History ZergRush / RealLife

* As a general rule the Zerg Rush does not work against a well-fortified position and concentrated fire. See Zulu Wars; Pickett's Charge; WW I...

** During World War One, as the Germans were pounding the French into jelly at Verdun, the Entente powers asked Czar Nicholas to launch an attack on the Eastern Front to take some of the pressure off before the French Army was annihilated. The Russian Army had no plans or equipment to launch an attack of the scale required, so the attack they launched was less of a battle and more of a true Human Wave attack. The supply situation was so bad, many Russians died from frostbite as from combat.

** During World War One, as the Germans were pounding the French into jelly at Verdun, the Entente powers asked Czar Nicholas to launch an attack on the Eastern Front to take some of the pressure off before the French Army was annihilated. The Russian Army had no plans or equipment to launch an attack of the scale required, so the attack they launched was less of a battle and more of a true Human Wave attack. The supply situation was so bad, as many Russians died from frostbite as from combat.

* Averted for the majority of all UsefulNotes/WorldWarII combat featuring tanks. Being the clever little bastards they were, the Soviets figured that the best forces to use tanks against were ''the ones that couldn't fight back''. Thus while Germany would happily use the same force for forcing breakthroughs and exploiting them, and The Allies were quite happy to simply use their vehicles and artillery to bludgeon their way through the enemy lines and grind them down with attrition, the Soviets did their very best to make their Zerg Rushes as unfair as possible by using as few tank formations as possible to make breakthroughs and massive Zerg-Rush-ey Mobile Forces containing all their armour to advance 100+km past them... ''and keep going''. Ideally the exploitation-forces wouldn't meet a single German Panzer unit before they had to call a halt to the advance so logistics could catch up... and even if they did, why fight it when they could just go around it and encircle it too? The pride of Germany's Panzer forces, lost in the Ukraine in the Winter Campaigns of '43-'44, were not destroyed in tank-duels but were encircled and destroyed when trying to break out or simply abandoned by (fuel-less) crews fleeing on foot or surrendering. Ironically, the rivalry between Germany's regular and Panzer forces prevented them from ever realising the latter's vision of 'Blitzkrieg' - the latter insisted on encircling and reducing pockets of enemy forces themselves instead of focusing on advancing as far as possible, leaving Blitzkrieg's more ambitious cousin (Soviet 'Deep Battle' theory) room to shine.
* Torpedo boats are small, fast, cheap, and a small fleet of 12 can carry enough materiel to sink 5 ships 20 times their size. They don't need deck guns since they're too small and maneuverable to be meaningfully engaged by larger ships. Their prevalence was the primary reason we didn't see much EpicShipOnShipAction during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, and eventually necessitated the invention of the torpedo boat destroyer to counter them.

** Driver ants (the siafu) use similar tactics for downing prey and are capable of blanketing a forest floor for miles around their nest. They even apply zerg rushes to physical obstacles, when they encounter an impassable barrier they use themselves as ramps.

** There's a Hungarian saying along the lines of "...as many as the Russians" (neighbouring Slovenia has the saying as well). Hungary lost both the revolutionary war in 1849 and the anti-Soviet rebellion in 1956 due to the enemy calling in Russian reinforcements, who employed this tactic.
*** In both cases it was a well-equipped and trained regular army against mostly RagtagBunchOfMisfits rebels. There were no ''[[CurbStompBattle need]]'' to use human-wave tactics, so Hungarians' version of the story is probably just a feel-better tale.
*** In 1944 and 1956 this was certainly true, but in 1848/9 the Hungarian Republic possessed an uncannily strong and well-balanced regular army, and the Honved did actually manage to defeat the Habsburg armies arraigned against them and pushed them almost all the way to Vienna before the Russians came in from the East and the Habsburgs came in from the West and effectively squashed them flat.

* The internet. Want to get quick results when someone stole your artwork? Got a conflict issue that you want to spread out quick and get support? Post somewhere prolific, with substantial proof. Now sit back and watch as the Internet Zerg Rushes someone's mailbox/account...

* Picornavirus germs. Usually, for a germ, it is not a good idea to kill your host, since it will also mean your own demise. Picornaviruses avert this fate by simply breeding in gazillions: they are highly contagious and their strategy is to multiply so much that it really does not matter if your host will die or not in the process. Diseases which these nasty germs cause are influenza, poliomyelitis, hepatitis, cattle hoof-and-mouth disease etc.

** Zerging is a [[ScaryStingingSwarm beehive's]] [[DisproportionateRetribution response]] [[GoddamnBats to pretty much]] [[WeHaveReserves everything, really...]]
*** Which is one of the strengths of [[BeePeople eusocial superorganisms]]. One bee is no bee; for them, the hive is the basic unit of life. This means that massive defensive responses begin to make evolutionary sense; the colony survives so long as enough individuals survive to keep the brood safe.

