How strong would a human shaped being have to be to bowser toss a dragon?

[Naruzeldamaster]

First off for those unfamiliar with the popular game of Mario 64 from which the bowser toss originates from it is the act of:
Step 1: Grabbing your large reptilian baddie by the tail.
Step 2: Lifting the beast against it's will off the ground.
Step 3:In spite of lizard's girth and size. Spinning in place to generate momentum for the throw.
Step 4: Yeeet. the exact distance and height of said yeet is proportional to the amount of spinning done and the speed at which they were spinning for the throw.

Second off: The character is from a warrior race who while comically strong, compared to a basic human, still fall within simi 'normal' limitations/expectations of a humanoid being, at least in a fictional setting with elves, dwarves etc.

The average rabbitese is roughly 5 to 7 times as strong as a regular human, but still follow human-like limitations based on that strength. (Their muscles would wane and tear just like humans given enough strain, so they aren't SUPER human like spiderman) They are basically the Amazons of this world, and do have a limit, I just haven't decided what that limit is yet. Let alone for this particular member of the species who puts themselves through 'training from hell' (I can link the TV tropes for that trope, or you can watch kenichi the mightiest disciple and watch the insane training the masters put poor Kenichi through)

For the Literary writers out there, this dragon isn't a BIG dragon, like mountain sized, so it's small enough that a strong enough human-like creature could toss it. In my mind the dragon is a tiny bit bigger than Smaug from Lord of The Rings. Which is pretty big for a standard sized human being like creature, but not mountainous like some dragons in fiction can be.

 

[pmmg]

If you want the real physics, they could not do it.

The dragon here would weigh like 40000 lbs, and most of that in the front. To grab its tail would offer no lift, and the tail would probably break before the dragon could be moved.

Further, the weight of the dragon verses the footprint of the man would cause the ground to give.

The heaviest deadlift for a man is about 1000lbs. So he would have to be 40x stronger than that. And that man was 1 in 4 billion.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

If you want the real physics, they could not do it.

The dragon here would weigh like 40000 lbs, and most of that in the front. To grab its tail would offer no lift, and the tail would probably break before the dragon could be moved.

Further, the weight of the dragon verses the footprint of the man would cause the ground to give.

The heaviest deadlift for a man is about 1000lbs. So he would have to be 40x stronger than that. And that man was 1 in 4 billion.

So in theory, we either need a smaller dragon or a stronger character for this to work with 'real' physics. And also something to keep the tail from snapping without the ground giving in. (This is a world where a strong/dense enough flex of mana energy causes small cracks under one's feet, let alone unleashing a large force of mana. the environment reacts to magic regardless of where it's coming from or what it's doing granted people that can do this with willpower alone are incredibly rare.)

Or I could think of something other than a bowser toss that's still an incredible feat of strength. All I know for certain is that I want it to be a comical feat of strength involving a roughly Smaug sized dragon.

Should also note that for future reference the character in question is a lady as most of the Rabitese are female. (it's a natural 70/30 split because of genetics, it gets a little more normal when half breeds are involved)

 

[Prince of Spires]

To give you a few real life comparissons:
Athletics has the hammer throw event, which is a 7.26kg heavy ball attached to a chain, which is thrown across the pitch. The world record distance is 83m. These athletes could be counted as super-human, given their strength and training. Yes, someone will some day break this record, but I very much doubt we'll see a human throw it 100m+. It's similar to what you're envisioning in the motions the thrower goes through.

The highland games have a weight throw event, which has a 25kg weight thrown. World record there is 26m. Though these athletes are perhaps one step less elite than a world record breaking athletics athlete, they're still in the top 0.1% of what humans are capable of.

Combining these two data points, you could guesstimate that for about 3 times the weight, you throw about 3 times less far. It's not exact, and it probably isn't linear, but it's good enough for a fantasy estimate. To give an idea, a large dog probably weight about 50kg, or twice the highland games weight, so a trained human athlete could throw that maybe 13m. Still impressive, but it does show how scaling up the animal diminishes the distance. So a horse at 500kg (if you could actually lift it, which I doubt) would then be throw 1m. And given that the horse is more than a meter long, it would look like dropping it in place...

 

[Rexenm]

Remember Mr. Blonde, from Perfect Dark? That guy would piss on a dragon. The only supposition, that it have any amount of dragon or cold blood to it.

Or that there is something special to the character: strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, luck. I know there isn’t a dragon in Fallout, but there is Mr. House.

There is also something about spinning, or staying still. In Jurassic Park, basically a fantasy about dragons, they stayed still, to avoid notice and got acid spit in their eye.

 

[pmmg]

Along the lines of, he couldn't really do it, if there was a myth that Hercules threw a dragon, I would have believed it, cause Herc was meant to be supernaturally strong, and I would not have tried to apply real physics to it. So...if your character is one of these, then I suppose he could do it.

 

[Diana Silver]

Viewed from another angle: for a 40 klbs dragon with a tail length of ~30 ft spinning around at a speed of about a second per turn, the centrifugal force pulling at the tosser's arms would be megaNewtons. That's getting to the order of magnitude of forces to put freight trains to a halt...

Their muscles would wane and tear just like humans given enough strain

So this...

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Along the lines of, he couldn't really do it, if there was a myth that Hercules threw a dragon, I would have believed it, cause Herc was meant to be supernaturally strong, and I would not have tried to apply real physics to it. So...if your character is one of these, then I suppose he could do it.

Since we're talking about Hercules, it's sort of a half myth half actual thing in the world of my story. There's a subset of characters in this story that are mythified in similar ways to Hercules. (the exact thing depends on the species) And other Demigods. And a large part of the story is de-myth-ifying these characters, if that makes sense? Not like in the sense of de-powering them, but helping them fit in with their culture and humanizing them etc etc.

Regarding this Character: Who is a lady half bread Rabibitese.

The vanilla Rabbitese (as in no cross breeding) are many times stronger than the average human record setting athlete ( 5 to 7 give or take) and that's the vanilla/regular species. Their muscles are many times stronger than a regular human shaped being, but follow the same rules physics wise. (well aside from being able to carry much more weight with greater ease, comes with the territory of being an amazonian race.)

Half Breeds tend to be either like a standard human or much stronger than their average species, due to a genetic defect caused by half breeding they aren't expected to live long. The half breeds that live long enough to thrive are often called Dragons because many of them have strength (or speed, or knowledge etc) equal to or greater than a dragon. This character is a "Dragon" although they had yet to accept the mantle until a turning point in the story. I should also note that being a half breed between species isn't the only way to become a "Dragon" but it is the most known about one in the story. There are other ways to become a dragon, such as being raised by actual dragon,

The myth side of things comes from mystifying the actual level of strength these "Dragons" (they can be any species that are half breeds) but they are still grounded in reality and have limits. Regardless of their origin species. They're mostly akin to demigods when compared to the rest of their species. Everyone overreacts to "Dragons" (not the scaly kind) because they aren't expected to live long enough to thrive, let alone perform the feats that they do.

For future reference:
I want her to accomplish a comical feat of strength (it doesn't have to be the bowser toss, the bowser toss was an example talking point) without breaking the rules of physics too much.

 

[pmmg]

She could throw a dragon, if the dragon was sort of helping. If the dragon was charging at her, and she fell back and kicked up, it might seem like she threw one, though a lot of it was the dragon's own forward inertia.

If she grabbed one by the tail and pulled it off of something, gravity might be helping, and that might also seem like she threw it.

Something lesser, the dragon could charge, and she punches it hard in some weak spot, cause it to stop. Suppose she punched its neck while it was preparing fire. The dragon might choke, release smoke and fall over.

 

[pmmg]

BTW, I picked the 40K number cause someone estimated Smaug was 30K lbs, and you said it was a little bigger than him. I am trusting the math and research of another on that.

 

[Diana Silver]

Or can she crane-kick the dragon on its heel, just at the moment it's trying to land, causing it to topple forward and face-plant?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

She could throw a dragon, if the dragon was sort of helping. If the dragon was charging at her, and she fell back and kicked up, it might seem like she threw one, though a lot of it was the dragon's own forward inertia.

If she grabbed one by the tail and pulled it off of something, gravity might be helping, and that might also seem like she threw it.

Something lesser, the dragon could charge, and she punches it hard in some weak spot, cause it to stop. Suppose she punched its neck while it was preparing fire. The dragon might choke, release smoke and fall over.

These seem a lot more plausible than straight up throwing the dragon with no additional lift. Also helps keep the dragons as strong beings too.

