Hey cavemen! Sharpen up your sticks!

I always assumed the 100 men vs gorilla question was meant with no weapons.

If you give the 100 men weapons, the gorilla is dead real fast. Making and using weapons is what put us at the top of the food chain.

Although, Emu Wars showed us that it's not this obvious
- Well d’uh, it was twenty-fucking-thousand emus spread over a fairly large area and just two guys in a truck with a machine gun.

Am I vastly underestimating the gorilla here? 100 men? We're swarming that dude like ants. His eyes are getting poked out in the first 30 seconds.

We’re swarming that dude like ants.
Are we? Or are we standing awkwardly in a circle, waiting for some other dumbass to make the first move, because the first guy to make a move is not gonna have a fun time.
- If not fighting is an option, I guess the men will stand in a crowd making noise and the gorilla will just chill in his corner. I suppose you have to assume that all parties are 100% committed to violence
- I mean, is this just an impromptu gorilla fight, or do we get to plan?
- If this was like a simulation and no single individual our their own safety above the group goal, then yeah. The crowd simply encircles and closes in on the gorilla, and some of the first will almost certainly die
- Well the gorilla will make the first move in that case, and if you don't make the move while it is busy mauling the unlucky first, you could be next.
  Oh who am I kiding? With how involved most people are in politics, they would not make a move until it is too late.
- Assuming it's a small arena battle to the death, yes. Do or Die.
  If it was a open world battle then the 100 people would just take turns harassing the gorilla until it dies of exhaustion. That wouldn't be a fair fight at all. Gorilla might get a handful of people but he's just exhausting myself more.
- With a bit of organization? Some guys distract it, others hit its head from behind!With a bit of luck we could start raping it after like 30 secs!
  I am not saying we should, that would be disgusting! I am saying we could
One of the things that sets the human animal apart is throwing things. That poor gorilla is getting pelted with a million rocks. RIP hambre sr.
- the whole premise is that it's hand-to-hand. if weapons are allowed there's no question to begin with. it's 1 man vs 1 gorilla and the man wins.
- Unless handicapped, any human child can throw a ball, catch a ball, throw a stick strait. No other animal even comes close.
  And here I am feeling sorry for myself because I can't throw a cast net properly. :(
- Also we got guns now. A couple of .30-06 rounds and King Kong is dethroned.
The gorilla could kill ten men with one swipe of his arm.
- They are strong but not that strong.
- Humans aren't made of paper.
  Even swinging a metal girder wouldn't kill 10 men in one go, just the first few and maim a couple more.
- Even if that were true, there'd be 90 others getting clean hits in. Yea, many guys aren't walking away from a bare knuckled fight with a gorilla, but the point is, neither is the one gorilla.

OK I assume the hypothetical implies either the humans are bare handed or that the gorrilla also gets a weapon.

Though, outside of hammers and swords I don't think that really gives the Gorrila much of an advantage...

tbf, 100 unarmed men vs. a gorilla is probably about the same difficulty level as 20 men armed with literal sticks vs. a mammoth
- Don't underestimate the power of a pointy stick. Whatever size advantage the beast may have, it's not going to be able to simply ignore stab wounds.
  Look at it this way, if you were naked and unarmed, and a dozen or more little imps as tall as your knee started stabbing at you from all angles with spears that can easily rupture your vital organs, how brave would you be to charge at them and try to kill them all with your bare hands?
- Strong disagree. The sheer maneuverability advantage a gorilla has (over a mammoth) makes it considerably harder for unarmed fighters. A reach weapon that you can poke at the mammoth's ass, forcing it to run and exert itself on defense. I don't think the mammoth is killing as many humans as the gorilla, or even a proportional amount.
  My only source for fighting animals is my experience fending off a wild dog. But tell me I'm wrong, I want to hear why so I can counterpoint.

...with weapons? Of course.

Unarmed? Fuck, no.

Unarmed? Absolutely. Humans are uniquely capable harassers. A gorilla would get winded after a short while and overheat not long after. The question isn’t whether the humans win, the question is how many people will die before the people start getting free shots at a barely conscious horizontal ape.
Unless the gorilla is windmill arming and people are just walking into the grinder, it’s always a win.
- Last time this made the rounds I asked ChatGPT the question.
- Really? And what exactly is a human naturally equipped with, that can do any kind of damage to a gorilla? Lol!
100 men can't take on one Gorilla? It'd only take a few to strategize and chase it to exhaustion.
- And then what? Slap it to death? Tell it unbearable jokes until it kills itself? Even exhausted, a gorilla could kill you with a casual backhand. What could you do, in return?
Humans literally evolved to use tools, it’s like asking a tiger to hunt without using their claws. Taking tools away from humans is not making them equal to the animal they are hunting, it’s handicapping them.
If you want to make them equal then the fight is 1 v 1 and the human has tools.
- Me explaining why I brought a gun to the MMA fight
- Gorillas are apes, just like us. They didn't evolve to use claws or fangs...or tools. Just sheer, brute strength. We cannot compete with that, any more than we can against a tiger.
  Which is why I said what I said...weapons? Yes. Unarmed? No.

in real life, animals prefer being alive and i think the gorilla would run if it saw two people at the same time, let alone 100, and either side would give up once someone got really hurt

Yo that's from the movie Ice Age

That one guy comes back walking funny "I thought you said beat OFF!"

