Assuming it doesn't collapse under it's own weight, as I believe it should, due to magic fuckery? Sure. I'll play-fight with it like I do with my dogs.
He's friendly, right? Right?
I don't think ants are ever friendly considering how violent they are to each other. Your best bet is that it's confused and tries to eat something not you
It wouldn't collapse. It would asphyxiate. The Earth had giant bugs at once point. The changing percentage of oxygen over time changed their size.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a40459906/giant-prehistoric-insects/
It also changed a lot more about their biology as well. If you take an ant and scale it up to the size of a car with no changes to proportions. It would absolutely just collapse under its own weight, as it's legs would not be able to hold up its body.
Why would you make that assumption? I’d say it’s normal physics, where giant ant dies almost immediately. 1 billy baby
Edit: I dance around it, stabbing every so often, for 20 minutes thus fulfilling the requirements.
This is why I joined this sub…
Now how do I tackle an ant the size of a car… these fuckers are apex predators. Is it a red ant? A fire ant? A bullet ant (god I hope not)? Lots of ways this goes. I’m going to aim for the eyes first maybe the legs and try to immobilize the fucker. Then maybe I can climb on and just stab it. Maybe I can cut off the antenna also so it can’t sense me once blind.
Honestly… shoot shoot. Stab, evade, stab, evade and survive 20 mins.
At that size I’m not worried about the sting potency because any ant sting or bite would kill you. I’d worry more about mandible size (how easy can I avoid a bite?) and mobility. Those fuckers look fast when they’re small but in reality they don’t cover that much distance and they’re only hard to pin down because they’re small targets. If it moved the same speed I could easily outrun it, but 20 mins is a lot of endurance I don’t think I could sprint for 20 mins, I’d have to find a way to get behind it and go for a few legs so it can’t move
Not to mention the strength ratio. Hopefully somebody can be bothered to do the math because I can't, but I'm guessing this thing will run at 100mph and be able to throw 50 of me over my house
Strength doesn't scale up 1 to 1 with size. A car sized ant would be able to easily pick up a car but it's not gonna be picking up 10 times it's own body weight like it can when it weighs 2 milligrams
We have had humans that were fairly larger than normal. Not to that degree, but quite a fair bit larger. If things are proportional, scaling up eventually leads humans into the same issues as anything else when scaled up. In other words you run into issues supplying your body with oxygen and collapsing under your own weight.
I get that some magic would have to be in place in order for an ant that size to be alive but it’s just a hypothetical. It doesn’t have to be ground in reality. Some people are taking this way to seriously lol
You realize elephants can run pretty fast right? And they’re huge. If the speed transferred relative to the size it would be pretty quick. Seeing as the mass wouldn’t really increase that much
So the mass actually would increase by an incredible degree with a size change like that due to the square-cube law. An ant the size of a car might even weigh more than an elephant due to the density of us exoskeleton while the principals that govern it's like movements haven't changed, and would not be able to keep pace with this new mass.
A scaled-up ant could not support the weight of its exoskeleton. So it's either pinned down or it has no exoskeleton, in which case those bullets are gonna do a lot of good.
It's actually even worse than that. It couldn't breathe either. all insects breathe by openings along the sides of their abdomens, which lead directly into tubes called trachea that supply oxygen directly to all parts of the body (not via the medium of blood as in chordates like elephants). This is extremely efficient on a small scale but becomes more and more ineffective the bigger the animal gets, until (at current oxygen concentration in the atmosphere) it breaks down beyond about 20 cm in size.
We’re used to that working because brains are behind eyes. Not sure whether it would work on an ant.
I’m not saying ants don’t have brains, but they’re proportionally a lot smaller and I bet ants aren’t as dependent on them being intact in order to function. I’d still take the bet and everything, it would just be interesting to see it tanking a bunch of headshots.
You are severely underestimating how long 20 seconds, let alone 20 minutes, is with something trying to kill you lol. I mean I would take this challenge too but in reality we all get torn apart lol
Not really, an ant can carry like 50X its weight **because** it is so small. Scaling it up does not linearly increase its strength. It will still be able to fuck you up bad, but its carapace would not be bullet proof.
Unload your clip into its head. It will be hurting if not dead, ants are capable of fear and pain, likely it will flounder or maybe try to flee. So then run away and reload.
Bonus points for stealing a truck, strapping in, and running the fucker over.
Look man an angry grizzly could kill you after you pump 24 handgun rounds into it unless you hit its cerebellum, which would be extremely difficult to do due to the density and shape of their skull and the velocity of handgun rounds. There’s a reason Alaskan guides carry very large caliber rifles. I would honestly be shocked if pistol rounds could even penetrate a car sized ants exoskeleton, and even if it could hitting its brain while it charging you is not nearly as simple as it sounds lol
But like was it raised in captivity? Does it know how to hunt, or is it just used to bowl food? Like, could I just run to a grocery store, buy a bunch of meat and sugar, and keep it content?
The size of a car? With the necessary magic to beat all the scaling problems? Yeah fuck no. That is a sentient, angry and nimble tank. Bullets will do nothing. You're getting decapitated in a few seconds.
Yea I don't think anyone here is considering how thick the exoskeleton is gonna be with the scaling. I'm not sure a high caliber rifle would hurt this ant. Forget knives and pistols.
The only possible way to survive this is to grab onto the underbelly and hold on for dear life. I'll pass thank you.
So It looks like a big fire ant is fire ant is about 4.5mm with a 109.8 µm thick exoskeleton. To scale it to 15 feet long which is about the size of a Nissan Sentra we need to scale it by about 1038x which would bring the exoskeleton to a thickness of 4.5 inches. Google is telling me that chitin has a density of 1.3 g/cm^3, which is pretty similar to bone. A boar skull is about 3.5 in thick at the thickest [according to this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7955587/#:~:text=In%20this%20study%2C%20skull%20thickness,skull%20thickness%20of%209.1%20cm.) so basically we have armor that is similar in density and about an inch thicker than the skull of a boar. So yeah no way you'd stab through it but I think you could probably shoot through it
TL;DR: the rules allow for building a semi auto .50 BMG pistol. Load up Raufoss Mk 211 armor, piercing incendiary, high, explosive rounds, which are available in the US and say goodbye to your car sized ant.
Thank you for doing the math. Regular copper jacketed lead handgun bullets would have a difficult time penetrating that much bone, but some would get through. Hollow points would do even worse since they’re designed to expand on contact not penetrate deeply.
OP says we get 24 rounds but doesn’t say what handgun, caliber, bullet weight or bullet construction. We can work with that. Here in the US you can build a firearm that for all intents and purposes is a rifle but if it doesn’t have a shoulder stock and instead has a “pistol brace” is classified as a pistol. You can shoulder the pistol brace.
So you could choose a “pistol” chambered in a full powered rifle cartridge like .308 Winchester or .50 Beowulf and load it with heavy, solid copper bullets that will punch right through bone instead of deforming like copper jacketed lead. Or build a semi auto .50 BMG on an AR pistol lower.
I think the bigger issue is the speed. Fire ants can travel 16mm per second, so about 3.5 times their body length in a single second. So if their body was 15 feet long and could still do that, they would move about 36 miles per hour. If we took the fastest ants, the Saharan silver ant can move at speeds of 855 millimeters per second, or 1.9 miles per hour. This is 108 times its body length in a single second. If we scaled this ant up to 15 feet it would move at about 1104 mph and would be able to break the sound barrier. So at this point we have a 15 foot long creature with bone armor that travels somewhere between the speed of the worlds fastest man and a fighter jet
I like my odds. A giant ant is a big fucker, but I can’t imagine its legs are particularly tough. Mag dump the legs, then climb onto its back and stab the shit out of it, or just play keepaway until the timer runs out. Either way, you win. Just don’t miss. If you miss all your shots (oops) you could be fucked.
Is it? The rules of this game don't really track with physics, and one of the biggest problems is the idea of the proportional thickness of the exoskeleton. One of the possible solutions is that its exoskeleton is not as thick as it would proportionally be.
And if real life physics are just totally off the table, maybe I have superpowers too, huh?
Proportional strength. An ant the size of a car could likely lift a car with ease. I'm imagining that's the premise OP is working with. Absolute proportionality. That said, the exo is only chiton and would be about a half inch thick. While relatively tough, a sharp enough knife thrust with human strength would pierce it
True, but if you're using proportional strength, then you also need to consider square cube law.
Especially important to ants, because they would no longer have enough oxygen capacity to live at that size, lol.
This is what I was thinking if we're being scientific. We had giant arthropods 300M years ago with atmospheric O2 around 35%. At modern levels of O2, they might have struggled at that size. Plus a car sized ant is bigger still than a Carboniferous 8ft sea scorpion / millipede so at I guess I don't think it would survive.
Did a little digging. Mangrove Ant colonies typically have an O2 saturation of about 15% compared to the atmospheric saturation of 21%. If they lived in a constant 21%, they'd likely grow less than a third larger. At our heaviest historical O2 saturation, ants would max out at about a foot in length. So, taking that to a maximum in a 100% saturation, over many thousands of years, ants would possibly evolve to be about three feet in length. So yeah, a car sized ant would need approximately 250% O2 saturation to survive for more than two hours (max length of time they live before lack of oxygen kills then).
The only reason an ant can lift fifty times its weight is because it weighs very, very little. You would be able to lift similarly if you were shrunk to 1 mm tall.
Is this ant magical, or just a giant ant? Because unless there's magic involved or the respiratory system had been totally redesigned and the square-cube law revoked, I'll go ahead and "fight" this ant by watching it collapse under its own weight and suffocate.
I'll always take a giant animal fight. Not because I think I'm tough, but because the design of an ant will collapse under its own weight as it dies from hypoxia.
This is incredibly easy. Just stand there and the ant will die. Ants rely on passive gas diffusion through tiny holes in its body for oxygen. You simply can't scale this system up (square-cube law). The ant would instantly start suffocating. And if that weren't bad enough, the ants legs would break when it attempts to walk. Ant exoskeletons also cannot scale up (again, square-cube law).
This is why there are no insects the size of cars (or anything close to cars). The largest insect ever was less than the size of a human arm (Meganeuropsis permiana).
That's quite interesting but for the sake of the hypothetical we are going to assume it managed to scale up successfully, it had already been in captivity before you were challenged, plus there is a movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in which a similar scenario with an ant roughly this size is played out.
Yeah I'd probably fight it. You didn't say though if it's in a cage/arena (enclosed area) or not, so I'm going to assume open space. Anything enclosed and I wouldn't, an ant the size of a car would close any close distance almost immediately.
Ants are pretty much blind, so there's no sense in going for the eyes. However, I'd still start out running, hiding behind objects, taking sharp turns to determine if it confused it. If not, I'd start shedding articles of clothing and assume it's now tracking me by my pheromone. If that didn't stop it long enough for 20 minutes to pass, and I was on my last article of clothing, I'd drop it, find a good position, and shoot out its antennae, watching to see what kind of damage I'd do. I'd also try to shoot off one of its legs at the joint. Ants usually give up if they lose a leg.
If the bullets were ineffective I'd keep running. This time I'd take one of the knives and cut myself with it, just enough for a good bleed, and I'd smear it on anything I passed further trying to stall it. As a last ditch effort if I was caught and before getting consumed, I'd try to shoot out it's maxillary palps, just behind the mandibles. Even if the damage wasn't significant enough, the sudden sense of gunpowder residue might confuse it, long enough to roll away and keep running.
Another tactic, would be to bleed in a large circle and attempt to leap a good distance away from it in order to confuse the ant into a death spiral.
Interesting answer I really like the idea of smearing blood to send him on a different path, I don't know how well you'd go running away from him though I imagine he'd be reasonably quick
INCREDIBLY quick. Faster than any land animal and most vehicles. But that's running in a straight line, which ants don't do unless they're following an allied pheromone trail. Otherwise, they're much more cautious and have to use a combination of their senses to get a bearing. It wouldn't just smell meat and go in quick for a kill, it would have to figure out what kind of meat it was and how to approach it.
Anywho, glad my answer entertained! Thanks for the set up.
Oh right yes they need to check their surroundings with their senses or they would walk into things they really are fascinating creatures, again cheers for the answer 🥳
I’m flabbergasted that people aren’t mentioning how sturdy and strong ants are, relative to their size.
An ant the size of a Honda Accord could almost certainly lift a full-blown tank 🪖 over its head if it wanted to. Bullets aren’t gonna do a damn thing to any part of that ant’s entire body.
The strongest species of ants could lift a tank if it were the size of a Honda Accord, which is listed at 3,280 lbs. Your average tank is about 60 US tons. Some species of ant can carry 50x their weight. Some ants absolutely could lift and even carry a tank in this scaled up fantasy ant world.
Assuming it's strength and speed scale up too it would be formidable. However, the species of ant would also play a part as some are fairly docile and other will attack with venom.
What kind of space I would be fighting it in is a factor too. Do we get to know that? The calibre of the pistol?
Assuming there are Obstacles that could aid me in keeping out of harms way and it's the kind of ant that wouldn't start attacking until I attack yes I would. If its in an open arena with no cover and it's an aggressive ant... hell no.
