Say every single animal on earth, in some kind of collective consciousness, decided to attack all the humans. I mean every single animal. Bugs, fish, rats, dogs, everything. No bacteria or shit like that, that doesn’t count in this case.
What would the response of humans be?
Obviously in some areas there would be giant swarms of bugs, and people would have to take cover. They’d go underground. But they wouldn’t last for long without food and water. They’d have to scavenge for those above ground, and be vulnerable to bugs and other animals.
Would the military be able to wipe out all the beasts?
Would everything deteriorate into an apocalyptic scenario, or would people manage to stay in stable forms of social order?
We could hole up indoors with some bug spray. Insects generally don’t last long if they don’t go about their daily business of staying alive.
Larger creatures are easy enough to avoid, until they starve to death, trying to get at us.
Our livestock is already contained, unless it gives up on eating and is singularly devoted to killing us.
I guess we eat meat until it’s all gone, then we go vegetarian. Pollination might be a problem, if all the insects died trying to get us, but we could hand pollinate.
All cows, bulls, lambs, etc, would be breaking out of their pastures by whatever means necessary, and devoting themselves to overwhelming the humans either by physically attacking them, or fucking up transportation routes by blocking them with their bodies.
Give me a gun and I’ll be more than happy to take care of the little heard of cows & sheep blocking the road. There are a lot more humans with guns than there are herds of sheep & cows.
Keep in mind, there are 300 million people in the US, and seven billion people in the world, so it’s not like every creature within a square mile is going to swarm on me. They’ll have to divide up. It’s unlikely too many animals are going to gang on me.
Well, we’re kicking the animals’ collective asses without even trying, and it’s no accident we’re at the top of the food chain.
We’ve got superior intellect, fire power, shelter, and sheer maliciousness. We’ve got the last resort option of nuking the earth from orbit, too. That’s the ultimate trump card.
At first, the animals would certainly have the upper hand in many areas: owners of large dogs and cat-horders would likely be among the first to go among suburbanites, along with isolated folks in more rural settings. City folks (at least, those with only one or a few small pets) would have less to fear, though we’d probably see a replay of The Birds. Once word got out that all the animals were revolting (and how!), hunting parties would be formed, etc. In other words, it’d probably play out similar to various Zombie Apocalypse scenarios.
It really depends on how intelligent this “mass consciousness” is. Say a good tactical mind with a fine understanding of the troops they have at their disposal. Each animals reproductive needs, food needs, etc, and can get them to sacrifice themselves for the cause. I don’t see humans surviving in this. Why? Bugs.
Bugs tip the scales. They can eat, or just crawl, their way through most defenses, spread diseases, contaminate food and water supplies, and we just don’t have nearly enough bug spray to deal with them. Mammals? We could put them down in an uprising. They can’t besiege us and starve us out because we can kill some of the besiegers and eat them. Not so with bugs. The bug/bullet ratio is seriously in their favor, and we’d be out of DEET damn fast. Have a few cows stand around and allow mosquitos to feed so they can breed and you’d have an army of bugs who could clog air vents and poison the air of any sanctuary humans find.
Humans are very clever, but there is just so much a tactician could do with bugs it isn’t even funny. They don’t have to be centralized(no nuke targets), if you tell the natural predators “hey, lay off for a couple weeks” then they have multiplied their numbers by a thousand or more. Killer Bees, Army Ants, there’s no stopping them really.
There would be heavy casualties, especially from disease, but I have no doubt that humanity would prevail in the end. We have the technology and the brainpower to compensate for the initial onslaught.
Upon the edit, like MtGMan said, if there is some sort of intelligence controlling this horde, we’re toast. If it’s just a bunch of animals and insects going on a killing spree, then we should be OK.
Cows blocking off roadways with their bodies in order to divert troops to an area where billions of mosquitoes are waiting to swarm them. Birds deliberately infecting themselves with diseases and then shitting all over granaries to destroy food sources, or deliberately flying into jet engines to make them crash. Stuff like that.
Ummm… then we’re boned? I’m sorry I’m not going to write a lengthy description, but I honestly don’t see how we can survive if our food, water, air, and space itself is contaminated and controlled by a malevolent force of nature.
Cows are a bad choice to block roadways. Your malevolent consciousness will want pigs for that job. They have a low center of gravity and a car which hits them will go airborne(the pig will roll under them like a log) and lose control. Regardless of what you’ve seen on “The Dukes of Hazard” cars don’t survive this kind of thing and continue running. Have some of the large carnivores tear open a few anteaters or other large insectivores and let the flies go nuts, especially the tsete flies. Have all the frogs spawn in the humans water supplies. Any frogs which get inside, try to climb up into the machinery and jam anything they can. Have them hide and die. The bacteria will be neutral, but with proper planning the animals can swing the bacteria and viruses to their side. Have the birds disrupt visual reconnaissance. Have beavers chew down electrical poles. Have squirels short out electrical transformers or extremely large birds perch on high tension electrical transmission lines. Beavers or elephants, or even termites, can make trees fall on power lines. Insects can clog intake valves on all sorts of engines. Have all the posionous spiders, stinging insects, fire ants, flying stingers(bees, wasps, etc.), snakes, and scorpions form perimeters around pockets of human resistance. They don’t provide decent targets like a line of dogs standing guard would. Any poisonous spiders should balloon their young over the human settlements. Beavers can dam any rivers flowing into the human areas. Locusts can eat their crops.
