Is there any area on the stomach where you can have a character be stabbed without dying?

Also...

If a sword swung into a character's arm at full speed, it would cut it off, not just inflict a very deep cut, right?

Probably, unless the character was in very thick plate armor (I think that might help, but I'm not sure).



My dad's a scientist, and knows quite a bit about anatomy, so I asked him, and he says there aren't any that he knows of.

Oh, dear. I can work around the arm-cutting thing, but not the stabbing. Back to the drawing board I go!

Is there really no way to survive a stabbing? I've heard countless stories of people being run through with spears, and they managed to live...

A stabbing in the stomach is not a guaranteed lethal hit. There are many factors that play into stomach stabbings, or any stabbings in general. If the stabbing hits major organs or blood vessels/arteries, your character can be assumed to be dead shortly.

If the knife avoids major organs, arteries, blood vessels, and the like, then you will have to worry about other factors surrounding the actual stabbing and the environment around the victim. The factors surrounding the event can usually determine the time it will take them to die.

The character would need medical treatment of some kind pretty fast. Besides medical help, some factors to consider in evaluating the chance of survival include: the health of the person, how deep the wound is, the blade of the knife that did the stabbing may be of worth, organs injured, arteries severed, ability of the blood to clot, diseases the person may have, speed and availability of adequate medical treatment, amount of blood loss, the filth of the surrounding environment, whether or not pressure can be applied, the risk of infection due to foreign objects left behind inside the wound, etc.

That is a lot of scientific information. But, one thing to remember with stories is that the correct information does not always need to be fully prepared and stated. Depending on the medical and scientific advancement of the world in which your story takes place, you may need only a little detail and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader.

There is not a "specific" place that one can be stabbed with a sure chance of survival. But, a stabbing is survivable, while remaining highly sensitive and unstable. I think that is the answer you were looking for, even with the amount of information I kind of dropped on your lap there. The actual outcome of your character's likelihood of survival relies entirely on your invention of that specific event.

Something to keep constantly in the fore front of your mind is that it is very hard to kill a person. Period. One swordmaster once put it like this (paraphrased):

"Killing a person with a swordthrust is like stabbing at a fly behind a Japanese blind, and hitting the fly."

People have survived amazing wounds in amazing circumstances. This is how God designed and created us.

Stomach, wounds, though, are very lethal, as the stomach acids will eat your body from the inside. They are also one of the slowest, lethal wounds. Thus, if you had good doctors, a person could probably survive it. However, in medieval times, when medicine was little better than superstition and astrology, there wasn't much to be done.

I can! Ahhhh.... White Raven, you make me long for those days of REAL food. I am a bit of a health freak, so I love all natural, organic foods that haven't been contaminated by human hands.... *sigh*

Haha, good job, White Raven. That post almost makes me willing to give up all the junk I eat and eat more stuff like that.

What an uplifting post. Blood and guts and gore . . . Sorry . But anyway, I pretty much agree with whatever else was said here. If someone gets stabbed in the torso, you can make it a miracle that the person survives, with God's intervention.
And for the arm. If someone gets slashed across the arm, it depends on the angle at which the limb is struck. Lots of times, it'll get lopped off, but if it strikes maybe at a diagonal angle, the arm might remain intact.

Good thinking!