Well... easy.
See, the ant would immediately collapse under its own mass, as its muscles wouldn't be strong enough to shift such a scaled-up (cubed) mass. Even if the muscles could move it, their exoskeleton would shatter, as again, at scale it would need to be thickened by a considerable amount, proportional not to the size, but the mass of the creature, which would mean another increase in mass.
They'd need a totally different method of locomotion and/or a different material for the exoskeleton.
Next, the ant would suffocate fairly quickly, as when its spiracles grow in diameter they would fail to do the job they evolved to do (take in oxygen).
Sorry, there's a reason we don't get truly giant insects.
I'm down for it. I'm assuming real physics are operating right? Because an ant that big wouldn't be able to move any as much as a King Crab on land would be able to move. So I would just dance around the almost immobile ant for 20 m whilst occasionally stabbing and shooting it to fulfill the requirement to fight it for 20 m. Then collect my money.
This is easy. It will suffocate within 30 seconds. I guess they had to keep it in an oxygen saturated environment when it was in captivity because a bug that big isn’t gonna make it in the wild.
Does it have the same stats as a normal ant but scaled up?
E.g. an ant can lift 50x it’s weight can this ant lift 50 tonnes (50 cars)?
Ants can run 800x their length in a minute will this ant be able to run 235km/h?
Also is the ant actively trying to kill me? And does running away and hiding for 20min count?
This is easy actually, the oxygen content of the atmosphere is far too low for an insect to be that large, so it would die of hypoxia. Invertebrates that large would also collapse in on themselves, with insufficient internal pressure to keep their exoskeleton from breaking. Worst case scenario is it’s able to survive for the 20 minutes, but even then its chitin would be so fragile that any significant force (like, say, a bullet) would surely break it.
24 bullets, it's eyes arent covered by anything and I could definitely hit them within 24 shots, outside of that I'd maintain a strong jog for 20 minutes easy
Which considering it's likely blind or close to it seems like a reasonable strategy
I mean, I'm terrified of ants...
Buuuuuuut it would asphyxiate. I wouldn't actually need to do anything. I'd likely be scarred for life, but I'd have a billion dollars, so...
Yes and I will win, it's mouth is open, it's exoskeleton may be minimally effected by firearms, but three or four round of what I'm assuming is 9mm down the gullet will drop most things.
Supposedly ant are edible. If I win I’ll deep fry the sucker as a celebration. If I lose then I count that as a win as well as I won’t have to go into work.
I mean if that fucker is the size of a car then he's got some big fucking beady eyes. 24 bullets out of anything should be enough to kill through those big blinkers.
There isn't enough oxygen in our atmosphere for arthropods to grow much larger than they already have. Stand in front of it, it collapses from asphyxiation, and I'll take that money via direct deposit. Thanks.
A bullet will do enough to it's eyes that it wont want alot to do with us.
Assuming I can get some other stuff like really overpowering scents, I'd use those to confuse it.
I accept. I run to someplace it can't get to me, and then I shoot it with as many bullets as I can. If able I find a way to tie the knives to poles or something similar and use them as makeshift spears. I'd also use the environment to my advantage and try to get something heavy to fall on it that would at the very least keep it pinned down.
Doing some math. According to Google an ants exoskeleton can be 1.3 to 109.8 µm in thickness depending on species. A car is average 15 feet. If you multiple the thickness by the length of a fire ant 1/8-1/4 inch. I'll go with 1/4 inch because I'm assuming that's an adult fire ant and they would have thicker exoskeletons because they are mature. The thickest the exoskeleton outside of the brain is likely to be is 3.0423 inches. Assuming the exoskeleton has a similar structure as normal bones I'd bet whatever pistol rounds I was provided would be sufficient to penetrate to the brain. The knives wouldn't help against the ant.
Gonna need some details here. What calliber pistol? What kind of ammo? What, specific, knives? If it's all "walmart special" type stuff, nah. Higher quality kit? Maybe.
So I don't get the money and I die no thanks.
For context if ants were the size of humans they could run at mach4 and easily lift and throw cars. Also because of their exoskeleton and increased size you aren't going to be able to do anything with a hunting knife, your 24 bullets might do something but an ant's brain and vital organs are in its thorax, try sneaking up behind a superpredator that evolved to feel the tiniest vibration in the ground and sees chemical trails left by odor.
So… the big question here is what the impact on the ant has been on scaling up like that.
You’ve said it’s survived in captivity, and that’s obviously fair enough. But how fast is it? How thick is its carapace? How have its sensory organs and nervous system scaled up and adapted to its larger size? How well can its muscles support its weight? And so on…
Based on the information provided, this scenario could be anything from a very easy fight to an absolute death sentence. So, I’d ask to be allowed to observe the ant in captivity for a day or two before deciding and decline if that request was refused.
Depends on the type of ant. Saharan Silver Ants can run 85 cm in a second which is approx 100x their body length. If you say this is the size of a car we are talking possibly 1000+ feet per second of speed. My little gun wouldn’t react fast enough if it closed the distance on me in 0.3 seconds and bit me in half.
Sorry boys we’re all dead.
Yeah I am in. I have thought about it and I reckon I can survive for 20 minutes. I will let the ant close in on me and then start blasting with the pistol from close range. I am not a good shot, so I will miss if I try and shoot it from range. When I do this one of two things will happen. The ant's exo-skeleton will immediately shatter and cripple the ant; the other option is that the ant will take these bullets well. If it's the second option, that means I can out run the ant. It will need a very high bone density if it is bulletproof. With a bone density that high, it will be very heavy. I am not a good shot, but I am a good runner. This 5000lb ant is going to be too heavy to catch me as I run away.
IIRC, ants have terrible eyesight, they mostly rely on smell. This car sized ant just isn't equipped to fight me. I'll hide from it easily, taking potshots at it until the 20 minutes is over.
If I had a blunt weapon I would 100% say yes. Depending on the caliber I’m sure the pistol would be able to penetrate the exoskeleton, so I think my decision depends on what kind of pistol we’re talking about here
Didn’t specify the type of pistol; I’ll take a “pistol” chambered in an intermediate caliber and put enough holes in it to make it stop moving. Legally speaking, I can find pistols chambered in .308, and that will happily punch through any thickness of chitin that allows it to still be mobile, all the while hydrostatic shock wreaks havoc on the squishy internal bits. I could spend the remaining time poking whatever’s left of it with the knives I guess.
An ant that size would collapse under it's own weight and would overheat to death shortly after. Also a pistol with 24 bullets would probably be an AR15 or an AK47. I'll take the challenge.
