In Kill Bill Vol.2, there is a death move called the Five Pointed Palm Exploding Heart Technique and it is said to be "quite simply, the most deadliest move in all of martial arts..."

If you haven't seen the movie, this is how it works. The person hits you with his fingertips in certain pressure points in your heart and lets you walk away. But once you take your first five steps, the power of the punch and the location of the punch causes your heart to explode inside of you.

I am aware that the human body consists of 108 pressure points with 36 being deadly and the rest either numbing or paralyzing.

But my question is is there really such a move called the Five Pointed Palm Heart Exploding Technique, or something like it.

I know it's only a movie but the idea of such a move existing sounds plausible, especially with the fact of the 36 deadly pressure points in the human body...

I am aware that the human body consists of 108 pressure points with 36 being deadly and the rest either numbing or paralyzing.

Basically each of the "fatal" pressure points are tied to series of specific nerve bundles that can *occasionally* induce certain organs to malfunction. However, if you cut off blood supply to a major artery you can also have an acute shock reaction followed by rapid loss of consciousness.

Medically, the specific number of pressure points (fatal and non-fatal) differ greatly for each individual, as well as specific location. There are "general areas" but ultimately their identification depends on one's ability to observe the musculoskeletal qualities of the subject. With anything, you get better at this with practice Much of the damage inflicted by fatal and non-fatal pressure points can be corrected with medical attention that you'd expect to find in any level 1 trauma center (in the US). Occasionally you will see irreversible nerve damage, but this is in an extremely low percentage of martial arts admissions.

But once you take your first five steps, the power of the punch and the location of the punch causes your heart to explode inside of you.

The time delay is possible for a complete loss of consciousness to occur, although it wouldn't be tied to number of physical steps. Likely, the extent of the trauma inflicted would cause the person to reflexively attempt to flee the situation before they collapsed.

Physiologically speaking, the breastplate and ribcage would normally prevent against this from happening. The heart is one huge muscle, it can take one hell of a beating (externally and surgically). Additionally there are individual differences in heart size due to exercise history, etc. Martial arts experts tend to be well-conditioned.

Even if you managed to puncture the heart, it would not directly "explode". It would simply leak & spray blood into the chest cavity (and probably lungs) leading to a loss of consciousness and immediate reduction in blood pressure, and eventually death. Upon opening the chest cavity, the heart would superficially appear to be damage, but still in one piece. However, it is possible to temporarily stop the heart by targeting a specific bundle of nerves, but the heart tends to recover (thanks to the Purkinje fibers).

It sounds like there has been a great deal of creative license taken with this movie. Interestingly, some cardiac patients have described their first heart attack as feeling like "an explosion in my chest", and, "an elephant sitting on my chest and bearing all of his weight on me at once".

MK

[edit on 28-9-2004 by MKULTRA]

I did it to my college roomate (freshman year) when he ate my Doritos, for like, seriously, the 10th time. Dude was like, "what are you doing?" and I'm like, "take a pill!" Long story short, five steps later, dude was dead. Force to Heart: Explode. Cops were all, "what happend?" and I'm like, "dude was always highstrung." Endgame: no charges pressed, which is the true beauty of the move. The DA will never have the evidence to successfully prosecute a case. Try it on your neighbor.

It's either real, or just showing admiration for Channel 5 Kung Fu movies of the past.

A blow hard enough to your chest can stop the heart (duh), but I don't think sticking your fingers into someones rib cages / breast bone is going to make their internal organs spontanesouly explode

From what I know, with the obvious exception of the throat and groin, a blow to a pressure point (pretty much any "soft" spot on the body, such as armpits, behind the knees, inside of the elbow etc) will only result in paralysis at most. Although you could probably render someone unconscious striking them in that soft spot at the back of your neck.

I know that a sharp blow to the side of the neck can result in unconsciousness. This is by way of shock to the carotid artery, jugular vein, and vagus nerve.

There's probably some truth to the effectiveness of these moves to bring pain. But I think that the movies like to exaggerate that which is true, for sensationalism.

I just saw KillBill 2 the other week. Awesome movie. That chick with the eye, didn't see that coming.
'Awesome, awesome to the max.' (Futurama: Future Stock, the 80's guy.) .

