# How much can one stretch the idea of how long a person can be knocked out for?



## ironpony (Jul 3, 2019)

For my story, the main character, a cop, wants to find out who the villains are and he uses illegal methods to do it, such as computer hacking.  He won't be able to find any evidence to arrest them cause the hacking is illegal, but he wants to know who the villains are, so he can then decide later the best approach.

The villains find out their computer was hacked and think they are probably being followed by whoever did it, so they set up a trap for the main character to find out who is following them and knows who they are now.

The MC realizes it's a trap, tries to escape and a gunfight ensues.  Another cop is also following one of the villains at this time, and ends up getting shot to death in the process.

The villains end up getting the drop on the MC but decide not to kill him cause they know that he cannot use any evidence he has cause it was all the result of the illegal hacking and therefore will not hold up in court.  So they know the MC will be a legally reliable witness as a cop.

So they decide to let him go and take off, and have him explain when the police respond to the gunshots.  They figure, let's see him fail to talk his way out of this one.

But they want the main character to be there when the police arrive of course to get caught at the scene to speak.  They could knock him out but that only lasts a few seconds on average I read, so could I stretch it so that the villains believe he will be knocked out for longer?  Or what do you think?


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 3, 2019)

Think what you want to achieve rather than getting tied up in how you first thought of doing it. Lots of things might keep him there besides being unconscious, for example a bullet in the leg. Not saying it has to be that, use your imagination, it could be anything, an heroic bystander tackles him and holds him, he has some sort of accident and is detained by do-gooders, a bystander is injured and he stops to give first aid, something falls on him trapping him. Start using your imagination and there are a million possibilities, besides actually being unconscious, why he might not leave the scene.


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## epimetheus (Jul 3, 2019)

How realistic is this story? Knocking someone out is a common trope, so just have him punched in the head, then waking up to the cops. No one will question it if it is in keeping with the realism in the rest of the story.

If you're going for realistic you might want to think of something else: knocking someone out is too unreliable for the basis of a plan - though some criminal types might not realise this.


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## ironpony (Jul 5, 2019)

Okay thanks, I can take a semi-realistic approach then, thanks.

There is another scene in my story where the main character cop, is hiding from the villains, who are looking for him.  If he manages to knock one of them out, would he arrest him?  If he is unconscious, he is not going to want to carry him out, since he is danger and needs to be ready.

So would he just handcuff the unconscious perp and then try to escape the situation, or are cops now allowed to cuff unconscious perps and then leave?


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 5, 2019)

ironpony said:


> ... or are cops now allowed to cuff unconscious perps and then leave?



It's a story, they can do anything you want them to. Really, he can drink a magic potion that gives him super strength, or allows him to fly, or makes him invisible if you write it that way. Of course things as extreme as that would change the story somewhat, but cuffing a villain to a railing is not in that order of things. I reckon what he would do is send a text reporting it so he didn't die of starvation if the cop was killed or something, then switch his phone off so he didn't get a call back. One of the things with people in terrorist situations hiding has been that their friends/family hear about the situation on the radio, phone to see if they are okay, and they get shot because the phone gave them away. At least put it on silent.


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## ironpony (Jul 5, 2019)

Oh okay.  Why wouldn't the cop cuff the perp though before taking off?


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 5, 2019)

ironpony said:


> Oh okay.  Why wouldn't the cop cuff the perp though before taking off?



Don't you want him to? or did you mis-understand me? No reason why he shouldn't as I see it.


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## ironpony (Jul 5, 2019)

Oh sorry, I thought you meant he wouldn't, I read it wrong.

Well I want to do what a cop would do when one of the guys is knocked out, and then the cop has to escape.  However, if he would cuff him, I still want the villain to escape after.  Perhaps the other villains free him by bringing their own hand cuff key, just in case, they needed to get out of police cuffs, if the cop were to leave, but maybe that's too convenient of them to think that far ahead?


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## JustRob (Jul 6, 2019)

When I read that someone has been knocked out for any length of time and then recovers without serious consequences despite having had no immediate medical attention I take it that the story is science fiction. Head injuries are so unpredictable that your villains may well kill the chap by doing this anyway, so I don't see how you can claim that they decided not to. They can clearly have no qualms about possibly killing him so may as well just kill him.

I enjoyed the film _Last Action Hero_ because it openly ridiculed the mythological world that these fictional characters inhabit. However, it's just entertainment and nothing to do with real life. The typical reader will just assume that they chose not to kill the chap outright because the story needed them not to. We always find it amusing when villains, or effectively their writers, have to make lame excuses for not killing the hero. As my angel, our resident Blonde Average Reader, often says, "It's a _story_!"


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## luckyscars (Jul 6, 2019)

In the real world it’s unusual (though not impossible) for a knockout to last more than a minute or two. Longer than that and there’s usually some brain damage or death involves.

But in the movie Independence Day, Will Smith knocks out an alien with one punch that last long enough for him to haul the alien across a vast salt flat to Area 51. Did anybody start throwing rotten tomatoes at the screen? 

No, they didn’t, and there is your answer.


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## ironpony (Jul 6, 2019)

JustRob said:


> When I read that someone has been knocked out for any length of time and then recovers without serious consequences despite having had no immediate medical attention I take it that the story is science fiction. Head injuries are so unpredictable that your villains may well kill the chap by doing this anyway, so I don't see how you can claim that they decided not to. They can clearly have no qualms about possibly killing him so may as well just kill him.
> 
> I enjoyed the film _Last Action Hero_ because it openly ridiculed the mythological world that these fictional characters inhabit. However, it's just entertainment and nothing to do with real life. The typical reader will just assume that they chose not to kill the chap outright because the story needed them not to. We always find it amusing when villains, or effectively their writers, have to make lame excuses for not killing the hero. As my angel, our resident Blonde Average Reader, often says, "It's a _story_!"



