Timeline for How would tiny dragons strike TERROR?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 21, 2021 at 23:21 | comment | added | Garrett Motzner | See the curious project of the military Bat Bomb. No, not the Adam West version... | |
| May 31, 2020 at 10:14 | comment | added | IndigoFenix | It seems to me that in a world of tiny fire dragons, people will generally build things to be tiny dragon-proof. Stone in place of wood, well-secured granaries, and a fast fire department will be absolutely essential to get civilization underway. | |
| May 30, 2020 at 14:07 | comment | added | Nyos | During WWII, US developed the Bat Bomb ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb ), where bats carried small incendiary bombs to set Japanese cities on fire. A sparrow is more-or-less the same size. The device was tested successfully, but was later cancelled because atomic bombs were finished faster. So yes, if a tiny dragon starts many fires, that could be effective even against WWII era Japan. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 21:57 | comment | added | Zwuwdz | Although this does present the question: Why are people in this alternate universe building their houses out of wood? These dragons would appear to be sufficiently dangerous as to induce a response. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 20:48 | comment | added | ZarHakkar | I would like to give an honorable mentions to the swamp dragons of Discworld, who were treated sort of like a livestock and prone to exploding occasionally. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 18:03 | comment | added | BillThePlatypus | I would expect the countermeasure for these dragons to consist of trained hawks, as they are already used to catching small, fast prey. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 15:43 | comment | added | Graham | @KeithMorrison Even there though, whilst a modern arsonist or accident may take out a row of connected houses (or even a tower block; Grenfell for the obvious example), the fire does not usually jump to neighbouring houses. Once houses mostly stopped being built with timber frames, fires generally became more localised and easier to control. Cities with timber-framed houses though were prone to full-on firestorms. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 12:34 | comment | added | F1Krazy | @BrianDrummond That was my first thought, but the question specifies that they're solitary creatures, or at least, don't form flocks or swarms. I think one would still be capable of causing a devastating fire, given that many such fires in history have started from something as small as a lantern or an unattended oven. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 12:00 | comment | added | user_1818839 | One, probably not. But imagine they flock like starlings, or swarm like locusts. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 10:40 | comment | added | John Dvorak | You know what's even worse than fire sparrows? Boom rats. | |
| May 29, 2020 at 8:07 | comment | added | vsz | @KeithMorrison : And a large dragon might be discovered before entering the city, and hunted down. If large dragons were a common occurrence, city walls would have ballista towers to shoot down any approaching dragon. But sparrow-sized dragons could enter undetected... | |
| May 29, 2020 at 0:29 | comment | added | Clockwork-Muse | ... not that an early shotgun would be terribly helpful - I wouldn't want to be handling "naked" (outside of a brass cartridge) gunpowder anywhere near one of these things. | |
| May 28, 2020 at 15:51 | comment | added | Keith Morrison | Let's put it this way: modern arsonists start devastating fires with lighters or matches. They don't need to break out flamethrowers. The only difference between the small dragon and a large dragon is that the small dragon takes slightly longer to get the inferno burning down the city to get going. Oh, and one more difference: the large dragon may be stymied by sufficiently strong stone buildings that it can't break into because it can't fit in the doors or windows. Something sparrow-sized on the other hand... | |
| May 28, 2020 at 15:02 | comment | added | Matthew | Modern houses are relatively flammable. A creature small enough that it's hard to keep away from dwellings, that likes to start fires (especially if it tends to do so at night, when the fire might not be noticed or found until it grows), would be a serious menace. For that matter, an actual sparrow, if it was aggressive, would be seriously annoying, though I suppose these days, people would get used to having the equipment on hand to 'handle' them... | |
| May 28, 2020 at 14:46 | history | answered | F1Krazy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |