Not sure if you remember this or not, but there was a commercial on TV in the past about dog treats where the announcer asks off screen, who wants treats and the dog answers ... "Me!  I'd get it myself but I don’t have thumbs!"

Well to tell you the truth, I’d never really listened that hard to the commercial. So when I heard the dog say (okay a human’s voice for the dog) “I’d get it myself but I don’t have thumbs”.  I got to thinking – "oh yeah dogs don’t have thumbs."  Or for that matter, I didn't really realize how much we 'can't' do without our thumbs.
 
So, let’s have some fun (well I thought it was fun.)  Try this:

Tape your thumb down on your dominate hand (that’s the hand you used the most.)  Then try to do everything you do in the normal course of a day (don’t cheat!) or let's make it a little easier - for an hour.

Difficult isn't it? (Admit it though - it was fun or funny!)
 
Now the reason it was so difficult is because your thumbs are opposable. Huh?  Okay, it means the thumb, unlike the fingers are capable of being placed opposite to something.  It’s how we are able to pick up and grasp things with our hands.  The thumbs actually have different articulation then the fingers. 

This oddity, if you will, sets us apart from a lot of animals, with the exception of monkey-see-monkey-do's and their second cousins, the apes.
 
Thumbs allows us to do everything from grooming ourselves, to cooking (okay some of us), to holding things and opening things – actually it allows us to do just about everything we do with our hands.
 
Think about it. How would we text!!!  Heaven forbid!!!
 
So as always I wondered how we could protect ourselves by knowing just how beneficial our thumbs were in a self-defense situation.

I read about a lot of different techniques that you can use with your thumbs or the bad guy’s thumbs for in a not-so-good situation.

For instance, by locking the bad guy’s thumb back towards his wrist and elbow; with maximum force you can create enough leverage to inflict a great deal of pain and bring a person to their knees.  This could give you a window of opportunity to follow up with a knee to the groin or stomach or even take them to the ground by continuing to apply pressure to the thumb. 

Or if you find yourself in a choke-hold with someone’s hands around your throat, grab both of the bad guy’s thumbs and bend them back opening his hold around your neck.  Again with enough force, you can actually dislocate the thumbs fairly easily this way.
 
And there’s always the gouging of the eyes with your thumbs.  Done wrong, however, the thumb gouge to the eyes is almost useless . . . but done right, it is one of the most dangerous and effective self defense techniques.  We are not talking poke here – as in, you get poked in the eye with something.  You need to get your thumbs positioned in the inside (tear duct) part of the bad guy’s eyes holding your hands around his head like you’re holding a basketball, and using the tips of your thumbs gouge away!
 
Next is a martial art’s maneuver called the ‘thumb lock’.   You take the thumb nail bed and push it back into the thumb like you were going to fold the thumb.  I know you’ve seen or even had it done to you in grade school – you know when we were all learning how to inflict pain on one another? Geeze, the fun huh?

Now there is a caveat (disclaimer) disabling may very well mean destroying the joint or breaking a bone (crack - crush) - but then we are talking your life verses their thumbs.  It’s called joint manipulation.
 
The key to ‘thumb-wars’ is, most people are not thinking about their exposed fingers and thumbs – and – they definitely aren't thinking about protecting them. 

Your strategy, focus on what the bad guys aren’t – their thumbs.

Where is thumbkin … where is thumbkin … here I am … here I am

- Survivor Jane

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