What would be the likely outcome if, at some unspecified time in the future, I were to lead an army of animals against my roommate’s army of clones in bloody, ideological, metaphorically heavy-handed battle?

Well, for this argument to be at all pertinent, worthwhile, and generally on point, a number of issues need to be addressed before the meat of the argument. First, this battle would be taking place at some time in the future, a time in which the majority of humans on Earth had been wiped out by disease, war, and an across the board moratorium on breeding. Human society would be almost entirely replaced by clones, the old technologies mostly lost or forgotten, their sole remnant being the process of applied genetics. This field of study will have advanced through the work of my roommate. But while he steeped himself in science, striving to subvert Mother Nature, I will have been engaged in a far different pursuit. Isolated on a mountaintop, with only a friendly owl to bring me food, I will have reached a state of such communion with nature that I will be able to speak to the animals. At this point, the brains in the animal world, the cetaceans, higher order avians, and higher order land mammals will decide that humanity (clonanity?) has got to go. It will be, they will say, essentially an us or them issue.

They will of course ask me to lead them against the clones, as my prodigious intellect and deep understanding of clones will be invaluable to their efforts. Plus, by this time, I will have grown lots more muscles and fur and claws, and big teeth, and night vision, and will be, essentially, one bad-ass sort of animal/human hybrid, and much closer to the animals than to the clones and the sad remnants of humanity. Colin Platt, my aforementioned roommate and leader of the clones, will by this time have built an army of clones, with the sole purpose of clearing the earth of anything not directly beneficial to, and controllable by, humanity (now essentially made up of him and his clone army).

He will, in essence, decide to wage war on Mother Nature.

So, when this war finally takes place, who will come out triumphant? Colin and his clones, or me and my animals? Well, the clones will be very strong, no question there. Very big and muscular. However, they will not be very intelligent. Also, they will not have any weapons beyond simple clubs and their own genetically enhanced fists, replete with claws of their own. They will have enough intelligence to follow orders from their leader, Colin, but without him they would be no more than a brute, mindless herd of big, hairless Neanderthals. Well, this "cut off the head and the body will die" metaphor could of course, apply to my army as well, except that the cognitive functions of many of my animals (namely dolphins and chimps and the like) will be more suited to battle than the clones. They live in a world of survival and are tailor-made to defend themselves and to hunt and to kill. The clones are good at all of these things as long as someone directs them. Admittedly, the war would be a lot messier if I were taken out of the picture along with Colin; however, his army would fail without his leadership. This question, is, however, largely academic, as when it comes to assassination, I will be in a far better off place than he. For starters, my net of spies will be infinitely superior to his.

I will have insects, moles, crows; my spies will be everywhere. He will barely be able to make a move without my knowing about it. He will essentially be unable to have spies, because, and here is one of his major weaknesses, his clones will have to be stupid. They will be immensely strong physically, but full of human frailty mentally, because if they were to realize their power they would not follow Colin. He would be unable to afford any intelligent clones, even for spies. And if you want to talk about assassination! Whoooeee! I’ll have adders, black widows, poison arrow frogs.

My assassins will be everywhere, and one bite or sting could be deadly. I will, of course, have my honor guard of bears and large jungle cats and wolves when on land, but if things got really hairy, I could always retreat to the water, where the clones would really be outclassed, with sharks and electric eels and poisonous jellyfish everywhere! I would be essentially invulnerable to subterfuge.

Colin would have one excellent defense against my proposed assassination and subsequent massacre of his troops: He could clone himself, lots of himself. These clones would be imbued with his knowledge by electrical stimulation of their brains as they developed, thus creating a veritable host of Colin’s, ready to run the army at the assassination of their leader.

He would, however, have to keep these clones in suspended animation, or locked up until it was time for the next one to come forth, or the Colin clones would all battle each other for control of the clone army. Obviously, it would be one of my higher priorities to discover the secret locations of these replacement Colin factories and destroy them.

Now, it would not be amiss to draw parallels between this conflict and the Revolutionary War. Specifically, think of how it was that the Americans ousted those boorish Brits. Guerrilla warfare! They knew the terrain, and the British soldiers’ discipline did them little good anywhere except for on a big, open field against another similarly formed army. Well, the same would hold for the clones. If they were to meet my army head on, things would be, at least somewhat, even.

I’d reckon a grizzly bear could take out a clone or two pretty easily, but what about ten clones? Colin’s army would be infinitely renewable as long as his cloning plants held up. My army would be vast, but largely static in number. Indeed, it would be in our best interests to win quickly, as with the passage of time, Colin’s army would become more and more advanced as his cloning techniques were honed, and eventually, the clones would just be too strong. However, at the outset, I would have the distinct advantage of troops who know any terrain and how to deal with it. A pack of wolves going up against a pack of clones in an open space could go either way, but move that confrontation to the forest, and there’d be no contest. Even if Colin were to burn all the forests, and stay out of the mountains and swamps, I am confident I could meet him on the open plains.

He would, because of the continuing shift of balance that his advancements in cloning would be causing, have the ability to force my troops to come to him on his own chosen field. However, even so, my options would be too many to count. I could have the very earth swallow his army, with a little help from the badgers, moles, and ants. What about army ants? There are billions of army ants in the world. Army ants on the march can skelotonize a cow in two minutes.

The clones would fair no better. Sure, a clone could crush a lot of ants, but there is a near endless supply of them, and they eat anything in their way. Oh yeah, and how about rhinoceros cavalry? What’s going to stand up to a charge of thousands of horned, five-ton juggernauts?

In the end, if it were to turn into a war of attrition, then I would lose. However, it seems highly likely that Colin and his clones would not be able to stand for long against the gathered might of Mother Nature.