One Billion Lions vs. “All” Pokémon
Why one billion lions would absolutely destroy all non-legendary Pokémon in a fight.
Photo from Pixabay.
February 27, 2020
So I’ve been arguing with my friends about this, and I don’t know where it came from. Regardless, I’m here to say why one billion lions would crush all the Pokémon.
First things first, let me set the rules of this debate. Considering how I’m the one writing this, I get to decide the rules.
When referencing Pokémon, I will only be using the Pokédex as accessible by the link here. I am excluding legendary Pokémon because, clearly, the legendary Pokémon alone could destroy one billion lions. After all, legendary Pokémon include actual gods who can manipulate time and space. In addition, any Pokémon not on the Pokédex will be excluded for my own sake in research.
This fight is an all-out war between both sides. The environment will be a large field-like area, ensuring that open-combat can be held between the two sides. Final Destination, for Smash Brother fans. To give Pokémon the best chance possible, they will have infinite energy or PP (Power Points). This is a battle of strength, not endurance.
Alright, having set some ground rules, I think it’s time for a disclaimer. I am not an avid Pokémon player, I do not claim to be an authority on Pokémon. However, I would argue, and I hope this becomes clear, that the sheer statistics of the lions are enough to suggest their victory over the Pokémon. I’ve engaged in multiple debates about this topic, and I am supported by three friends who are Pokémon fans, people who have played many of the games and watched the television show. It is because of conversations with them that I have the key arguments I do.
So let’s get into it. Here’s why I believe that one billion lions would easily crush the roughly 80o Pokémon in the Pokédex.
The most important thing in describing the utter destructive force of one billion lions is to help you understand the scale of one billion lions. Time for some math.
According to the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre website, the average male lion can be anywhere from 1.7 to 2.5 meters long. That’s 5.6 to 8.2 feet. Now, I had trouble finding information on lion width, but one forum post suggested lions are 1.5 feet wide shoulder to shoulder. I have no way of validating this, but www.healthline.com claims the average man is 16.1 inches (1.34 feet) wide shoulder to shoulder, so I’m just going to assume 1.5 feet is a fair width for a lion.
Knowing the width and length of an average male lion, we can calculate the square footage each lion will be taking up. I’m going to use the upper estimates, so each lion takes up roughly 12.3 square feet. Using this number we simply multiply that by one billion, coming to 12.3 billion square feet (rather simple). So one billion male lions would take up 12.3 billion square feet, which, dividing by 5,280^2 square feet per square mile, we get the number ~441.202 square MILES of lion. For context, St. Louis County is 523 square miles. That means in a situation wherein one billion lions stood shoulder to shoulder, they would take up 84 percent of St. Louis County. That is utterly, in a word, ridiculous.
Now for this next point, I’ll be using a bit of theoretical conjecture that may seem a leap of logic, but we are talking about magical pocket monsters.
So, I ask you to turn your attention to ants. Ant populations in a colony typically tend to be roughly around 100,000 to 500,000 worker ants and several hundred ants of other types, according to Texas A&M AgriLife. With this large population, they are able to accomplish various feats of incredible coordination.
Ants are able to build bridges using their comrades and cross gaps. In floods, they are able to form rafts by joining together and floating to safety. They are able to magnify their already impressive strength by teaming up on their quarry.
Now, while lions lack the proportional strength of an ant, this situation does yield numbers upwards of 2000 times of a colony’s population. Meaning, the feats that lions would be able to accomplish with this extreme population, mixed with the known flexibility and agility of the creature, would allow them to act as what I have called, the “Lion Wave.”
At this population, they would form a fluid, unanimous motion not dissimilar to that of a wave. For an image of what this would look like, I suggest viewing the movie “World War Z,” a mediocre movie that does display the fluid dynamics of large populations. Additionally, in “Inside Out” the dream boyfriends demonstrate this concept as well.
So when you hear all the Pokémon vs one billion lions, it is not a situation of multiple battles of one lion vs one Pokémon, it is an utter wave of destruction of epic proportions vs all of the Pokémon. Realistically it is safe to assume a majority of the Pokémon would be wiped out in the first few seconds of the lions striking.
