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So, I'm making this creature. While making it I'm wondering, some things about how humans will react to it and likewise.

Lore

In 2037, World War 3 breaks out. Instead of nukes, the countries warring with mutates and viruses. One side (lets call them AU) of the war launches a virus that change the DNA in infected humans in 10 days after entering the host., making them mutates. AU's virus will stays active for 5 years before the virus dies. Anywhom, the virus backfires and it spreads all over the globe. Since of AU's stupidity in not making a cure for pre-mutate infected, the whole world got overrunned in a matter of weeks. 100 years after, there are 2 human-like lifeforms in the world. Humans and Muts (mutants from the virus)

Stats

Humans: After 100 years, humans' complete tech level is a bit above shotguns, rifles and swords/bows (they know farming and stuff). Other than small parts across the globe of labs and alikes, anything that the humans didn't forget about life before the war and the war itself is drowned in godly powers and alike.

Muts: 1. Since because of the war needs, muts live short lives, and able to gain thousands of new warriors since child muts mature after 1 year. But muts rarely grow past the age of 6, let alone 10.

  1. Due to evolving, muts became humanly smart over the 100 years. since muts became a lot smarter, there are factions within Muts, and some want peace with humans.

  2. Muts are gray-skinned creatures with sharp fangs/claws for shredding. But there skin is more or less easily ripped apart. With smaller body size (~2ft) they can hide easier. There can be ~10,000 in hordes.

  3. Muts have outstanding memories (aka they filter out unimportant things and can have some memories of there mother) so ideas must quickly kill fast and can't happen again for ~12 years. 3 Here's the thing, without a lot of food, they become dumb and disorganized (after 2 months they start to become dumb in order to not starve. They can be starved for 3 months more.)

Question

Lets say that humans/muts are involved in a major war. Each side wants to destroy the other. Since the story takes place in a human side, what weakness could the humans exploit, (aka use in order to kill most of the muts) since I have no clue how people might go in order of this, (not a general) I would love some help.

Edits in this text

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  • $\begingroup$ So, the Muts are basically humans, but short-lived and less organized? Sounds like they should be a simpler foe to combat than humans. $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Dec 8, 2016 at 19:13
  • $\begingroup$ What level of technology do the Muts have? $\endgroup$ Dec 8, 2016 at 20:43

6 Answers 6

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You've got the solution right there in your hands! "But without alot of food, they become dumb and disorangized."

Humans could locate communities of Muts and destroy their food supply. Poisoning food storage and burning down crops have been a mainstay of humanity's warfare since the beginning of history. This would turn the intelligent, organized communities into unorganized foragers.

Unorganized Muts would be easier to destroy en masse. Additionally, you state that Muts are factionalized, so find two factions of Muts that dislike each other and destroy one's food supply. If you're lucky, they'll assume the other faction did it, and now both factions are destroying each other for you to gain control over the food supply. Even if the Muts with the destroyed food know humans did it, they still need food to keep themselves organized enough for retribution, if nothing else. And that enemy faction is a ripe target to attack; with their backs against the wall and a need to rapidly replace their food supply, the Muts would most likely raid their enemies, leaving two weakened factions to pick off.

A Mut faction may "defect" to the Human side, because humans have the infrastructure to feed their population, not to mention maybe they've made enemies with factions on their own sides. You say they have long memories; think the Hatfields and McCoy feud. They escape their side and join the Humans as both R&D and an army. Maybe they allow a large portion of their population to go hungry, turning them into warfighters for the Human side, in exchange for the larger amount of food required to keep the Mut intellectuals fed and smart.

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  • $\begingroup$ My comment is more about large scale destruction of muts, while the other two answers are better for actual warfare. $\endgroup$
    – Zoey Green
    Dec 8, 2016 at 19:19
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You said that their offspring grow to maturity in a year, which brings up a lot of questions about their metabolism. If they are human-sized, then they have to absorb enough nutrients in that one year to survive and support mass building -- meaning that they are going to need to eat a lot of food every day or have super-efficient metabolism that allows them to convert food to body mass at an astounding rate.

But what about their adult daily caloric needs? Without some sort of switch for their metabolisms, they would need to constantly eat massive amounts of food or risk digesting themselves. That's assuming that their digestive systems are capable of breaking food down quickly enough; they are still limited by the speed of chemical reactions!

