How Many Kindergartners Could You Personally Take On In A Fight Before Being Overpowered?

By
John Hawkins

This fascinating question was posed by someone on Reddit,

Stipulations and context:

  1. The kindergartners are released 5 at a time every 30 seconds.

  2. The arena is a standard sized classroom, let’s say 40 feet wide by 25 feet deep. However, the room is completely empty.

  3. The kindergartners are unarmed. They are just going to run at you, attempting to punch, kick, bite, and scratch you. Their ultimate goal is to cumulatively dog pile on you and pin you to the ground. If they can pin you for 15 consecutive seconds, you lose.

  4. You have to knock a kindergartner unconscious in order to defeat them. Once they are knocked unconscious, they vanish from the classroom arena.

  5. You can use any strategy you want to fend them off, but you are also unarmed and you are not allowed to leave the room.

My guess is that with these ground rules, it would be much tougher than most people anticipate to deal with this challenge.

First of all, if you’re not someone who is trained in martial arts and used to sparring, you are going to gas out VERY QUICKLY. In fact, my guess is that by the minute and a half mark, most adult males are going to be still functional, but sucking wind. Of course, even that could be optimistic because 5 fresh kindergartners are being released every 30 seconds. Given that the average boy entering kindergarten is 47 pounds, you could get into a lot of trouble very quickly as the numbers piled up just because of sheer weight. Moreover, the instructions say that they “run at you.” That means almost inevitably, some of them are going to get to you and wrap up your arms and legs. Can you peel them off? Absolutely, but that will take more energy and cause you to gas even faster.

Additionally, although an adult male can typically easily disable a child, the rules say the boy has to be knocked unconscious to disappear from the arena. While battering a child that size would be easy, knocking them unconscious may take significantly more effort. That’s doubly true if we are talking about a carpeted room, instead of a room where the floor and walls are concrete.