How Can a Slice of Toast be Weaponised? [closed]

Question

In a short story I'm writing, the protagonist is running late to work and, as such, is having to eat breakfast on the way there.

Unfortunately, the city is currently under siege by an opposing state, and raids are frequent in the city.

Using only a slice of toast, how could an armed, modern soldier be fought off?

You can do whatever you want with the toast, including changing the level to which it's toasted, but it must remain a slice of bread.

Edit: I apologise for the vagueness, I'm new to posting here.

I'll clear some things up:

• Assume that this encounter takes place on the present day. There are no fantasy elements available, just the skills of an office worker and a slice of toast.

• It can be assumed that the enemy soldier is armed with modern, conventional equipment, including but not limited to:

  1. An assault or battle rifle such as an M16 or M14.
  2. A bulletproof / Kevlar vest
  3. A bayonet or tactical knife

• The enemy is ignoring any laws that may incur war crime charges.

• The enemy is not at all enhanced using drugs, but has undertaken army training.

• The protagonist lacks any training, but really doesn't want to be late for work.

• The toast is merely a slice of bread that's been put in a toaster. It's makeup is that of cooked bread and can't be changed.
• No outside intervention will be provided on either side, the fight is essentially isolated from the rest of the world

The aim is for the protagonist to incapacitate the enemy; anything more is fine, but they shouldn't be able to continue fighting.

Answer 1

• Share toast with soldier as a peace offering. There are a few examples of soldiers in WWI sharing meals.
• Throw it at the soldier as a brief distraction to give your protagonist a chance to run away
• Use toast as bait in a booby trap, or poison it.
• Make it extra dry, so the soldier chokes on it
• Crumble it, and get the crumbs under the soldier's collar. The weight of bulletproof vest and gear will make the crumbs itch and scratch so much that he cannot fight

Answer 2

Resurrect the ancient recipes for Dwarf Bread.

Sliced into toast (blunting many saw blades in the process) you can then use the slices in a number of ways:

Shuriken. make sure the corners are sharp and flick the toast into the eyes of a soldier, thus blinding him. The density of the bread should be able to shatter any polycarbonate lenses he may be wearing.

A Hand Axe. A very versatile item. Chip the edge down and you have a convenient weapon that you can hit a soldier anywhere on soft tissue, like the face, hands, or neck. break it corner to corner and you have an impropmtu dagger that will go through ballistic body armor like, well, butter.

Caltrops. throw the toast down hard enough to shatter and the resulting shards could cut through even the stoutest combat boots. Smash it and run away.

Or you could just bring the whole loaf for a large blunt instrument. Should be good enough to shatter even a modern kevlar helmet.

Answer 3

Incendiary bread: dip the toast in alcohol, set it aflame and throw at whatever you want to lit.

You may wish to sing revolutionary songs as the enemies run from the inferno that you started. Depending on your grasp of languages you may go for german Links, Zwo, Drei, Vier, italian Bella Ciao or french Chant du Départe. If you are not revolutionary yourself, you can always stick with the good old The Roof is on Fire.

Answer 4

If your protagonist can get in close enough without being shot, blown up, or bayoneted, he can cram the toast into the soldier's mouth and throat until he chokes or suffocates to death.

The obvious disadvantage is that you can only do this once, and the toast won't be edible afterwards, but I'm sure your protagonist would rather be hungry than dead, and he can always grab the fallen soldier's weapon afterwards, if he feels the need to protect himself.

Answer 5

There are two categories for killing someone with toast. Killing them directly with the toast, or using the toast as a means to kill another way.

Killing with Toast

This is the harder and more impractical choice. Causing bodily harm with a soft, small object is very difficult. It's not large enough to be used for suffocation, and not hard enough to break the skin or be used as a club. You could sneak up behind an opponent and force the bread down their throat, but if you're in such a position it would be easier to hit them in the back of the head or put them in a headlock.

Toast as a Tool

The easier method is to use the toast in such a way that you can gain the advantage and kill your opponent by some other means.

Toast as a Distraction

There are several ways you could use toast to distract an opponent. You could throw it away from your current position, to shift their focus from where you might be to the position of the toast. You could crumble the toast up and throw it in their eyes, temporarily blinding them by forcing them to close their eyes. You could use the toast to lure animals (birds) to a different location than your own.

Once the opponent is distracted, you can run away or use another weapon to attack.

Toast as a means of Poisoning

You could poison the toast and find a way for your opponent to eat it. Very difficult to pull off as people don't usually eat random slices of toast found on the street or offered by strangers.

Magic Toast

If your world has a magic system, countless things could be done to alter the toasts original state to make it a usable weapon. Increasing its mass and structural integrity could make it a viable bludgeoning weapon.

Answer 6

Premises

• This is a modern state (who besieges cities anyways nowadays, read The Art of War)
• Weaponry is generally within modern NATO standard, i.e. MP5 or HK416
• Soldiers generally work in groups, because buddy system
• The soldiers don't obey the Geneva Conventions, because they're attacking citizens

Methods of Weaponizing Toast

If there is a method of weaponizing toast, it will almost certainly need to be able to take out many soldiers at once, because there will be at least platoon-level sizes of troops out there that are heavily armed. Because explosives and acid is hard to find in a general home,^{[citation-needed]} your hero will be pretty hard-pressed to beat these dozens of well armed troops. Basically, the best idea is simply to give the bread as a peace offering, possibly poisoning it with a slow acting poison (thallium rat poison?) if your hero is feeling patriotic.

tl;dr: Don't attack troops armed to the teeth with toast

Answer 7

To be clear we can do anything with the Toast.

To me the answer is simple apply anything that contains a corrosive warning label on it. You can apply this to your toast making it an effective blinding weapon, hell make it strong enough, without destroying the toast and you can burn there skin off!

all it comes down to now is making sure that your protagonist knows how to use the toast now that hes created such a weapon, stealth and athleticism is all it comes down to now that your toast is weaponized.

edited from suggestions!