# Let's kill a Dragon **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 23, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423 "2015-02-23T16:58:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/41 "2015-02-23T22:30:18Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > Let’s kill a Dragon. No magic. No modern technology. I submit the idea of trapping the Dragon in an enclosed space and using a Ballista, a giant crossbow, to shoot it and kill it. So how to trap it? How to avoid getting burnt by dragon fire? Any other ideas or methods??? I was thinking that nuke that they used in Game of Thrones, there be dragon shit all over the place, but shit happens. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/42 "2015-02-23T22:31:01Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > That also spoils my idea, which is similar: vying “scorched earth” strategies. He burns my crops? I kill all the prey animals in his range. We both starve, but he’s bigger, so he’ll starve first. The survivors of my people can then begin re-planting. > > In combat? Arrows. Ballista were mentioned; we could modify one to throw a scattering of lighter bolts. > > A thrown net, or a strung net between trees, might also work. Entangle the puppy, then beat him to death with clubs. > [@yellowjacketcoder](#): > > What kind of lair does the dragon have? > > I was thinking about stringing cable across to slow the dragon down as he leaves, and then shoot with ballista while he’s stopped (since normal ballista use would be too inaccurate). Then I remember medieval tech, so I doubt you’d have steel cable, just rope that would burn easily. Maybe not fast enough to prevent the ballista assault. > > Then I thought about pouring pitch on the dragon as he leaves. Not to kill him, but to slow him down so he can’t fly, allowing knights on horseback to attack in a pincer and, presuming the lances can penetrate the hide, kill the dragon that way. You might have better luck with a weighted net rather than pitch though. > > Or, while the dragon is out and burninating the countryside, sneak into his lair, wait for him to return, and then peg him in the vulnerable eye as he’s laying down to nap. Dunno if that violates the “fight” constraint. > > The hard part, IMHO, is not the intelligence or the firebreathing, but the flight. If you can’t hit the dragon and he can wing you, he’s going to win a fight. That means getting him to ground (or at least trapped). > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Load elephants with the best explody stuff you have, or failing that with barrels of pitch. Light the barrels on fire, and drive the elephants into the lair.Backup teams of elephants deliver materials to further stop up the lair. Hope for death by asphyxiation. > > Alternate plan: if there’s one dragon, there’s two dragons. Recruit a dragon to help you kill the one you want dead. > [@Teuton](#): > > I’d got the Roman route, I think the Scorpio - a light ballista, basically, would be ideal for this sort of task. You’d want lots, though, and you’d want groups of them spaced at distances so he can’t just land and eat everyone at once. yes, this is the type of thinking i was looking for!!! ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/43 "2015-02-23T22:33:02Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > It was creative, but given the restrictions you have placed, it is unworkable. Building a dam big enough to accomplish the necessary flood with nothing but human and animal labor is a monumental undertaking. Something large enough might actually take years to construct with the work crews under threat of dragon attack the whole time. > [@Scumpup](#): > > If we’re essentially at a pre-gunpowder level of tech here and dealing with an intelligent flying flamethrower, he will quite likely burn our cities as well as our crops and there will be little we will be able to do about it. If he has sufficiently good night vision to permit him to make night attacks, has has us completely scrod. > [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > So the dragon gets strength, flight, flames, intelligence, armor, and poison immunity. And we get rocks. > > Why don’t you go whole hog and say the dragons get high potency acid for blood and can adapt to any environment. And swim real good. > > Meh. I say just blow it out the airlock. > [@Scumpup](#): > > Yeah, at this point the wyrm has all the cards. Our best bet for continued survival is to hope that, since it is intelligent, we can persuade it to accept tribute in return for not destroying us. We’re a bunch of primitive, agricultural screwheads and it is a flying, armored, self-directing flame weapon. It will burn our crops, eat our cattle, burn our farms, burn our cities, and fly at will around the kingdom faster than we can react. We have nothing faster than a horse, no gunpowder based weapons, and no reliable methods of communicating quickly even