40 midgets VS a lion

[Matt]

Murphy

[Bram]

Airwolf's designer was Dr. Moffet. So that'd have my vote.

Roel Moffet

[Saucemaster]

Oh sure, blame the Irish.  Is this Roel Murphy the same man who gave us "Murphy's Law", then, Matt?  Because if so, clever.

Not-an-edit: Roel Moffet is funny sounding, but Roel Murphy is clever-er.  The fact that Moffet ends with a hard consonant makes it better for using as a curse word, so there's something to be said for that.

[Matt]

Oh sure, blame the Irish.  Is this Roel Murphy the same man who gave us "Murphy's Law", then, Matt?  Because if so, clever.

Indeed it was, and I'm glad someone noticed. ;D

[Bram]

Well, I noticed, but I didn't think it was too appropriate...this isn't about a cascade of thing's going wrong, but rather about someone doing something stupid and we need a scapegoat.

Incidentally, Murphy's Law's Murphy's first name was Edward. Dr. Moffet's was George. But Ã? still feel he needs to be called Roel (this is pronounced 'rule'...Roel Murphy...Murphy's Rule...Murphy's Law).

Also, in highschool, the running gag went further. If we somehow couldn't blame Roel, we blamed the Nazi's. A Dutch slang name for Nazi's is Moffen. Moffen...Moffet...

Oh the serendipity of it all (and the off-topicness to boot).

[Saucemaster]

Well, I noticed, but I didn't think it was too appropriate...this isn't about a cascade of thing's going wrong, but rather about someone doing something stupid and we need a scapegoat.

As I saw it, the joke is this: take Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment.  Now, imagine what this Mr. Murphy's life must have been like, to have led him to such a conclusion.  Terribly unlucky, right?  But what if everything he did went wrong, and at the worst possible moment, because he's actually such a dumbass that everything HE designs goes wrong at the worst possible moment.  "Well I'll just add this ventilation shaft here, no one will ever notice it...."  "OH NOS!!  How did THAT happen?  Why must everything always go wrong?"  "Alright, just about finished with my superhelicopter.  Ah, screw it, forget that last little bit of armor.  No one could possibly hit a target that small...."  "OH NOS!!  How did THAT happen?  Why must everything always go wrong?"  Generalizing from such experiences, Mr. Murphy ends up deciding that this horrible "luck" is actually a universal law.

Did that kill the joke enough?

[Limbo]

Only on TMD can an important discussion such as deciding the victor in a fight between a full grown male lion and three and a half dozen regular midgets turn into the description of the possible wanderings of one Edward Murphy. Long live D.T.H.T.!

[Saucemaster]

Yeah, this thread got Dutchjacked but good.

And my boy seems to be slipping in the polls a little, so to reiterate: Vote Lion!  Save the midgets for kl0wn-porn.

[Dr. Sylvan]

No, it's actually probably the same genious who designed that conveniant maintenance shaft, totally unprotected by any for or shape of forcefield (or door, for that matter) that just so happens to lead straight and all the way down to the core energy supply at the heart of the Death Star.

FYI, the shaft was ray shielded according to General Dodonna. That's why they had to use proton torpedoes.

Just in case anyone else was as disturbed by that slight inaccuracy as I was.

[kl0wn]

And my boy seems to be slipping in the polls a little, so to reiterate: Vote Lion!  Save the midgets for kl0wn-porn.

FYI, the shaft was ray shielded according to General Dodonna. That's why they had to use proton torpedoes.

Midgets have ray-shielded shafts.

Vote Midgets!

[Saucemaster]

Midgets have ray-shielded shafts.

Lions have protein torpedoes.

Vote Lion!

[Matt]

I'm withholding my vote until I get an answer on the Zoo vs Wild question.

[Machinus]

I'm withholding my vote until I get an answer on the Zoo vs Wild question.

The article says the lion was shipped from Africa, I think. That's about as conclusive as it's going to get.

In the spirit of the debate, I am pretty sure it was a wild lion. The point of the fight was 1 ferocious lion vs. 42 fighting league midgets. They wouldn't have set this up with some pansy ass lion used to having delivery steak every night.

[Bram]

The point of the fight was 1 ferocious lion vs. 42 fighting league midgets

42? Forty-two???

Man, that just tipped the scales in an answer-to-everything kind of way.

[Rico Suave]

If the fight were to take place in a racquetball court, there would be no place for the midgets to run or hide.  There would be no strategy because the lion can stand in the center of the court and reach each and every midget within one leap. 

GG.

[Dozer]

I vote Lion. Lions kick ass, plus they are cats. I love cats. Especially big cats.

Also, I saw an episode last year of the wonderful Australian show "Rove Live", where this late-night entertainer Rove had midgets as christmas tree decoration. Can't do that with lions, so lions win, period.

[Bram]

One lion. One (1). That looks like this:

O

Forty midgets, on the other hand, look like this:

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooo

Forty is a LOT of midgets. Try to envision fourty people in a room.

