A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest
Street fights aren't real. If someone approaches you on the street, you can almost always walk away. If it's one of the rare times it might not be an option to walk away, it's a good idea to have some kind of self defensive force or experience. Pepper spray, or some kind of combat experience are good. A gun is strongest.
Or just give up your wallet if it's a mugging.
Every communist should have some sort of physical fighting experience, or experience with firearms. We will need it.
Being punched hurts. The sort of person who randomly assaults strangers in the street will also probably have a knife on them and won't hesitate to use it. Being stabbed hurts a hell of a lot more than being punched. It isn't worth going to hospital to "defend your honour" or some bullshit like that. You won't "teach them a lesson" if you win a fight, they'll just find some excuse as to why they're still a "tough guy" and keep being a shitty person. It isn't like the movies at all. It is nasty and brutal and no one "wins." Just walk away. The police don't deal with it, but that doesn't make it your job to do so. Getting in street fights accomplishes nothing except you might need to poop in a colostomy bag the rest of your life.
Though as others have said, knowing how to fight and knowing how to take a punch is a good idea, being able to handle painful and unpleasant situations is important, but learn martial arts or something, don't get beat up by aggressive assholes outside of bars. That's like trying to learn to drive by racing in the Indy 500.
There is an old saying about knife fights. The loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance.
There really is no practical way to defend against someone who knows how to use a knife for combat. Even if you are highly trained in knife defense, you will still likely be cut or disabled.
De-escalation should always be top priority. If you cannot de-escalate, try to run away. If you cannot run away, try to delay the threat and call for help. If you cannot do those either, that is when you fight. (Fighting should only be a last resort.)
There is nothing shameful about avoiding conflict if possible. (Before anyone asks, no, this does not contradict our support for revolution. The Bourgeoisie are historically proven to use violence to suppress the Proletariat. This conflict cannot be de-escalated because class conflict is already ongoing, and the Bourgeoisie will always exploit the Proletariat for profit. The Proletariat cannot simply run away because the Capitalist system is so intertwined in the current society. And Bourgeois threats cannot be delayed because they're already ongoing. Hence, Revolution and the establishment of the DoTP, being the Proletariat's self defense, is the only solution against the Bourgeoisie.)
Also, about your imagined scenario, if the apocalypse does arrive and we somehow survive through it, fighting would only be the least of our worries. We would still need resources for food, water, and shelter, as well as other tools and equipment to ensure we don't just die from illness or from a hostile environment. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, disease and starvation would likely be a way more likely cause of death than getting killed by another person.
Fighting is a last resort for me. If someone engages me I will attempt to de-escalate. If I am forced into a physical altercation, I will use any and all means of protecting myself including deadly force. I am not bound by any "fair fighting" rules that some people seem to think is honorable. I will gouge eyes, bite face, squeeze nuts, use objects or weapons, or anything else imaginable to defend myself
If you look at any modern revolution, 9/10 of the people needed to carry it out have not been involved in any physical fighting. We are not just talking about culinary or medical workers who are active during the actual revolution, we are also talking about workers in infrastructure, communication, or administration who organise beforehand and then just refuse to carry out their bourgeois or feudal masters' orders in a strategic, coordinated manner. Before the Civil War and the Intervention, the October Revolution actually overthrew the transitional government in a bloodless coup, because it was well-organised. The majority of fighting happens after the revolution when reactionary splinters of the army revolt against the new government and have to be subdued by the faction that is loyal to it. If this faction is sufficiently large and well-organised, it will not need to drag civilians into the fighting.
Collapse is a different story. Especially in the first few months, depending on how bad it gets, you will be on your own, and you will need to get physical to procure your own food, clothing, and other necessities of life. Sadly, this seems to be the more probable route right now.
If the collapse happened (whatever that even means), it wouldn't be like Mad Max because Mad Max is a movie, it's not real. This ideology that individual humans are by nature violent and constantly on the brink of murdering each other all the time has no real basis in science or history that I know of. It does, however, provide a nice excuse for why communism can never work and why you need cops with assault rifles at Wal-Mart.
Best to walk away in our current world, always a chance you might deal a lethal blow (even if unintentional). Mad max world stop the fight before it starts. If you have a chance to ko with a sucker punch do so, anyone can win a fight, best to not let them settle in
What if you are not the fighter type, aka your typical homebody nerd?
People trip. People fall. People hit their head on the ground. If you caused that, you're going to jail regardless of how good of a fighter you are
Also, I haven't seen this mentioned, but you also rarely know if somebody has a knife or gun
Always try to run. If that doesn't work you'll have to fight. Personally, I usually carry pepper spray on me for such occasions but it depends on your local laws whether that's a good idea or not. In my country, you're allowed to carry it and use it in self-defense (if it isn't self-defense your fucked tho). If laws allow it and you decide to carry pepper spray make sure you get familiar with how it sprays.
It depends on the situation. Personally fighting is a last resort, but it hasn't been something I had to do recently.
Always escape. If you are confronted with fighting and can't escape, end the encounter as quickly as possible and then escape the moment you can.
And also, even if you outclass or get a one-up on your attacker and end up disabling their ability to harm you, you can still be held legally liable for further injuring them, even if you are the defender in the scenario. Just get out. Investigations have ways of deciphering whether an injury was actually caused by self-defense or not.
And if it's absolutely a life and death situation, then fuck honor. Honor doesn't matter if you or your loved ones are dead.
The best self-defense strategy the large majority of the time is having the awareness to prevent encounters in the first place.
As a rule of thumb, if you're unsure whether you should fight, you should most likely walk (or run) away. Even top of their league fighters are still at a significant risk of death or permanent injury and you shouldn't flounder into some fight if you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it. Since I assume from the title that you mean physical fight, you should also always consider the possibility of the assailant being secretly armed, or that others might join in.
As others pointed out, most people wouldn't be fighting (and probably physically can't) unless shit has really hit the fan (in which case you're not gonna have much choice), and the proper way to do it is through organised people's militias. I always recommend learning some martial art because it's actually very cool for your health no matter if you get into a fight, but also because it helps you understand the risks of confrontations, how to keep your cool, and maybe even how to de-escalate some situations safely.
Also guns are long-range, hyper-accurate, supersonic pellet-launchers that can pierce flesh and bone, no matter the size of the meat lump we call humans. Doesn't really matter that much who is shorter or taller if one of them is packing one. Blunt force weapons (hammers) are also really effective at causing a lot of pain, if not outright killing, even if the person using them is not particularly strong.
TL;DR: Don't lone wolf it.
I don't provoke people so it would be so out of left field that the absurdity of the situation would make me laugh.
“One who fights and runs away; is he who lives to fight another day”
Depends on the situation. Are they attacking you to rob you? You can turn the situation around and say "I'm so sorry to hear that you are so desparate that you'd resort to potentially hurting yourself for these goods. What lead you down this path? Perhaps we can help you look for other means?" Are they using this as a situation to assert dominance and continuously rob you or break you into submission? Run if outnumbered. Intimidate about who else you can call to assist with violence. If they are just attacking you and you can't reason with them, run and if they reach proximity, knock them back or trip them then use their loss of control to gain distance.
But if the collapse happened and we were in Mad Max, is not fighting a good strategy?
IMO fighting is generally better than being seen as a pushover (which will then invite anyone else to come take whatever they want from you). But fighting is almost always not a good strategy.
If things are going to come to blows in some "Mad Max" scenario, in most situations wouldn't it still be better to fight unfairly (hit first, hit dirty, join in a group, hit while they're not even looking)? Violence is always an answer, but opening yourself up to violence is almost always a bad idea. Better to be a dirty, cheating coward than dead.