* Dromaeosaurs (or more commonly known as "[[RaptorAttack raptors]]"), but especially ''Deinonychus'', became famous for their hunting strategy which is extremely similar to that of wolves, and almost every depiction of these dinosaurs shows them savagely mobbing and overwhelming huge plant-eaters. But ScienceMarchesOn, and after people have realized this whole theory had been based on more wishful thinking than actual fossil evidence, it has gradually lost its credibility. [[HereWeGoAgain Then someone claimed to have found support for the idea of pack-hunting among giant theropods, like tyrannosaurids...]]
** ScienceMarchesOn back the way it came, however! There's at least one fossil trackway evidently made by deinonychosaurs that clearly demonstrates cooperative travelling, which means that the theory of pack-hunting raptors is still plausible. [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/mar/29/dinosaurs-behaviour-raptors-pack-hunters This article]] explains it all.

* Sea turtles aren't the only ones. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada Cicadas]] emerge in huge numbers to overwhelm their predators, and plenty of the noisemakers escape to breed. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_satiation Predator Saturation]] is prey species' version of a ZergRush.
** Several species of trees also have so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_(botany) "mast years"]] during which they produce vastly more seeds than normal. Through not yet entirely understood mechanisms, they manage to coordinate those among all members of the same species in the wider area. Animals (like e.g. squirrels) which usually live off the seeds cannot possibly eat them all and thus the next generation gets its start.

** Similarly, the allied bombing campaigns against the Axis powers. In fact, bombing strategy of the time in general tended to center on massing enough aircraft to bullrush their way through the defenses to lay in their attacks, but this was most famously used by the heavy bombers of the US Army Air Forces and their daylight "Precision Bombing" campaigns in Europe. The effectiveness is much debating, however the German military was forced to disperse manpower and resources to provide air defense all across the continent, which they could have otherwise used in Africa, Italy, France, or Russia. Ultimately, the strategy worked because the Americans could build planes and train aircrew faster than the Germans could shoot them down, and the Americans got better at making it more difficult to shoot the bombers down, such as by extending the cruising range of the P-38 fighter (thereby allowing it to escort the bombers all the way to their targets)[[note]]A breakthrough Charles Lindberg achieved, by pulling back the prop control to 1200 RPM[[/note]]. They still paid dearly, however, and during the course of the war, the USAAF lost more men in battle than the entire [[SemperFi US Marine Corps.]]

** Note that the Americans ''were'' accustomed to trench warfare on account of the Civil War experience, and placed emphasis on mobility once they got to Europe. Of course, by then the war was almost over - in no small part on account of Germany throwing everything into [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_spring_offensive one last desperate offensive]] in the hopes of winning the war before the Americans came. After the failure of the German offensive, the German position in the West was essentially untenable, but they managed to hide that fact from both the civilian parts of the German government and the Allies. When the Americans [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive started going on the offensive]] together with their allies, the German Empire collapsed within a hundred days militarily. At the cost of over a hundred thousand American casualties - more than both sides suffered at Gettysburg.

** Note that the Americans ''were'' accustomed to trench warfare on account of the Civil War experience, and placed emphasis on mobility once they got to Europe. Of course, by then the war was almost over.

* During the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar, the Union generals who typically won more battles were unafraid to lose massive amounts of men. In particular, several politicians rallied for Lincoln to fire Ulysses S. Grant due to the massive casualty rates of his soldiers. However, since Grant was one of the few generals Lincoln could count on to strike hard at the Confederates, Lincoln kept him on.

** UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies had "Doppelsöldner" (literally "those who receive double salary") who got double (or triple or...) the wage but had to fight in the first row and to be the first through a breach. 16th century author [[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Franck Sebastian Frank]] says about them: "Es ist durch die bank hindurch alweg und alzeit ein böss unnütz volk[...] Ist es im krieg, so ist under tausend kaum einer an seinem sold begnuegig, sunder stechen, hawen, gotslestern, huoren, spielen, morden, brennen, rauben, witwen und weisen machen, ist ir gemein handwerk und höchste kurzweil. Wer hierin küen und keck ist, der ist der best und ein freier landsknecht; der muoss vornen daran und ist würdig, das er ein doppelsoldner sei."[[labelnote:translation]]"They are to a man at all times and everywhere an evil and useless breed[...] When they're in the field, there is hardly one among thousand satisfied with their wage - instead stabbing, beating, blaspheming, whoring, gambling, murdering, burning, robbing, making widows and orphans, is their common trade and highest pastime. Who's brave and good at this is deemed the best and called a free ''Landsknecht'', he must go first and is worthy of being called a ''Doppelsöldner''[[/note]] Yeah, he didn't particularly like them.

** UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies had "Doppelsöldner" (literally "those who receive double salary") who got double (or triple or...) the wage but had to fight in the first row and to be the first through a breach. 16th century author [[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Franck Sebastian Frank]] says about them: "Es ist durch die bank hindurch alweg und alzeit ein böss unnütz volk, nit wenige dann münch und pfaffen. Ist es im krieg, so ist under tausend kaum einer an seinem sold begnuegig, sunder stechen, hawen, gotslestern, huoren, spielen, morden, brennen, rauben, witwen und weisen machen, ist ir gemein handwerk und höchste kurzweil. Wer hierin küen und keck ist, der ist der best und ein freier landsknecht; der muoss vornen daran und ist würdig, das er ein doppelsoldner sei."

* Another name for ZergRush is '''Human Wave Attack'''. It has historically been the traditional tactics of barbarian warbands and {{conscription}} armies who have masses of manpower but very little training or equipment.

** The same business occurred in the [[UsefulNotes/MiddleEastUprising2011 Arab Revolutions of 2011]]; the governments of UsefulNotes/{{Tunisia}} and [[UsefulNotes/ModernEgypt Egypt]] fell more or less because their militaries refused to fire on protesters, and other techniques were useless because of the sheer number of protesters. Libya turned into a CivilWar and Syria and Bahrain turned into bloodbaths because the government forces were willing to fire on the people; however, we should note that because the Libyan and Syrian militaries/security forces had similar demographics to the general public, defections to the protesting side kept the situation protracted, while the fact that the Bahraini forces (and the [[SummonBiggerFish Saudi and Emirati forces they called in to help]]) were primarily Sunni and the protesters primarily Shia made defections less of an issue, and the uprising was crushed as a result. On the other hand, Morocco explicitly ordered its security forces not to fire on protesters no matter what they did, which is why the protests there never got that big and why the regime was able to get away with moderate reforms.

** Zerging is a [[BeeAfraid beehive's]] [[DisproportionateRetribution response]] [[GoddamnBats to pretty much]] [[WeHaveReserves everything, really...]]

* A strange example; In late 2021, Website/{{Reddit}} users bought several failing stocks, most notably those of [=GameStop=], ''en masse'' to jack up the value of the brands, thus causing the hedge funds and short sellers betting on the stocks falling to lose millions of dollars. In return, those affected by Reddit's raid invoked a ZergRush of their own, by overloading the subreddit that incited the attack, temporarily crashing it.

* Bacteria. The UrExample of ''[[IncrediblyLamePun "divide and conquer"]]''....

** The Soviet government was the victim of a ZergRush itself, led by ''the president of Soviet Russia'' -- BorisYeltsin, who stood atop a tank in Red Square demanding sovereignty for all Soviet nations. It could be argued that the government in Russia only changes ''by'' ZergRush -- it was a major tactic of the Bolsheviks, of the pro-democracy movements that ended Soviet rule, and, as of TheNewTens, it's the new ''fear''. UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin faced protests after his third election to the presidency, the major slogan of which was "Russia without Putin," so the state issued a cap on the number of protestors allowed. It's impossible to know what the effect would have been had protestors not been scared away, but they were the largest protests seen since 1991.

** The Soviet government was the victim of a ZergRush itself, led by ''the president of Soviet Russia'' -- BorisYeltsin, who stood atop a tank in Red Square demanding sovereignty for all Soviet nations. It could be argued that the government in Russia only changes ''by'' ZergRush -- it was a major tactic of the Bolsheviks, of the pro-democracy movements that ended Soviet rule, and, as of TheNewTens, it's the new ''fear''. UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin faced protests after his third election to the presidency, the major slogan of which was "Russia without Putin," so the state issued a cap on the number of protestors allowed. It's impossible to know what the effect would have been had protestors not been scared away, but [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment they were the largest protests seen since 1991]].

* 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.

* Arguably, the human immune system, when working at peak efficiency, destroys invading pathogens by zerg-rushing them with antibodies, followed up by waves of immune system cells to attack the stragglers.

** UsefulNotes/JosefStalin of course, applying WeHaveReserves and the "Cannon Fodder" concept to the fullest extent in the first phases of the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo Great Patriotic War]]. When the Soviets got back on their feet and developed their Deep Battle doctrine, the Zerg rushes of 1941 and 1942 became much less common, instead relying on sophisticated maneuver attacks. After you lose 20 million men, there is not a whole lot of manpower to throw at the problem.

*** Zig-zagged with the [[UsefulNotes/ChineseWithChopperSupport People's Volunteer Army]] during the UsefulNotes/KoreanWar, and indeed, with many armed forces supposedly using "human wave" tactics. They may be given to WeHaveReserves mentality due to relative scarcity of high tech equipment and large numerical advantage, but trained manpower is not easily replaceable and even low-tech, high-manpower forces tend to rely on skills and tactics except under most dire conditions. A US marine during the Korean War supposedly quipped, "how many squads of Chinese make up a human wave?"
*** Subverted with Chinese Volunteer Force in Korean War, see Korean War point below.