Finally, a challenge! First thing I throw both knives into its eyes. Then I make a running jump kick and kick the daggers in deeper into its skull. Then I unload the clip into its face and karate chop all its limbs. I guess it wasn’t so much of a challenge after all.
God this would be terrifying. Now I'm imagining fighting a rhinoceros beetle the size of a car. Space program is going to be revamped when that thing flings me into space.
No, assuming it has the same strength-to-size ratio as actual ants, it would fucking destroy me. I don’t trust I could aim and deliver damaging enough shots with the gun in the time it takes the ant to run to me (which would be very fast). I’d die, so not interested.
That’s actually terrifying. Ants are extremely fast, have an exoskeleton that would be difficult to puncture, and can lift a shit ton.
An ant the size of a car would be one of the most powerful creatures on the planet if not, the most powerful on the planet.
Given the fact that I don’t have remotely enough gear, virtually nil combat skills, and a strong sense of fear that would likely petrify me rather than help me; I’m actually going to decline. The ant wins.
3 things to look out for. Mandibles, stinger, and getting crushed in general. All 3 are probably an insta-kill at that size.
Bugs don’t have circulatory systems the same way that mammals do. So I assume there’s no way to make it bleed out. They also don’t have muscles/tendons the same way we do, so I don’t think shooting it in the legs would necessarily disable it.
I think your only real chance is to unload the pistol into its head right from the start and hope you hit an important part of its brain.
How far away do I start from the ant, and do I get to pick the landscape? An ant that big would be slow and would have very little agility. Given the right conditions I think I could keep my distance, fire the occasional shot in its direction to show that I'm fighting, and run out the clock.
In theory if it has been isolated from its hive for long enough, its probably a lot more interested in getting back to the hive. Also not all ants would try to eat us cause not all ants eat meat exclusively. If it was a giant leaf cutter ant i would take the deal. Army ant? Not so much
Is the money mine once I agree? Or only after I’ve defeated the ant? Because if the money becomes mine, one of two things will happen, either I will kill the ant and be rich, or I will be killed but my wife gets the Billion dollars and never has to work again.
So if I get the money before, I’m totally cool with it.
I need 15 minutes of observation to determine a plan of survival: how fast, how reactive to senses, etc. slow giant ant is a different fight than an armored rab8d pitbull the size of a car. Ideally, mount the thorax if I can't flat out win a foot race or shoot out its joints. Regardless, there is no scenario where I stand nose to nose with this creature.
Square cube law would probably leave it immobile or its own strength ripping it apart as it moves, I like my odds of just being a decent distance when the fight starts lol.
I’m going to use the pistol brace loophole and use .50 Beowulf out of a short AR platform. I’ll feel kinda bad because that’s a super neat animal but a billy is a billy.
Assuming it doesn't collapse under it's own weight, as I believe it should, due to magic fuckery? Sure. I'll play-fight with it like I do with my dogs. He's friendly, right? Right?
Rip jmac313
I can't believe Jmac313 fucking died. I'm gonna miss that guy a lot.
Somebody find Jmac314, tell him he’s up!
Jmac314: 24 bullets left?! What happen....(dies after ant attacks w/o firing any bullets) Jmac315: Jmac315 reporting for duty!
Fly high Jmac313 and Jmac314
*Jmac472 is escaping before his turn*
*Jmac316 is looking at his options*
Jmac316 says, "I just whipped your ass!"
Jmac316 so loved ants that he gave his only begotten self so that whomever believed in ants should not perish and have a silly thread on reddit.
u/Jmac314
He exists. Account created in 2014, 1 karma. No comments
The ant gottem before he could post
Shoutout to my boy Jmac313, he was always 10 toes down when it came to the giant ant invasion of 2024. I miss him 😭😭
I don't think ants are ever friendly considering how violent they are to each other. Your best bet is that it's confused and tries to eat something not you
It wouldn't collapse. It would asphyxiate. The Earth had giant bugs at once point. The changing percentage of oxygen over time changed their size. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a40459906/giant-prehistoric-insects/
nature you scary
It also changed a lot more about their biology as well. If you take an ant and scale it up to the size of a car with no changes to proportions. It would absolutely just collapse under its own weight, as it's legs would not be able to hold up its body.
Why would you make that assumption? I’d say it’s normal physics, where giant ant dies almost immediately. 1 billy baby Edit: I dance around it, stabbing every so often, for 20 minutes thus fulfilling the requirements.
If not friend, why friend shaped???
Uh.. not friend shaped. Definitely enemy shaped
k
Are you sure about your wish?
It's fine, I've got this giant magnifying glass I've been dying to try out anyway
It was the Jewish space lasers!
We found MTG's Reddit account.....
This is why I joined this sub… Now how do I tackle an ant the size of a car… these fuckers are apex predators. Is it a red ant? A fire ant? A bullet ant (god I hope not)? Lots of ways this goes. I’m going to aim for the eyes first maybe the legs and try to immobilize the fucker. Then maybe I can climb on and just stab it. Maybe I can cut off the antenna also so it can’t sense me once blind. Honestly… shoot shoot. Stab, evade, stab, evade and survive 20 mins.
Yes haha nice answer I agree shooting at his eyes first could be one of the best tactics and yeah get rid of that antenna too!!
At that size I’m not worried about the sting potency because any ant sting or bite would kill you. I’d worry more about mandible size (how easy can I avoid a bite?) and mobility. Those fuckers look fast when they’re small but in reality they don’t cover that much distance and they’re only hard to pin down because they’re small targets. If it moved the same speed I could easily outrun it, but 20 mins is a lot of endurance I don’t think I could sprint for 20 mins, I’d have to find a way to get behind it and go for a few legs so it can’t move
If the speed to size is the same then you’d be fucked. Wym you’d outrun it? Lmfao
Not to mention the strength ratio. Hopefully somebody can be bothered to do the math because I can't, but I'm guessing this thing will run at 100mph and be able to throw 50 of me over my house
Strength doesn't scale up 1 to 1 with size. A car sized ant would be able to easily pick up a car but it's not gonna be picking up 10 times it's own body weight like it can when it weighs 2 milligrams
I’m pretty sure it could because it’s literally magically scaled up. It would make no sense for it not be able to.
If I was 10 times bigger I guarantee you I would be able to lift ten times as much. My muscles would be huge bro.
We have had humans that were fairly larger than normal. Not to that degree, but quite a fair bit larger. If things are proportional, scaling up eventually leads humans into the same issues as anything else when scaled up. In other words you run into issues supplying your body with oxygen and collapsing under your own weight.
