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I'll bet it would be possible, with a good bit of work, to determine this using computer simulation. Trying to figure out the question "How many" is a lot harder than "How long can you run?", "How much strength does it take to knock out a 5 year old?", "How many five year olds can attack someone at once?", "How hard can an average 5 year old kick/bite/etc?". It should be much easier for people to agree with a relatively close number on those questions. Use those answers to have factors like endurance, endurance regeneration, strength, etc... plug them in to some type of computer simulation and ta da, problem solved.

Would there be any interest in a project like this?

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Excellent point. We really can't answer this question with any degree of certainty until we start breaking it down into smaller elements.

To me, here are the two hugely key questions:

1) What tactics would the 5-year olds learn during their hour about how to bring you down to your knees, or lower?

2) What tactics would you learn to stop them from doing this?

3) Given #1 and #2, how quickly could they bring you down to your knees, or lower? On average?

4) If they did bring you down to your knees, or lower, what % of the time could you right yourself and toss the little buggers off?

Seems to me that as long as you're upright, you're golden. But as soon as enough of them are clasped around your legs to make you immobile/easily tripped, or enough of them are underneath you to make you fall, you're in trouble.

My guess is that dispatching the first 10 or 20 will be a massive piece of cake, but by 25 or 30 they'll get you down, and start jumping on your head. At that point you won't have any idea where you are or what the hell is going on -- it'll be like being surrounded by a swarm of hornets.

50-50 to get up at that point. If you get up and shake them off, you can probably take down another 20 or so, rinse, repeat.

So my guess is around 40.

Follow up question: Instead of being slightly above-average 5-year olds, they are little f'ing well-organized and super-intelligent geniuses like in Ender's Game. Not any stronger than the usual 5-year old, but basically adult minds in 5-year old bodies.

How many are you taking down then?

Or, more humorously put: what's your magic number if you have to fight that many 2+2'ers, shrunk down to the size of 5-year olds?

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