BTW, I picked the 40K number cause someone estimated Smaug was 30K lbs, and you said it was a little bigger than him. I am trusting the math and research of another on that.

This makes sense too, I know I want the dragon to be 'roughly' Smaug sized (either bigger or smaller, if I went smaller it'd be easier to 'bully' but I still want the size to be a defining feature of the dragon.) but have some ideas as to how a human being entity could effectively 'bully' it into submission. A few tactical maneuvers paired with insane demigod-like strength when her species was already very strong compared to most human likes could easily make things look that way.

 

[JBCrowson]

I think the biggest difficulty would be the flexibility of a dragon's tail. It would be like trying to pick up a ship by the anchour. The only way it would be at all possible is to spin before the dragon is off the ground, so that centripetal force effectively stiffens the tail and body of the dragon enough for it to be liftable. The dude would need to be stood on a rise with clear ground around him.

For an object to move in a circle there is a force of m x r x omega squared towards the centre, which our hero would have to be able to generate.
40000 pounds is about 18000 kilos (=m).
The distance from centre of gravity of the dragon to the end of the tail is r - say 30 meters for Smaug.
If the guy spins fast on foot he might max out at 1 full circle per second, so omega is 2 x Pi. (omega is angular velocity measured in radians, where a full circle is 2 x Pi)

Hence the full force the hero has to generate to spin the dragon is roughly 18000 x 30 x 40 N = 21.6 million Newtons. For comparison a top sumo wrestler is believed to generate about 4-5000 Newtons in their shoves, which is about the same as the 1000 pound deadlift. The hero would have to be about 4300 times stronger than the strongest humans.

So if s/he is stood on a hill; can generate that force in their arms; and spin at 60 rpm, the dragon would lift off the ground. Once they let go of it the dragon would fly off at a tangent, a bit like this post

 

[Karlin]

Adjust gravity. You'd still need to deal with mass, though

 

[Rexenm]

You could go for levity. The king is in possession of a gem, and that is forged into the hilt of the sword. Then the knight takes the sword, and removes the gem, and forges it into his gauntlet. Then he goes on a journey to dip it in the holy waters. On his way there he is met by a travelling hag and a baby. The hag dies and sidetracked the knight spends years hand rearing the child. Then he figures out the child was a prophesy on his way to controlling a dragon. This angers the knight. Thus the bowser toss.

 

[Vaporo]

Regardless of how strong your character or the dragon's tail is, it would still be impossible because your character would be unable to get enough traction with the ground. i.e. They would just slide around before they could throw the dragon unless they had a magic power to hold themself in place, or were willing to wait for several hours prior to their throw to bury themself in concrete up to their knees. You might think that they'll just stomp their feet into the ground really hard to try and bury themselves, but that wouldn't work for either. Any attempt at stomp-based self-burial would send them flying a mile into the air before they successfully rooted themself. Plus, they'd have destroyed the ground beneath them in doing so. The remaining crater full of rock dust and gravel probably wouldn't provide much support.

Now, if you had an especially sturdy and well-grounded steel structure (that you don't particularly care about damaging) already handy, they could wrap their legs around that and use it to provide leverage for their throw, but such structures tend to be few and far between outside of large industrialized city centers.

The only exception is if your your character is so fast and strong that they can use their own momentum as leverage for the throw. i.e. Let's say the dragon is 1000 times their weight. They grab the dragon's tail and toss, and the dragon gets thrown away at 20 meters per second. Your character would be launched in the opposite direction at 20000 meters per second. Wherever they landed (If they land at all. This is faster than earth's escape velocity) they would probably leave a crater roughly the size of the dragon they just threw.

At the level of strength and durability necessary for that sort of feat, throwing the dragon probably becomes completely unnecessary since, well...

So, to the answer to the question of "how strong do they need to be" is "absurdly." Unless they happen to be standing next to the conveniently placed foundation of a skyscraper.

 

[pmmg]

Just wish to restore some sanity to this thread.

1) Dragons cannot be thrown
2) Dragons tails do not break
3) Those attempting are usually BBQ'd or eaten.
4) One Punch character was actually eaten by a dragon. (they just don't show that episode).

 

[Finchbearer]

To my mind, and as someone who played a lot of Mario as a child, if you are wanting this to be part of a narrative in a story, then *anything goes*.

