Examples
- The Art of War discusses such tactics: such a rush is good for when you know your army vastly outnumbers the other, but heavily discouraged for longer tasks like siege warfare due to the risk of heavy losses.
- Battleground: A hired gun is besieged by an army of toy soldiers, which pile on hundreds of small wounds and force him to resort to his firearms, then to improvised weapons, ultimately taking them on by himself. Subverted at the end in that it's a literal mini-nuke that kills him.
- Bazil Broketail: The Sephistis' main tactic is "overwhelm them with numbers". It works fine on the demoralized, very disorganized Ourdh Imperial Army. However, facing the disciplined, well-trained Argonath legions (with dragons in their ranks to boot) it fails utterly-they're slaughtered by the thousands.
- Chrysalis (RinoZ):
- Every so often, the Dungeon will launch a "wave", where ambient mana levels rise and hordes of monsters spontaneously appear out of the walls. They start at level 1, so they're individually easy to kill, but they just keep coming, for weeks. (And they, if they're not rapidly exterminated, they start gaining levels by fighting each other...)
- Ants are well known for Zerg Rush tactics in combination with Explosive Breeding, flooding their targets with endless hordes of disposable soldiers. Dorylus ants are an especially extreme example; they're blind, but can rapidly breed millions of ants.Donnellan: Think of millions of monsters crawling across the ceiling, bursting out of the walls and scrambling on top of each other to kill you, what does it matter that they can't see?
- Defied by Anthony when he rejoins the Colony. Since they're his new family, he doesn't want to see them throwing their lives away, and sets out to teach them more advanced strategies.
- In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, when Cloak appears at the park, acting threatening, the Powers (characters with less than "super" powers) try this on them.
- Jim Butcher's Codex Alera novels feature the Vord, basically a fantasy Captain Ersatz of the Zerg. Fighting against Roman legionares with Elemental Powers.
- However, what makes the Vord absolutely terrifying is that they don't just rely on Hollywood Tactics; Vord Queens are brilliant strategists. For instance, the first time the protagonists went up against a hive, the queen got the steadholders to split their forces in half so she could take over quietly, then when the reinforcements arrived Zerg Rushed them from ambush. After inflicting heavy damage, she had her warriors draw back, knowing that the legionares would take their wounded inside, where she had Takers waiting to turn sleeping soldiers into drones. She specifically targeted the healers and Knights, crippling their combat force. In other words, one five-minute Zerg Rush = half the army down.
- Not to mention the Alerans' furycrafting works against them. Normally the Vord don't know how to use the furies, but if someone uses their furies, then the Vord can do the same, making the most powerful weapon the Alerans have useless.
- However, what makes the Vord absolutely terrifying is that they don't just rely on Hollywood Tactics; Vord Queens are brilliant strategists. For instance, the first time the protagonists went up against a hive, the queen got the steadholders to split their forces in half so she could take over quietly, then when the reinforcements arrived Zerg Rushed them from ambush. After inflicting heavy damage, she had her warriors draw back, knowing that the legionares would take their wounded inside, where she had Takers waiting to turn sleeping soldiers into drones. She specifically targeted the healers and Knights, crippling their combat force. In other words, one five-minute Zerg Rush = half the army down.
- The World War II-era Imperial Japanese version of this, the Banzai charge, is thoroughly derided in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:Bobby Shaftoe: Don't you guys know banzai charges never work?!Goto Dengo: Everyone who learned that died in Banzai charges.
- In The Dark Half, the sparrows use this tactic against George Stark in the final confrontation. It works, and they defeat him.
- In the first of The Dark Tower books, The Gunslinger, the Man In Black sets a trap for Roland by convincing the entire town of Tull to turn on him when he inevitably stops there to rest. Roland coldly guns down every last man, woman and child.
- In The Dinosaur Lords, the horde is, by and large, unarmed and unarmoured, and their one and only tactic is to run at the enemy and tear him apart alive. Considering they outnumber humans by an order of magnitude, don't feel pain or exhaustion, go against an enemy for whom a trebuchet is cutting edge military tech and are led by an Omnicidal Maniac who wants to wipe out everyone, it's a fairly viable tactic.
- In Dora Wilk Series, the semi-corporeal ghosts manage to take a super-witch Viola down by sheer weight of numbers — they can attack her faster than she can repel them.
- This is the whole reason for the Masquerade in The Dresden Files, by the same author. It is mentioned several times that though supernatural creatures, and even wizards, regard ordinary mortals individually as somewhere between food and pawns, everyone in the supernatural community knows that if the mortals in general ever became aware of the supernatural, they could wipe out all the vampires, fairies, and wizards by sheer weight of numbers.
- Eric: "They were discussing strategy when Rincewind arrived. The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the stones to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking."