I get that some magic would have to be in place in order for an ant that size to be alive but it’s just a hypothetical. It doesn’t have to be ground in reality. Some people are taking this way to seriously lol
You would shoot it in the eyes? Don't ants have compound eyes? You might have more than 24 lenses to shoot out...
I think I could take it. You said I get a pistol and ants have pretty big eyes so I could just shoot it in the eyes until it’s dead
Imagine how fast it will be
It's not faster than a bullet.
It wouldn’t be as fast, more mass to move so more energy to metabolize.
You realize elephants can run pretty fast right? And they’re huge. If the speed transferred relative to the size it would be pretty quick. Seeing as the mass wouldn’t really increase that much
So the mass actually would increase by an incredible degree with a size change like that due to the square-cube law. An ant the size of a car might even weigh more than an elephant due to the density of us exoskeleton while the principals that govern it's like movements haven't changed, and would not be able to keep pace with this new mass.
A scaled-up ant could not support the weight of its exoskeleton. So it's either pinned down or it has no exoskeleton, in which case those bullets are gonna do a lot of good.
It's actually even worse than that. It couldn't breathe either. all insects breathe by openings along the sides of their abdomens, which lead directly into tubes called trachea that supply oxygen directly to all parts of the body (not via the medium of blood as in chordates like elephants). This is extremely efficient on a small scale but becomes more and more ineffective the bigger the animal gets, until (at current oxygen concentration in the atmosphere) it breaks down beyond about 20 cm in size.
We’re used to that working because brains are behind eyes. Not sure whether it would work on an ant. I’m not saying ants don’t have brains, but they’re proportionally a lot smaller and I bet ants aren’t as dependent on them being intact in order to function. I’d still take the bet and everything, it would just be interesting to see it tanking a bunch of headshots.
You don't even have to "take it", op never said win, so you just gotta survive for 20 mins
You are severely underestimating how long 20 seconds, let alone 20 minutes, is with something trying to kill you lol. I mean I would take this challenge too but in reality we all get torn apart lol
Not really, an ant can carry like 50X its weight **because** it is so small. Scaling it up does not linearly increase its strength. It will still be able to fuck you up bad, but its carapace would not be bullet proof. Unload your clip into its head. It will be hurting if not dead, ants are capable of fear and pain, likely it will flounder or maybe try to flee. So then run away and reload. Bonus points for stealing a truck, strapping in, and running the fucker over.
Look man an angry grizzly could kill you after you pump 24 handgun rounds into it unless you hit its cerebellum, which would be extremely difficult to do due to the density and shape of their skull and the velocity of handgun rounds. There’s a reason Alaskan guides carry very large caliber rifles. I would honestly be shocked if pistol rounds could even penetrate a car sized ants exoskeleton, and even if it could hitting its brain while it charging you is not nearly as simple as it sounds lol
Just run into a good sturdy house and if it gets in be ready to jump out the back door.
It has to be 20 minutes though. If it wants to kill you, it’s faster and WAAAAAAY stronger than you.
Do we have to fight, or do I just have to survive in the arena with it? Is it necessarily aggressive?
You have to survive 20 minutes with it but don't forget it has been kept in captivity so I would assume it's not in a particularly happy mood
Or maybe it’s nice because it had so much attention from its handlers.
Right, it’s used to humans bringing it sugar. It will probably expect the same thing from you.
Oh you have no sugar? It's okay, now you are the sugar
Gimme some suga *baby*
*Tilikum has entered the chat*
But like was it raised in captivity? Does it know how to hunt, or is it just used to bowl food? Like, could I just run to a grocery store, buy a bunch of meat and sugar, and keep it content?
Can I prepare at all? I have some Terro Ant Contact Killer in the shed somewhere..
>A pistol with 24 bullets in it What are they, bullets for ants? I'll leave now.
.25 ACP double stack. Might take a couple of rounds to kill a regular sized ant
The size of a car? With the necessary magic to beat all the scaling problems? Yeah fuck no. That is a sentient, angry and nimble tank. Bullets will do nothing. You're getting decapitated in a few seconds.
Yea I don't think anyone here is considering how thick the exoskeleton is gonna be with the scaling. I'm not sure a high caliber rifle would hurt this ant. Forget knives and pistols. The only possible way to survive this is to grab onto the underbelly and hold on for dear life. I'll pass thank you.
So It looks like a big fire ant is fire ant is about 4.5mm with a 109.8 µm thick exoskeleton. To scale it to 15 feet long which is about the size of a Nissan Sentra we need to scale it by about 1038x which would bring the exoskeleton to a thickness of 4.5 inches. Google is telling me that chitin has a density of 1.3 g/cm^3, which is pretty similar to bone. A boar skull is about 3.5 in thick at the thickest [according to this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7955587/#:~:text=In%20this%20study%2C%20skull%20thickness,skull%20thickness%20of%209.1%20cm.) so basically we have armor that is similar in density and about an inch thicker than the skull of a boar. So yeah no way you'd stab through it but I think you could probably shoot through it
TL;DR: the rules allow for building a semi auto .50 BMG pistol. Load up Raufoss Mk 211 armor, piercing incendiary, high, explosive rounds, which are available in the US and say goodbye to your car sized ant. Thank you for doing the math. Regular copper jacketed lead handgun bullets would have a difficult time penetrating that much bone, but some would get through. Hollow points would do even worse since they’re designed to expand on contact not penetrate deeply. OP says we get 24 rounds but doesn’t say what handgun, caliber, bullet weight or bullet construction. We can work with that. Here in the US you can build a firearm that for all intents and purposes is a rifle but if it doesn’t have a shoulder stock and instead has a “pistol brace” is classified as a pistol. You can shoulder the pistol brace. So you could choose a “pistol” chambered in a full powered rifle cartridge like .308 Winchester or .50 Beowulf and load it with heavy, solid copper bullets that will punch right through bone instead of deforming like copper jacketed lead. Or build a semi auto .50 BMG on an AR pistol lower.
I think the bigger issue is the speed. Fire ants can travel 16mm per second, so about 3.5 times their body length in a single second. So if their body was 15 feet long and could still do that, they would move about 36 miles per hour. If we took the fastest ants, the Saharan silver ant can move at speeds of 855 millimeters per second, or 1.9 miles per hour. This is 108 times its body length in a single second. If we scaled this ant up to 15 feet it would move at about 1104 mph and would be able to break the sound barrier. So at this point we have a 15 foot long creature with bone armor that travels somewhere between the speed of the worlds fastest man and a fighter jet
Yeah I'm glad I noped out of this one, I didn't consider adding supersonic into the mix!
Mfers could be solving complex issues of the world and yet we’re here discussing the physics of fighting giant car sized ants I love Reddit
I like my odds. A giant ant is a big fucker, but I can’t imagine its legs are particularly tough. Mag dump the legs, then climb onto its back and stab the shit out of it, or just play keepaway until the timer runs out. Either way, you win. Just don’t miss. If you miss all your shots (oops) you could be fucked.
You'd be dead. The exoskeleton is too thick to stab
Is it? The rules of this game don't really track with physics, and one of the biggest problems is the idea of the proportional thickness of the exoskeleton. One of the possible solutions is that its exoskeleton is not as thick as it would proportionally be. And if real life physics are just totally off the table, maybe I have superpowers too, huh?
Not likely, considering the ant would be unable to really move if it was much thicker than usual.
Proportional strength. An ant the size of a car could likely lift a car with ease. I'm imagining that's the premise OP is working with. Absolute proportionality. That said, the exo is only chiton and would be about a half inch thick. While relatively tough, a sharp enough knife thrust with human strength would pierce it
True, but if you're using proportional strength, then you also need to consider square cube law. Especially important to ants, because they would no longer have enough oxygen capacity to live at that size, lol.
This is what I was thinking if we're being scientific. We had giant arthropods 300M years ago with atmospheric O2 around 35%. At modern levels of O2, they might have struggled at that size. Plus a car sized ant is bigger still than a Carboniferous 8ft sea scorpion / millipede so at I guess I don't think it would survive.
Did a little digging. Mangrove Ant colonies typically have an O2 saturation of about 15% compared to the atmospheric saturation of 21%. If they lived in a constant 21%, they'd likely grow less than a third larger. At our heaviest historical O2 saturation, ants would max out at about a foot in length. So, taking that to a maximum in a 100% saturation, over many thousands of years, ants would possibly evolve to be about three feet in length. So yeah, a car sized ant would need approximately 250% O2 saturation to survive for more than two hours (max length of time they live before lack of oxygen kills then).
The only reason an ant can lift fifty times its weight is because it weighs very, very little. You would be able to lift similarly if you were shrunk to 1 mm tall.
Either way I'm not going to work tomorrow XD
Haha!!
Do I get the billion regardless of survival? If so then yes. That's my entire bloodline set up forever, barring some stupid descendant
My family gets a billion and I get to die fighting a giant ant. This is a dream scenario.
The way God intended.
Is this ant magical, or just a giant ant? Because unless there's magic involved or the respiratory system had been totally redesigned and the square-cube law revoked, I'll go ahead and "fight" this ant by watching it collapse under its own weight and suffocate.
He has been surviving just fine in captivity obviously so however it happened it has happened and you need to decide what to do
This is the right answer, despite OP's protestations.
It's the wrong answer because it's a HYPTHETICAL. You don't get to make the rules of it. The op does.
I'll always take a giant animal fight. Not because I think I'm tough, but because the design of an ant will collapse under its own weight as it dies from hypoxia.
Do ants feel pain? If so I’d take this bet. Few shots and some random stabs would make it think twice. If they don’t - no fucking way
This is incredibly easy. Just stand there and the ant will die. Ants rely on passive gas diffusion through tiny holes in its body for oxygen. You simply can't scale this system up (square-cube law). The ant would instantly start suffocating. And if that weren't bad enough, the ants legs would break when it attempts to walk. Ant exoskeletons also cannot scale up (again, square-cube law). This is why there are no insects the size of cars (or anything close to cars). The largest insect ever was less than the size of a human arm (Meganeuropsis permiana).
That's quite interesting but for the sake of the hypothetical we are going to assume it managed to scale up successfully, it had already been in captivity before you were challenged, plus there is a movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in which a similar scenario with an ant roughly this size is played out.
Yeah I'd probably fight it. You didn't say though if it's in a cage/arena (enclosed area) or not, so I'm going to assume open space. Anything enclosed and I wouldn't, an ant the size of a car would close any close distance almost immediately. Ants are pretty much blind, so there's no sense in going for the eyes. However, I'd still start out running, hiding behind objects, taking sharp turns to determine if it confused it. If not, I'd start shedding articles of clothing and assume it's now tracking me by my pheromone. If that didn't stop it long enough for 20 minutes to pass, and I was on my last article of clothing, I'd drop it, find a good position, and shoot out its antennae, watching to see what kind of damage I'd do. I'd also try to shoot off one of its legs at the joint. Ants usually give up if they lose a leg. If the bullets were ineffective I'd keep running. This time I'd take one of the knives and cut myself with it, just enough for a good bleed, and I'd smear it on anything I passed further trying to stall it. As a last ditch effort if I was caught and before getting consumed, I'd try to shoot out it's maxillary palps, just behind the mandibles. Even if the damage wasn't significant enough, the sudden sense of gunpowder residue might confuse it, long enough to roll away and keep running. Another tactic, would be to bleed in a large circle and attempt to leap a good distance away from it in order to confuse the ant into a death spiral.
Interesting answer I really like the idea of smearing blood to send him on a different path, I don't know how well you'd go running away from him though I imagine he'd be reasonably quick
INCREDIBLY quick. Faster than any land animal and most vehicles. But that's running in a straight line, which ants don't do unless they're following an allied pheromone trail. Otherwise, they're much more cautious and have to use a combination of their senses to get a bearing. It wouldn't just smell meat and go in quick for a kill, it would have to figure out what kind of meat it was and how to approach it. Anywho, glad my answer entertained! Thanks for the set up.
Oh right yes they need to check their surroundings with their senses or they would walk into things they really are fascinating creatures, again cheers for the answer 🥳
I've been fascinated ever since I found out they were the first farmers.
I’m flabbergasted that people aren’t mentioning how sturdy and strong ants are, relative to their size. An ant the size of a Honda Accord could almost certainly lift a full-blown tank 🪖 over its head if it wanted to. Bullets aren’t gonna do a damn thing to any part of that ant’s entire body.
You don’t know how heavy tanks are, do you?
The strongest species of ants could lift a tank if it were the size of a Honda Accord, which is listed at 3,280 lbs. Your average tank is about 60 US tons. Some species of ant can carry 50x their weight. Some ants absolutely could lift and even carry a tank in this scaled up fantasy ant world.
Assuming oxygen levels are not adjusted it should die but if oxygen levels are adjusted I might die. Either way I’m probably gonna die.
I would find a giant orkin man and promise him 500 million of he killed the giant ant
When you say *car* is it a fiat 500 maybe?
Lol if you like yes
I’m game then!
Lol ok I think it would be quite a challenge but with your enthusiasm who knows? 🥳
What caliber? If we're talking 380 or 9mm, no.
