Cossack whip - a military weapon or sacramental attribute

Hand-to-hand experts have long established that a person with a knife at a distance of three to four meters, in most cases, is much more dangerous than a person with a pistol. This is due to the fact that when carrying a pistol concealed, it takes much more time to bring it into combat condition compared to a knife.

At the same time, the human brain is designed in such a way that rarely can it control several actions at once, unless these actions are reflexive. Like, say, a special forces soldier who has spent years practicing snatching a pistol from a holster while simultaneously removing the safety, chambering a cartridge, and moving the barrel to the aiming line. Most likely, the criminal will be a “green Rambo” who recently bought an injury or a thug with a knife who felt like the master of the alley.

No less dangerous is an attack on a person by stray or fighting dogs. Sometimes such an attack causes even more fear and numbness in the victim than an attack by hooligans, because there is no chance of reaching an agreement with the dog.

Unfortunately, in modern Russia, as in most civilized countries, it is now not customary to walk with a sword at your side. The maximum that few residents of megacities allow themselves is to carry a folding knife in their pocket or purse, and even fewer people can use it as a weapon of self-defense.

At the same time, not all public places can be entered with a knife in your pocket, since the practice of installing frame metal detectors and hand-held scanners at establishment security is increasingly being used, and during a personal search, even drinks in glass containers can be confiscated. However, no one is surprised that people with criminal intentions manage to go everywhere not only with bladed weapons, but even with firearms.

As a result, law-abiding citizens find themselves empty-handed and with thoughts in their heads: “Eh,... barrel... knife...” And then, after robbery or violence, a period comes when everyone is strong in hindsight: “I wanted to buy a whip... with it I would have gone through metal detectors, in the belt it would not take up space in the pocket, would not pull the belt, would not attract the attention of security, and by law it is not considered a weapon. I could have gotten her in the arms and neck... I could have knocked her out, but... I didn’t buy it, I didn’t take it with me...”

DIY whip: types

Classic Don whip
Since ancient times, the whip has been considered a military weapon, although initially it only decorated the Cossack’s dress uniform. Later it was used in battle as an auxiliary gunpowder weapon, as well as a weapon for punishing guilty Cossacks. In peacetime, the whip began to be used for hunting.

There are two types of whips: Don and Kuban. The Don whip is characterized by the presence of a handle 30-40 cm long, a whip 1.5-2 meters long, as thick as an arm. It delivers sharp blows, and this sharpness is achieved due to the ring connecting the handle and the whip. The Kuban is characterized by a shorter handle (20 cm), which is woven into the whip itself, due to which it takes the same shape as it. Unlike the Don, it is suitable for delivering snap blows.

How to weave a whip with your own hands

Diagonal weaving
The Kuban whip was traditionally woven from rawhide beef leather. The flap was divided into four stripes, tapering downward. The weaving of a whip began with a handle into which horsehair or a wooden stick was inserted. Gradually, the hair or stick was braided with strips of leather, and a loop (lanyard) was made at the base. Next, the shock part of the whips was woven, into which horsehair was also inserted. At the end of the whip, a special leather pocket was made where a bullet or other heavy load was placed. The handle was often decorated with fringe or other decorations.

In modern conditions, not everyone manages to get horsehair, so there are many more ways to make a Kuban whip with your own hands. Here is one of them:

1. For the base, a nylon cord 80 cm long and 10 mm thick, as well as an aluminum tube with a diameter of 12 mm, is used.
2. The tube is wrapped with a nylon cord, one end is inserted inside it to a depth of approximately 10 cm. Each layer is applied with lubrication with wax so that the nut is waterproof.
3. Next, strips of leather are cut; this can be done using a regular stationery knife. To make it enough, a whip 80 cm long will require 1.5 m of leather.
4. The strips are cut so that each of them tapers 1 mm from the bottom after 25 cm from the beginning. There should be 8 stripes.
5. Using an edge cutter, each strip must be processed.
6. The strips are screwed to the base so that those that go from left to right are wound first, and then the opposite ones. The end is secured with threads.
7. After this, the actual weaving begins: two right and two left ones are intertwined in a checkerboard pattern in front, the next ones will go from behind. The weaving pattern can be seen in the photo.
8. A thickening is made where the spanking knot will be located.
9. The tip of the handle is sealed with a piece of leather, and a fringe is made on it.
10. The lanyard can be removable or non-removable.

You can watch the video in more detail on how to weave a Cossack combat whip with your own hands.