- Halo:
- In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, this was the purpose of the Spartan-III supersoldiers, since the Spartan-IIs were deemed too valuable to waste. The Spartans would be sent on missions with next to no success rate, in the hopes of stalling the enemy. It's a slight subversion in that they're physically and mentally tougher than the average shock troop, but they're still treated tactically as an expendable resource.
- In Halo: The Fall of Reach, Spartan-II John-117 along with the rest of his team observe a formation of roughly 1000 Unggoy (Grunts), and John reminds himself that while Grunts can be cowardly, they tend to attack in such numbers that in several instances where the human defenders kept mowing them down wave after wave, the humans eventually ran out of bullets... at which time another wave of Grunts would step forward.
- The Han Solo Adventures: In The Lost Legacy, Guardian Corps droids perish by the dozens in the mining camp battle, being run over by construction vehicles or shot by firing lines of riflemen, turret gunners, or the cannons of a freighter. However, few of those initially successful opponents survive, as hundreds of robots concentrate on them until the war robots' combined numbers and power are too much.
- Hollow Kingdom (2019): Sick MoFos will rush towards any electronic device they can detect. This behavior is exploited to break open the windows of homes with trapped pets inside.
- Honor Harrington:
- Sheer numbers are the primary thing which made the People's Republic of Haven such a threat to the far more technologically advanced Star Kingdom of Manticore. In fact, the Battle of Manticore in At All Costs is a classic Zerg Rush strategy, as it's an attempt to claim outright military victory before the Manticorans can get their latest Game-Breaker deployed throughout their fleet.
- The same is even more true of the Solarian League. Complacent in their superiority, they never upgraded their technology during the 20-plus-year Lensman Arms Race between Haven & Manticore and are largely content to throw men and ships at problems. As the Harrington trope page itself says, even their reserves have reserves. Not that it helps them much, their tech being So Last Season that a single squadron of heavy cruisers contemptuously blows out of space several superdreadnought squadrons.
- In On Basilisk Station, the drug-crazed Medusan natives try to do this. Given that they have nothing better than breech-loading rifles, they die en masse when the air support covering a bunch of Powered Armor Space Marines appears. Those natives have more luck when they ambush a smaller scouting force, which is overrun even as the last surviving member is desperately unloading a Gatling gun with exploding bullets into them.
- Treecats use this in taking down the oversized predators of the planet Sphinx namely the Hexapuma and Peak Bear.
- Robert E. Howard's works:
- In "The Slithering Shadow", Conan the Barbarian is nearly overcome by incompetent soldiers who get in each other's way — there are so many of them, and they do not lack courage.
- In "The Shadow Kingdom", Kull and Brule face a horde of Snakemen."Valka! What a killing!" said Brule, shaking the blood from his eyes. "Kull, had these been warriors who knew how to use the steel, we had died here.
"These serpent priests know naught of swordcraft and die easier than any men I ever slew. Yet had there been a few more, I think the matter had ended otherwise."
- Journey to the West — Sun Wukong can generate a near-infinite number of miniature clones of himself. Given that Wukong himself is a Munchkin of the highest order, a Zerg Rush of tiny Wukongs can subdue all but the most powerful opponents. (The owner of a magical fan, for example, dealt with the problem via hurricane-force winds.)
- The Lord of the Rings and some of J. R. R. Tolkien's other works feature Zerg Rush tactics, typically by orc or goblin forces.
- The forces of evil can also be surprisingly clever tacticians, though, as several major defeats for the good guys show. They just almost always have the numerical advantage and decide to make use of it.
- J. R. R. Tolkien had fought in the First World War, and knew the Zerg Rush by his own experience. He modelled the modus operandi of the Orc warfare after the First World War human wave attacks.
- Necrotic Apocalypse: In the extremely simple "language" of the mindless zombies, they don't even have a name for individual zombies. When referring to themselves, they are "teeth," always and explicitly plural. This is because one tooth is useless, but many teeth can eat anything. Zombies are actually quite timid on their own, but will consume anything if they have a numerical advantage. Over time, they group together into hordes that cannot be stopped.
- Variation in the New Jedi Order. The Yuuzhan Vong will commonly open battle with a Zerg Rush composed of their slave-soldiers (mostly Chazrach) in order to test the enemy's strength and weed out the weakest. Then they go in themselves to fight the real battle against the remaining, more worthy, enemies (it's an honor thing) and though the Vong are big on brute force, they can be incredibly clever tacticians when they legitimately want to. They end up stopping Zerg Rushes altogether in the last few books as they don't have the numbers to do it anymore.
- In the Ranger's Apprentice books, this is the strategy the Temujai use; send waves and waves of soldiers at their enemies to crush them, while employing a few skilled archers specially designed to take out opposing leaders. Massive casualties mean nothing to them, because they have reserves.
