What is the largest animal you could kill whilst naked?

[Miguel]

As a general rule, humans suck when we can't use tools

And we even use vacuum cleaners for that.

As for me, I think I stand a fair chance against anything that doesn't come up to my waist in height, assuming the above concerns that I can catch it, and that it's not so suddenly poisonous that I die before I kill it (I note the question wasn't "What can you kill whilst naked and survive?").

If it's much taller than my waist, chances are it's considerably stronger, tougher and less squishy than me, so I reckon I would probably lose there.

[zebru]

A goat maybe? Assuming that I could jerk its neck with enough speed and strength.

Still a lot of depends whether:
a) the animal is tame
b) if not, do you need to catch it
c) if you do need to catch it first, in what kind of surroundings you are in

Cats and dogs wouldn't be much of a problem if they trust you I think. Cat that isn't tame is a completely different game.

[Iggy]

If I can manage to make it unable to run, I think I could manage to strangle an ostrich, if I work out a lot

Otherwise, a turkey would be my max.

[nanabobo567]

Well, now, that depends. Are we allowed to use the animal's own artillery against it? Like, say, breaking off a deer's antler and running it through its own bone? 'Cause I could do that. Otherwise, until I get my lung capacity up, I'm not killing anything naked for a while. I can barely suck up a small beetle, let alone sucking up something half my size.

[Zap]

Realistically, with no equipment or any kind of weapons or traps, I think I'd be lucky just to take something like a wild turkey or chicken without getting hurt. Though, perhaps I could kill a dog if I had to. I've been told something you can do in a fight with a vicious dog is to put your hand down its throat and choke it.

What would make a good pair of shoes? Rabbits, perhaps? I haven't particularly big feet, but even I can tell that the squirrels outside my window are too small.

I guess that would have to do. I'd get a pair of armadillos for shoes if I was a little farther south, though. Those plates could make some real tough bottoms, and they have fur on their underside you could use to line the shoes.

By the way, this thread makes an interesting pair with the "Neocolours Recipe Exchange" thread beside it.

[Sagrei]

If I could manage a small rodent that'd be a trick. I'm a weakling.

I've been told something you can do in a fight with a vicious dog is to put your hand down its throat and choke it.

Pilling a tame, friendly dog without bait is dangerous enough, and any injuries I got there were purely by flailing accident. Any dog big enough to fit a human hand in its mouth has more than enough muscle around the head to crack all those tiny fiddly bones in a hand. I can't see how this would work.

This reminds me of one of the two* great internet thought-experiments: how many five-year-old children could you take down before they took you out? Any weapon you have they also have.

*The other being: if you put a plane on a conveyor belt which is moving backward at the exact same speed the engines are going, will it take off?

[Madge]

Of course it will take off. For starters engines can't go at speeds, they go at power, it's the wheels that go at speeds [/pedantic], but seriously, if the treadmill were going backwards at the same speed the wheels of the plane were moving forward it would indeed take off.

The five year old children thing is pretty damn awesome, though. I could probably take out about half a dozen with butter knives - I've got height on them so I could gouge them in the eyes/stab them in the neck with a lot more ease than they could me, and my size means I have my weight behind me more than they. Of course this depends on how well organised these 5 year olds were. If they climbed on each others' shoulders I may be in for a tougher time.

[Cranberry]

With five-year-olds, I think I'd want a heavy weapon, one that would harder for them to wield. Yeah, that would mean I'd get tired faster, too, but I could take more of them out with one hit beforehand.

[Jazzy]

Or something which required thinking the five-year-olds would be unlikely or unable to do. I've heard before the age of about seven children can't understand the passive voice, for example. Perhaps if you had something like a knife with a sheath, and the sheath was held on with a combination lock, you could print instructions for getting the correct combination in the passive and they'd be completely foxed by it, even if they can read. (Or make the combination ln 2, or the year Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, or the number of pounds in twenty stone, or something.)

[EofS]

The treadmill thing would be a fantastic solution to issues of space when constructing new runways. Except that, you know, if it failed it would be an utter catastrophe.

(And the fact that it would be spectacularly impractical and unviable financially. But those are boring reasons not to do it.)

[Jazzy]

The main problem, I think, is that the engines would always have to be going at the same speed as the treadmill - not significantly faster or it will drive off the front, and not significantly slower or it will be flung backwards. People are good at compensating for treadmills' increasing speed, but as you can see at the end of the video, at some point the man has to go slower than the treadmill and he's thrown off. With a plane, there's less of an issue that the plane can't physically go fast enough (because if the treadmill can do it, the plane almost certainly can) but the plane will be thrown off in the same way if for whatever reason it does go slower than the treadmill. So the plane has to match its speed increases to the treadmill exactly, or almost exactly. At takeoff speed (which seems to be between 150 and 225mph depending on type of plane, according to Google), delays become significant.

Or do they?

Human treadmills are about double a running stride, so let's make our plane runway double the length of a 747 plus a bit, or 150m. We'll assume we've placed the plane exactly in the middle of the treadmill in case it goes too fast or too slow - ie, there's half a plane length in front and behind, 37.5m each way. 747s take off at 180mph, according to one source; if the plane is going at 170mph when the treadmill's reached 180mph (which seems reasonable), it has about 8.4 seconds to get up to 180mph - at that point, it will be thrown backwards off the end of the treadmill. (This, of course, assumes that it actually stays at 170mph for all of the 8.4 seconds- if it can reach, say, 175mph, while it isn't fast enough, it will have longer). The internet thinks that the 747 takes 75 seconds to get to 90m/s, so its average acceleration is 1.2 metres per second, per second. At 170mph, it's going at 76 metres per second, and 180mph is 80 metres per second, so it will take approximately 3.3 seconds to reach 180mph, which is safe, and it should take off.

If, however, the plane is only going at 160mph when the treadmill's reached 180mph - and if things fail, the plane would probably go a lot slower than 160mph - it has 4.19 seconds before it's thrown backwards (same assumption again that it stays at 160mph). Unfortunately, it has an acceleration to do which is supposed to take 7 seconds. Plane flies backwards and hits whatever's behind the treadmill.

It does occur to me that while it's financially unviable now, if land prices continue to skyrocket - no pun intended - giant treadmills might be cheaper than two-mile runways. But, as shown by the (incredibly simplified) maths, you shouldn't all rush out and buy stocks in treadmill runways just yet.

[Sagrei]

They did this on Mythbusters, with an unmanned kit plane and a conveyor belt somewhere, but haven't yet showed the episode. Though, plane + conveyor belt has showed up in the writeups once or twice, proving that Adam and Jamie are damn dirty teases. Seriously, this one went everywhere. That guy who does 'Ask The Pilot' on Salon even tackled it, though I can't remember what his take was.

I don't know nearly enough about airplanes and the physics involved to answer this, though airplanes always make my little flightless primate brain go whoa, coooooool.

As for the five-year-olds, it's easy. Handgun with child-safety lock.

[Jazzy]

I always found parents had more trouble with child-safety caps on bottles than children did; I used to have to open them for my mum. I'm not sure if handguns are the same.

[EofS]

Jazzy, why must you continue to thwart my genius with your feeble human logic. One day I will finally develop a scheme so cunning that it denies even your mathematics. And you, madam, will not be getting any stocks in it!

[Jazzy]

I aim to please