Ants Take Over The World

Due to some unknown disaster, ants have become the dominant predator. They've grown to be the size of coffee tables and have become intelligent to the point of primitive wood work. The ants rely on tribal systems and have begun to construct their own language based off movement and clicks. The ants have, through heavy mutation, began feeding on both animals and plants. Instead of a queen ant having hundreds of eggs, usually only 2 dozen because of how the ants have evolved to defend themselves.

Humans have been forced to live underground or in the cold mountains where the ants are too vulnerable to the elements to venture. The humans living underground build their cities out of the materials they find underground, carving homes into the walls. Scouts are sent out every month to bring valuable materials like cotton and wood into the caverns. Crops are grown above ground, covering the entrance to the cavern entrance.

However, there are several countries that have managed to sustain themselves throughout the ant raids. Norway, Scotland, Eastern Russia, and Greenland have managed to hold off the ants due to their climate.

I have a lot of story ideas for this, and I'm interested in what everyone thinks.

Metal working cultures tend to trump wood only cultures. A main in bronze plate would be nearly invulnerable to one of these ants.

How are they taking over the world?

This story requires some suspension of disbelief, but I have some ideas that can make it seem more in line. The ants have acidic slobber that are capable of weakening most minerals, including metals. Plus, great climbing skills.

You can bet a lot of ants died while pushing the people back.

Increase the amount of eggs a queen can lay. In fact, since they're fairly intelligent, allow the queen a good deal of control over how many eggs she lays.

If this was modern humans than no amount of numbers are going to win a stone age weapon vs high explosive war. Iron age humans would be a better match. If you want to do some major underground settlements then early industrial age would make sense. Think kind of primitive steam punk. Normally, iron smelting would take massive amounts of fuel. This means entire forests turned into charcoal to keep the furnaces lit. Regular coal needs to be turned into coke first or it just wrecks the furnace. Geothermal can be considered an alternative. The main issue in the way of mines is the water table. Ground water finds its way into mines all the time and it needs to be pumped out before you can mine. The good news is that it's usually quite pure and safe to drink. The bad news is that you'd never pump it out without steam power. Frankly, steam engines were designed for the mines.

Food is an issue, cold areas are bad for growing and mountains make poor farms. Extensive terraces are required. Luckily, they don't require much tech to make and are rather impressive to look at en mass.

Places like Canada and Russia would be war zones. The ants would make incursions during the summer but be pushed back during the fall. Ants are pretty bad swimmers so islands like Japan and Britain would be hard to take. Humans might be able to hold Indonesia and Madagascar but it's chancy. Don't know what to make of Australia. The ecologic is already trying it's damnedest to kill all the humans. The Ants might have just a hard of a time.

Is this what you're going for?

If the ants are tool users and can do wood work have them use that. Even simple boats or rafts of some sort should be possible. As well as bridges and other structures used to get around obstacles.

The other important question to ask, what kind of ants we talking about exactly? What specie(s) of ant are they most like? Are their multiple variations just like in the world today?

Water doesn't stop all ants like say Army Ants which form ant-rafts and float across.

I would suggest going through all the various types of ants the world has to offer and use them fora basis for your ants.

edited 5th Nov '13 5:54:44 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The setting takes place in the 1920's, not too technologically superpowered, but pretty advanced for its time. Maybe during an experiment involving steam powered machines humanity unearthed some ancient virus that causes certain Arthropods to become twisted into giant, tribal killing machines.

Well, I was thinking that it was a virus/mutation that spread across multiple species of ants. You'd have army ants that just kept coming, bullet ants that used psychological warfare, and fire ants that basically went in with brunt force.

One of my ideas is that the humans assign each ant species a threat level. Right now, I think it should go like this, just with more species of ants added on.

Least Dangerous Ants: Leaf Cutter variants, Weaver Ants

Mid Tier: Carpenter Ants

Most Dangerous: Bull Ants, Army Ants, various Fire Ant species

And when I said the ants were tribal, well, I mean like central Asian tribal. As in, these ants are like Genghis Khan in insect form.

If I wanted to make it a little more interesting, introducing giant wasps that were rivals with the ants would be cool.

The idea of an entire bridge of army ants lining up from South Korea to an island near Japan so the Queen can get across and lay eggs mightbe interesting...

The wasps would have federation type systems, while the ants would have something like khanate and monarchies.

edited 5th Nov '13 9:09:15 PM by BagRick