This topic is stolen directly from another forum which I frequent often.  It was perhaps the funniest and most well known off topic post from that forum and I was hoping that it could enjoy some more continued great discussion here.  This is the question and rules that follow:

The question: How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?

The specifics:

- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is "out."
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of "counter-tactics" training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
* The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down. 

Based on this criteria there have been good answers ranging from 5 to 100.  But reasoning it out, how many do you think you can take?  The more reasoning, the funnier it actually becomes.  Have at it, and obviously because this is a statistics website, use meaningless statistics as much as possible. 

Ha, that would be no problem at all, I´m supper tall, have a long arm range and am to stable to just push over, they cant get me anywhere where it hurts since I´m wearing a cup.... so unless they learn how to make a human piramid that can crush me I´m good. Since only about five or six of them can attack me at once due to their short range it would only be a matter of how much energy I have... I´d say anywhere from 50-70.... wait you said healthy american kids .... so many will be obece ??? then add another 15 or so.... asian kids substrakt at least 30... sure not all asians can do karate, but I don´t know which ones are the ones that can....

My little sister is about 5 years old. I don't like phantasizing about beating up 5 year olds in my spare time.

Difficult because they are actually very strong at that age but when my daughter is in a foul mood and lashing out at me I'm just trying to avoid punches and stop me or her coming to harm without trying to harm her.

But I would guess it would be more likely I would get tired out holding them off and therefore too weak to defend myself at some point.

Also if it is one kid at a time it would be easier than 100 all after you at once.

So I'd say

one on one: 40

Multiple kids at once: 20

I'm a heavy guy, it would take a lot to bring me down...

And El Duderino...you can't have a "healthy American kid" also be obese lol.

I could probably take on 20-30...all of them swarming at once would get ugly though.

Im 14 lmao!! I will take 15 lol

@ Ben: yeah ok I guess, "healty" kids are not obese... they have big bones, is that better ???

and one more question.....oh boy this is gonna sound really bad..... here we go....... can I grab one of the kids and use it as a weapon ??? yeah everybody here will hate me for that but comon its hypothetical...and hypothetically takeing one of the kids and starting to wack the rest with it would do a lot of damage....

yes, I´m a sick sick man and I need help, I know that

"no foreign objects" you cheater.

@elduderino: I dunno how long you think you'd be able to swing around a 5 year old, but i don't see anything in the rules against it and rely on it for my strategy, so i say go ahead.  Thread creator might disagree though :-/ 

I've seen this before... i'll use the same reasoning I did then.

FACT: 5 year olds are on average about 50 pounds. 50 pounds is next to nothing in a weight room setting: however, taking into account for fatigue (eventually) and squirminess (originally) it will be hard to judge how long one would be able to hold one. For this reason sheer force will only get you so far... muscles fatigue.

Additionally, I have been trained for killing by years of playing video games and am in very good shape. This in additionto my age putting me in the peak physical and mental condition I will ever be in, I am at a supreme advantage physically and strategically.

So to start the battle one needs to account for the fact that you are not yet tired, but you will be: they have a huge advantage in numbers, and you are in an enclosed area (as I could easily outrun them, come back when I was rested, and pick off a lot if that were not the case.

However, as it is an enclosed environment, the first order of business is to get near one of the borders of the area. A corner would be preferable, so unless it is a circular space about the size of a basketball court one should go to a corver of the room.

This provides multiple advantages. The first and most obvious of these is the ability to cover your flanks -- if your back is to the wall, you will only be able to be attacked from the front (which also just so happens to be the most defensible part of your body. The second advantage is the ability to see all the children at once (as opposed to if you were in the middle of the room. A third major advantage is the limiting of the number of children that could attack you at any given time to one or two, as opposed to a *LOT*.

A fourth advantage to being in a corner is dependent on the type of wall. If it is a solid wall (as it sounds from the description), this border could be an effective weapon if used strategically. If it is more of a fence sort of thing, it will be less useful in this aspect but more useful in the ability to temporarily snag a child and give you a respite.

if the fence is a solid wall, one would be able to use it as a bludgeon -- that is, push the 5yos into it such that you are using less energy per child to disable them. Once disabled (probably knocked out) one will be able to either: use their body as a barrier to even further limit the number of children attacking you (although you have to be careful how you pile the bodies so that it is neither scalable from the opposite side nor topplable on to you. A ramp shape where the ramp slopes up from where you are standing to be sheer on the side where the children are is what you should go for... this could be accomplished by standing on the ramp and taking care of the chilren, then pushing them behind you as the ramp slowly gets bigger. This has the added advantage of keeping your flanks covered. Additionally, as the ramp gets larger one could push children off of it onto the children waiting below.

Once the ramp/wall is sufficiently high (I would recommend 4-5 feet, as this will be taller than most if not all of the 5 year olds. one can do the same thing on the other wall (if you are in a corner). Once this is done you basically have a wall with only one attack vector, which is much preferable to even the amount of attack space when you are in a corner.

Anyways, thats all immaterial. The important parts of my stratege falls back to that using the wall as a bludgeon. You will have to use much less energy per child for the disabling in that case, and can even alternate which arm you use easier for when one gets tired (my personal sport of choice involves using both arms equally, so they are relatively equal in strength to each other).

Given all this, I put my limit at about 40-50. Possibly more if it takes less energy to knock out a 5 year old than I think it will, possibly less depending on the layout of the room and whether or not the children are expecting my strategy, as i just typed it up and put it on the internet for the whole world to see and come up with counterstrategies to).

Anywho, I put waaaaaay more thought into that then i was planning on.

@ Alpha-dk: My part time job is picking up heavy boxes and throwing them around, they weigh about as much as a 5 year old, so I wouldn´t only wack the rest but use the knocked out kids as amunition as soon as the others are a few feet away, from my job experiance I can say I could throw about 60-70 kinds in 30min. and could do so for at least 5-6 hours (thats how long my usual shifts go)