This is taken from another message board, but I thought it’d be a fun exercise to post it here, too.
The question: How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?
The specifics:
• You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
• You are not allowed to touch a wall.
• When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is “out.”
• I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your “magic number.” The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
• The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of “counter-tactics” training.
• There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
• The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.
5-year-olds are a tough lot, but I would have a significant height advantage over them, so I think I could probably handle 15 or so. Then again, it might take quite a bit of beating up from them before I’m comfortable with the idea of smashing the heads of 5-year-olds together. But once I cross that line… it’s on!
This is a silly question. I am big enough to intimdate the hell out of any five year old kid. And if you did hit a 5 year old hard enough to knock them out there’s a good chance you’d kill them. One well placed kick to the side of the head would do it. First one down and you’d win, as the others would be fleeing you. Particularly if you took out whichever one seemed to be the leader or most aggressive. A day of training wouldn’t be enough to overcome their instinctive sense of place or “pack order”.
Are they normal children such that I would be concerned about hurting them and just trying to fend them off without injury, or are they like, zombie 5 year olds?
If I accept your rules completely, that the kids will never get scared enough to quit, then it won’t take too many kids to overcome an adult – probably four could do it if they coordinated their attack well enough.
OTOH, if I play by Shibb0leth’s real-life rule, then I’m going to go after the biggest, strongest one first and smash her right in the face - hopefully starting a geyser of a nosebleed.
And if you think you can take on 15 five-year olds at once, I suggest you spend a day in a kindergarten class.
Well, they’re supposed to be “healthy Americans” so they wouldn’t be overweight like far too many real-life 5-year-olds are today. So I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use their bodies as offensive/defensive devices, assuming you’re of a certain strength.
And, yeah kunilou maybe 15 was aiming a bit high, especially since they won’t get scared. Perhaps 7 is more realistic… with that much space, I could probably just run around for awhile and wear them down.
My son just turned six, and he weighs about 58 lbs. This would be very normal for his age.
Five year olds are tough (my son has given me a few blows that have caused me to blink), but an adult has a major advantage in strength. I think you could easily take down 10 or so, following the OP’s rules strictly.
If you are a good hand to hand fighter yourself, then I think you win even if there are 50 of them. Imagine Ken Shamrock against these kids!
A five year old is probably going to way somewhere between 30 and 50 pounds. You can find some smaller or bigger, but they would be well outside of the curve. They’ll also be between 3 and 4 feet tall, generally.
I still don’t know what could possibly motivate a five year old not to be scared. I can make some five year olds cry just by looking at them.
I don’t think 15 is too many to defend yourself against. To be honest, I don’t know if 150 would be too many – I can’t see that they would be large enough to do me any significant damage if I’m not concerned with hurting them, no matter how concerted their attacks are. It seems like it would be like a bunch of unarmed guys my size attacking a man who was 11 or 12 feet tall, 800 pounds, and three or four times stronger than the strongest of us.
Well, beign healthy and trained in martial arts I imagine I could take on at least 30 before I’d get tired. As long as I can keep moving for a bit and protect my genitals I think I’d be fine. One good kick to the noggin should put one down.
I’ve seen about six 5-6 year olds take down a teen age girl. She was about 16 and average sized. She was trying to defend herself, but not successful. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if people had not stepped in to stop them once she was down.
Meh. In twenty minutes, half of them will be playing grabass in the corner of the court and the rest will either need to go potty or want to go to McDonalds.
That said, it would probably be a tie. My heart wouldn’t be in it, and all of us would probably turn it into a game of chase.
Assuming they ar 5 year old zombies or possessed, then I would use then as weapons against each other. I wouldn’t have problems if I had some space to move. I could ko about 2 a minute but would succumb to exhaustion after an hour or so. Then again I’m strong, healthy and know some martial arts.
If they were normal 5 year olds I wouldn’t fight them under any realistic scenario.
No kidding. I teach preschool, and “take on” 20 four and five-year-olds every day.
Give me a couple pounds of Play-Dough, a big supply of cool blocks, a really big box of crayons, some glue, a big jar of glitter, a never-ending supply of paper and I could handle at least twenty for a couple hours.
I don’t know why, but a bunch just attacked this unpopular girl on the school bus. I did not see it start. It ended when a bunch of the other teens stepped in to pull them off and told them to leave her alone.
I never had problems with this group of children, but it brought back memories of my childhood so I was terriffied. She only started the school a few months earlier so there was not a lot of time for her to build up history. I didn’t see her provoke them. I do know that she was really annoying, immature and clueless.
Also, my nearly two year old took out my husband for several minutes last night, but she let go as soon as he had asked her too and didn’t follow up. Had there been a blood thirsty child and no other intervention, he would have been a goner.
No kidding. I teach preschool, and “take on” 20 four and five-year-olds every day.