Recommendations

An example of modern materials is textolite

For the manufacture of whip handles, hard types of wood are traditionally used - beech, oak, ash, acacia. The material should be durable but light. Of modern such materials, you can use textolite, ebonite, but not light metal alloys. To make a whip, it is recommended to use natural rawhide. It must be soaked before weaving in ordinary water - the weaving process will become much easier, and after the leather dries, the weave will become stronger.

To determine the correct size of the whip, you need to extend your hand in front of you and rotate the whip in a vertical position: it should not reach the face of the person rotating it.

The shape of the slap (the leather bag at the end of the striking part of the whip, into which a weight is placed to enhance the blow) should be trapezoidal; this is the most convenient shape. It is best not to make the slap in one piece, but to leave room for lacing. This is necessary in order to be able to remove the weight from the pocket. For the load, it is recommended to use a piece of lead the size of a 5.45 mm bullet or directly a bullet from a hunting rifle.

To prevent the handle from becoming too thick, before braiding it is necessary to reduce its diameter by an amount that is equal to the thickness of the strips of leather used for braiding.

What is the advantageous difference between a whip and a knife?

1. According to the Criminal Code, a whip is not considered a weapon.
2. It is quite difficult to kill a person by accident with a whip. You can instantly injure, cause a painful shock, immobilize, but not kill. That is, the defender will not have problems under the heading of exceeding the necessary self-defense.
3. The striking distance with a whip exceeds the striking distance with a knife.
4. The speed of movement of the warhead of the whip is several times higher than the speed of movement of the enemy’s hand, burdened by the weight of his weapon.
5. The whip easily passes through any metal detectors and inspection areas.
6. The whip does not need to be removed from the safety lock or placed in a combat position - it is always ready for battle.
7. A safe is not required to store and care for the whip - it hangs beautifully by the door and you will never forget it when leaving home.
8. Owning a whip does not require attending special expensive knife fighting courses or a shooting range.
9. A whip can be worn on a belt under a T-shirt in summer, and in the sleeve of a jacket or coat in winter. Have you tried to take a gun out from under your coat in winter? And in the summer you can go with a holster on your belt.
10. The price of a combat whip is much less than the price of a good knife, much less a pistol, and you do not need to obtain a permit to purchase and carry it.

DIY Don whip

Don whip with shalyga
The process of how to weave a Don whip is slightly different from making a Kuban whip in that the whips have a different design. For the handle you will need a thin wooden handle 30-40 cm long. Similar to making a Kuban whip, strips of leather are cut, tapering downwards. As a core, you can use the same leather as for the braid, only in this case two strips are taken and twisted around its axis to give it a round cross-section and elasticity. A small weight is added to the slap and braided inside. A leather fringe is attached to the end opposite the slap. When the slap and the main part are woven, you can begin to attach the whip clamp to the handle. An ordinary ring from a bunch of keys can serve as such a fastener, but it must be large in diameter. Next, the handle is made: a hole is drilled in the center of the stick, into which strips of leather are fastened, covered with a tight thread on top. The weaving of the handle is carried out in the same way as in the manufacture of the Kuban whip. The hole is closed with a piece of leather and attached to a whip with a retaining ring. The arapnik is ready.

Examples[edit]

Religion[edit]

• Gospels: Jesus himself, with all His love for mankind, once drove all the traders out of the temple with the help of a makeshift whip made of rope. Nowhere is it said, by the way, that He beat people or even cattle with this weapon. He turned over the tables, that's for sure. This appears to be the only time the Son of God was truly angered.

Literature[edit]

• The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion: Balrogs. The fiery scourge is the signature weapon of these demons of Melkor. In the other hand they usually hold some other weapon - a sword there, a mace or an ax.
• “Wolfhound” - an example of a drunken driver serves as an epigraph in this article. By the way, according to Wolfhound’s mental assumptions, a careless whip bearer knows how to knock a fly off a horse’s ear with the tip of his whip and is unlikely to have ever seriously whipped the horses themselves. In addition, in penal servitude, Wolfhound gained freedom (and a nickname) by finishing off with his bare hands an overseer nicknamed Wolf, who came out against him with a whip and dagger.
• “In Steel Thunderstorms” by E. Junger - in hand-to-hand combat with the British, German stormtroopers, in addition to the owners of traditional sabers, knives, batons, also met with an individual armed with a barbed wire whip - one of the heroes even got hit in the face with this thing, although he was lucky and at least he wasn't blind.
• “Carp and the Dragon”, a dilogy by G. L. Oldie - due to the fact that the merciful Buddha Amida granted Japan, at the height of a bloody war, fukkatsu (instant rebirth of the killed in the body of a killer), deadly weapons are no longer used - and samurai instead of katana and wakizashi They began to wear long and short whips. The best thing is to teach the insolent a lesson without killing him.
• “The Witcher Saga” - “lamia” whips with blades and hooks woven into them, a common weapon of all sorts of scumbag bandits. An extremely unpleasant weapon that leaves permanent scars, which is why in many areas the mere possession of a lamia is punishable by law. In Novigrad, by the way, these whips were chosen by the fighting monks of the Church of Eternal Fire.
• “A Song of Ice and Fire” The Dothraki use the whip for combat purposes - more often if they need to immobilize a horse or person by lashing their legs.
• In the books, the “Sand Snake” Obariah Sand used a whip as a weapon along with a spear. In the series, for some reason, this weapon was given to her sister Nymeria, who in the books specialized in knives.

