"Berserker"Moment

[LASur5r]

Talking of a lot of experiences where you all have had a combat moment in your life...just curious...I have read of times in the days where the good guy, champion, hero, had to face multiple opponents in open combat and they, the good guy, went completely into a "berserker" mode and they came out of the fight, but not remembering what happened.

Anybody have a "berserker" moment that you'd like to share? Thanks.

[Erich]

In my "bad old days" I had some fights. Quite a lot, by civilized standards. I feel sort of stupid talking about this - I don't want to sound like I'm strutting around here being all badass, because I'm a Christian and I really try not to fight nowadays.

I had a head injury (frontal lobe) when I was 16, and during the first ten years thereafter had very serious anger management issues. (My family agrees that I woke up with a different personality than I'd had.) (There are still moments when I have troubles.) After the head trauma, I began experiencing "berserk" moments during hostile situations.

There were several fights when I would get into a weird "berserk" state. My voice changed (drastically), and I was unbelievably full of adrenaline. I felt stronger, and I was clearly scarier. It freaked my friends out, and concerned them (even some guys who were more into fighting than I was). My thinking sort of "tunnelled out" to where my only focus was smashing and hurting. I did not experience loss of memory - just a sharpening of focus on exactly what I was doing and nothing more.

During these moments nothing that happened to me seemed to hurt, and frankly I don't think I wound up as injured afterward as I should have in several instances. I would not stop fighting when I should have stopped fighting. In one instance three of my friends had to beat me up to get me to stop beating this guy's head against a pole (he'd kicked me in the yarbles to show off his kung fu prowess). My friends had sort of started the fight (they were more aggro than I ever have been), and they were really freaked out by the way I'd gotten.

It did not happen in every fight I was in, and it happened on several occasions where I wound up not fighting (in which case I started shaking pretty dramatically and uncontrollably, and felt like I needed to drink a whole lot of liquor quickly so I didn't hurt anything). It probably happened a couple of times a year until I was about 28. It hasn't happened in a long time, and I really try not to go there. I'm pretty sure I could still go back into this weird state if I were in a fight. I try really really hard not to get in fights.

Anyway, like I said, I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be a tough guy. I'm so glad that I have myself more under control now, and I pray I never lose it again.

[Skorzeny]

Was this a Chuck Norris movie or a Bruce Lee one? I got it - Jackie Chen flick, wasn't it?

In all seriousness, surviving a violent encounter with multiple opponent requires the following:

1. A weapon (an equalizer).
2. A very, very good luck (the kind that turns you into a religious person).
3. Extremely stupid and inexperienced opponents.
4. High proficiency in serious self-defense training, particularly in multiple opponent training.
5. Or all of the above.

When I was a young man (and very, very mal-adjusted), I once got into a fight with twenty guys (okay, maybe not quite twenty, but enough that I could not count them all in a couple of seconds). I got royally pounded into the pavement (I do remember turtling and getting kicked on the back of my head, but not much else), but I survived, because a police car showed up and dispersed the guys.

Yeah, actually, come to think of it, that's about the only thing I remember (turtling and getting kicked in the head and the cop who "woke" me up). I think that's called memory loss.

Skorzeny

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For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. Sun Tzu

[MTAA]

lol Skorzeny. We had this scottish echange student in highschool that was jumped by about seven or eight guys at a party. He was kicked and beaten pretty badly, had two 40 ounce malt liquor bottles broken over his head. He just got up, covered in blood, sat down in an easy chair and kept on drinking. Now that was classic ! As far as berzerker ? goes I dunno, never happened to me. I once hit a guy so cleanly that I didn't feel a thing, I thought I whiffed and that he had tripped.

[Erich]

Reading back over the original post, I realized it concerned combat against multiple opponents. My "berserker" thing was merely a rage, a loss of control to stop and increase in focus on inflicting injury, probably related to the coup-contracoup injury to my frontal lobe. It certainly never enabled me to fight more than one person at once.

And like I said, I don't want to lose control like this ever again. This is the sort of thing that's brought up as a diminished capacity defense in murder cases. Head injuries can make people weird.

Again, no multiple opponents. I was just reponding to the "berserker" element of the question.

[RHC]

Theodore Roosevelt described the feeling he had in combat by saying "The wolf rose in my throat."