at battlefield distances. > If it will not accept tribute, we’re finished living in whatever territory it has decided to claim. > [@Scumpup](#): > > While I commend your attempt to have some kind of solution, we are just about exactly in the position of a nest of mice trying to persuade one cat to do battle with another cat on our behalf. Hell, to an intelligent dragon we probably aren’t even just food…we are vermin. Maybe we are more like the rats in my cellar trying to convince you to kill me on their behalf so that you can have my stuff and their eternal gratitude. > > Note: I don’t actually have rats in my cellar. I agree with all of these, in reality he would be pretty darn hard to beat ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/44 "2015-02-23T22:39:55Z")
Quetzalcoatlus was about the size of a giraffe, though there’s some controversy over how much it weighed and whether it could achieve powered flight. I’m guessing the larger dragons would be magic themselves – magic flight, magic fire breath. If the fire breath is chemical based then it would run out of fuel in short order. An animal that size would take an enormous amount of energy to fly for any length of time, so, magic. A lot depends on how big it is. Whales and mammoths have thick skin and fatty deposits but humans can take them down with spears and harpoons. Even if it has skin like plate armor the skin of the wings will be thin and should be damaged by missiles. Once the wing flap skin tears it can’t fly for awhile. Could launch pots of chemicals at it, either caustic or sleep inducing (King Kong style). Not sure what the ancients had in terms of chemical know how but I’m sure they could cook up something nasty. The Greeks could launch Greek fire at it, maybe. Unless it’s that BS RPG stuff where dragons are immune to all fire attacks. You could drop big rocks on it, best in a mountain/valley. If you had enough people you could spread out groups of attackers so it can’t land anywhere for long. It would fly until it was exhausted, then you could converge. Not as effective in mountainous regions, or if it’s smart enough to see the trick and fly outside its territory. Could have two teams. One drags it down with ropes, grapples, and nets. The other rushes in and stabs it with spears. High casualties, but it could get the job done if it’s not much bigger than 20-30 foot. You could set a giant glue trap and bait it. I’m not actually sure if you can trap a large animal that way, but it’s worth a shot. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/45 "2015-02-23T23:11:39Z")
Another idea is to guard the waterways. It has to land to drink eventually. Hopefully you’re not in the land of a thousand lakes. You can ignore realism just for the sake of a fantasy dragon, but in the interest of weight reduction a big flying animal probably wouldn’t have particularly thick or armored skin. And it’d probably have a gracile build. I think even really old societies could defend themselves from that. Massed atlatl fire would probably make it think twice. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/46 "2015-02-23T23:15:29Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Quetzalcoatlus was about the size of a giraffe, though there’s some controversy over how much it weighed and whether it could achieve powered flight. I’m guessing the larger dragons would be magic themselves – magic flight, magic fire breath. If the fire breath is chemical based then it would run out of fuel in short order. An animal that size would take an enormous amount of energy to fly for any length of time, so, magic. > > A lot depends on how big it is. > > Whales and mammoths have thick skin and fatty deposits but humans can take them down with spears and harpoons. Even if it has skin like plate armor the skin of the wings will be thin and should be damaged by missiles. Once the wing flap skin tears it can’t fly for awhile. > > Could launch pots of chemicals at it, either caustic or sleep inducing (King Kong style). Not sure what the ancients had in terms of chemical know how but I’m sure they could cook up something nasty. The Greeks could launch Greek fire at it, maybe. Unless it’s that BS RPG stuff where dragons are immune to all fire attacks. > > You could drop big rocks on it, best in a mountain/valley. > > If you had enough people you could spread out groups of attackers so it can’t land anywhere for long. It would fly until it was exhausted, then you could converge. Not as effective in mountainous regions, or if it’s smart enough to see the trick and fly outside its territory. > > Could have two teams. One drags it down with ropes, grapples, and nets. The other rushes in and stabs it with spears. High casualties, but it could get the job done if it’s not much bigger than 20-30 foot. > > You could set a giant glue trap and bait it. I’m not actually sure if you can trap a large animal that way, but it’s worth a shot. i like your ideas!! ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/47 "2015-02-23T23:22:57Z")
