Hated the anthrax series, especially because I was within months of retiring when I got the last booster.
The shot that really gave me grief was the series of gamma globulin injections I received early in my career, they gave them as a pre-deployment hedge against hepatitis when we still had Clark AB in the Phillipines. Glockfan, that lump of peanut butter shot was probably the gamma globulin vaccination.
Damn, that felt like a mule or two just plain kicked you in the hip! Then you were supposed to rub the injection site to help disperse the lump of thick serum into the surrounding muscle tissue. Yeah, right!
As for guns vs. knives, I had (still have, really) a buddy who is a Nepalese Gurkha. I felt that there was no way a knife-wielder could ever get the drop on somebody packing heat, and let him know that. He grabbed one of those rubber training knives, and I dropped the magazine/cleared my CCW Caspian Officer's ACP, then re-holstered it in my IWB Milt Sparks Summer Special.
He came at me from the legendary 21 feet that everybody talks about.
Holy Schmidt! By the time I cleared leather, he was making sashimi out of my kidneys.