Looky here, . If you think the warpath at the end of days is gonna be a church picnic, you best set down that peace pipe and get the whacky outta your tobacky. Yessir, that road’ll be a hard one, ridden by hard men with hard tools.

You could do a lot worse getting your hard on than with the new ZT Traumahawk, our first foray into the ax. The Traumahawk is two pounds of crash ax balanced to throw, with an edge that can cut you out of a fix, and a spiked poll end that can bust a window, a car door lock or a cranium. While this ax is weighted differently from a traditional wood handled ‘hawk, due to its all-metal, full-tang construction, it still throws well, turning at one rotation per 3 paces for most throwers. The 80CRV2 steel has proven extremely durable during a full summer of testing, in spite of hard landings on concrete, collisions with other axes, and ricochets into bikes, the shop barbeque and our neighbor’s windshield (sorry about that, Marc!). The ax beard is hooked to catch and rip, and the poll spike is beveled to an edge, providing another surface to stick in the target when thrown and adding some nasty to a close quarters punch with the head.

• Total Length: 16 in (.41m)
• Head Width: 7.25 in (.18m)
• Edge Length: 4.25 in (.11m)
• Steel Thickness: .205 in (5.2mm)
• Weight: 2lb (.91kg)