You may remember my fascinating and important thread from a couple years ago asking how many 5 year old kids you could kill before being overwhelmed.

Well I found another interesting conundrum online,

BBC NEWS | World | Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight

The story is fake but its origins are interesting. Two men were having a debate about whether a group of unarmed midgets could take down a lion. To prove his point one of them created a fake article and spread it around the net to fool his friend.


Anyway it's an important question with philosophical relavence so let's have your views.

For those interested here are the views as laid down by the original author


: Join the 'debate': Here are the terms of the fight:
  • Fight takes place between 1 full-grown, male African lion and 40 midgets
  • The midgets are unarmed (no guns, baseball bats, tasers, etc.)
  • The fight takes place in a closed arena (a racquetball court for example)
  • Fight is over when either a) the lion is dead, or b) all 40 midgets are dead or unable to fight back (severely wounded)
  • Lion is highly agitated, midgets know there's no way out until the lion is dead (they have to fight)
  • The midgets are not specially trained to fight (not like the Cambodian fighting ones in the article) but are in average physical and mental health
  • The midgets are given 5 minutes before the fight to prepare/strategize

Ok I'm going to go with the lion on this. I can't see how 40 midgets completely unarmed could overcome an adult lion. They would all get torn to shreds as easy as 40 5 year olds against an adult man.

IF the midgets were totally fearless and oblivious to their own lives and could sacrifce themselves happily in an effort to overwhelm the lion then maybe they could throw themselves on it and beat it to death, but in a real world setting I just think they would scared shitless and get butchered real fast.