Amok!

This is coolbert:

Upon becoming a colonial power when being ceded the Philippines by Spain after the Spanish-American War of 1898, American military personnel in the Philippines came upon an interesting phenomenon.

This is the phenomenon of amok [amuck].

The English word amuck comes from the Filipino word.

Refers to a person who runs around in a crazed, frenzied fashion with an edged weapon, usually a bolo knife [machete] in their hands.

Cutting and slicing to death anyone that gets in their way.

Before these people are killed, and that is the only way of stopping them, they usually are able to kill or maim seriously dozens of persons in their frenzy.

And killing them is the only way to stop them.

And killing them is not easy.

Vital organs will have to pierced through and even then the perp will keep going, much as an automaton would be. You are not able to subdue such a person.

Now, the phenomenon of amok is found in areas of the world where Malay people live. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The phenomenon has been studied and no explanation can be offered as to why these people go off the beam and do what they do. Other than the somewhat common factor of being the only child in the family, no rational cause has been determined.

The brain seems to leave the body and the normal sensations of pain no longer exist for the persons gone amok.

A famous video was shot of an assassination attempt on Imelda Marcos.

The assassin pulled a bolo knife out from underneath his barong [shirt], and stabbed Mrs. Marcos dozens of time, his arm working like a piston, again automaton like. The two body guards on either side of Mrs. Marcos shot this guy eighteen times prior to his falling to the ground. You could see his body twitching with each shot impacting, but the many bullets he absorbed seemed not to stop him.

Now, in the initial years of the American occupation of the Philippines, American troops came across the amok phenomenon in a military sense. Moro [muslims] insurgents would go amok and attack American troops. A very famous account of one such attack reads as follows [I am paraphrasing]:

"From one hundred yards out, the Moro attacked the guard at Jolo, a short sword in either hand. The guard opened fire with highpower rifles [Krags]. The Moro got within five yards of the guard, stumbled and fell. The bugler dispatched [killed] the Moro with a shot to the head with his forty-five caliber revolver. Upon examination, the Moro was found to have been shot four times in the body, and six additional times in the extremities."

Now, think about this! The Moro charged the guard [ten men], with two short swords, knowing that he was going to die. The guard fired at this guy and hit him ten times. But the Moro was only killed when he stumbled and was killed by a head shot from a forty-five revolver!!??

It was not uncommon in the Phillipines for a Moro gone amok to charge American officers, who would empty their thirty-eight caliber ACP revolvers into the Moro, but still to have the Moro reach them, and slice the American officers to death with his bolo knife, the Moro dying in the process, but achieving his goal. These experiences persuaded the U.S. Army to adopt the forty-five caliber autoloader pistol as it's standard sidearm.

Afterthought. The "true" Filipino martial art of Arnis incorporates features of Spanish fencing, knife fighting, and unarmed combat into a unique martial arts form.

These martial artists are reputed to be the most dangerous of all martial artists in the world. Can close on a man with a side arm and slash that man to death faster than the man with the side arm can draw his weapon and fire.

Oriental edged martial arts forms rely upon the slash as the primary wounding technique, in contrast to the western edged weapon forms of fighting, which rely upon the stab.

coolbert.