Cinema[edit]

• “The Headless Horseman” - in the Soviet film, Maurice Gerald (Oleg Vidov) uses a whip in the final battle with Cassius Colhoun. He knocks the revolver out of Colhoun's hands and then drives him into the abyss.
• Iron Man 2 - Ivan Vanko wields two energy whips.
• Zorro! He knows how to swing an awkward weapon so well that he can even draw the letter Z with it.
• Indiana Jones is extremely skilled with a whip. He often uses it for peaceful purposes - in fact, because of it, such use is mentioned in the introduction.
• From Dusk Till Dawn - Tom Savini really knows how to do tricks with a whip, so they let him show it off as his character "Sex Machine." True, when he turned into something similar to either a dog or a rat, he himself was beheaded
  with his own whip.
• UnderWorld - deconstruction: vampires constantly try to use cutting multi-link whips in hand-to-hand combat against werewolves, but never in all the films has such a whip helped defeat a werewolf in battle

TV series[edit]

• "Xena, Warrior Princess" - Among other weapons, Xena is very good with a whip. By the way, when the heroine was young and stupid, she herself was once, by grabbing pieces of armor and clothing with a whip, stripped to the limits appropriate for a teenage series by the Queen of the Amazons, whom Xena dared to attack.
• “The Amazing Journeys of Hercules” - here the real-life battle-woman from Greek myths, Atalanta, skillfully uses a battle whip (although she appears only once).

Animated series[edit]

• Castlevania (Netflix) - the Vampire Killer magic whip, taken straight from the game, is the main weapon of vampire hunter Trevor Belmont. At some point, he replaced his whip with a magic flail found in his family’s ancestral castle, but not for long: in the finale of the third season, in a battle with one huge monster, Trevor, with a flail in one hand and a whip in the other, epically whipped the monster to death.
• RWBY - it is the stack that Beacon's senior instructor Glynda Goodwitch uses as her weapon. True, much more often she uses it for its intended purpose - to reason with particularly violent students, and in battle she does not fight with it, but focuses her telekinetic abilities. Ilya Amitola, a young Huntress working as an assassin for the White Fang, is armed with a techno-magical whip with a built-in Dust mechanism, allowing the girl to enhance her blows with elemental energies. She most often uses Electric Dust to stun enemies she hits.

Anime and manga[edit]

• Berserk - One of Guts's opponents, the elder of the Kushan clan of assassins Bakiraka Silat, is armed with a pair of multi-tailed flexible urumi blades in addition to katar daggers and throwing chakra hoops.
• Lost Universe - Kali, the Nightmare assassin, uses an energy whip that can easily cut even massive steel structures.
• Re: Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu - by the 5th arc, Subaru had learned to use a whip at a good level. But to his regret, this “not bad” is only enough to escape from his opponents with superhuman abilities.

Comics[edit]

• DC Comics - Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman. The whip as a weapon complements the image of the anti-heroine, dressed in a blatantly fetishistic catsuit.
• Marvel Comics - Mark Scarlotti, aka Whiplash, is an enemy of Iron Man and the prototype for Ivan Vanko, mentioned in the Movies section. He has talent in handling a whip, and also managed to make himself an incredibly powerful weapon of this type, which cuts through everything, except perhaps adamantium.