Ive been studying Hapkido for a while now (blue belt) and I have never heard of this move. There are several ways to knock someone out with a well placed blow, as well as a few places you can kill with the correct strike, i.e. ridge hand to the neck. The only thing Ive heard of that comes close to this move is something Master Boong Soo Han used to demonstrate. A well focused individual is able to concentrate his/her chi. Once the chi is focused, Master BSH could stand in front of you with his fist less than an inch away from your chest, then he would punch your chest. The fist was only able to move less than 1 inch, but the power from the focused chi was enough to knock the person being punched on ther a55. This would also leave one heck of a bruise.

have studied tai chi, pa-kua, sing-i, aikido, nin-ten-do (lol). seriously,there are masters that can produce some amazing results,even with light contact
such as touch that leaves a dark red trail at points of contact. saw only as demo-no real deep trauma but spooky just the same. give me doritos or give me death? give me a break.

Hey Koka I was just about to tell them about that bbc3 Show The one I was watching where this grand master could use his chi and with his voice (shouting) could knock down his opponent. And also ring a bell he said he would only ever use it on a person twice as t could cause internal damage.

I don't think there is any thing as the Five Pointed Palm Exploding Heart Technique that’s just glamorised up for the movies. But there is such a thing with pressure points that I have seen this guy could easily kill you if he wanted just buy striking you in 3 places.
He did it to one guy during training and after a few days he wasn't feeling to well he went to see his master and he immediately started to press certain points. Apparently he said if you had left it any longer you would have died


[edit on 30/9/2004 by SE7EN]

It is my impression that Quentin Tarantino tends to borrow ideas from previous movies or TV shows. The "Death Touch" has been around for ages in the realm of fiction anyway.

I remember an old episode of "Kung Fu" where it was portrayed much as described above (bunched finger-strike to chest using chi, not force of physical impact).

There was also a movie with Jet Li (I don't know the title) where he stuck an accupuncture needle in someones neck. This supposedly allowed the heart to pump blood into the brain, but somehow prevented its exit, causing the brain to rupture with a time delay.

I suspect Mr. Tarantino has combined these two ideas.

Look up "Dim Mak"...I believe that is what the death touch attack is called, but been a while since I was into this sort of thing....

I use pressure points mostly on my friends' dogs to make them sit, hehe...(it's a light touch, not harmful), especially since I screwed up one day with a person...

I paralyzed a buddy of mine (well, the left side of his body), with a neck pinch, for almost an hour... Needless to say, he never wanted to rough-house after that one, hehe...

Ya, I was going to say, "Dim Mak." But I was afraid that if my memory failed to serve me, I might be talking about some kind of oriental stir-fry. Man, I would never live that down...

A possibility - when you hit the chest hard at a certain point in the rhythm of the heartbeat, the heart stops and cannot recover. You die of cardiac arrest, but nothing explodes. Rare, and you have to have extremely accute and almost supernatural timing to be able to use this intentionally, but hey, it's possible. Killed some kid in karate class a few years back who took a kick to the sternum.. I don't remember any more of the details to be able to find a reference, though.

It seems everyone is applying 'hard science'. What about one's chi? I'm only vaguely familiar with the martial arts, but I vaguely know eastern mysticism as well. One's inner energy, the chi, where does that factor in? Thousands of years of Asian medicine is based upon it.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Look up "Dim Mak"...I believe that is what the death touch attack is called, but been a while since I was into this sort of thing....

Hmmm...thought it was Shinanju. But, Gazrok set me straight.

What about the Vulcan mind meld, or perhaps the Vulcan nerve pinch as an antidote to the 5 pointed palm exploding heart?

Originally posted by ZeddicusZulZorander

Originally posted by Gazrok
Look up "Dim Mak"...I believe that is what the death touch attack is called, but been a while since I was into this sort of thing....

Hmmm...thought it was Shinanju. But, Gazrok set me straight.

remember the remo movie?? what a load of crap!!
i read some of the books. the author could make anything sound plausible, like swimming through snow etc.

flc

What about that move on the movie "Five fingers of Death," where the dude had fingers conditioned so hard that he could just stab through your sternum and rib cage and impale your heart on his fingers?