Pikachu? That little yellow rat is going to take out one, maybe two lions. 1/1,000,000,000 rounds to 0. Therefore, Pikachu dies and nothing matters.
For the other small percentage of Pokémon, let us say 10% so less than 100, they can maybe survive against the lions, at least initially, but they cannot put a dent into this mass. The problems I’ve been provided are 1) flying types, 2) ghost types, and 3) those that are simply really strong.
Flying types are a simple one. They need to land and/or get close to attack the lions, at which point the wave of lions will pile upon each other to reach them. Easy, done. The Lion Ladder will prevail.
Ghost types are a little tricky, and I can understand if not everyone follows me here. Presuming we live in a wacky enough world that Pokémon exist, I think it would be believable that ghosts exist. Therefore, if a lion dies, it becomes a ghost lion and ghost types are weak to ghost types, therefore the lions prevail.
Finally, those that really strong (like Machamp, who can lift a mountain). Strength is really not a valuable asset in this fight, as being able to lift a lot or punch hard doesn’t help against a fluid-like mass. A mountain is solid, a billion lions is an ocean. Even speed doesn’t help, as Machamp, punching faster than you could imagine, can’t punch the ocean away.
Overall, I believe the lion’s victory is clear. More importantly, I found this extraordinarily fun. For the past few months, I’ve been debating with friends and pondering comical theories of how lions would win here and Pokémon would win there. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who would win, it’s a thought experiment that is a great way of having fun whilst simultaneously practicing reason and logic. I encourage you to jump into your own inane debates online or in person, have fun with it.
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Well what about a pokemon like Magcargo? Its body temperature is 18,000 F, so no lion would be able to even get near it without dying. Maybe you could argue that some sort of kamikaze attack from many, many lions could potentially get him, but that seems kind of like a stretch. Or what about Steelix, whose body is said to be harder than diamonds? The lion’s only option against it would be to literally suffocate it , but steelix is also snake-like and can stand upright, keeping its head away from the lions.
This was an informative read! Informative in the sense that neither you, nor your three friends that claim to be fans of the Pokemon series, took the time to actually do any research into the topic. This comment will focus on one Pokemon, as this Pokemon alone would be enough to overwhelm the lions with raw power, but before going into that, I’d like to pick apart your argument here, step by step.
First of all, the argument is not “Who Would Win Between all Non-Legendary Pokemon and One Billion Lions, it is ALL Pokemon vs. One Billion Lions. The fact you needed to make exclusions to win and were still wrong is laughable. Additionally, you take massive creative liberty by saying Ghost Lions would exist, and while this may be true, this does not prove lions would be victorious, as the physics of ghosts are unknown in the real world. Bite, an attack that has been present since the first games, has been a Dark-type attack in the majority of its appearances, so the argument that lions would need to be ghosts to affect them is extraneous either way.
Large portions of your argument center around the “Lion-Ladder” and “Lion-Wave” comparisons to ants, but this idea presents your lack of knowledge into biology in full force. Ant colonies are only capable of accomplishing feats such as this, due to being euscocial, or a hive-mind. Ants have no free will, only functioning as a collective, which allows them to accomplish feats of teamwork impossible for other, non eusocial animals. No lion would logically want to die for the rest, so the Lion-Ladder would not function, crushing the lions at the bottom by the time the ladder reached some Flying-Types.
All this aside, your argument is invalidated by the existence of one Pokemon – Magcargo. This slug would single-handedly eliminate the vast majority (99%) of Pokemon single-handedly as collateral, as this Pokemon’s body temperature is 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit, just under double the temperature of the surface of the sun. In order to combust, a human being would only need to be 91.4 Million Miles from the sun to cause ignition without some sort of protection (Unless you would like to give your lions some spacesuits). Using your ~441.202 mi^2 of lion you listed, you are well within the bounds of this heat radius, unless you would like for them to march in a single-file line towards this death slug, which would be silly, as the crux of your argument is that the lions would overwhelm the Pokemon.
All in all, while I love this debate, it’s only really a debate with people like you who neglect to do proper research and rely on the idea that that many lions is insurmountable for any known creature. Unfortunately for you, as you mentioned, these are creatures from a wacky world, and a 10.2 Thousand Kelvin snail exists, instantly incinerating everything in its vicinity, except itself, and leaving your argument in a pile of ashes.
