In my younger days, when I wasn't always as nice as I am now, I've been on both ends of this.

Run your hand up your neck feeling your vertebrate, then you should be able to feel the base of your skull. That's the place where I got hit when I was 13, I woke up with a concussion, mild one at that after I was knocked out.

So I believe that's where your place is.

EDIT: Spelt a simple word wrong.

Once was for about 10 seconds in a game of field hockey. The guy took a golf swing and connected just above my right elbow. I was in significant pain when I came round and I still have a tiny dent above that eye.

The second time, he decided to kill a tiny fly with his cricket bat. A fly, as you may have guessed, does not have much stopping power. He swung through and connected with my chin. Next thing I knew I was on the ground. I found out five years later that I'd been out for about 30 seconds and they'd all been pooping themselves. Hardly any pain and no real side effects.

Have no idea why that's the case, but maybe it helps in an anecdotal way

http://kidshealth.org/kid/ill_injure/aches/concussion.html

This one's a little more specific.

http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~cahr/headfall.html

And maybe one more, just for fun:

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/articles/scni18a2.htm

She drops to the floor, and I was convinced as a reader that it was plausible.

Do not attempt to knock someone unconscious with a single blow unless you are willing to risk having that person remain conscious and pissed or risk killing said person.

Hitting too hard on the back of the head may cause blindness; the vision center of the brain is in back, in the occipital area. That indentation you can feel as you run your fingers up your neck, to the base of the skull, is where your spinal cord enters the brain (obviously), so being struck there too hard can paralyze or kill.

Striking someone "behind the ear" can kill as well; it's the mastoid process, and is very sensitive. Press on yours a bit, and you can feel it.

The skull under one's forehead is the strongest part of the whole structure, which makes sense really, being the part of the skull that may slam into things accidentally (like when swinging through trees?) Maybe that's why a good portion of "higher" thinking resides in the frontal lobes underneath, I don't know.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I'd want to be struck into unconsciousness via any portion of my brain. I often wonder how in some TV shows, when one of the main characters gets knocked out on a regular basis, he or she doesn't develop permanent brain damage.

It helps if you're as strong and dextrous as a Vulcan, at least compared to your target. You should practice on someone you're not afraid of killing or badly injuring, because it's easy to screw up and crush the wind-pipe, break the collarbone, or cause brain damage. I'd just go with a head-butt myself, but I can't see many situations where I'd want to knock someone out without taking any risk of killing.

"...the carotid baroceptors (the things that control blood pressure) are located right below the angle of the jaw. Hitting one of them will cause paroxysms of the heart and could lead to rapid unconsciousness or fibrillation."

Some people have tougher jaws. Some have the proverbial "glass jaw"--one good punch and they're out.

But keep in mind, some people get knocked out cold, while other recover within seconds.

1: I was whacked in the face with an iron bar that snapped the septum leaving it floating free, it also opened the nasal cavity so that blood bubbled from a hole near where the nose meets the brow. It did not kill nor knock me out but left me black-eyed and bandaged. (This was the state I was in when I met my wife... hmmm).

2: Another was a severe whack on the forehead when I collided at speed with a basement mooring. The most disturbing thing was that I could not control my eyes, they were shuddering. It was awful. I was totally useless but never lost consciousness.

PS: A friend of mine used to wear his baseball cap under his hard-hat... I don't know why. Anyway, one day a plank fell and hit him on the head, not very hard but a definite whack. Soon blood started pouring out from under his hard-hat. The blow had caused the metal button on the top of the cap to pierce his scalp in a perfect crescent. It was cool.

PPS: I did not contribute much to the discussion but it certainly was cathartic... thanks

Think of boxing again. The big fat gloves prolong the fight because the surface area of the impact is spread out and cushioned. In the old bare knuckle days a bout rarely lasted more than 3-4 rounds, and usually ended by the first two, because the surface area of the impact was smaller so the damage was more localized and there was less cushion. Now think of a pistol or dagger butt. Relatively same amount of force, but applied in the right place can cause a greater jarring of the brain to render subject unconscious much easier than a fist.

Knocking someone out in this way is called a concussion. These are commonly caused by blows to the side of the head. The temples are the main weak point, followed by the side of te skull's peak and just above the temples.

The junction between the top most vertebrae and skull are a weak point on the human body so hitting someone there will cause it as well. There are also major nerves there that when pinched will do the job. That also makes it a very dangerous place to hit, and could easily paralyse of kill someone if too much force is applied.

Another is an upper cut under the jaw (this is why you see boxers with vicious uppercuts win so much). There is a nerve weakpoint above the jawbone that can temporarily stop motor function.

The nose and temples are other weak spots. The temples are the softest place on the skull, and the nose is just weak.

