others would not break at all. 
If you had driven by a particular park in Lakewood Colorado on Saturday July 19 2003 you would have found us, the fencers of Scola, standing around melons and hunks of meat stabbing and cutting them with various weapons. We were there to demonstrate the power of the sword. This page summarizes the results in gory detail.
In order to test a broken epee the first thing you need to do is break one. This
proved harder than expected. Starting with a bunch of worn out epee we stood
around and tried to break them. Some snapped like twigs,
others would not break at all.
The broken epee proved to be every bit as effective as a sharpened one. Here are some examples.
Tanwen has just stabbed a melon and is holding her fingers on the blade to show
how deep her lightest possible touch penetrated the melon.
If the touch is even a little bit harder the results are much more dramatic.
When I look at this picture I think about the hard skin on the outside of the
melon, and the soft skin on my belly :)
That was a melon. What about meat? The results are the same.
Even with armor the poor meat didn't stand a chance. 
This is standard SCA armor off of one of Randal's old jackets. Doesn't that
make you feel safe :).
Next we tested the effectiveness of Randal's court sword. We found it to be the
same as the broken epee. 
We even tried to skitter off the top of the melon. It was impossible to do so.
The tip always bit in and drove into the melon. Similarly, we tried the court
sword against ribs. The ribs didn't matter. Even if you hit one the tip just
deflected around them and through the meat.
We also attempted to tip cut with the court sword. 
As you can see tip cuts with a court sword would only be useful across the eyes
or some other soft target.
Next was a genuine rapier. 
Even on ribs the rapier went right through, if it was aligned with them.
If the blade was rotated 90 deg from this picture it was virtually impossible
to penetrate the ribs. Also angle of the shot was important. We found it all
but impossible to go in from a high guard, only when the shot started low and
came up at the ribs did it penetrate. We found that the rapier was effective
for tip cuts. A flick of the wrist was sufficient to cut right through the
melon, and full cuts were effective against ribs and other meat.
Here is a c-cut from a tanto. 
And here are a lot of gory pictures of the effectiveness of a falchion.
