A Komodo Dragon appears near every person on Earth. How screwed are we?

[u/Odd_Mongoose3175]

At 12am in every country, a Komodo dragon appears behind every person on earth. How screwed are we?

• The Komodo dragon magically spawns at least 8m behind/adjacent/above/under the human if enough space, by default. If none, then they just spawn wherever they could fit behind the human

• Its a hungry male Komodo Dragon

• Win via death of above 97% humanity/Komodo death

Round 1: Base Komodo

Round 2: The Komodos can somehow fly far as a chicken, knows how to throw stuff, shoot their Venom like a laser as far as 10m and have black belt in BJJ

Round 3: Same as R1 but a Megalania is in front of the human in case Komodo fails

[u/svenson_26]

Komodo dragons aren't brawlers. They're patient hunters. They have rotting flesh in their teeth, which acts like a venom that infects when they bite, and slowly brings down large prey after a few days while they wait patiently nearby.

They're not particularly fast or agile. Adolescents can climb trees, but adults can't. We can whack them with sticks, or throw stuff at them, or use actual human weapons like guns, so we can fight them from a distance. Many people would get bitten initially, but we have antibiotics. If we can survive the initial onslaught, we have a good chance of living.

I think a 97% win condition would still be tough, because children, the elderly, the disabled, and the immunocompromised wouldn't fare very well. The 12am spawning time is bad, because it hits people while they're sleeping, but the fact that it's 12am everywhere actually works in our favour: The first places to hit 12am are tiny pacific island countries. After the first 3 time zones hit 12am, we've hit less than a million people. Then we get more populated pacific islands like Fiji, then New Zealand and parts of Australia. It's possible that we figure it out, piece it together, and warn people as more komodo dragons come.

It's 5 hours and 7 time zones before we hit Japan/Koreas/Indonesia, and really start to get into some high population areas. We hit China/Indonesia/Philippines in the following hour. If we haven't organized enough to warn these countries by now, then we're done.

[u/manta173 → u/svenson_26]

Actually they found out sometime in the 2000's that they are mildly venomous and most monitor lizards are. It was always just assumed it was bacterial and never confirmed. Cause who wants to swab a live komodo's mouth.

They have grooves in the back of their teeth that help direct the venom.

[u/Vinegar1267 → u/svenson_26]

That’s outdated information, Auffenberg’s research on several of the islands Komodo dragons are native to yielded findings that despite popular belief the reptiles have true venom as well as fast-acting anticoagulants and do not let their prey go intentionally.

On the contrary most of their prey is optimally killed outright from blood loss in a direct attack. The deer and boar which escape don’t do so as part of the Komodo dragon’s intention, and the tracking element is just the lizards trying to finish the job. Buffalo do tend to die slower deaths but that’s because Komodo dragons are generally no bigger than a large hyena enabling bovids to launch prolonged counter-defenses.

[u/jessemfkeeler → u/svenson_26]

Then it's gonna hit the US where there's conspiracy theorists that think being prepped for Komodo Dragon attacks is a liberal agenda brought on by Bill Gates. Then we're hooped

[u/TheDungeonCrawler → u/svenson_26]

I actually don't think we can really be prepared because, like, how the fuck are we supposed to piece together what is happening? This has got to be magic and there will be so many variable descriptions from the people who aren't fucking bodied by an 8 foot long lizard with knives for mouths that any information we can feasibly determine will be poisoned by the batshit perceptions of survivors. Hell, we might not even be able to nail down a time because who remembers what time a giant lizard appears out of the ether before trying to chokeslam them into the nearest drywall?