[Limbo]

One lion. One (1). That looks like this:

O

Forty midgets, on the other hand, look like this:

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooo

Forty is a LOT of midgets. Try to envision fourty people in a room.

Envisioning:

|---------------------------------------------|
|ooo                                                   |   
|ooo                                                   |   
|ooo                                                   |   
|                                                        |
|                                                        |
|                                                  O---|
|---------------------------------------------|

Where

ooo
ooo= stack of 40 midgets in panic
ooo

O--- chained lion waiting to be unleashed

[Bram]

Those are nine midgets, not forty. Try again.

|---------------------------------------------|
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |
|oooooooo                                          |
|                                                 O----|
|---------------------------------------------|

Christ, people, we're talking about a dumb animal here, not Batman!

[Jacob Orlove]

It's more like:


|-----------|
|xxxxxxxx  |   
|xxxxxxxx  |   
|xxxxOxxxx|   
|xxxxxxxx  |
|xxxxxxxx  |
|-----------|

Where 0 = lion, and x = dead midget

[Limbo]

Those are nine midgets, not forty. Try again.

|---------------------------------------------|
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |   
|oooooooo                                          |
|oooooooo                                          |
|                                                 O----|
|---------------------------------------------|

Christ, people, we're talking about a dumb animal here, not Batman!

Hence the stack of fourty midgets.

[Bram]

You fools. If you only knew the power of the midget side.

An average adult midget weighs some 80 pounds. A full-grown male lion weighs between 330 - 420 pounds. So worst case scenario (for the midgets) they still outweigh him seven (!) times over.

Lion aint got nuthin' on them midgets!

First, the little bastards form a plan. Naturally, they start panicking and don't execute it. The lion kills several of them (the weakest and slowest) and starts munching away at their remains. The midgets coordinate again, seeing the futility of simply running around. The remaining 30 or so midgets jump him in a collective effort, during which he kills another five or so. Each leg is grabbed by about five midgets, rendering the lion completely immobile (trust me, even if you're a lion, you can't move of there's 400 pounds hangin from each leg). The remaining five midgets jump on his back and beat him to death with their bear hands (targeting the neck).

[EDIT] My dad agrees with me, but he doesn't have an account so he can't vote

[Vegeta2711]

(trust me, even if you're a lion, you can't move of there's 400 pounds hangin from each leg)

Have you ever played American Football or seen the games? I can move with 300 pounds hanging from my legs, because
1. it's spread out a lot, it's not really 400 pounds because it's going to be impossible to get that many people wrapped around the leg and some of the weight is dragging and hence supported by the guys own body..
2. I lift 800 pounds with my legs and I only weigh 200. A lion weighs twice as much and is using 4 legs compared to just two. I'm betting it can still move, not counting the fact that it can just chew on a few of the people on it's front legs.

This is of course assuming at least half of them don't piss themselves and curl up into a ball as most people do in the sight of something as scary as a lion.

[Limbo]

The lion kills several of them (the weakest and slowest) and starts munching away at their remains.

Do you think the lion starts eating while he is still "threatened" by living critters? Heck no. Kill first, eat later.

[Bram]

You obviously don't watch the Discovery Channel a lot

Either way, i't's basically the same wether he's eating two or three of them or ripping away at five more. A lion ony has one mouth, you know. Yall KNOW the maniac midgets will jump him en masse. You're all fooling yourself into thinking the lion has a chance in hell.

It's not some robot ninja pirate lion...it's just a dumb animal. Yall are giving it far too much credit.

[kl0wn]

It's not some robot ninja pirate lion...it's just a dumb animal. Yall are giving it far too much credit.

I would just like to second that.

All of you keep sharing what you would do IN THE LION'S SITUATION. The lion isn't made up of a collection of human minds, the lion is a LION. Lions are horrible strategists vs. humans. Midgets are humans.

You may think you'd be able to beat 42 midgets with a lion's body, which I STILL doubt. But even if you could, you've got a human brain to try to out-think them with. I'm voting for the midgets until I know the lion's actual strategy. Oh wait...lions can't communicate with humans? Lions can't even FATHOM human behavior? Gee that sucks...because midgets can understand lion behavior and one might think that would put them at an advantage. Kind of like how humans have been known to swim with sharks and live.

[Dante]

It's not some robot ninja pirate lion...it's just a dumb animal. Yall are giving it far too much credit.

I would just like to second that.

All of you keep sharing what you would do IN THE LION'S SITUATION. The lion isn't made up of a collection of human minds, the lion is a LION. Lions are horrible strategists vs. humans. Midgets are humans.

You may think you'd be able to beat 42 midgets with a lion's body, which I STILL doubt. But even if you could, you've got a human brain to try to out-think them with. I'm voting for the midgets until I know the lion's actual strategy. Oh wait...lions can't communicate with humans? Lions can't even FATHOM human behavior? Gee that sucks...because midgets can understand lion behavior and one might think that would put them at an advantage. Kind of like how humans have been known to swim with sharks and live.

only if they have gear and harpoons.

