 50 years ago. It was acceptable even earlier than that to play with disabled WW2 Japanese rifles.

Fantasies? Everyone has them. The most popular one is that if shtf, you will bug out to grand pa's farm on foot. Now for the reality. As my late wife and I are leaving Afghanistan, walking through the Khyber Pass (driving a car or taking plane is not in the cards), I look straight up about 3-4000 feet. I know that there are locals crossing the border up there. I exclaim: "if I to fight up there, I wouldn't make it."

Sometimes, there are no good or perfect alternatives. They may be thrust on you. Like my dad was an officer on the Honolulu on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. There are only imperfect solutions. Yes, I know the problems of grappling - a week on morphine at Kaiser after taking a hit in a san soo class. YMCA skills class in knife fighting. No. National level instructors, some times in classes as small as two people. So what? I am not going to grapple if I can avoid it. One trick pony solutions abound in this world.

If you fly, unless you are a sky marshal, you aren't carrying a gun. What is the best defensive tool? Your brain! Look around the aircraft and look for tools. Scan your fellow passengers. Carry a flashlight and know how to use it as a defensive tool. I have probably purchased and restored (including units given as gifts to my young relatives and the auto mechanics) a couple hundred TSA confiscated knives.

I didn't know we were talking about airplanes and other places where guns aren't allowed. I was responding to keeping a knife or tomahawk for HD when you have kids in the home.
I think you'd also draw some flack if you had a tomahawk in any of those places guns aren't allowed. Another possible win for a walking stick. Hopefully you don't run into any armed assailants when you are limited to cutting or impact weapons. A gun still trumps most anything.

it trumps. use a defensive pen. have 4.

I wonder how many tomahawks (or axes, hatchets) were used in self defense last year? Or even in assaults? Not many I would guess.

Answering Mac66, probably not many.

Now I give a couple of different dimension of cast iron escrima sticks, hatchets, axes.

Shtf. You go with what you have by way of tools, not hypothetical tools. You also go with what skills exist.

So, you think that you have to live with (reality not all perfect world) and work with people who have no tools and no skills. You understand that a group may help your survival.

Price a shotgun and 50 rounds of slugs. Think of the storage volume for the same and the weight. Now price a homemade cast iron escrima stick or a Cold Steel srk knife. How many of those units can assemble or buy for the price of that shotgun? Your group would need more than one shotgun.

Your neighbors, wife, or grandchildren have no shooting skills. Now you have to take time to impart skills. I can teach a small group of people escrima movements in an hour. Thereafter, they can practice on their own. Maybe I come back a few days later and have members of the group demonstrate the movements. Think about how much time and noise making expensive ammo you are use teaching shooting. Conversely, I was trained by a Ghurka how to use the knife in trench clearing/night fighting. Remember 50 years in South Vietnam that a whole barracks had their throats slit at night. That skill is teachable. My knife instruction goes back many years to Steve Tarani. I can teach what he taught.

Another dimension. Your guns are not grandfathered in. One day, because you followed the law and had your guns registered, an unsympathetic government decides to take away your whiz bang. Ok. Now you have to scramble.

Of course, Mac66 doesn't have to consider what I have said. I happen to be urban. So I am concerned with survival in a group. Conversely, I am the manager of a 700 acre sharecropped farm and a 120 acre woodlot with game. I expect those properties to be overrun within a week of shtf and people go looking for food.

I have a black- Hawk... It throws awesomely.

Present use of Tomahawks in US military: Presently, the U.S. military adopted a modern tomahawk for use in current hostile situations in the mid-east. The U.S. Army Stryker Brigade employs tomahawks in Afghanistan and the device is used by several American reconnaissance platoons in Iraq. A tomahawk is included in each Stryker fighting vehicle as part of a “tool kit.” They are to be used for hand-to-hand combat and for taking down doors and entering buildings. In addition to combat, soldiers use tomahawks to open crates, dig trenches, remove road obstacles and knock out improvised explosive devises (IED) and detonate landmines. Tomahawk’s used by the U.S. military are manufactured by the American Tomahawk Company based in Byesville, Ohio and the Gerber Corporation.