The correct answer is to befriend the t-rex and then team up to kill the multi millionaires caging up people and extinct animals for violent entertainment.
Apparently T-Rex can live up to a couple weeks without food.
So I would spend most of that time pestering it, throwing rocks and stuff just to keep it awake and agitated. Ideally get it to chase me back into my indestructible hut.
After week 3, if it isn’t dead, it will be so lethargic and ill that I could hack away at it’s tail until enough bleeding finishes the job. It says I have food, it does not say he has food.
Poop on the knife, stab it anywhere I can reach when it is inevitably near the hut trying to get me. Repeat until infection does its work.
Is that what a poop knife is?
Sadly no
This is easy.
We’re locked in the arena. I’m safe in my indestructible hut. I also get food. So all I have to do is sit there and wait for the t-rex to starve to death and/or die of dehydration.
With literally zero expenditure of effort I’ll make the $500mm in like two weeks.
If you’re fed, it’s highly likely the T Rex is also fed.
A predator like that probably won’t starve in a month. Its a bit hard to say, you could compare with a crocodile (larger ones can fast for 2 - 3 years) but they are cold blooded which is a huge metabolic advantage here.
Lions can go 2 weeks without eating, and are far smaller which means there’s less of them to waste away before they perish. A massive predator like a rex would having huge amounts of mass to lose before it died.
Chances are they probably only ate every 1 to 2 weeks by default. A month is not much of a stretch for it, so you likely fail.
Chances are they probably only ate every 1 to 2 weeks by default.
What did they even do all day then?
Probably smoked weed and played Fortnite, they were likely a bunch of wankers.
wankers
With those arms? uh oh
Really long wein
Predators tend to spend most of their time just laying around.
We suspect dinosaurs were metabolically similar to Komodo dragons, which are also probably an example of island dwarfism. So they’re probably the closest analog we have. And they either eat scraps or lay in ambush. Which, you know, involves laying around for long stretches of time.
lay in ambush. Which, you know, involves laying around for long stretches of time
Great line to remember for my boss
Actually it is believed that T Rex was warm blooded: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/t-rex-was-as-warm-blooded-as-humans-new-study-finds/
I think you misread me, that is the common theory yeah
Ahh reading over again you’re right my bad!
I’m not sure I agree on the longevity. Trex is no crocodile that can sit there with essentially zero energy expenditure for hours/days/weeks; Trex stands upright and has to walk which requires a lot of muscle output.
Also what about water? Are you saying it wouldn’t die of dehydration either?
Why would it be wandering around if it was stuck in a relatively small space? It can sit or lie down, being bipedal doesn’t mean it needs to be constantly standing or walking.
I looked into this afterward and there’s actually a study by Barrick and Showers (1999) estimating that a large tyrannosaur could consume 2 - 3 weeks’ worth of food in a single meal, and that’s before accounting for its existing fat reserves. Remember, a starving animal will burn through its fat reserves and eventually its muscle tissue before it dies, so at that size it’s potentially got significant runway.
There’s also Kleiber’s law, which says larger animals have proportionally lower energy requirements relative to their body mass. Obviously a rex would need an enormous amount of food in absolute terms, but that doesn’t mean it would actually need to eat particularly frequently. Throw that all together and i highly doubt a month would be enough to starve one to death.
Dehydration is a much better argument though, I’ll give you that. I’ve no idea how long a rex could survive without water, and I doubt anyone can reliably estimate it. I’d imagine that would kill it long before starvation did.
Although interestingly, the original scenario only says you’re provided with food, it doesn’t actually mention water for either of you.
But if it rained, water would pool in its footprints and you’d definitely be screwed.
your hut is in the middle. the food delivery is at one end or the other because you
don’tcan’t tip enough (weren’t given any money) for the dashers to risk their lives delivering a sack of soggy tacos.If you have to walk through trex territory to get food/water then it’s much harder…
I would wait and hide, allowing the T-Rex to tire itself out. Then one night, when the T-Rex was especially tired and soundly asleep, I would carefully climb into the T-Rex’s cloaca. There I would stay for the rest of the month.
That’s it, you can keep the 500 million. I’ve already won.
Prose so beautiful it brought a tear to my eye.
Literally why humans (and our ancestors) were able to put themselves at the top of the food chain.
Strange, I don’t see the part about hiding in a prey’s cloaca for an entire month. 🤔
It’s heavily implied.
Clown in ambulance style? How big is a T’s asshole for a grown ass man to fit in??
If you do it right, t-rex will learn what it’s been missing and welcome you back with arms wide open.
I’m so flattered that you you see me as a grown ass man <3
Its not much of a leap to assume you’re an ass man
That is just disrespectful. They could be a General Manager, District Manager, or Regional Manager. You don’t know.
