It’s a common occurence in adventure fiction for the badass hero or villain to take out opponents by the half-dozen unarmed hand-to-hand. But real life is more complex. On the one hand, numerical advantages are simply more important; the side with the greater numbers can generally just overwhelm and sit on the solo fighter. On the other hand, most people are wusses and inclined to run rather than fight.
With that in mind, consider the following scenario. Our solo fighter is a 6’5", 250-lb psycho whose spent his life mastering Krav Maga, and in the prime of his life. Driven mad by the downturn in the economy, he decides to take out his ire at the local Morgan Keegan office. He walks in and shoots the security guards in the face, and and proceeds to lay into the workers there with bare hands (and feet & teeth & so forth) till he’s killed as many as possible, announcing his intention immediately after breaking someone’s neck. None of the people he’s attacking have any dedicated weapons.
Assuming the psycho has room to move, and that none of the brokers are trained in any combat technique of any sort and that all of them are of average size and physical conditioning, how many brokers will it take to bring him down?
I totally should have gone ahead and put my guess as to the first respondent and responder in a spoiler box. I just missed my chance to look like a genius.
As currently stated, the whole office, probably. Most people are going to run, hide, or both. I’m trying to imagine my center rising up against someone like that in force, and I’m just not seeing it.
Well, for a serious response, it took 4-5 folks on United 93 to take out razor-blade wielding terrorists. I imagine that our hypothetical 'roid rage/Major League Leftfielder might disable 3-4 before being swarmed under by 5-6 others. So say anywhere from 8-10 normal motivated folks should be able to subdue the attacker.
Of course, I stupidly neglected to include in the OP "How many people will Psycho Maga be able to kill, which is a slightly different question. And also a different calculation, as, unlike on Flight 93, there are presumably other exits, so many people are going to make like rabbits, thus giving our villain an advantage. Also consider that, under such circumstances, a disproportionate number of those he’ll be assault are going to be the physically sub-par, as, obviously, he can catch them more easily.
I’m with Aesiron on this. As currently stated he’s going to kill people until he can’t find them anymore. If the people are dedicated to attacking and stopping the guy then it’s probably around 6-10. There are clips on youtube of one guy versus a lot more guys that could be some sort of reference. Here’s a video of a boxer beating the crap out of 4 guys.
Well, if there are exits, then I expect everyone will be busy beating feet for them, while yelling at 911 on their cellphones to get the SWAT team there ASAP. Our nutcase probably could kill 1-2 unlucky victims before he finds an empty office.
If we posit an indefinite number of normal schmucks who are cornered with no way out, and know that they’ll be killed individually if our pscho gets his hands on them, then I’ll stand by my 8-10 estimate.
It doesn’t matter how big and tough he is; if he is unarmed and he has got his back to me, I am going to bounce a pc monitor or something off his head while he is distracted. If that doesn’t put him down, then I’ll run!
Put it this way, I bet there are plenty of UK pubs where if someone did that, they might take a few down, but they wouldn’t be walking out unharmed.
Yeah, I think it depends on the scenario. Like United 93, if you did not act, death was certain. If you did act, maybe there was only a 98% chance of death. But faced with even a miniscule 2% chance of survival, people would be more likely to go out fighting. In my office, I expect most people would try to hide and you just wouldn’t get enough people willing to charge the bad guy all at once.
2 guys is enough to take the guy down if they’re smart about it. Otherwise, 3-4 is plenty to just dogpile his ass…as long as they’re willing to take a punch in the process.
I remember from fights like this as a kid that the addition of additional people against the toughest kids in the class didn’t change the outcome by all that much.
Problem is that there’s only so much room next to the one guy, and only so many people who can engage him at one time. So no matter how many people are available in reserve, at the point of the action it’s always one on two, or at most three.
And two people don’t equal twice one person. One person has a significant advantage in terms of coordination. So if that guy also has a significant edge in terms of strength and fighting ability, my guess is that he could hold off any number of opponents (unless he tires out).
Where that changes is if the guy gets mobbed, i.e. a tightly packed crowd presses forward and surrounds the guy at close range. At that point his flexibility and freedom of motion would be severely hampered, and he would be finished.
Only idiots or kung fu movie extras are gonna try to trade with the guy. The thing to do is take him down to the ground. Shoot in for the legs, once he’s down, somebody grab a choke, fight over.
It depends on whether the office drones are savvy enough to use the huge cache of weapons strewn around any office; computer monitors & CPUs, printers, wire, chairs, desk drawers, small cabinets, big slivers of glass from broken windows and such, lamps, pens, stainless steel tape dispensers, desktop knickknacks…Just looking around my studio/office, I can spot literally dozens of available weapons.
It shouldn’t take more than 2-3 to take Tough Guy down if they’re capable of a smart attack; if they aren’t, and are just planning on swarming him, it could take 4-6 (maybe even 7 or 8).
Well know badass and douchbag Chuck Norris was once asked what he would do if confronted by 6 thugs in an alley who demanded his wallet. This was in his matial arts, pre-*‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ *days. His reply?
“I’d give them my wallet.”
My plan? Me and one other guy (preferably a big guy, like me) grab a table from the lunch room and turn it over. We both hold it like a sheild and run directly at him. The table offers some protection and our combined weight and force will knock him down or pin him against the wall. Then Agnes form Human Resources can beat him over the head with a telephone like is was a pinata.
On the other hand, one of those fighting back on Flight 093 was Jeremy Glick, who was a former national collegiate judo champion. Cite.
A wise man (my dad) once said that the only true answer to any question is “It depends”. If the brokers in question can get their shit together fast enough to cooperate in taking out the psycho, then 4-5 of them can do it. Two go low, two go high, one circles around behind and hits him from behind. As Jettboy says, there are any number of useful objects around the average office that can help make life difficult for an attacker. “Throw a coat over his head and kick him in the nuts” is one of the best options against a knife, and also works against unarmed attack.
Throw a mug of hot coffee in his face, and stab him with a pencil. Whack him over the shins with a power strip. The possibilities are endless.
Why yes, sometimes I think of ways to kill my co-workers. Why do you ask?
Almost, except most office workers aren’t going to have to instinct to throw a lionkiller on the guy once he’s down. But he WILL go down assuming there’s at least three motivated-by-mortal-terror keyboard jockeys going for him - all the training in the world won’t help much when somebody bearhugs his legs together and he catches a shove.
Once he’s down, the crowd kicks him in the head until he stops moving. I’ll give him four, tops, assuming he’s trying to take them simultaneously.