Oh okay, but a lot of times in fiction, the villain will leave the hero alive, if they can be used as paste though.  In my example, the hero just accidentally shot a cop to death.  The villains knock him out, so wouldn't the villains think, "the police will find the shooter, with his prints on the gun here hopefully, and then the blame will be taken off of me".

If the villains kill him, then they have two dead bodies at the scene, which leads the police to think there is another killer out there, that has to be found, wouldn't it?


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## kilgore (Sep 4, 2019)

chloroform


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## Amnesiac (Sep 4, 2019)

Cops are not going to handcuff someone and just leave. Number one: Handcuffs are expensive. If I'm going to handcuff a suspect, they're going into the back of the car. When I was with the sheriff's department, if I felt that there was a chance I would be overwhelmed, or a situation was going pear-shaped, I'd just call for backup. Now, whether that took the form of other units on the scene or calling out the SWAT team, helicopter, etc., was another situation-based question.


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## Amnesiac (Sep 4, 2019)

Another thing: I used to say, "If criminals were smart, this job would be a lot tougher." Criminals, by and large, are dumb-asses, and if they have the chance to kill a cop, they're going to do it, consequences be damned. And they'll usually do it with the cop's own weapon, if they can get past the triple-retention holster that most cops use, now.

The only way a criminal is going to leave a cop alive, is if your criminal is an anti-hero and hadn't smoked the first cop. The "criminal" is actually an innocent man, a la, "The Fugitive."


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## Irwin (Sep 4, 2019)

Amnesiac said:


> Cops are not going to handcuff someone and just leave. Number one: Handcuffs are expensive. When I was with the sheriff's department, if I felt that there was a chance I would be overwhelmed, or a situation was going pear-shaped, I'd just call for backup. Now, whether that took the form of other units on the scene or calling out the SWAT team, helicopter, etc., was another situation-based question.



Don't they use plastic zip ties now instead of handcuffs?


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## Amnesiac (Sep 4, 2019)

Irwin said:


> Don't they use plastic zip ties now instead of handcuffs?



In multiple suspect situations, yes. Just one or two suspects, they still use cuffs. There are the ordinary cuffs that have the chain between them, and then there is another kind, that just has a hinge between the two cuffs.


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## ironpony (Sep 4, 2019)

Amnesiac said:


> Cops are not going to handcuff someone and just leave. Number one: Handcuffs are expensive. If I'm going to handcuff a suspect, they're going into the back of the car. When I was with the sheriff's department, if I felt that there was a chance I would be overwhelmed, or a situation was going pear-shaped, I'd just call for backup. Now, whether that took the form of other units on the scene or calling out the SWAT team, helicopter, etc., was another situation-based question.



But what if you handcuff one person and two others are getting away.  By the time you call for back up, they're gone and may never be caught after, so wouldn't you go after the two who are on foot as oppose to a suspect who is cuffed on the ground, which back up could probably pick up a lot more likely, once they arrive?



Amnesiac said:


> Another thing: I used to say, "If criminals were smart, this job would be a lot tougher." Criminals, by and large, are dumb-asses, and if they have the chance to kill a cop, they're going to do it, consequences be damned. And they'll usually do it with the cop's own weapon, if they can get past the triple-retention holster that most cops use, now.
> 
> The only way a criminal is going to leave a cop alive, is if your criminal is an anti-hero and hadn't smoked the first cop. The "criminal" is actually an innocent man, a la, "The Fugitive."



Oh okay, well I can just have it so they don't knock out the cop then, and the cop gets away.


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## Emmeran (Sep 5, 2019)

ironpony said:


> But what if you handcuff one person and two others are getting away.  By the time you call for back up, they're gone and may never be caught after, so wouldn't you go after the two who are on foot as oppose to a suspect who is cuffed on the ground, which back up could probably pick up a lot more likely, once they arrive?
> 
> 
> 
> Oh okay, well I can just have it so they don't knock out the cop then, and the cop gets away.



You can't restrain a suspect and leave him, you have a legal and moral duty at that point to care for the suspect and anything that happened to them would let them off scott-free while creating an untenable liability situation for the officer, the department and the city.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Writing police stories without any referential experience is a nigh on impossible task, that's why a lot of great writers go with Private Investigators instead of police officers.  Keep in mind that what you see on the video screen is complete BS, LEO's are not avenging warriors they are the first line representing the people and the laws of the people and therefore must strictly follow and exemplify all the laws of the people. 

 Readers are usually much more discerning individuals then the video watcher, you have to do your research and get your waterfowl linear.


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## ironpony (Sep 6, 2019)

Okay thanks, but I don't want my main character to come off as an idiot t the reader either.  If he cuffs one suspect and lets the other two get away without making any effort once soever, I feel he might come off as idiotic for doing so.  So I thought that realism is good, accept for when it's going to make the characters come off as foolish, and then you should stray away from it, unless I'm looking at it the wrong way?


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## Trollheart (Sep 6, 2019)

ironpony said:


> Oh okay, but a lot of times in fiction, the villain will leave the hero alive,* if they can be used as paste though*.  In my example, the hero just accidentally shot a cop to death.  The villains knock him out, so wouldn't the villains think, "the police will find the shooter, with his prints on the gun here hopefully, and then the blame will be taken off of me".
> 
> If the villains kill him, then they have two dead bodies at the scene, which leads the police to think there is another killer out there, that has to be found, wouldn't it?


I'm honestly not trying to be smart, but I don't understand the bolded. Do you mean a patsy, or are they just in a sticky situation (sorry)?


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