Gonna defend the nunchuks, they're basically just a flail, you can hit with a lot of force without feeling recoil through your hand because of the chain, and nunchuks have roughly the length of a shortstaff at full range, but foldable because it's segmented.

If you actually wanted to fuck somebody up with nunckuks, there's no need for the elaborate moves they do in exhibition nunchuk competitions, you would just swing that shit at full extension towards somebody's head or legs. And, as somebody who has dicked around with practice nunchuks for fun, it's not hard to avoid hitting yourself if you keep it simple, follow Dusty Rhodes' rule "do not do shit you do not know how to do."

I'll recommend checking out a youtube called "Jesse Enkamp" who's a karate guy and explains the history of it in one of his videos, if anyone is interested. (this is not an endorsement of their other content, which I have not viewed or vetted)

EDIT: to answer the question, those self-defense spike things. Like yes you could hurt a person with them, but practically a crenelated flashlight does the same shit, but is also a flashlight, making it more practical and less embarrassing to carry with you.

This goofy mall ninja shit

Those guns where it's just five barrels all pointing in different directions

Like, you shoot once and maybe hit one of the line of guys charging at you

But then his four friends are pissed

Hey, I'm not abiding by nunchuck slander. They were invented by okinawan peasants who were barred from owning weapons by their samurai occupiers, so they made all sorts of makeshift weapons instead, such as the nunchuck being derived from an agricultural flail. Is it the ideal weapon? No, but you had to use what you could when a samurai could legally kill a peasant without consequences

If it counts, my pick is railway artillery guns. They're super impractical and inaccurate, and extremely vulnerable to being attacked and disabled. They use way too many resources for the impact they have. But on the other hand I absolutely understand why they were built, because man has always wondered: "what if we just make the gun bigger?"

My vote is for early chemical weapons (like the kind they pumped out via hoses) because the wind would change and they'd poison their own guys. A liability that big is it's own kind of stupid.

Let me introduce you to US Patent #1183492A Albert Pratt's Helmet Gun.

The users probably said skill issue but it never looked like a good idea to me

Modern weaponry? FASCAM (Family of Scatterable Mines). Effectively a "minefield in a can" where each mine is launched from a tube that has a little computer brain in it that is supposed to have a timer that tells it to detonate after so many hours.

Good idea right? Forces can quickly drop some area denial minefields over square miles in a matter of hours instead of the days it took with with hand emplacing that will explode themselves instead of needing to be removed by hand. But with all the points of failure in computery devices... internal battery failure, failure to communicate between the brain box and the mines before deployment, the mine canisters getting really hot making the solder on the mines' circuit boards getting soft enough that things break loose when hitting the ground nothing about these things seems to be a "good idea."

Wind up having to manually proof minefields anyways AND you've got WAY less idea where the fucking things landed than with hand emplacements.

Oh... and the antipersonnel mines that are mixed in with the antivehicle/tank mines try to throw out trip wires when they are dropped. Making an already fucking terrible weapon that causes terrible situations even more terrible.

The keyblade

Damn, I was going to say nunchuks too. Why would you use a weapon where getting hit in the face with your own nunchuk is a staple in slapstick comedy?

The Apache Revolver.

Looks cool as hell, but it notably lacks a safety catch or sights.

tacticool lever guns

like I really can't picture a situation where having a lever action with a bunch of pic rail attachments isn't either goofy overkill or you're in a situation where a semi auto with all the same attachments would be massively more practical

Every single bladed weapon you can buy in a mall.

any weapon that was likely not used as an actual warfighting weapon and is now relegated to mall-ninja cool shit like meteor hammers lmao

I've got the urge to make a ur mum joke, but I'll refrain.

I think a lot of tactical nuclear weapons are kinda dumb. Things like the Davy Crockett or nuclear artillery seem to put your own troops at significant risk, and it's also an easy path to escalation.

I watch short videos of this girl who uses anything as a throwing weapon and every time she throws she says biu~~~ (usually she's throwing pins) so. Some of those are dumb (a leaf??? A playing card? Like I know gambit is cool and all and on some level everyone thinks they can probably throw cards if they practiced but you gotta admit it's goofy).

So I'm gunna go with some of the things that she throws to give some variety compared to the nunchuck answers (which ai agree with). The other things she throws like ice daggers are unreservedly cool though.

Jet fighter.

Probably those baby Weapons from FF7 Rebirth.

I really don't get how these weird sheet metal swords are supposed to be useful in combat. Okay so I can inflict nasty cuts on my opponent? And myself? Also just seems like they'd get caught around things and break.

Shard of broken glass

Ouch

I would have said meteor hammer, but I saw a demo of that shit by an actual pro and it was pretty amazing. Now I want a rock on a rope, but I have no skills so I'd just get myself killed faster than screwing with a lightsaber.