When was the last time it ate before going into the arena?
I used to have a recurring adventure dream/nightmare like this when I was a kid. Except the hut was NOT indestructible.
Research suggests a T-Rex would need 50-100k kCal/day. Even if it ate a whole cow before starting, it would be hurting a week in.
Maybe it could survive the month, but would probably be severely malnourished at that point.
In any event, there is no mention of what happens if I fail to kill it. Does the experiment just end and I go home empty handed, or does the magic hut disappear and we fight it out to the death?
Can I keep the hut?
A hut, in this economy?
The only reason they can offer 500 million is because of the crypto sponsorship
All right, we’ll keep the sponsorship. I’m fine living in the Cypto.com Arena('s Previously Magic Hut).
“Yes, Richard, you can keep the hut.”
I also immediately thought of ayoade on taskmaster when I read that comment. I see you prole.
Only the knife.
Surely the T-Rex also gets food and a hut
Seems like a reasonable assumption is that it gets 90-95% of its BMR per day; that is, its fed enough to stay alive for a long while, but it us on a duet and chronically hungry.
If you fail to kill it and survive, yeah seems like going home empty handed is the safe assumption.
That’s assuming it doesn’t have the capability to go into torpor.
Yeah that was my thought, just let it starve.
If I’m allowed to have alcohol then I molotov the T-Rex. I rinse and repeat until it collapses from exhaustion, stab it in the eyes, then set it on fire again.
If I can get a molotov in its mouth, even better.
I implore anyone thinking of trying this to consider that the Tyrannosaurus rex measured up to 43 feet long, stood about 12 to 13 feet tall at the hip, and weighed roughly 4 to 9 metric tons. Its skull alone could weigh up to 600 pounds, and it had a bite force estimated at 35,000 to 57,000 newtons.
You would be better off with a TSA-approved blade against a Bengal tiger. There is no amount of strategic planning that can compensate for your being so incredibly outclassed that you’d have a better chance at building the first antigravity spaceship in your invincible hut within that same month.
Anyway, I would still probably try, for $500M.
You would never take it in a straight fight, but there’s a very good reason why humans absolutely dominate every animal on earth - our intelligence. The original post is too light on details, but in basically every scenario there almost certainly is some possible way to win that could be figured out.
Punji sticks. Me use poop and sharpness. Give big lizard tiny microbe. Big infection. Me eat meat and watch it slowly die painful horrible death weak from no food or water.
That’s a lot of digging to do while a T-Rex is prowling around.
It’s got to sleep sometime. Dig a hole while it’s sleeping. Doesn’t have to be a hole that the whole dinosaur can fall into, just deep enough to step on a punji stick:
Fair enough. Also I really appreciate this art.
the Tyrannosaurus rex measured up to 43 feet long, stood about 12 to 13 feet tall at the hip, and weighed roughly 4 to 9 metric tons. Its skull alone could weigh up to 600 pounds, and it had a bite force estimated at 35,000 to 57,000 newtons.
BUT!
our intelligence
I could take it in a fight.
Now imagine the animal is exhausted, injured, hasn’t eaten for a month and is asleep, and you’re in for a 500 million USD reward. IDK that I’d take the chance, but it seems possible if you’re relatively fit and knowledgable about hunting.
I said a straight fight. Meaning just body fighting against body plus a short knife. There’s tons of other ways to kill an animal. Poison collected from plants or other animals, starvation, dehydration, traps, pits, fashioning arrows, spears, causing infections, and on and on
Convo about what animals we could fight in a 1 v 1 fight came up, and a buddy chimed in with some solid piece of wisdom on the matter:
“If you think you’re gonna lose, then you’re gonna lose. Thinking you can win doesn’t guarantee a win, but its impossible to win if you don’t think you can.”
why humans absolutely dominate every animal on earth - our intelligence.
We like to think that about ourselves, but in my opinion, that’s not the whole truth. After all, there are other intelligent life forms as well (though it’s certainly debatable whether they’re just as intelligent, “differently” intelligent, or simply less intelligent). The key reason why we, in combination with our intelligence, dominate the planet is, in my opinion, cooperation within social groups beyond the (extended) family. Religions, states, laws… all mental constructs we use to ensure that we can cooperate within massive groups. As far as I know, no one else does this.
In our scenario here, this crucial component is missing: While a human is (quite likely) more intelligent than the T-Rex, he is, after all, just one individual, and his true strength lies in the community. If we were to place 50 people together in this setting, I believe there would be significantly less doubt about the outcome.
I had similar thinking, but limited the group to 3 (some hopeleslly low number).