Speaking of the speed of chemical reactions, without a means of production that would support such massive caloric needs, they would starve themselves pretty darn quickly. You implied that they started with sub-human intelligence. Do you think a species without a level of intelligence that would enable farming could feed itself sustainably?

You also mentioned that their memories are outstanding, but mentioned nothing about their learning capabilities. Memory isn't enough to innovate! Without the ability to think faster (that also means more calories required), their memories are wasted on the vast amounts of ennui and pointless data in day-to-day life. Besides, just because you remember all the mathematical formulae doesn't mean you'll be able to solve problems faster than your brain can grasp and process things.

Their short lives also work against innovation (unless, again, they think faster than humans). Many technologies take years to develop, even assuming that the people working on them are the same people all throughout. With such short lives, you would need to perform knowledge turnover much more often, and each turnover is necessarily prone to misunderstandings unless your mutants have an infallible super-precise language.

OKAY, let's assume that these problems were solved through some astounding chemistry and luck. To answer your question:

  1. Starvation -- Unless they can survive on minimal food (which doesn't seem to be the case, unless they don't mind being stupid), they must have the means to produce much more food than we modern humans can. Deny them access to food through whatever means you desire -- fire, poisoned earth, and so on.

  2. Psychological warfare -- If you know what they fear, then broadcast horrific media at them. They'll remember it clearly and permanently because of their outstanding memories, and will be constantly haunted. Let their societies collapse in the ensuing madness. Their short lives mean that even periods of trauma of "normal" length for us would be a massive loss of personal productivity for each of them. They don't have the time to "get over it" like we do. Unless they can think faster (snagging on this again).

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  • $\begingroup$ Psychological warfare is a great point. And considering they're split into factions, propaganda may be a great tool for turning them on each other. Or you know, blaring Justin Bieber's 'Baby' until their heads explode. $\endgroup$
    – Lu22
    Dec 9, 2016 at 7:00
  • $\begingroup$ Hot damn, that is evil. $\endgroup$
    – LiveMynd
    Dec 9, 2016 at 7:03
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Do the muts use ranged weapons (or any high-level tools at all)? Because if not, they're likely to come off very badly in this war. Past that, just use sound military strategy. Use mobility (what sort of mobility options do the humans have?) to concentrate your forces and divide theirs (and by the sound of things a cut-off group will fare badly, as they will become dumb and disorganised).

The biggest question is how did they do so well in the first place? Do the muts outnumber the humans by a huge margin? And what do they eat?

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  • $\begingroup$ This. Human hunting parties can exterminate any non-organized adversary using tactics and weapons. $\endgroup$
    – Durandal
    Dec 8, 2016 at 19:10
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Asymmetric Warfare This is a classic David and Goliath scenario. Use hit-and-run tactics, booby-trapping objects of mut-interest, poisoning… Maybe check out the way guerrilla-troops (e.g the Vietcong) operated. Avoid large-scale battles, let them conquer regions that will overextend their supply lines then cut off detachments from the main force and siege or annihilate them. (Also: read up on the Winter War for possible tactics and scenarios)

Economic Warfare Study the mut-economy. Attempt to deny them essential resources they already lack. Works especially well with food or energy. Use agents to create economic bubbles (The south sea bubble is a nice real-live example). Flood their markets with (cheap low-quality) products a lot of them make for a living.

Cultural Warfare Recruit pro-human muts as agents. Support their groups (and keep them well-fed). Assure them that they are right and treat them well. Use them as a way to sneak human culture, philosophy, religion and arts into the mutant world, allowing for even more mutants to identify as pro-human. No weapon is as strong as massed self conviction. Incentive a low reproduction rate in pro-human muts, so you can integrate a steady stream of them without breaking your society.

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Reverse Siege Warfare

I would suggest starving them out. Have your people get a small cavalry force and lure a large number of them into a valley, or other depression. Now that you have the higher ground, you can repell them with rifle fire and keep them there until they become disorganized from hunger. Finish them off.

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A small addition, if the muts are rapidly mutating, should their cells do so aswell. Assuming this they would presumably develop terminal cancer very quickly, as the cells are constantly generating , degenerating , and regenerating. correct me if im wrong

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  • $\begingroup$ Wetaxel123, thats why they barely live past 10 years. $\endgroup$ Dec 13, 2016 at 14:50

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