...a foot soldier. Stolid yeoman infantry.

But from what? Baboons, perhaps?

Ants. Real Big Ants.

Flotsam And Jetsam endorses this.

Ants are cool and all, but I just saw one of these on my porch ...

Those shits are amazing, but, i think they would get pwned by a whole heap of giant ants.

Ants eat anything, from straight up sugar, to veg, to dead critters.

They can chew their way through wood.

They work in insanely organized colonial structures. They forage, build, and fight, and destroy, as one tireless organism.

They can climb just about anything, and they can tunnel through just about anything. They are extremely hard to kill, given their relative size and weight. They can also survive underwater.

They are extremely adaptable to most environments, habitats, and sustenance sources.

One of their sole weaknesses, is that they are not generally found in great quantities in extremely cold antarctic climates.

But i say, put some fucking antparkas on the bastards, and they will adapt rapidly.

Gigantic Ants. Think About It.

Ants have a lot going for them. And Chris didn't even mention how they can carry many times their own weight!

I live in South Carolina, I just have a deep-rooted hatred of ants. Especially those invasive bastards Fire Ants.

Other organized colonizing bugs:
Bees (air support)
Termites (sabotage and sneak attacks)
Yellow-jackets (like bees but so much worse, plus they are known to build stealthy bunkers underground)
Wasps (small elite groups capable of building nests just about anywhere needed)
Aphids (crop/plant-life destruction)
Thrips (vampiric fucks)

Dood. I hate ants too. Especially this time of year, and living with my sister who is a slob.

BUT. This application is for a hateable footsoldier. Completely imperturbable and professional waves of flexible and disposable hordes.

Yellowjackets are sweet too. Also wasps. But aside from the stingers, i don't see that they have too much over the ant. Also worth noting, that ants even have winged varieties.

For the ground war, i feel that Huge Ants are the thing.

I can see the merits of the ant as a foot soldier. But the groundforces would need to be diverse.

For example, the yellow-jackets, given their ability to fly and sting yet their love of burrowing underground, make them great ambush forces.

Wasps, with their potent sting and high maneuverability combined with their awesome predatory skills (they hunt spiders and shit) would make great assassins/special forces.

I think you see where I am going. And Thrips, thrips puncture their prey and suck out the fluids. That is a moral killer.

Hmm. Yes, i see where you are coming from. We WILL need special forces, paratroopers, that sort of thing.

I wouldn't feel right about sending millions of wasps, yellowjackets or similar, on regular old cannon fodder suicide missions.

For that, we need ants. Really big ants. Probably five to six foot tall would be more than enough.

Are we talking height at the shoulder whilst standing on all six legs? Those would be very long ants as well.

ohh I think a crapload of different size big ant, like in proportion to the many different sizes there are. Maybe some 2-3 foot ants and then some 5-6 foot fuckers. That would really fuck with people then.

Hmm. Good points. The things would need to be able to maneuver and fight effectively within human spaces. Houses, hallways, elevators, automobiles, etc.

Whatever sizes necessary to both allow this, and also to keep the human-ant confrontation so heavily skewed in favor of the Giant Ant that the term "fight" would fall out of common usage, or indeed would transform within the human lexicon, to mean something more akin to the current "be senselessly massacred by".

Whatever size (or sizes) they need to be for that, that is what we will do.

I think there size would also depend a lot on their job within the colony.

The next problem is what to replace the queen with.

In order to use these things strategically, something intelligent must be in control of the colony. We can't breed hyper-intelligent Queens because they could become a problem later on.

Some sort of Robo-Queen with transmitters to communicate orders?

Before i reached the end of this post, i was going to suggest some sort of Computer Ant.

So, i agree.

We just have to be careful, we don't want a HAL/2001 on our hands.




Again.

No intelligence, just a remote transmitter.

It will essentially be a satellite dressed as an ant.

Satellite In An Ant Costume would make a fine custom title.

I feel as if we are missing a water-based form of soldier.

Torpedo-armed penguins, anyone?