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So, recently, a bunch of Kraken eggs have hatched, bringing them back form a few centuries of extinction for unknown reasons. Also, turns out that when their sea-based population gets too high, some grow themselves a hardened skin exoskeleton/armour that makes them look a lot like crabs.

Krakens are carnivorous, huge and fast. Also, their hardened skin makes them impervious to almost any guns that aren't as powerful as artillery cannons. A tank might be able to stand its ground against one that is roughly its own size, but those are the extreme low end of the size scale. Your typical kraken is somewhere between the size of a house and a mansion.

Your average kraken is also famished in spite of its photosynthetic symbiotes.

Cities, towns and villages are obvious targets for these monsters. Lots of fresh meat, all packed into a small area.

The only weakness of a kraken is its eyes, and they know it and defend them. And anyway, there isn't really anything important behind the eye. It can just use its sense of smell to hunt if you blind it.

On top of all this, in this timeline, the War to End All Wars (WWI for you lot) actually worked. There hasn't been any war in the last hundred years anywhere. Almost all military equipment has either been recycled, or was rusting away somewhere waiting for its turn.

So we don't really have anything with which to fight back against them.

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The first strike lasted a week. Only one in a hundred survived. There are a thousand Krakens in Europe alone! Some have tried hiding underground. But food shortages bring them out, to see their shelter crushed by a hungry kraken who sniffed them out.

Many have moved to the polar regions, but none have returned.

An average kraken only needs to eat about one cow or human a week.

Is there any way I can survive along with my family?

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    $\begingroup$ Why is my question “Too Story Based” and how do I get it opened? $\endgroup$
    – Starfish Prime
    Jan 27, 2020 at 14:54
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    $\begingroup$ Anyhoo, antitank weaponry will work a treat against your beasties. It is lightweight, commonplace, and available for a whole range of platforms. There's no way all of it would have been lost or recycled. Did all the hoplophiles and paranoiacs get rounded up and shot? It is also straightforward to reimplement the basics by amateurs if needs be; look at the risk posed by IEDs in Afghanistan, etc. The real question you should ask is what to do with a quarter of a million tonnes of fresh calamari and what sort of a health risk it might pose. $\endgroup$
    – Starfish Prime
    Jan 27, 2020 at 14:57
  • $\begingroup$ Could use more information-- how long ago was WWI in this era? Obviously long enough for the world's weapons to fall into disrepair, but how long is that? 20 years? 60? A century? Is it modern times for us, now, with stuff like the Internet, trans-continental aircraft, satellites, etc? $\endgroup$
    – NegativeFriction
    Jan 27, 2020 at 15:03
  • $\begingroup$ @NegativeFriction I actually do say that there have been no wars for a century, and that WWI worked in ending all wars. 2+2=WWI was about a century ago. $\endgroup$
    – Mark Gardner
    Jan 27, 2020 at 18:25

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If there are a thousand krakens in Europe and they managed to kill 99% of the population (742 million) in a week then each kraken was killing 1.2 people per second (plus any cows they may have eaten along the way). That seems unlikely given the distances involved alone. They would each have a very large territory so it doesn't seem reasonable that even a brief peek out of your underground shelter instantly results in unavoidable death.

"and they only need to eat one cow or human a week" (this is an odd amount - a cow contains several times more nutrients than a human) So why were they killing so furiously fast during the first week? Most animals kill what they need to eat. While meat is more energy dense than plants, hunting is hard and potentially dangerous, and definitely takes a lot of energy compared with grazing on plants. Wanton killing is wasteful of resources and carnivores tend not to do it. In order to kill 99% of the population of Europe in a week with krakens killing at their natural feeding rate you need about 735 million krakens in Europe.

If they really have embarked on a monstrous killing spree far exceeding their dietary needs then the reason is unlikely to be connected to their dietary requirements, so give up on any idea of matching them to a more suitable food stuff (e.g. persuading them to eat only cows).

What is different about the krakens now than was different to the ones a few centuries ago? Were they a problem then? How did people survive / control them then?

It seems unlikely you will be able to force them into submission (artillery or better is the only thing that works, and you don't have much of that left). There might be a disease vector but with 99% of your population gone the odds of there being any surviving bioweapon capability (or any other useful industry at all, really) are vanishingly small.

So, no, it doesn't look like you are going to survive. Your krakens are too overpowered, or too numerous, or some combination of the two.

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  • $\begingroup$ yeah, I was worried about them being too powerfull. They used to keep themselves in check by the old ones eating the young ones, leading to the population never exceeding a few thousand globally except when a clump of eggs hatched. They used to be content to stay in the seas as well. $\endgroup$
    – Mark Gardner
    Jan 27, 2020 at 18:23

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