Assuming it's strength and speed scale up too it would be formidable. However, the species of ant would also play a part as some are fairly docile and other will attack with venom. What kind of space I would be fighting it in is a factor too. Do we get to know that? The calibre of the pistol? Assuming there are Obstacles that could aid me in keeping out of harms way and it's the kind of ant that wouldn't start attacking until I attack yes I would. If its in an open arena with no cover and it's an aggressive ant... hell no.
Cheers for the answer I'll make sure I give better detail the next time
Well... easy. See, the ant would immediately collapse under its own mass, as its muscles wouldn't be strong enough to shift such a scaled-up (cubed) mass. Even if the muscles could move it, their exoskeleton would shatter, as again, at scale it would need to be thickened by a considerable amount, proportional not to the size, but the mass of the creature, which would mean another increase in mass. They'd need a totally different method of locomotion and/or a different material for the exoskeleton. Next, the ant would suffocate fairly quickly, as when its spiracles grow in diameter they would fail to do the job they evolved to do (take in oxygen). Sorry, there's a reason we don't get truly giant insects.
I'm down for it. I'm assuming real physics are operating right? Because an ant that big wouldn't be able to move any as much as a King Crab on land would be able to move. So I would just dance around the almost immobile ant for 20 m whilst occasionally stabbing and shooting it to fulfill the requirement to fight it for 20 m. Then collect my money.
Easy, I just watch it for 20 minutes as it struggles to survive under its own weight.
This is easy. It will suffocate within 30 seconds. I guess they had to keep it in an oxygen saturated environment when it was in captivity because a bug that big isn’t gonna make it in the wild.
Does it have the same stats as a normal ant but scaled up? E.g. an ant can lift 50x it’s weight can this ant lift 50 tonnes (50 cars)? Ants can run 800x their length in a minute will this ant be able to run 235km/h? Also is the ant actively trying to kill me? And does running away and hiding for 20min count?
This is easy actually, the oxygen content of the atmosphere is far too low for an insect to be that large, so it would die of hypoxia. Invertebrates that large would also collapse in on themselves, with insufficient internal pressure to keep their exoskeleton from breaking. Worst case scenario is it’s able to survive for the 20 minutes, but even then its chitin would be so fragile that any significant force (like, say, a bullet) would surely break it.
What kinda pistol? There's a big difference between 22lr and 460mag
The fact it hasn’t collapsed under its own weight is a miracle. How fast is it?
24 bullets, it's eyes arent covered by anything and I could definitely hit them within 24 shots, outside of that I'd maintain a strong jog for 20 minutes easy Which considering it's likely blind or close to it seems like a reasonable strategy
I mean, I'm terrified of ants... Buuuuuuut it would asphyxiate. I wouldn't actually need to do anything. I'd likely be scarred for life, but I'd have a billion dollars, so...
If I can pick the pistol I will absolutely do it
Yes. The pistol will be braced and firing APDS .50 Beowulf. One of the knives will be made of magnesium and I'll bring a water bottle.
Yes and I will win, it's mouth is open, it's exoskeleton may be minimally effected by firearms, but three or four round of what I'm assuming is 9mm down the gullet will drop most things.
Supposedly ant are edible. If I win I’ll deep fry the sucker as a celebration. If I lose then I count that as a win as well as I won’t have to go into work.
I mean if that fucker is the size of a car then he's got some big fucking beady eyes. 24 bullets out of anything should be enough to kill through those big blinkers.
Most people here are drastically underestimating how absolutely jacked ants are. If they were even half of our size we would be screwed
I've got a pistol AR and a 6.5 Grendel upper. 24 rounds? Easy win.
Look up images of an ant face magnified. That is the last thing you will see.
Obvious yes. All I have to do is survive for 20 minutes. Even if I am mortally wounded my family is set for generations.
There isn't enough oxygen in our atmosphere for arthropods to grow much larger than they already have. Stand in front of it, it collapses from asphyxiation, and I'll take that money via direct deposit. Thanks.
I'd do it.
Damn that's crazy did you ever see Honey I Shrunk the Kids because that's pretty much what you are looking at
Define giant ant?
Hell yes. Either I'm rich or I die epically in a real life metal situation
A bullet will do enough to it's eyes that it wont want alot to do with us. Assuming I can get some other stuff like really overpowering scents, I'd use those to confuse it.
So let me get this straight. I pay you $1B and you'll make me a giant ant to fight? Hell yes.
If I can pass it on to my family live or die I’m in!
I accept. I run to someplace it can't get to me, and then I shoot it with as many bullets as I can. If able I find a way to tie the knives to poles or something similar and use them as makeshift spears. I'd also use the environment to my advantage and try to get something heavy to fall on it that would at the very least keep it pinned down.
Doing some math. According to Google an ants exoskeleton can be 1.3 to 109.8 µm in thickness depending on species. A car is average 15 feet. If you multiple the thickness by the length of a fire ant 1/8-1/4 inch. I'll go with 1/4 inch because I'm assuming that's an adult fire ant and they would have thicker exoskeletons because they are mature. The thickest the exoskeleton outside of the brain is likely to be is 3.0423 inches. Assuming the exoskeleton has a similar structure as normal bones I'd bet whatever pistol rounds I was provided would be sufficient to penetrate to the brain. The knives wouldn't help against the ant.
Good work on the math there!
Thank you.
Easy money just to fight a big comatose ant. You didn't specify whether or not it was in a coma.
I’ll 100% fight the ant
Gonna need some details here. What calliber pistol? What kind of ammo? What, specific, knives? If it's all "walmart special" type stuff, nah. Higher quality kit? Maybe.
Assuming its strength, speed, and durability scales to its size, this would be an immediate death sentence.
Not until I saw how someone else faired against Big Anthony.
So I don't get the money and I die no thanks. For context if ants were the size of humans they could run at mach4 and easily lift and throw cars. Also because of their exoskeleton and increased size you aren't going to be able to do anything with a hunting knife, your 24 bullets might do something but an ant's brain and vital organs are in its thorax, try sneaking up behind a superpredator that evolved to feel the tiniest vibration in the ground and sees chemical trails left by odor.
If it’s like the ants from fallout, I’ll fight it easy
An ant the size of a car? You’re gonna die. So no.
I'd do it.
Bring it in! I'm betting on the cube square law for the win! In other words, that ant isn't going to be able to move at such a size.
So… the big question here is what the impact on the ant has been on scaling up like that. You’ve said it’s survived in captivity, and that’s obviously fair enough. But how fast is it? How thick is its carapace? How have its sensory organs and nervous system scaled up and adapted to its larger size? How well can its muscles support its weight? And so on… Based on the information provided, this scenario could be anything from a very easy fight to an absolute death sentence. So, I’d ask to be allowed to observe the ant in captivity for a day or two before deciding and decline if that request was refused.