Board games[edit]

• Mordheim (Skirmish for Warhammer Fantasy) - if an ordinary whip is a very stupid weapon, giving minus one to strength and distinguished only by the ability to bypass shields, then the iron whip, unique to the Sisters of Sigmar faction, is already an extremely good argument in brawls between warp stone hunters, devoid of all the shortcomings of its leather brother.
• Warhammer 40,000 - here whips, this time, however, electric ones, are also loved by churchmen - for example, it is the electric whip that every commander of the Repentian Sisters detachment (penal battalion of the Sisters of Battle) carries with her, and a pair of these are built into each hand of the arcoflagellant - the church combat cyborg , made from a reforged heretic. The Drukhari, who are passionate about sadomasochism and slavery, love whips, especially their gladiator “witches.” And the Chaos also put especially large power whips on their combat vehicles like Helbrutes, Defilers and Fiends. In addition, the energy whip was used by the primarch Corvus Corax.

Video games[edit]

• AFK Arena - The demoness Meriga uses a whip as a weapon. Which is not surprising, since she is a succubus and dressed in an extremely fanservice manner.
• Bayonetta - the whip is one of the main character's many additional weapons, which, coupled with the costume, only complements her image of a dominatrix.
• Bloodborne - One of the hunter's starting weapons that can be selected at the beginning of the game is the whip cane. The least powerful of the starting weapons, but the fastest and the damage scales more from agility rather than strength. Possibly an homage to the Castlevania series.
• Castlevania - the Vampire Killer whip, passed down in the Belmont family from generation to generation and regularly used by its representatives to fight Dracula and his army, has become the main symbol of this game series. They can also break candlesticks and knock out throwing axes, holy water and fried chickens from them - don’t ask how, it’s just possible.
• Dark Souls - There are three combat whips in the game, and this entire weapon class is arguably the worst along with combat fists. Not only do they cause monstrously little damage and are quite slow, but they also cannot perform a critical hit or repost, as well as a fall strike. But the worst thing is that the whips constantly cling to walls and all surrounding objects. And yet, whips have one single advantage - they cannot be parried, but with such damage and constant clinging to walls, this advantage is very dubious. This class of weapon is ideal for those who want to make the game even more difficult.
• Diablo II - the toad-like Overseers in the fifth act, including the quest Shank, are armed with thorny whips. This is used not only against the player character, but also to turn the wards (no less toad-like slaves) into kamikaze berserkers, trying to run up to the main character and explode.
• Dead Cells - the main character has three types of combat whips in his arsenal, each with its own characteristics. The main advantages of using them are that they hit far (despite being considered a melee weapon) and ignore enemy shields when attacking.
• Double Dragon - Linda! A punk villain with a whip, also dressed in a very BDSM style. In the crossover with Battletoads, on the third level, crowds of “dominatrixes” copied from her in approximately the same clothes roam around, and for an inexperienced player two of them are like death with a scythe.
• Dragon Quest - in this series, whips are usually a fairly effective class of weapon, because in one blow they can hit a group of enemies, and the most advanced ones can hit all of them at once. Whips are most often used by female characters in this series, and generally the more fanservicey a girl is, the more likely it is that one of the weapon classes available to her will be a whip.
• Final Fantasy VIII - Quistis wields a whip made of metal links.
• Hades - Furies are armed with whips. Actually, this is their working tool - they torture sinners in hell.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III - Demons of the Abyss (aka Spawn of Evil) and their improved versions of the Lord of the Abyss (aka Fiends of Hell). The latter not only fight with whips, but also materialize new demons from the corpses of their allies.
• Kingdom Rush: Frontiers - Saurian Brutes are armed with light whips with enormous damage. If it comes to hand-to-hand combat with them, then any of the player’s soldiers (either nimble assassins, armored templars, or gnomes under medicinal beer) will go down in packs. Heroes won't last long either.
• Kingdom Rush: Origins - For the Twilight Whip Busters, the commander-overseers of the local dark elves, whips serve not only as weapons, but also as a means of motivating their allies. Prompted mobs run to the exit much faster. The elf herself is not very dangerous in battle, but if she is killed, she will curse the nearest player tower, disabling it for 10 seconds.
• PROTOTYPE - Mercer can grow a battle whip straight from his hand. It’s a useful thing: it hits far and hurts (if you want, you can even shoot down a helicopter flying overhead), and it also looks epic.
• Team Fortress 2 - Disciplinary Action, a melee weapon for the Soldier. It does little damage when hit, but is useful from the point of view of supporting the team: if you hit an ally with this whip, he will significantly speed up for a while.
• Terraria is the Summoner's secondary weapon. Whips work as melee weapons, but deal summoning damage. When the Summoner hits an enemy with the whip, the summoned creatures attack that enemy.