We'll drive that woolly mammoth right off the cliff!

Some people seem to forget that humans can cause literal stampedes with each other in large crowds and will suffocate anything underneath.

I don't think a mammoth, or even a bull, would be very impressed by some humans stampedeing.
- I bet any mommoth would be impressed by this.

With a little creativity, and total dedication despite the high chance of being ripped apart, 100 men could take down a silverback without weapons or tools. Some go for the legs, some go for the arms, some go for the eyes, and then there's the really buff guy that locks arms around the head, while the others turn him by the feet, like a wrench, until it's neck breaks. Or someone jams their arm down it's throat until it suffocates. May take a few attempts and arms. Or there's the butthole, someone mentioned entrails, I dunno. Imagination.

~25 are more than enough, if they are willing to die. Once a single person gets on the gorillas back while it is distracted and does a proper rear-naked-choke its gg.
Edit: Even if you think this is bs, there is no fucking way a gorilla could take 100. People are vastly overestimating how strong the average gorilla is and underestimating how strong a human pumped full of adrenaline is.
- Only way the gorilla wins is if it's 100 wussies that'd just watch until it was their turn to get wrecked.
  Even then, the gorilla would certainly need a nap before finishing everyone off. After all, humans have a greater capacity for energy output, and it'd be similar to putting down 100 pacifist pitbulls with your bare hands. Even athletes would tire out before finishing that off.

This thread is filled with people underestimating the neck strength gorillas have.

Good luck being able to choke out a fking gorilla, no matter what sort of Eddie Hall sized bastard you are.

I may be mistaken but I doubt that any remotely average or even slightly above average person could choke out a gorilla, even if the gorilla can't remove the person with his arms and is just flexing his neck.

No need for that. They would just have to harass it until it died of heat stroke.
- That seems much more rational, yeah.
  And I'm not being sarcastic. It plays to our strengths. We can perspirate much better.

It would probably take 5 -10 unarmed (and not allowed to use any tools) fit adult men to take down a gorilla, depending on a variety of factors. Most gorillas would rather run than confront humans, though.

What are they gunna do, punch it to death? Good fucking luck. They’re not going to be able to pin it down, the gorilla will probably gut at least one of them and beat the shit out of a couple before anything even gets going and it may even use as a flail against the others if it’s feeling particularly spicy and tool-usey that day.
That big forehead is also because it’s all muscle that pulls a giant, fanged mouth shut with incredible force. Grown adults can be killed, and definitely at least subdued, by dogs and you think a handful of “fit” men could take a gorilla?
Laughable, honestly. They couldn’t even do enough damage if they came upon while sleeping and didn’t have a huge rock to crash on its head.
- They don't have to kill the gorilla, just disable it. Fingers, meet eyeballs. It's hard to stop five pairs of arms at once. It would be at great cost to the men, of course, but it's not as impossible as you make it seem.
A gorilla will make very quick work of 5 men. If it's direct combat, 10 is also way too small of a number.

Fake news!

Y’all are severely overestimating unarmed humans. It’s ridiculous, unless the gorilla is sleeping. 15-20 men could dogpile the gorilla and it would just stand up and swat ten other men down with one arm.

The gorilla could charge the group like silverbacks seem to always do, half the men would instantly be incapacitated.

The gorilla could take one guy, lift him by his head swinging him around to beat all the other men, or just rip the guys legs off and then use the legs as weapons.

The gorilla could climb a tree and then take a nap, and any of the guys who tried to climb the tree would fall to their deaths.

With spears or sticks or rocks the men would win, but without any weapons, it’s dumb to think the men even have a chance….

In real life… a hundred men could scare a gorilla away, as long as the gorilla didn’t realize they were unarmed.

You are hilariously overestimating a gorilla. Completely and utterly. A large gorilla is only ~500lbs. There are some healthy humans that weigh about that much.
Would you be able to play around in a fight vs 100 mandrills? Because there's more of a difference between a mandrill and a human male than a human male and a silverback. You are imagining WAY too much for a gorilla.
Here. Watch someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about. https://youtube.com/watch?v=cFf6YowOm7o
- This.
  People massively underestimate numbers. 100 people is a lot.
  For comparison, a human would have no trouble against a single terrier. But an unarmed human against 100 terriers is a different story.
  In movies it's quite easy for a skilled fighter to take on 100 enemies. In reality, 1 vs 3 is already a very unbalanced fight.
- There are some healthy humans that weigh about that much.
  What? Even if you were 2.5 metres tall, you'd still be very obese.
Biologist Dirk Draulans commented on this topic and his conclusion was that the first 10 to 20 people would be cannon fodder who'd get their limbs ripped off, but after two minutes the gorilla would tire and be overpowered. Similar to running it's humans their endurance that wins over explosiveness.
- If we allow for skilled fighters, I bet only a handful would even suffer serious injury before the gorilla was either tired out or choked to the floor. Gorillas aren't that much bigger than a healthy male unless you're only pulling from Indonesia or something ridiculous like that. 300-500lbs vs 180-200lbs. All the doubters are clearly imagining a 2000lb killing machine... (hell someone else was comparing them to mammoths!)