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I thought this might be a fun thing to discuss, and should at least partly take my mind off the fact that I'll be getting my 10 foot kangaroo hide bullwhip in about three weeks. It's a 16 plait, black in color, and the fall is three feet, so the reach on it is actually 13 feet. At any rate, a friend of mine, who admits to liking weapons more with flair, said that he didn't think that the whip is the most combat possible weapon. Personally, I beg to differ. For one, it boasts a great variance in range. You can crack it at it's maximum range, or as I've seen some performers do in my research, you can crack it less than an inch from your own face. Also, another thing that not many know: how a whip makes the cracking sound (and I mean the real cracking, which on a ten footer, resembles a gunshot). The way that it works is that the force you apply to the handle transfers down teh whip, and the whip is constantly decreasing in diameter, so the speed increases exponentially as it nears the fall, and ultimately, the cracker, which is moving so fast by that time (approx 1400ft/sec) that the sound is the air rushing to fill the vacuum made by the tip, in essence, a miniature sonic boom. So, if one were to hit something while the crack was going, it would slice clean through most targets, and in the case of hitting a person, it can create gashes and break bones. At any rate, I was curious as to other's thoughts.

The ti of the whip is breaking the sound barrier, and going faster than some bullets. With a ten or twelve foot bullwhip, you can do some serious damage, including breaking bones.

Anything can be a practical weapon if you know how to use it (I'm reminded of Vin Diesel using a cup in Chro. of Riddick). A bullwhip woulld be awesome if you could use it. A chain would do more blunt damage, but it also takes more strength to weild.

Also, a whip isn't near as tiring. doing whip work is actually able to be very relaxing as it is able to also be exhilerating.

Probably true, but the nature of the chain makes it so that one: there's a very limited range of montion, and two: lots of the energy in that system can be lost. In the tight weavings of the whip, none of the systems energy is lost and the lightest flick of the wrist will cause the motion to be magnified one hundred fold at the tip, and let off the snap of a sonic boom.

That's really not true. All the retractions and strikes carry back into a weaving fashion, making it really easy to regain control. It's also, by no means, for striking alone. It can be used to ensnare a target, trip, and otherwise disable the target, where the whip is mostly for striking, and each strike is separated.
Also, as I said, these weapons tend to have another feature in them. A lot of them have blades or weights attached to them, easy to be used for striking a very close-range.
There are reasons these were adopted by the warriors of Japan and China.

Not entirely, but I did think it was primarily. Multiple cracks may not be hard, but they are separate, which I would think could slow the attack speed. Another thing, as I was trying to say, is that the weight of the chain is used to give it motion. You're really not putting a lot into it, and it's gaining momentum as it weaves. Another thing is that I was never specifically speaking of chains; I mentioned kusari gama, and kyoketsu shoge, which are typically ropes with weights and blades. Oh, and just to say, you're only referring to bull whips here, but other whips (made of chain) do exist.
As I say, I don't think they're impractical weapons, but I do prefer other flexible weapons, and that's just me.

I call bullshit.

It also has negligible mass, you see.