Why 100 Humans Probably Can’t Beat a Gorilla

It’s not about strength—it’s about whether people can actually work together.

May 05, 2025

Over the past week, a strange hypothetical has again taken over social media. The setup: Could 100 unarmed humans defeat a single silverback gorilla in a fight?

Arguments quickly split into two camps. One side insists that sheer numbers would win out. A hundred people working together strategically should be able to overpower one animal, no matter how strong. The other side points to the gorilla’s stats: a bite force that rivals a lion’s, enough upper-body strength to lift a small car, and a level of agility most humans lose in elementary school.

Naturally, the internet ran with it. Memes, mock battle plans, and even celebrity commentary followed. But for an economist, the real question isn’t about muscles or tactics. It’s about coordination and why it tends to fall apart when we need it most.

It’s Not a Strength Problem. It’s a Cooperation Problem.

Let’s give the optimists the benefit of the doubt: maybe 100 humans could beat a gorilla. If every person showed up, followed a plan, risked getting hurt, and stuck to the plan, they might eventually overpower one very unlucky primate.

But that’s the catch. This isn’t really about brute force. It’s about coordination. And that makes it a textbook collective action problem.

The concept is simple: the group only succeeds if everyone contributes. But the incentives push people in the opposite direction. If you’re Person #37, why risk injury when you could hang back and let the other 99 do the work? Especially if you still get the same outcome either way.

This dynamic plays all over the world. People benefit from things like clean air, public broadcasting, or safe neighborhoods, but those things only exist if enough people chip in. And yet, it’s often easier to freeride—to enjoy the benefits without paying the costs. It’s why your group project in school probably had one person who never pulled their weight.

So sure, maybe 100 people could win. But only if none of them acted like... well, people.

Why the 100 Would Likely Lose

Even if we assume everyone is physically able to help, will they? Probably not.

Freeriding is just the beginning. Collective action problems come in many varieties. There’s miscommunication: “Wait, I thought you were going left.” Misaligned incentives: “I didn’t agree to be on the front line.” And plain old disorganization: “Who’s in charge here?”

These breakdowns don’t require bad intentions. They just require people to be people. Getting large groups to act in unison can be really hard. Really hard.

That’s why economists and policymakers spend so much time thinking about how to overcome these failures. Because in the real world, the stakes are often much higher than a hypothetical fight with a gorilla.

How Governments Solve Coordination Problems

In the real world, collective action problems don’t usually involve gorillas. But the underlying challenge of getting lots of people to work together for a shared goal is everywhere.

That’s one of the main reasons governments exist: to help solve collective action problems. They create systems that align individual incentives with group outcomes by using laws, taxes, subsidies, mandates, and, when needed, enforcement.

Take taxes, for example. Few people would voluntarily donate a chunk of their paycheck to build roads or fund public schools. But when paying taxes becomes the rule, people generally comply.

But not all coordination has to come from the top down. Nobel Prize–winning economist Elinor Ostrom spent her career showing how communities often solve collective action problems on their own. Through strong social norms, local trust, and clearly defined rules, small groups can manage shared resources like fisheries, irrigation systems, or forests without a central authority. It turns out that culture and community can sometimes do what laws and fines cannot.

At scale, the challenge still grows. The more people involved, the harder it is to rely on norms alone. In some ways, public policy is just an ongoing effort to get the 100 humans to work together before the metaphorical gorilla shows up.

Final Thoughts

The most interesting question isn’t whether 100 humans could beat a gorilla. It’s how many it would actually take.

That’s the economist’s instinct: to focus on the margin. At what point does the group get large enough (and coordinated enough) to overcome the challenge? Is it 30? 60? 99?

According to some people, the answer is one.

In a widely shared YouGov survey, 8% of Americans said they believed they could beat a gorilla in a fight. Not outrun. Not outsmart. Defeat. Another 17% thought they could take on a chimpanzee, an animal that’s smaller than a gorilla but still wildly stronger and more aggressive than any human realizes.

This is where overconfidence bias enters the picture. We tend to overestimate our abilities—physical, intellectual, or otherwise. It’s the same force behind overly aggressive investing, DIY home repairs gone wrong, and fantasy football teams that look unbeatable in August.

And that brings us back to the original debate. The real insight here isn’t about gorillas. It’s about humans, and how we coordinate, how we misjudge risk, and how our behavioral quirks shape real-world outcomes.