As you said, it is a thought experiment at the end of the day, but anyone using sound logic would see that two suns would win against any number of lions, and I hope this counter-argument has opened your eyes to the facts of this discussion.
There’s this pokemon that’s hotter than the sun. yeah i don’t think lions win, even if only 1 pokemon survives it’s still a win
Hate to break it to you, but Magcargo is hotter than the sun. I don’t think that 1,000,000,000 lions would win against something that would kill them from millions of miles away
Ok so I’ve read through the comments and there is a HUGE contradiction in some specs
Macargo the go to Pokémon for the Pokémon’s side of the debate
Because it is hotter than the sun, I saw on saying how it could kill the lions from millions of miles away
Not true the sun heats us up from such a great distance because of its size, vsauce3 did a video on this and because it’s not as big as the sun it’s death zone is 50 meters not millions of miles, and that would kill the Pokémon before all the lions
Macargo is still a issue though the lions could 100% kamakaze macargo with the large amount of numbers
But a easier way is to lame the macargo out heat is energy and that energy has to be coming from somewhere
It’s food would turn to ash before it could eat it so the lions use each other for food and wait for macargo to die from age. Once again the lions prevail,
I also saw one saying that the lions aren’t a hive mind like ants so lion ladder is impossible my response
I think it’s fair to assume that the lions goal is to win the fight, they are in the battle field they care not about food, but about winning, if not then the Pokémon wouldnt care about the fight either and kill each other as in some Pokémon entries it talks about Pokémon killing each other for food
The Pokédex was written by a 10 year old. A 10 year old that most likely claimed the “really hot snail” he’s be walking side by side with for the past 2 weeks must be hotter than the sun because he tried to pet it and burned his hand. Seeing as a large amount of Magcargo can live inside granite caves at the same time, without melting down the entire mountainside, makes the claim that they are hotter than the sun pretty dubious. We can assume that other Pokédex descriptions are based on the imaginative mind of a 10 year old with no father figure.
Shedinja
One billion is a LARGE number
Alright, let’s get down to this. While your argument is compelling, it is completely and utterly lacking in any realistic tactics. I won’t explain why Magcargo alone beats everything, and I won’t go into the absurdity of Lion Ladders or a Lion Wave. Other comments have covered that far better than I ever could. Instead, I’ll direct your attention to the Psychic type, which is really all that’s needed to win. Let’s go through the list, shall we? And all of this information is directly from the Pokedex, so a quick search will verify these claims of mine. I’ll also include the dex entries that support my claims for you, just in case
First up is the one with a legendary mustache, one that rivals the Jumpman himself: Alakazam. An IQ of 5000 (R&B) is impressive, yes, but it’s psychic powers are insane. It can literally create matter with its psychic powers (BW & B2W2)
Gothitelle’s psychic powers are so intense that it warps the space around itself, letting people see to galaxies that are THOUSANDS of light-years away (Black). This is a passive thing that comes about from how insanely powerful Gothitelle is. It can see the future (White) and tell exactly how long anything has left to live (White)
Meowstic has the psychic power to turn a ten-ton truck into dust (X, OR), and the female variant is far more likely to let loose on you when it’s pissed (Sword)
Metagross can analyze its opponents faster than a supercomputer (UM), and as it’s a fusion of two Metang (Sapphire), it’s so durable that even a collision with a jet plane won’t scratch it (Metang, FRLG), and it can boost its psychic powers by more than quadruple by linking its four brains brains (Metang, Ruby, slight inference)
And of course, there’s the infamous victim of the 34th rule: Gardevoir. It can see the future (Ruby), and can use its powers to make a black hole (Sapphire). Even if a lion manages to escape from this, it’d still have to contend with the other psychic-types on this list, as well as dozens of other insane hax (Such as Shedinja stealing the spirit of anyone who looks into the crack on its back [Ruby}, and Tyranitar, who cannot be harmed by any attack [Gold])
TL;DR: Only a handful of Pokemon are actually needed to completely and utterly defeat all lions, because of insanely powerful psychic abilities
Even with the fact that Magcargo isn’t exactly as hot as it is, They still couldn’t get near him and even if they could i am suprised that no one has actually brought up the fact that Pokemon have moves and even if they could get close enough to attack they could just use a fire based move and burn any lions that even approach them. And even if Magcargo were to go out there 75 fire type Pokemon that could burn any lion to ashes. Another thing is the fact that many pokemon have moves with status that can cause burning,paralyzing, and sleeping which can lead to the lions being totally out of the fight even if they are not dead. So in recap, Pokemon moves make it practically impossible for the lions to do anything substantial. They can cause varying effects to the lions. Also gardevoir can cause black holes so ther’es that