- This is explicitly said to be how humans defeated the elves in The Riyria Revelations. Elves are superior to humans in every way: stronger, faster, tougher, more advanced technologically, and more powerful in magic. However, where humans can replenish their numbers in a couple of decades, it takes millennia for elves to restore their losses. As one protagonist puts it, the elves "were drowning in a floodtide of humanity."
- The Salvation War: Armageddon: This ends up being the only real recourse of the forces of Hell. Due to the fact they're at bronze age levels of technology and are up against modern armies, it's not like they have much of a choice... they almost won, as the human armies were close to running out of ammo.
- Second Apocalypse: The scranc were created with Organic Technology to be a biological weapon. They have a literal lust for carnage, will eat almost anything, and reproduce so quickly that they can carpet nations. Although individually they are not particularly dangerous, they attack in waves with no regard for their safety, overwhelming armies with simple attrition. In the north, their staggering numbers "break the back of reason" and defy even the largest armies to withstand them.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager novel “Death of a Neutron Star”, this tactic is employed against Voyager by the Qavok. In a one-on-one confrontation, Voyager has the Qavok outmatched to the point that the Delta Flyer can defeat a Qavok ship, but with seven or more Qavok ships attacking Voyager at once the cumulative effect of their firepower can be a problem. During the final clash, Voyager ends up facing seventeen Qavok ships that have diverted power to their shields to help them hold out, doing enough damage that Voyager loses its weapons and most of its shields before they trick the Qavok into accepting a previously-stolen ship that has been rigged to explode.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Rico tells how the Bugs that are fighting against the humans would send soldier arachnids out in massive numbers, and when desperate, even send out harmless workers to cause the humans to waste ammo on them.
- Used several times in Super Minion. At one point, Tofu is almost killed by a massive swarm of rats. On another occasion, he gets caught in a crowd being attacked by a couple of stitched-together puppet monsters. He expected to have to fight his way out without help, but after he beat one to death with a fire extinguisher the crowd attacks and kills the rest.
- In Those That Wake, the brainwashed students do this to Mike and Remak.
- The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles: Both the Montreal Alouettes and Atlantic Schooners attempt this against the Toronto Argonauts, creating armies that have never played football professionally, but can simply overwhelm the Argos through sheer numbers. And the Schooners would have won, if not for timely intervention from Greenland City.
- In The Traitor Son Cycle, humans have better tactics and strategy than the Wild, but the Wild has superior numbers and their individual warriors are more powerful, which is why they often act like this.
- In Henry David Thoreau's Walden, he discusses a war between red and black ants that played out like this.
- In the Warhammer 40,000 Grey Knights novel, the Allking of Sophano Secundus had an army with horses and spears that just rushed at the Grey Knights, which Alaric actually thought would have killed them because of sheer numbers. They were able to get away though, suffering one casualty and another with an injury while the army of Sophano Secundus lost countless.
- The Wearing the Cape series has the supervillain Flashmob, who can quickly produce temporary duplicates that appear with all of his equipment, weapons and ammunition. The duplicates can make duplicates as well, up to a maximum of about twenty. Individually, they are just normal humans with guns who pop out of existence if you inflict serious damage to them. Collectively, they are a constantly regenerating twenty-man tactical team with absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
- This is the primary use of Trollocs in The Wheel of Time. Though larger and stronger than humans, they're too stupid and undisciplined to be very good tacticians (though having human or Myrddraal officers in charge helps some). There are a lot of them, however, so they're generally sent out in massive waves to do as much damage as they can through sheer strength, bloodthirstiness, and weight of numbers. Averted with individual Fists (groups of a hundred Trollocs with one or two Myrddraal) as the smaller size allows the Myrddraal a greater degree of direct control, and they're actually quite clever. On the other hand, this turns the Fist into a Keystone Army that can be killed by killing the commanding Myrddraal, so some eschew the tactic.
- In Andy Hoare's White Scars novel Hunt for Voldorius, Voldorius deploys thousands of cultists and conscripted militia against the Space Marines.
- In Worm, Skitter's tactic against unarmed or unaware enemies is to simply flood them with thousands of insects, all biting and trying to crawl into any available orifices. This is usually enough to bring non-capes and even some capes to their knees, helped by the fact that she can easily send millions of insects against them. Against stronger parahumans she has to adjust her approach.
- In Xanth's third volume, Castle Roogna, Dor finds out that this is why goblins are particularly feared, and not even the King of Dragons will stick around when they turn up (in addition to ethical considerations concerning monsters fighting other monsters). Goblins attack in ridiculously large numbers and can storm castle walls simply by piling up into a living ramp (or recently-living, in the case of those at the bottom of the heap). Individual goblins have such miserable lives that they have no real objection to dying like this and they still have the numbers to swamp the defenders even allowing for the tens of thousands it took to pile up the ramp.
