Over the past few weeks, it has become a very large debate online on whether or not 100 random men could beat a gorilla in a fight to the death. Many believe it’s definitely a landslide one way or another while others think it’s an impossible question. But age old questions like this only have one true answer: so which is it
Many believe men could easily defeat a gorilla with teamwork. Many on the other side believe the men would stand no chance. Both sides have their statistics to back up their argument and have set out simulations and real scenarios on how to take the oher down.
Although it may be a niche internet debate, it presents a very interesting point on the abnormally high confidence of humans and the overwhelming way certain animals are talked up to a very high standard as well. Either you believe 100 is way too many and a smaller number like 20 is more realistic or you believe there is no way of possibly damaging a gorilla to even come close to defeating it.
Let’s start with the facts. The average male is around 5’6” tall and approximately weighs 200 lbs. The average Silverback gorilla is around 6’0” tall on its hind legs and approximately weighs 450 lbs.
According to quora.com, the same average male can produce up to 1,000 newtons with a single punch, while the same average gorilla can produce up to 12,000 newtons of force with a single punch. That means a gorilla’s punches create over 12 times the amount of force and is very easily enough force to crack a human skull and produce severe bleeding in the brain.
According to MedScape.com, Silverback gorilla skin is also much thicker than human’s skin, especially in the chest and back areas. It has very damage resistant skin to cuts, lacerations, punctures, and blunt force and can also heal much faster than humans.
Now for the scenario. The fight will be outdoors and around 70 degrees fahrenheit to rule out any environmental factors for both humans and the gorilla. The ground will be a grassland similar to a field.
All humans will be allowed to wear an outfit and socks as long as what they are wearing doesn’t give a competitive advantage such as metal, plastic and any type of jewelry. These can give an advantage to the humans and produce a lot more damage.
The humans will all be adult males aged 18-49 of random types of origin, ethnicity, height and weight. This will prevent the ideal circumstance of just picking 100 super athletes. To put this in perspective, only around 12 to 19 percent of males are considered “well-trained” according to HumanKinetics.com. The gorilla will be the average Silverback gorilla as previously stated.
The 100 men will have no “prep time” going in the fight. Every participant will be on the battlefield at the same time. The men can organize themselves however they want when the fight starts.
The closest man to the gorilla will be around 100 feet when the battle starts. The rest will be lined up in five rows of 20.
Now for the biggest upsides and downsides. The gorilla’s biggest advantage is likely its strength with the ability to smash a human’s skull open. This is all theoretical however, as there is no 100% way to measure this as you can’t just ask a gorilla to smack one of those punching bags that track how hard you hit it.
Many believe that this theoretical force is completely off and the number is closer to 5000 Newtons which would be similar to a professional boxer.
There’s also a spreading motion that a gorilla could grab both arms of a human and pull and be able to rip them off. This is most likely false as the average gorilla is very strong but would have to use all of their strength and likely over a long period of time. If a gorilla would try to pull this off in the actual fight it would get swarmed and bitten by 80 other men immediately.
Though the gorilla has all of the physical advantages that it could possibly need to win one versus one against a man, the real question is: can it take 100 at the same time? With a lot of factors being speculation, I believe that It could not beat 100 humans.
As long as the humans use the right techniques and have a general understanding of basic primate anatomy, it should be rather easy to find the critical spots of a gorilla like its eyes, genitalia, spine and joints. Doing so and swarming it, the gorilla is gonna get tired trying to keep them all off at the same time as defending its critical areas. This is not saying that the gorilla would not mess up some people but with a number as large as 100 it’s nearly impossible.
With most of this debate being just speculation and personal opinions, there is no correct or incorrect answer until it’s put to the test. Hopefully we don’t actually test this silly internet debate but what do you think? Is the gorilla too strong to be defeated? Are the males gonna be too much to overcome? Or will the humans choose the wrong strategy and be humiliated?
