Klingon warrior effectiveness

[Patrick Ogaard]

It's worth noting that they are warriors, not soldiers.

Ignoring the implausibility, 1,000 TNG+ klingons are shrunk down to 3mm high and told to attack an ant nest. What happens?

The warrior/soldier dichotomy I'm not so worried about. Professional soldiers, at least American ones, are often styled, or style themselves, warriors.

The ant nest thing, though...

What species of ant? How many ants in the nest?

How good are endoskeletons and lungs for critters that small?

How well, if at all, do disruptors work when shrunk down to that size, especially against relatively massive layers of chitin?

How effective is a headbutt against something trying to snip your head off with the rough equivalent of the Jaws of Life (somebody's TM)?

Do the Klingons at least get one little BoP? Just a little palm-sized one, with little photon torpedoes the size of grains of rice?

Most importantly, how can Klingon warriors possibly live with doing battle with a bunch of women (or at least females)? Even if they're insects, soldier and worker ants are all females, albeit sterile ones.

[Sea Skimmer]

It's worth noting that they are warriors, not soldiers.

Ignoring the implausibility, 1,000 TNG+ klingons are shrunk down to 3mm high and told to attack an ant nest. What happens?

Unless its a very small nest or the ants are some pussy type with no warriors tens of thousand of ants swarm the Klingons and tear them to shreads before eating the bodies.

[Patrick Ogaard]

It's worth noting that they are warriors, not soldiers.

Ignoring the implausibility, 1,000 TNG+ klingons are shrunk down to 3mm high and told to attack an ant nest. What happens?

Unless its a very small nest or the ants are some pussy type with no warriors tens of thousand of ants swarm the Klingons and tear them to shreads before eating the bodies.

Now here's a thought:

Klingon bloodwine is toxic to humans. If it is also toxic to ants, then maybe the solution to defeating the hive is to get all 1,000 warriors sauced on bloodwine and then have them get eaten. The ants share the food around and within hours tiny tumbleweeds roll through the nest and tiny, tiny coyotes come in, sniffing around the corpses of the brave but ultimately doomed ants. Klingon guile at work.

[Sea Skimmer]

Now here's a thought:

Klingon bloodwine is toxic to humans. If it is also toxic to ants, then maybe the solution to defeating the hive is to get all 1,000 warriors sauced on bloodwine and then have them get eaten. The ants share the food around and within hours tiny tumbleweeds roll through the nest and tiny, tiny coyotes come in, sniffing around the corpses of the brave but ultimately doomed ants. Klingon guile at work.

MAD isn't much of a victory, though I doubt that there would be enough bloodwine to wipe out the whole nest.

[NecronLord]

I mentioned that the klingons are magically shrunk down, thus their lungs and bodies and equipment still work (implausible I know, but hey)

The klingons disruptors work, though they still have the propensity to drop them and charge the ants. They would probably go through the chitchin fairly easily.

They can have a bird of prey, about twice the size of the micro machine version, with photon torpedoes as powerful as matchstick heads.
The BoP is unable to reach escape velocity, and has an operational ceiling of ten meters. There is a pylon nearby which prevents them using transporters.

There's also a hungry pair of ravens nearby that they should avoid. They can smell their exhaust when cloaked, and like shiny spacecraft.

Their objective is to assasinate the queen of the ant colony.

Scenario 1 : Fairly placid european ants

Scenario 2 : Red ants

Scenario 3 : Amazon soldier ants

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I have a pet theory that there actually two different broadly related races which evolved on the Klingon homeworld and which the UFP thinks are both Klingons. The Klingons of TOS and the Klingons of the movie era and TNG.

The Klingons of TOS were an advanced, materialistic culture of considerable power who'd been around for a while and were ruled by an Emperor. That's why they were called an Empire. They were thinking, normal, rational people with a sophisticated society which had existed in space for far longer than the UFP, just like the Vulcans/Romulans and other species.

However, to maintain control over this second race of Klingons, the Emperors were forced to raise a privilaged upper class of them to increasing power. These people, like the top layer of society in a colony, for instance, naturally adopted the customs of the smooth-forehead Klingons, for lack of a better name, but pandered to their own races for politics: They were intermediaries.

Eventually, perhaps through a declining birthrate, increasing monopolization of combat roles by the second klingon race, and other factors, this intermediary class was able to gain the Chancellorship, and then depose the Emperor. Roles were reversed.

However, as long as those people in specific ruled, they maintained the same policy as the smooth-foreheaded klingons. Their ideas about national government, policy interaction, military training and tactics, etc, were taken from them and so of course they reasonably held the same course.

Their constituency, still grounded in traditionalist culture, was less than pleased at this, thinking that they had ended up with the same rules with new faces. This came to a head when Praxis blew up, because the leadership of the Klingon Empire was willing to make peace, while the average Klingon would have wanted war, even though it was totally irrational. So, the peace was successfully made, but the populace was angered to the point that in the long-term that very peace allowed for the undermining of the regime in favour of a traditionalist one, the one we see in TNG - Perhaps by violent revolution, in the style of the Ayatollahs taking over in Iran.

[Jeremy]

Very interesting but ultimately more indepth then Star Trek is capable of.


I really like that theory, good job!