Maybe we should change this to: Drop 40 midgets and a quart of blood into an olympic pool with a blood-thirsty shark?

[Saucemaster]

First, the little bastards form a plan. Naturally, they start panicking and don't execute it. The lion kills several of them (the weakest and slowest) and starts munching away at their remains. The midgets coordinate again, seeing the futility of simply running around. The remaining 30 or so midgets jump him in a collective effort, during which he kills another five or so. Each leg is grabbed by about five midgets, rendering the lion completely immobile (trust me, even if you're a lion, you can't move of there's 400 pounds hangin from each leg). The remaining five midgets jump on his back and beat him to death with their bear hands (targeting the neck).

I call shenanigans.  Let's recap how forty normal people, pulled off the streets, would react in this situation:

First, the little bastards argue for five minutes about what a good plan might be, and who gets to tell them what to do anyway, because forty people can't agree on ANYTHING in five minutes unless they have an acknowledged authority figure who tells them what to do.

Enter THE LION.

They completely panic, most of them forgetting their own name (much less any plan they might have had), and the lion kills the first ten or so--mostly the weakest and slowest, but also just those that were closest to him when he entered.  Depending on how large the room is, at least one midget probably gets trampled to death, too.  Now of the remaining thirty, let's be generous and figure that 2/3 of them actually somewhat recover from the shock as the adrenaline kicks in.  We've got twenty midgets who realize they have to do something, and quick.  However, there is no plan--there's probably two or three different plans that all sounded good in the five minutes before this horror was unleashed, so as people tend to do in stressful situations, they all start to break into smaller groups that act independently of each other.  Let's round up and say that's three groups of seven people--or 7, 7, 6 if you want to stick with the exact twenty--who are under attack now.  THE LION, by the way, is not wasting his time eating.  He's not going to eat if he's not hungry, and remember, he fights for a living.  He's well-acquainted with the concept of "I'ma kill this mothafucka even if I ain't hungry".  He's also used to dealing with predators in groups--cf. Hyena, The.  Maybe two of the three midget groups survive the second phase, but by now the lion has a few minor wounds and is enraged.  Now we're basically down to fourteen midgets trying to work in concert vs. a full grown, enraged male lion with a few minor wounds.  Their plan is still haphazard and formed on the fly, and they're going to be tripping over the eviscerated bodies of their buddies and slipping on all the blood in the meantime.  Do any of you realistically think The Fourteen stand a chance here?  Please.

Midgets are humans.

I think that quote actually sums up my argument pretty nicely.

And 40 midgets really is "a collection of human minds," and while one human mind in a life-or-death situation can sometimes be capable of extraordinary feats, a collection of human minds is usually a liability.  Unless they've been trained and prepared for the situation in question, which it's stipulated in the description of the scenario that they haven't.

I would agree with you all about the midgets if I had any faith whatsoever that they could, in five minutes, decide on a leader, decide on a plan, and then mentally recover from the sheer shock of seeing Jimmy, Pepe, and Otto all ripped limb from limb in twenty seconds flat before sheer attrition made executing that plan impossible.  I have no such faith.  These are forty ordinary people, not forty Marines.

Maybe we should change this to: Drop 40 midgets and a quart of blood into an olympic pool with a blood-thirsty shark?

Dude, shark TOTALLY wins, simply by virtue of vastly greater mobility.  They pull their prey under and frequently let them die from blood loss as it is.  What are the rest of them going to do, swim down and try to catch it?  If they had some sort of device that allowed them to move at normal land-based speeds underwater or something, then I'd go midget, but otherwise, no way.

[Bram]

and then mentally recover from the sheer shock of seeing Jimmy, Pepe, and Otto

OK, I concede that of there's people called Pepe among the group, they're probably doomed 

These are forty ordinary people, not forty Marines.

Yes, but if they were well-trained Marines, they'd only need three or four to take down the lion no problem.

Dude, shark TOTALLY wins, simply by virtue of vastly greater mobility.  They pull their prey under and frequently let them die from blood loss as it is.  What are the rest of them going to do, swim down and try to catch it?

If it were a shark, yes, the midgets would be royally screwed. But is ity stands, my money is on the midgets.

[Saucemaster]

and then mentally recover from the sheer shock of seeing Jimmy, Pepe, and Otto

OK, I concede that of there's people called Pepe among the group, they're probably doomed 

I was going for that international flair, you know?  Actually, Pepe isn't what really dooms them.  What really dooms them is the inclusion of Pierre, the midget accountant, and Jean-Luc, the midget Zamboni-driver.  These are the people you trust to form and execute a plan in the face of a quarter ton of snarling feline lethality?  They're too busy wondering why they've wasted their life.