Most animals that are considered smart are social, too. Your definition of intelligence is too narrow.
there’s a very good reason why humans absolutely dominate every animal on earth - our intelligence
Gonna have to slight disagree on this one. I’ve always found out ability to organize and communicate in generalist situations to be far more valuable than individual intelligence (though that’s also nothing to shrug at compared to other animals).
Naw, part of me is wondering if you’d be more likely to succeed in a 1-on-1 with the knife or a 3-on-1 unarmed. I still can’t think of a good strategy, but I feel like wed stand a better chance that just any one of us out there.
“organize and communicate in generalist situations”
So, intelligence? Humans didn’t develop big brains for playing chess and doing theoretical physics, and most animal species that are considered “smart” are social (e.g. crows, most whales).
Eh, yes?
Feels like a different flavor of “intelligence” since one is problem solving focused (“how do a beat an unbearable for with minimal gear”) while the other is waiting for “triggers” and having “responses” ready (“I’m at my spot and need to wait for guy #2 to run past to drop the anvil”) and then not freezing if one of the triggers is slightly off.
So anyway, in general, both probably count as intelligence, but in this specific case, I think its worth differentiating one from the other. The best organizer/team player is not gonna stand out when working alone, while the most intelligent problem solver may not be able to work on a team.
Sure, but the thing is, humans dominate every known animal in both. The way primitive humans (probably) lived, they needed to be both competent at individual problem solving and group coordination.
But fair, it’s quite telling that this “human vs. t-rex” problem isn’t presented as a group effort, but as “one vs. one”. Many modern humans have deluded themselves into thinking that the greatest people work alone.
You mean sacrifice 2 so one can escape right?
Lol, not the intention.
I’m thinking of trying to start some kind of rope making operation in the hut (VERY wild card assumption that the resources for this would be available). If you and your two buddies could make enough rope to hog tie the Rex, then successfully did the thing while it slept, maybe you could also build some level of choker for it to suffocate the beast?
Idk, but I know that’d be a lot of rope. Gotta get multiple people on the task.
That might work. You could probably use multiple people to set up a trap and bait the beast in. There are definitely more options when you have more people to work with.
Also our ability to run long distances. I have no idea on the speed of a T-Rex, but it may be possible to have it chase you long enough to wear it out.
Due to the mass of T Rex (4-6 tons) it would theoretically top out at 10-15mph, the same run speed of a trained marathon runner putting some effort in. An athlete could outrun a T Rex briefly, and the exertion would probably dissuade it from chasing for long.
T Rex predated upon slow, large herbivores. I think a hit & run tactic would eventually wear it down.
That works on things that run away. It could just eat you if it can beat you in a sprint.
After comparing dinosaurs to feet and British money I still have no idea how big it is, but I believe you it’s dangerous.
1 meter = 3 feet
(approximately)
Also: Big animals can be surprisingly stealthy. Elephants can sneak up on you when you’re not looking.
Everytime you leave that hut and don’t look at the Rex because you are busy digging or doing something else, you’re in grave danger that it sneaks up on you. It’s not gonna boom with every step like in Jurassic Park.
I’ll try it for free after reading Cloaca Guy’s idea.
Bro, you have no idea how alpha I am.
And I do MMA.
Humans hunted wooly mammoths to extinction, and we’d do the same to T Rexes. 7 tons of mass is all well and good until a monkey who spent the last evening whittling a spear chucks it into your side from dozens of meters away.
Teams of humans hunted mammoths. This is just you vs a murder chicken the size of a whale.
It’s actually a single murder chicken the size of a mammoth, who can’t retaliate to ranged attacks once I’m in my shelter, nor run away from me. I like my odds way more than team hunting mammoth herds.
Wait until it falls asleep infront of the hut, slit it’s throat and run back inside
You’re not gonna get through it’s hide fast enough lol
Guys I just checked t Rex extinct easy money they already ded
Never saw the jurassic Park sequels huh? There are islands with dinosaurs on them.
Somewhat related comment. Is it possible to kill a human with a thumbtack?
You could totally rip open a neck artery with a thumbtack.
You can kill a human with a well place punch or just a chokehold.
So yes, you can also do it with a thumbtack.
I imagine an infection would be the most likely killer. Maybe eventual bloodloss? Though that would take quite some time.
Yes, you just have to be patient
Get him to swallow it, and maybe.
Pat someone like $250 million to shoot it from outside the arena.
no mention of the T Rex being provided food, so
I wait in my tent until it is practically dead of hunger or thirst, then I stab it
Yeah this seems easy. Chill out in your indestructible hut and eat some hot Cheetos for a month, wait for the T-Rex to starve to death. Come out a millionaire.
No mention of you being provided food either…Nevermind I’m blind sometimesLiterally says “you will be provided food”.
Whoops looks like I have the stupid ¯\(ツ)/¯
That could mean anything.
“You will be provided, food.”
