Since sophomore year of high school, my friends and I have joked about a fictional movie that we fantasized about filming. The concept is that of an all-out war between people and animals.
ALL animals would be included - birds, insects, domestic pets, fish, livestock, wildlife, everything. Bacteria and simple organisms wouldn’t count. The animals would still be preying on each other for food, but they would all be allied against mankind.
If this conflict actually happened, who would eventually win? My money’s on the animals.
How good a tactician are all these animals? Take mosquitoes. They could really screw people up with malaria, equine encephalitis, and other things if they knew how to plan. What would mosquitoes do that they don’t do now.
Wasn’t there a Sci-Fi trilogy based on just this premise? Death World? Death Planet? Something like that. As I recall, the book went farther and even the plants were attacking the people.
(googles…Ah, there it is: Deathworld by Harry Harrison - not a bad read as I recall, but I always liked his Stainless Steel Rat stuff better).
It’ll depend a lot on how the war starts. If all of the animals just suddenly decide at the same moment that Humans Must Die, without any warning, then we’re toast. A cat or a dog is quite capable of killing a sleeping human, if it were for some reason to decide to. And at any given moment, about a third of the planet’s population is asleep. If one third of all pet owners (a significant fraction of all people) in the world died overnight, human society would probably crumple on its own, without any further attacks by the fuzzy contingent.
Then, too, if we go by the standard of winning of “last critter standing”, they’re sure to win, since we can’t win. Sure, we’ve managed to kill off quite a few species, some without even trying. But there are also some species that we’ve tried diligently to kill off, and haven’t succeeded. When the blood’s all shed and the dust has settled, I don’t know who will be lying slain on the field of battle. But I do know that it won’t be the cockroaches.
It may depend on the ability of animals to collaborate and their willingness to self sacrifice.
Their best shot for a first strike would be for our livestock to commit suicide (starvation, dehydration or self inury), and every animal stop eating insects.
The second wave would be those insects and rodents and the like eating our crops.
A few months after the food supplies are gone, just move in the big guns, lions, tigers and bears, oh my…
As I further recall, this wasn’t Earth it was some colony so it’s not an exact match - much more limited resources and population. To actually answer the question, I’d have to go with us. Technology triumphs over fangs (and stingers and teeth, etc.)
Thanks for reminding me of that. It was a trilogy, no? One was the “psi” planet, one was the beach slavers/Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, last one was… nope. Help me, that was s series to read again.
If just the insects started to attack us on sight, organization or no, instead of just biting us when we piss them off - well, it would definately kill a lot of people and start a huge panic, whether we survived long-term or not. You’d haul out your duct tape and plastic sheeting and still not keep those bastards out without suffocating yourself. Ever have ants?
A dog maybe (and only some dogs at that). A cat? I’m not so sure. I’m fairly certain an enraged domestic cat could totally ruin a sleeping human’s day, but to actually kill them?
I’d assume an average domestic cat with a desire to kill me would go for my neck. My neck is big and the cat’s mouth is small. I’d be awake in no time, and kitty would be thrown against the far wall a second later. I’m sure I’d be gouged, bleeding, sorry, and bruised (possibly even blinded), but I doubt I’d be killed that easily. I’m not ignorant of the sheer speed and violence of an enraged animal attack, but I’m many, many times larger than a domestic cat, and the cat would want to make the first strike absolutely textbook perfect to even stand the remotest chance.