everyone mentioning regular pokemon ignoring the several literal immortal gods involved here, some who could will the universe into entire destruction within hours at most, yeah I’ll give it to the pokemon here
Doesn’t matter how many lions, or how powerful the lions are, they are, in the end, only 441 square miles, even counting out universe destroying ones, several of those pokemon gods could still just will them away or use a literal giant beam of death to destroy them, examples like yveltal come to mind, with the beam of death, which it can use at great range from the sky let alone the fact it’s fairly immortal
lets just remember steel types. If we’re going off the pokedex, then there’s steelix. ITS BODY IS LITERALLY HARDER THAN DIAMOND. Lions aren’t doing jack to that. As for the food issue, it eats soil. What’re they gonna do? Remove the soil? Next up, Skarmory. It has protective armour, flies at nearly 190 MPH, and has wings like swords. I think you can guess how that ends. Magnezone. Discharge is a move that acts in a radius, as in team battles it will hit every pokemon on the field, including teammates. Any lion in that radius is far beyond dead. Not to mention it can fly so good luck hitting it. Now a bit of an exception as it’s not steel, Tyranitar. Its body literally cannot be harmed by any physical attack. these are 4 pokemon that can wipe the floor with the lions, I think its safe to say they stand no chance.
Well unfortunately, I have a strategy that would work even if Magcargo was excluded, Machamp, you said just strength but you forgot a very important detail. Quote from the Pokédex “Its four ruggedly developed arms can launch a flurry of 1,000 punches in just two seconds.” This would mean Machamp could throw 500 punches in just a second, with that math, Machamp could get rid of every single lion in just over 23 days. With what you stated, he would be shredded, but you forget about support Pokémon. Enter Alomomola, a pokémon who knows Life Dew as well as Heal Pulse. Life Dew heals 25% health of all pokemon on your side of the field, so in this situation, Alomomola could heal everyone easily, and Heal Pulse does 50% to one pokemon only. “But Dylon!” I hear you asking “That’s still gonna hurt and it’s gonna still take damage” And what about Reflect, a move that lessens physical damage, or what about old reliable Baton Pass? Any pokemon with attack, defense, and speed raising moves can pass them over to Machamp and help it too. Your arguement is weak as you clearly have not done your own research.
they literally have ghosts like try touching a literal ghost you lions. They also have powers over the earth itself. They could just open fissures in the ground and attack with a ranged attack from the other side.
I ran my own analysis that took 5 minutes and can be done with someone who has more than two brain cells. The battle will take place in a massive field. I will make the outcome of endurance AND strength. First of all, the battle is considered ALL pokemon so Arceus would just be like: Aight, you guys gotta head out and thanos snap them out of their existence. If that somehow fails, celebi and dialga can just rewind time. So that is an easy win. But, that was very anti-climatic and was fairly obvious, so I will exclude legendaries and mythicals for lion fans. So, lemme tell you something. Steelix cannot be destroyed. It is as tough as diamonds. The only thing that can destroy diamonds are other diamonds, and unless you lion fans say their teeth are strong as diamonds (which is not true), steelix would win. Ghost types are a bit of a difficult topic to talk about, but lets say when lions die they turn into ghost lions. The ghost lions would be insanely outranged. Even if they somehow ‘overwhelm’ them, that would mean most of the lions would already be dead, and the rest of the pokemon can sweep the remaining lions. Even if the ghosts go for other pokemon, physic pokemon will decimate them if we are going by type advantages and if that doesn’t work, other pokemon will kill them anyway. I will even make things more biased on the lion’s favor, and make the pokemon turn into ghosts when THEY die (which is completely unfair to the pokemon). Next is Magcargo the burning snail. You could argue that pokemon will also get hurt due to the heat, but a lot of pokemon knows moves like protect. Area moves will also desamate the lions, even if they don’t hit ALL enemies. And lion towers are dumb, and requires strategy that lions don’t have. Even if they could strategize, birds like staraptor and talonflame are too fast for the lions to attack them, and if they ‘chase the birds’ around, the lack of balance would mean that they would collapse, and even if they had balance the bottom lions would die anyway. One argument that lion fans make, is that it’s 1 pokemon vs 1.2 million and magikarp can’t do that, and I agree.