Any overload to the nervous system will cause unconsciousness as well, though more difficult to do. Thus a sufficiently hard kick to the male genitalia can render man unconscious.

I'm sure there are more nervous weakpoints that experts know, but those are the basics.

Other knock out blows, if you can catch someone off guard, is under the ribs cage. A strong enough hit will push up the diaphram and shoot all the air out of the lungs, rendering the opponent temporarily unable to respond to attack.

@Survivor: A lot of that depends on weight and strength advantage. If a 300 pounder who is more muscle than fat lays a heavy blow on a 150-200 pounder, it's not going to matter how much muscle tension they can muster, they're going to take damage and possibly go down.

Secondly, bare knuckle fighters don't hit the thick parts of the skull. They aim for the weak points, such as the jawbone, mouth, nose, side of the face (knuckles connect on the cheeckbone), and ear, where a bare knuckle punch can inflict serious damage. All head blows, if land correctly, are done with the pointer and middle finger knuckles doing the majority of the damage. Those knuckles are a strong point on the hand, have a small surface area and provide little padding for the blow, thus inflict the maximum damage to the opponent while causing relatively small damage to the attacker.

I have to reiterate the points about boxing. A three hundred pound fighter wearing gloves might well be able to knock a smaller opponent across the room with a body blow, but the actual damage will not be what it could have been without gloves. On the other hand, that same blow delivered against the head will be far more effective with gloves. The relative strength of your knuckles to the target's "weak points" on the head is a huge variable, a bigger variable than relative body mass. It's also a lot more difficult to gauge accurately prior to attempting a blow. Smart bare knuckle fighters don't aim for the head at all, the hard impacts you can deliver with your knuckles are far more effective against softer and more accessible targets on the body. Aiming blows at the head is only advantageous when you're wearing gloves or using a weapon.

I boxed at Notre Dame; we studied the causes of knock-out a bit (so as to more reliably cause them). Blows--especially a punch to the jaw--cause unconciousness by forcing the skull to rotate faster than the brain. The brain slams into the wall of the skull, and then it's nighty-night time.

Survivor is right about the gloves, too. They make fights more brutal, not less. And a couple of exceptionally heavy hitters I know used to pack eggcrate foam in their gloves to keep from breaking their hands. There just isn't any way to hit someone in the head without hurting yourself. Strikes to the nose and mouth might leave you with skinned knuckles if you're lucky; solid strikes anywhere else are likely to leave you with a fracture. Sometimes the injuries can be worse (I once saw a guy hit another guy in the face at a party. The victim was knocked out cold. The aggressor had three broken bones and four of the victim's teeth stuck inside of his hand--one of which severed a tendon).

"What are you staring at?" Hideously Disfigured Character snapped.

"N-nothing," the bellhop stammered. "But...but, sir, your eye..."

"What about my eye?" HDC snarled.

"It's...it's sliding down your cheek, sir. And I think you lost your big toe in our lobby."

Zero, I like the rag with ether - or some more modern anastheic(sp).

BTW, why don't the airbags ever deploy in movies where the car keeps going and going and going crash after crash after crash?

quote:

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In the old bare knuckle days a bout rarely lasted more than 3-4 rounds, and usually ended by the first two, because the surface area of the impact was smaller so the damage was more localized and there was less cushion.

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A similar principle was behind the invention of modern fencing. When you deal with bladed weapons, caution and finesse beat raw power pretty consistently. If the popular method of dueling involved clubs, fencing would be a very different sport.

"What I need is a believable, realistic, actual way of knocking a person out in one blow without causing them any irrepairable harm or amnesia"

There were several comments about using a rag with ether, chloroform or a more modern anesthetic, and it seems to me that Zero liked the idea. Without adequate experience in boxing or martial arts, in my humble opinion, using an anesthetic agent is actually the best truly reliable way of making someone unconscious. However, as far as "irrepairable harm or amnesia" goes, there are no guarantees.

Anyway, Zero, if you are thinking of going with something like this, in order to make it believable you'll have to create a situation for your character where he/she is capable of obtaining the ether or chloroform in the first place. (Since they're not sold at most pharmacies. As for more modern anesthetics, some of the newer ones evaporate too quickly to be reliable on a rag.

The technique is of certain importance, of equal importance, however, is the attacker 's mindset. He has to attack without reservation and with extreme aggression. To do otherwise, or with hesitation, is to risk failing.

May seem obvious.

Like others have mentioned, there are no guarantees in such situations. However there are opportunities that you either recognise or you don't, that you have the skills to exploit or you don't. The skills and mindset of the attacker are what determines 'how' a situation like this is 'allowed' to develop.