History ZergRush / RealLife

* Arguably, the human immune system, when working at peak efficiency, destroys invading pathogens by zerg-rushing them with both antibodies and other proteins (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complement_system Complement system]]), followed up by waves of immune system cells to attack the stragglers. In such regard [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrophil neutrophil]] white blood cells ''are'' the closest equivalent to the TropeNamer, having both a short lifetime and being formed by the bone marrow by the billions daily plus constituting the immune system's frontline.

** On social media sites such as Website/{{Twitter}}, Website/{{Facebook}}, and Website/YouTube this is known as dogpiling. Exploited by people with a large following who want to use their fans as their personal army to attack people with smaller followings to bully them into silence. The actions of these fans can range from hurling insults to doc-dropping and death threats against family members.
*** Do this too often and you risk a counterattack, the zerg rush of dogpiling fans merely becomes seen as a weapon of choice, and the people you initiated this on may band together to do it to you in retaliation en masse. For example, popular antifeminist channels are known for sending their fans after small channels who make videos on feminism. Eventually these small channels have had enough and have decided to call out these larger channels and continue to do so. A few of these large Website/YouTube channels have been suspended as a result.

* Famously subverted at the Battle of Thermopylae, which funneled the massive zerg rushing Persian army into a narrow corridor straight into Greek spears. Numbers counted for nothing. [[BigBookOfWar Sun Tzu]] ''especially'' warns of attacking "a pass so narrow a single man can defend it".

* The Japanese used Banzai charges to great effect in China during the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, even against fully-alerted, unbroken infantry. But then, the majority of Chinese troops were poorly trained and poorly supplied. Often, Chinese soldiers were expected to hold off Japanese attacks with bolt-action rifles and stick grenades, while Japanese troops were frequently supported by artillery, tanks, poison gas and airplanes. Banzai charges could be stopped easily by machine guns, but most Chinese platoons only had one light machine gun on average, with every battalion only getting a single heavy machine gun. This lead to many cases where Japanese soldiers, well-trained in bayonet fighting, would charge [[ScreamingWarrior screaming]] through Chinese rifle fire and inflict heavy casualties on the defenders. Most Chinese troops (from [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors the Guomindang, Guominjun, Guangxi Clique, Communist China and Yunnan]]) seldom had any artillery (using mortars instead) or even barbed wire; they had no air support for many years, with the GMD only getting sufficient air support by 1944. Most warlord soldiers (with the exception of the Guangxi Clique) were even worse-equipped; in the early border clashes with Japan and its puppet states, they could even [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Great_Wall count themselves lucky]] if they had bolt-action rifles and a literal handful of ammunition. [[note]]A Chinese folk song praises the virtues of fighting a rich enemy; its first verse begins, "No guns, no cannons, but only what the enemy provides us." By the late stages of the war, a lot of Chinese equipment was captured from the Japanese -- not just rifles, artillery, and ammunition, but helmets, combat webbing, and even shoes. This led to friendly-fire incidents, but even that was better than trying to fight barefoot with bamboo spears or Dadao swords. [[/note]] But the US was as well-equipped relative to Japan as the Japanese were relative to China; at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US would have more surface ships than the Japanese had aircraft, and infantry were equipped to match. (US infantry also carried a semi-automatic rifle, the M1 Garand; both China and Japan still used bolt-action rifles with five-round magazines.) So, while US troops feared banzai charges as demoralizing and unsettling, they weren't particularly vulnerable to them; the failed charge at Henderson Field was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_charge the first of many]]. A decisive factor was that the Americans had plenty of automatic weapons to back up their infantry, while the Japanese were in short supply of automatics. But Japanese commanders falsely claimed that the tactic still worked, [[AttackAttackAttack meaning that it stuck around until 1944]].

* UsefulNotes/{{Unix}} makes spawning processes trivially easy. A malicious user can easily create a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb fork bomb]], a program that reproduces itself until it eats up all the process table entries.

** The Federals also had a higher population density then the Confederates. Thus Federal units could be recruited as needed, while Confederate units were mostly local military fraternities. The Federals also made extensive use of the Scorched Earth doctrine, using their quickly assembled units to smash Confederate economy and thus fulfill the RTS definition of a ZergRush (though it's worth noting that the South did plenty of the scorching themselves, to prevent supplies from falling into the North's hands). However, while the Union did suffer (roughly) 60% more casualties, the KIA excess was only 10%. Considering that the Confederates usually enjoyed the defending position (in the later years of the war, at any rate), and that the Civil War constituted the early days of trench warfare, with the known results during World War I, the numbers don't exactly point to rash tactics and disregard of one's own troops. Politicians lobbying against Grant had more to do with politicking after they decided the war was as good as won, using casualties as a pretext, than concern for the troops or about the general conduct of the war.

** The army ants of South America take the zerg rush concept to its logical extreme. While the ants normally feed using mass foraging, when they enter their nomadic phase the entire colony will move as one to a new home consuming any prey unlucky enough to be in their way. Even large [[GiantSpider spiders]], [[ScaryScorpions scorpions]] and [[CreepyCentipedes centipede]] stand no chance

* During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, using as many [[ActionBomb suicide drones]] as possible to get past air defenses became quite common when targeting objectives a given side saw as valuable. Russian forces often used Iranian Shahed-136 drones for this purpose when targeting cities, which Ukraine answered with Australian SYPAQ drones (which are flat-packed and made from materials often confused with cardboard, and from the price tag may as well be) tossed in swarms towards air bases and other military objectives. One of the successes of the tactic is that if the drone is cheap enough, even ''shooting the damn thing down'' is a net monetary loss, let alone letting it hit something.

* During the Russian invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}} in 2022, an Ukrainian presidential advisor being interviewed about the future Russian military plans literally said that the Russians were "preparing a Zerg rush for us", expecting Russia to deploy large numbers of poorly armed volunteer soldiers to try to overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses. The journalist conducting the interview was confused, having not heard the term before, leading to the advisor having to explain the definition and origin of this trope.

* This is the main method of hunting for most pack hunters, attacking a single but much larger target as a group. A gray wolf, for example, may not weigh more than 100-110 lb but by working as a pack of about a dozen wolves, they regularly take down much larger prey, like a 1,100 lb elk, or even a 2,000 lb bison, though in the latter case, they also rely on their [[SuperPersistentPredator incredible stamina]] to effectively exhaust the giant bovine to death. Similarly, lionesses (which usually weigh around 300-350 lb) have been documented bringing down young elephants around 3 tons in weight.

* This is the main method of hunting for most pack hunters, attacking a single but much larger target as a group. A gray wolf, for example, may not weigh more than 100-110 lb but by working as a pack of about a dozen wolves, they regularly take down much larger prey, like a 1,100 lb elk, or even a 2,000 lb bison, though in the latter case, they also rely on their [[SuperPersistantPredator incredible stamina]] to effectively exhaust the giant bovine to death. Similarly, lionesses (which usually weigh around 300-350 lb) have been documented bringing down young elephants around 3 tons in weight.

* This is the main method of hunting for most pack hunters, attacking a single target as a group.