But, that is PROOF you are lion fans are biased because you are making us use the short end of the stick. Pokemon are stronger together having to support each other. Since this is ALL pokemon Vs 1 billion lions, you cannot use 1v1 million as an example. Pokemon are smart enough to learn orders and commands, as we saw from pokemon trainers. Pokemon have strategists like alakazam while lions have a few intelligent lions, at most. Moves like mat block makes it so they do not get damaged until the end of the turn, or in this case, after the ally pokemon can attack. So the pokemon can heal up or set up. Even if it fails later, they can still get decent set up like dragon dance or swords dance. Lions wave tactics will not work, because they will just get DECIMATED by area moves. Now let’s talk about endurance. Lions have no food. Pokemon don’t need food. They consume it, but they don’t require it. I’m even gonna make pokemons use no held items either, to boost the lion team. Pokemon will run out of pp is another argument, but that’s like saying pokemon can only use 1 move because it’s turn based combat and then they have to wait for the next turn, which lions won’t give a crap about. 1 billion is a lot, but numbers don’t matter against pokemon like magcargo and steelix. Overall, lions don’t stand a chance against pokemon.
Lion fans are too dumb to realise this.
Your stupid lions stand no chance, Just send a Gengar at them and they wont be able to touch him all he had so use is like dark pule or something and Gengar would win.
HOW THE HECK WOULD THE LIONS PILE UP LIKE ANTS, THAT MAKES NO SINCE.
Bruh… Magcargo… like it’s 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and since you never once have to feed Pokemon in the games, it can never die unless it faints, and since the Lions can’t get near Magcargo with dying, Pokemon can’t lose. Don’t get me started on the anime. You might say, “well Ash feeds his pokemon!” but the anime is a loose adaptation of the games since none of the battles in the anime are turn-based. If it’s the Pokemon from the Games, Pokemon win, but if it’s the Pokemon from the Anime, the Lions can win, but it’s not a 100% win rate. I swear this is so dumb people bring up the Lion Ladder or Lion Wave, first of all, the Lion Ladder is impossible since the weight would squash the lowest Lion before they could get to the Pokemon flying, and even if they could, the flying type could just move, and there’s nothing the Lions can do. This such a dumb debate holy hell, just go read a book lmao
Ok, but like. It’s a BILLION lions.
So ignoring the pokedex here if we were to comply to the rules of the Pokémon GAMES all the Pokémon would need to do is use spread moves such as earthquake, surf, water spout, etc. And sure it may not kill them all in one hit something that will kill them all in one hit is perish song, which kills everything that hears it, and sure it will kill all Pokémon including lions, some Pokémon have the ability sound proof rendering them immune to all sound based moves including Perish Song which will leave some Pokémon to survive and represent Pokémon as the winners.
What about Dynamaxing? A few Dynamax Pokemon and some G-Max moves might do the trick, what about held items? Pokemon can hold certain items that can boost their power.
What about Ghost types? The infamous Magcargo?
” All ” Pokemon would technically win,
but since you’re excluding Legendaries, then..
It seems you think that all Pokémon attacks are physical. Flying Pokémon can use special moves (ranged moves) that avoids contact with lions, and would take out the lions without a scratch. There are also Pokémon that can heal, and one move, known as ‘Wide Guard’, protects every Pokémon on the side of the move user. Lions also cannot pile on top of each other, as body temperature will increase and start killing the lions at the core. With the combination of status moves, which increase the abilities of the Pokémon while decreasing the abilities of the lions, special moves, ranged attacks, and wide guard and healing moves, the Pokémon would be able to win.
