It effectively becomes a ‘reverse’ kiting issue [in MMORPG terms kiting is running around just far enough ahead of a major mob and hitting them with attacks [spells, distance weapons] to wear down their health while [hopefully] not taking enough damage to put you out of the fight, or several people swapping ‘aggro’ [aggression you get from damaging the monster] between team members to keep the other members from getting too much damage.
So you have to run around the parking lot, avoiding damage while taking out the normal people trying to damage you, which then really does mean how big is the parking lot [or how squishi the normal people are]
That runs counter to my experience and intuition about muscles. As I have become stronger, I have become faster as well. People with stronger leg muscles than I have can run faster. People with stronger arm muscles can punch faster.
From a purely physics standpoint, since our bodies have mass, they will move around faster when greater force is exerted on them.
So, I dispute your claim that a 10x person would be no faster than an average person (to be clear, I don’t think he would be 10x faster).
Do you think a person with 1/2 strength would be no slower than the average person?
From a purely physics standpoint, the only speed advantage that you get from increased strength is an increased ability to overcome your own body weight (and whatever else you’re hauling around). Your muscle tissue doesn’t contract faster; you just can move more easily with a load.
Of course, the question is, what’s this guy’s load? How did he manage to get 10x more durable? Presumably it’s not just increased ability to ignore pain; presumably his bones can withstand a strike that’s ten times harder before they break. That implies to me that he’s not really made of normal flesh and bone anymore. Dude’s probably got steel in his bones, literally.
Of course, at 10x strength, that probably won’t be a problem; he can have a full set of plate armor infused into his skin and still move around easily. But he won’t be moving any faster than, say, you.
So the real question actually is the one you’re asking - how impeded are the people he’s facing by their lack of fitness? How unfit is the average person anyway? If they’re like me, they could be defeated by a stiff breeze. But if they’re reasonably fit, tough-boy might be able to dance around a bit, but he’s not going to zipping around like a gadfly. (And if he tries to they’ll trip him.)
Not a big problem. If you have enough people, you just encircle the single person and then close the circle in around him. There’s no flank and no isolated people for him to target. He can’t evade because if he moves away from one part of the circle, he’s just moving towards a different part of it.
Brief googling suggests that MMA fighters can generally bench press 300-400 pounds, and the “average” man can bench about 130. So if we assume that an MMA fighter is 3x as strong as the average person, then someone 10x would be… truly superhuman. Obviously MMA fighters are trained fighters, but even if they weren’t, that level of strength is considerable.
I’m a pretty mediocre sprinter. Someone 10x as strong as me is maybe 3x as strong as Usain Bolt. I bet that person would be damn fast.
I’m not sure. Unless you start out encircling him (which you don’t, per the OP), how are you going to encircle someone who is faster and stronger? He can outrun the flanks trying to get around him and whoever is on the edge of that flank is vulnerable.
And even if you have a circle around him, if he charges one side of the circle to break out, can you mass enough force to stop him? And these are individuals without pre-planning or training. Will they not just run the hell away?
I think you likely end up with the group swarming away from the strongman and not daring to approach.
How about we flip the question to answer it? If we take an average man, how many people who are 10x weaker would it take to take him down? At what age can we say that a child is 10x weaker than an average man? Let’s say 8YO. How many 8YOs would it take? Probably 1-2 dozen. Have you ever wrestled with nephews (or been the nephew)? It sounds about right.
Honestly, since the OP didn’t say that the dude was super-fast, I think the most reasonable assumption is that he isn’t. I’m being charitable here - presuming he’s not an android the dude is probably a mountain of muscles and not agile at all.
Of course, being a mighty glacier has its perks - the dude can tank most attacks (presuming he can protect his eyes and squishy bits) and attempts to encircle him or pin him down would require almost a mountain of people to pull off, assuming they work even then.
You form a circle by walking around the single man on both sides of him.
Now I’ll grant you that if he turns and starts running away and he’s faster than anyone in the group, this isn’t going to work. But I feel the OP was asking who would win a fight, not who would win a foot race. I’m assuming for the purposes of this thread, the single man is not trying to run away from the fight. If he runs around, it will be for tactical advantage in the fight.
If you have somebody who’s pretty strong, you’ll want to put some depth in your line. Have a circle that’s three or four people deep. The single man may try to break through but the people in the circle just have to grab him and hold on. Even if he’s stronger than anyone else, he’s going to slow down when he’s pulling ten people.
This kind of thing won’t work if you’re fighting Superman but it’s going to work against somebody who’s “only” ten times stronger.
If I was the guy in the middle with a circle of people four deep surrounding me, I wouldn’t consider myself trapped in the circle - I’d consider the inner rows of the circle trapped inside with me.
Then he would have been defeated by somebody of equal strength to him which would be illegal under the rules of the OP, which specifies his attackers are much weaker.
Cannot predict now