Let’s consider it in these terms: How could a group of primitive agricultural screwheads successfully do battle with an armored attack chopper armed with incindiary weapons? That is, in effect, the situation. They have to get it while it is on the ground ---
**Author:** ![donkeyoatey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47c2d/32.png) [@donkeyoatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/donkeyoatey)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/48 "2015-02-23T23:25:45Z")
You catch it in a [dragonet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT3QYb7AN6k), revoke its maiden-devouring license, throw in a dungeon for 50-300 years and maybe it’ll die of loneliness. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/49 "2015-02-23T23:34:09Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Let’s consider it in these terms: How could a group of primitive agricultural screwheads successfully do battle with an armored attack chopper armed with incindiary weapons? That is, in effect, the situation. They have to get it while it is on the ground ah, good point ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2015, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/50 "2015-02-23T23:47:38Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > What do we have to offer the hypothetical second dragon that it will desire enough to fight one of its own kind to gain it? Why do we not just offer that as tribute to the one that is already destroying us? > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > The treasure of the first dragon. Our annual tribute. Hands. We can pick up coins and gems and move them to where the dragon wants them. Opposable thumbs, baby! So we could move the target dragon’s treasure to any point of choosing for the hired hitdragon. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/51 "2015-02-24T00:00:01Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > You could drop big rocks on it, best in a mountain/valley. The only way to be sure is to do it from orbit. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/52 "2015-02-24T04:10:34Z")
> [@Pixel\_Dent](#): > > Send him bundles of giant cigarettes. Eventually he’ll die of lung cancer. [http://www.truthandbeauty.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The-Dragons-certainly-not-quitting-this-year....jpg](http://www.truthandbeauty.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The-Dragons-certainly-not-quitting-this-year....jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/53 "2015-02-24T16:06:14Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Hands. > > We can pick up coins and gems and move them to where the dragon wants them. Opposable thumbs, baby! So we could move the target dragon’s treasure to any point of choosing for the hired hitdragon. I don’t think this should work. While I was being ironic before when I suggested that dragons would be social and telepathic, dragons that collect treasure must have some means of collecting and moving treasure (otherwise, they would be unable to …). Maybe a smaller dragon could be tempted to attack the resident dragon for its treasure if it could be convinced that we could offer sufficient assitance to make it workable. Intelligent, non-Chinese, mythologic dragons are almost always portrayed as avaricious. After the dust settles, maybe we could kill the survivor? I like the ideas involving barrels of pitch- it’s hard to fly weighed down with glop, especially with pitch-befouled wings. The pitch may ignite if it flames. You could also take advantage of intelligence + avarice; go for the long con! ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/54 "2015-02-24T16:54:07Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > I don’t think this should work. While I was being ironic before when I suggested that dragons would be social and telepathic, dragons that collect treasure must have some means of collecting and moving treasure (otherwise, they would be unable to …). Just a WAG, but maybe treasure hoarding dragons swallow the gold and precious stones and then regurgitate it back in their lairs. They are often portrayed as, literally, lying atop a mound of treasure rather than having it packed away in chests. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/55 "2015-02-24T17:23:47Z")
You’d have to. lets be honest; Killing a Robert would be Nothing to a Dragon… ---
**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/56 "2015-02-24T18:38:49Z")
Dig a mine and put treasure at the end with a pressure device that collapses the entire mine. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423/57 "2015-02-25T08:11:45Z")
Use a Vorpal Sword that goes Snicker-Snack with a One-Two! One-Two! Then galumph back with its head. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-kill-a-dragon/713423.md?page=2)