Lions all the way!
You have 3 worlds, real life, the Pokemon game and the movies/anime.
The fight will take place on an infinite flat plane.
In the real world most Pokemon would die instantly because they break the laws of physics, most would die from not being able to breath, eat, or even support there own weight. That’s not mentioning the powers which simply can’t exist. Lions get the dub easy.
The game what I mean here is using the logic present in Pokemon battles to extrapolate onto ours. Obviously there a lot of differences but I think it should work. Basically Pokemon have a limited pp and health it should be wild Pokemon so they can’t have items and mega/dynamax. Lions would win from sheer number and Pokemon finishing pp as there are no moves to restore it they are helpless. The lions would have to be spread out to mitigate the effects of attacks that hit multiple targets and so most lions would die but would eventually win.
In the anime it gets a bit crazy and I guess I don’t need to explain why lions would lose against gods. In the anime Pokemon are treated differently and in the case of legendaries they are way more op than in games, which is probably why we don’t see any caught by some random 9 year old. In lions defense there are many instances where regular humans are hit by Pokemon attacks and aren’t hurt very much and ash carrying Pokemon weighing thousands of pounds.
Some common problems we see in these arguments
Well the Pokédex isn’t very reliable we don’t have any source and especially with less useful Pokemon the creators don’t really care what they put in, they wouldn’t have expected what they wrote for shackle would be lore breaking. The Pokédex eateries also don’t play apart in the gameplay and is mostly ignored in anime unless it’s a better character.
Pokemon and real world aren’t compatible, real life has strict and sophisticated boundaries whilst Pokemon is broken. So compromises are inevitable and each side cannot agree on each one.
Lions don’t really work together and so do wild Pokemon. There would be a lot of friendly fire
People disagree on what the boundaries and fight should be based on, I gave 3 scenarios probably biased but there are many more scenarios you could apply. I think I did good and any bias is not intentional.
Dude kyogre use water spout just watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdOSMo6Svc
your face when you realize a fire snail just destroyed your entire argument 😐
In response to this post, I’m just going to set up a way for pokemon to literally destroy the lions.
For example, the small black holes created by gardiviour will explode with a few times of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
The infamous Marcargo with a body temperature of about double the surface of the sun.
The LITERAL Gods of SPACE, TIME AND GRAVITY.
Now, for the finishing blow, I’ll leave a link to a YouTuber who will explain how pokemon win much better than I can. https://youtu.be/5XdOSMo6Svc
Oh, yeah, for ghost lions-ghost types can be hit with other moves as well.
Lions are super cool. They could just eat the Pokémon. If the dumb Poke-dumbs try to kill them, the could lions could just survive. If the Pokémon has a hard shell, the lions could just use Netherite pickaxes. If the dumb Pokémon fly, the lions could make a ladder, DUH. If the Pokémon is a ghost, the lions could just use vacuums and crap from Ghostbusters. It’s so obvious who would win this fight. Open your eyes, people… smh my head.
the only reason people think lions could win is they extremely cuck the pokemon while giving lions the ability to stack and shit like ants. they also remove all basic ways of finding a link between them people want it to follow the game rules but we aren’t allowed to know lion stats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdOSMo6Svc the video gives a great idea of what a lion would be like in the pokemon universe. and if we go with real lions then we have nothing to go on besides the Pokedex. your main argument is a billion is a lot and they would all struggle to death but moves like poison spike and aoe attack affect them all. and that’s even talking about buffing moves. any given metric the lions are screwed
and abdus qamar if they had power that couldn’t exist then maybe your “real world” is probably the most biased thing possible.
if you are going to say does the lions win because magic doesn’t exist in the real world maybe don’t talk about fighting magical creatures.
Dose not matter how many lions you have flying Pokémon would still remain victorious or lest say ditto he can be killed he just slime claws and teeth can’t kill ditto making Pokémon victorious.
Also has anyone ever seen a ghost lion before I sure haven’t lions can’t turn into ghost I just says lions not mythical lion Pokémon would desimate