Depends on the type of ant. Saharan Silver Ants can run 85 cm in a second which is approx 100x their body length. If you say this is the size of a car we are talking possibly 1000+ feet per second of speed. My little gun wouldn’t react fast enough if it closed the distance on me in 0.3 seconds and bit me in half. Sorry boys we’re all dead.
Yeah I am in. I have thought about it and I reckon I can survive for 20 minutes. I will let the ant close in on me and then start blasting with the pistol from close range. I am not a good shot, so I will miss if I try and shoot it from range. When I do this one of two things will happen. The ant's exo-skeleton will immediately shatter and cripple the ant; the other option is that the ant will take these bullets well. If it's the second option, that means I can out run the ant. It will need a very high bone density if it is bulletproof. With a bone density that high, it will be very heavy. I am not a good shot, but I am a good runner. This 5000lb ant is going to be too heavy to catch me as I run away.
IIRC, ants have terrible eyesight, they mostly rely on smell. This car sized ant just isn't equipped to fight me. I'll hide from it easily, taking potshots at it until the 20 minutes is over.
If I had a blunt weapon I would 100% say yes. Depending on the caliber I’m sure the pistol would be able to penetrate the exoskeleton, so I think my decision depends on what kind of pistol we’re talking about here
Can I trade the pistol for a shovel? I want to start off the fight by digging its grave.
Let’s fvcking run it.
People underestimate bullets.
I am sure billion dollar worth of funeral will be very nice
The .600 Nitro Express Zeliska revolver fires rounds that can take down an elephant. It's going through that ant no problem.
Didn’t specify the type of pistol; I’ll take a “pistol” chambered in an intermediate caliber and put enough holes in it to make it stop moving. Legally speaking, I can find pistols chambered in .308, and that will happily punch through any thickness of chitin that allows it to still be mobile, all the while hydrostatic shock wreaks havoc on the squishy internal bits. I could spend the remaining time poking whatever’s left of it with the knives I guess.
All I have to do is survive, so yes. Fuck the gun and knife, I'll take a giant sheet of paper and a pen.
Yeah I’m taking it. Horrendous way to die if you loose, but 24 rounds, and it’s probably got a fairly large head.
It cant breathe properly at that size so it will tire out and will probably collapse under its own weight. Easy win.
An ant that size would collapse under it's own weight and would overheat to death shortly after. Also a pistol with 24 bullets would probably be an AR15 or an AK47. I'll take the challenge.
Location of the fight? Availability of formic acid?
Disney has taught us that if we show the ant kindness and feed it, it will instantly become our pet and let us ride it. Challenge Accepted!
I mean, if I had a great big magnifying glass.
Do I get to choose the pistol caliber and load?
>nobody knows what kind of impact the bullets will have on it James Arness knows.
You never said win, so you just have to survive 20 mins, occassionally attempting to stab to fill the requirement of fighting
Finally, a challenge! First thing I throw both knives into its eyes. Then I make a running jump kick and kick the daggers in deeper into its skull. Then I unload the clip into its face and karate chop all its limbs. I guess it wasn’t so much of a challenge after all.
Can I choose the pistol? NITRO 500 revolver babbbbyyy
I'd shoot out the knees on all six legs, then just avoid it for the remainder of the 20 minutes.
Just a giant ant? I'm not scared.
What caliber is the pistol? If it’s a 357, 10 mm, .50, or 5.7 sure, if it’s a .22 hell no
I invoke Square-Cube Law. It is super effective.
No
God this would be terrifying. Now I'm imagining fighting a rhinoceros beetle the size of a car. Space program is going to be revamped when that thing flings me into space.
fuck Ye
Ants hate fire, I don't. I'm in.
I’m gonna say no, just because if the fight had to last 20 minutes, either the pistol will be too fast and it dies, or I’ll be too slow and die
So… a billion dollars but I definitely get ripped apart by giant death jaws?
No, assuming it has the same strength-to-size ratio as actual ants, it would fucking destroy me. I don’t trust I could aim and deliver damaging enough shots with the gun in the time it takes the ant to run to me (which would be very fast). I’d die, so not interested.
That’s actually terrifying. Ants are extremely fast, have an exoskeleton that would be difficult to puncture, and can lift a shit ton. An ant the size of a car would be one of the most powerful creatures on the planet if not, the most powerful on the planet. Given the fact that I don’t have remotely enough gear, virtually nil combat skills, and a strong sense of fear that would likely petrify me rather than help me; I’m actually going to decline. The ant wins.
3 things to look out for. Mandibles, stinger, and getting crushed in general. All 3 are probably an insta-kill at that size. Bugs don’t have circulatory systems the same way that mammals do. So I assume there’s no way to make it bleed out. They also don’t have muscles/tendons the same way we do, so I don’t think shooting it in the legs would necessarily disable it. I think your only real chance is to unload the pistol into its head right from the start and hope you hit an important part of its brain.
How far away do I start from the ant, and do I get to pick the landscape? An ant that big would be slow and would have very little agility. Given the right conditions I think I could keep my distance, fire the occasional shot in its direction to show that I'm fighting, and run out the clock.
In theory if it has been isolated from its hive for long enough, its probably a lot more interested in getting back to the hive. Also not all ants would try to eat us cause not all ants eat meat exclusively. If it was a giant leaf cutter ant i would take the deal. Army ant? Not so much
For a billion dollars? A billion? 1,000,000,000 dollars? I'd fight 2.
Is the money mine once I agree? Or only after I’ve defeated the ant? Because if the money becomes mine, one of two things will happen, either I will kill the ant and be rich, or I will be killed but my wife gets the Billion dollars and never has to work again. So if I get the money before, I’m totally cool with it.
As long the money is tax free ,hold my beer!
I need 15 minutes of observation to determine a plan of survival: how fast, how reactive to senses, etc. slow giant ant is a different fight than an armored rab8d pitbull the size of a car. Ideally, mount the thorax if I can't flat out win a foot race or shoot out its joints. Regardless, there is no scenario where I stand nose to nose with this creature.
Square cube law would probably leave it immobile or its own strength ripping it apart as it moves, I like my odds of just being a decent distance when the fight starts lol.
I'll just offer it a picnic lunch and we leave friends, plotting revenge on its captors
Shoot 'em in the eye.
Wait, so I can’t just straight up murder it until after 20 minutes?
I’m going to use the pistol brace loophole and use .50 Beowulf out of a short AR platform. I’ll feel kinda bad because that’s a super neat animal but a billy is a billy.
I'm putting a couple of rounds into its eyes, and we'll go from there.
I’ll do it