If you are looking for a serious answer, ask a serious question and all of that…

Of course, let’s give a semi-serious answer here, if a dragon was larger than Smaug, a ‘human shaped being’ whatever that is, assuming it looks physically like a human, would not even be able to get their hands around a scale, let alone an entire tail. Also assuming this is a live dragon, it has forces of its own, which would always be greater than that of a ‘human shaped being’, again making it impossible to toss. I’m no physicist (thankfully for the physics community) but I would have thought that even if there were some leverage of the tip of the tail and the thinnest part, that you would need a whole array of other forces to even lift the dragon slightly off the ground, let alone toss it, nevermind the fact that the dragon would be a pretty useless dragon not to sense someone is trying to do something they really shouldn’t. Again, we come to a dead end.

 

[JBCrowson]

I think the biggest difficulty would be the flexibility of a dragon's tail. It would be like trying to pick up a ship by the anchour. The only way it would be at all possible is to spin before the dragon is off the ground, so that centripetal force effectively stiffens the tail and body of the dragon enough for it to be liftable. The dude would need to be stood on a rise with clear ground around him.

For an object to move in a circle there is a force of m x r x omega squared towards the centre, which our hero would have to be able to generate.
40000 pounds is about 18000 kilos (=m).
The distance from centre of gravity of the dragon to the end of the tail is r - say 30 meters for Smaug.
If the guy spins fast on foot he might max out at 1 full circle per second, so omega is 2 x Pi. (omega is angular velocity measured in radians, where a full circle is 2 x Pi)

Hence the full force the hero has to generate to spin the dragon is roughly 18000 x 30 x 40 N = 21.6 million Newtons. For comparison a top sumo wrestler is believed to generate about 4-5000 Newtons in their shoves, which is about the same as the 1000 pound deadlift. The hero would have to be about 4300 times stronger than the strongest humans.

So if s/he is stood on a hill; can generate that force in their arms; and spin at 60 rpm, the dragon would lift off the ground. Once they let go of it the dragon would fly off at a tangent, a bit like this post

In the quoted situation when the hero lets go, the dragon flies off at 189 meters per second (about 420 miles per hour). It would be airborne for about 54.5 seconds and would land about 3.6 km away - a little over 2 miles (assuming it didn't just start flying).

As PMMG says chances are the dragon toasts / eats / toasts then eats the 'hero'.

 

[LachlanBondAuthor]

First off for those unfamiliar with the popular game of Mario 64 from which the bowser toss originates from it is the act of:
Step 1: Grabbing your large reptilian baddie by the tail.
Step 2: Lifting the beast against it's will off the ground.
Step 3:In spite of lizard's girth and size. Spinning in place to generate momentum for the throw.
Step 4: Yeeet. the exact distance and height of said yeet is proportional to the amount of spinning done and the speed at which they were spinning for the throw.

Second off: The character is from a warrior race who while comically strong, compared to a basic human, still fall within simi 'normal' limitations/expectations of a humanoid being, at least in a fictional setting with elves, dwarves etc.

The average rabbitese is roughly 5 to 7 times as strong as a regular human, but still follow human-like limitations based on that strength. (Their muscles would wane and tear just like humans given enough strain, so they aren't SUPER human like spiderman) They are basically the Amazons of this world, and do have a limit, I just haven't decided what that limit is yet. Let alone for this particular member of the species who puts themselves through 'training from hell' (I can link the TV tropes for that trope, or you can watch kenichi the mightiest disciple and watch the insane training the masters put poor Kenichi through)

For the Literary writers out there, this dragon isn't a BIG dragon, like mountain sized, so it's small enough that a strong enough human-like creature could toss it. In my mind the dragon is a tiny bit bigger than Smaug from Lord of The Rings. Which is pretty big for a standard sized human being like creature, but not mountainous like some dragons in fiction can be.

well ok, if it's 5-7x stronger than a human, think about what 5-7 buff dudes could lift. Eddie hall has a 500kg deadlift, and he BARELY got that bar up. If we set that as an upper limit, that gives us around 2500-3000kg for 5-7 Eddie hall's to lift. That's around half the mass of an elephant. So this creature could just BARELY lift half an elephant (watch the eddie hall deadlift record to see how much effort it would have to put in). Lots of people have used lots of methods to guess Smaug's weight, but pretty much everyone agrees he's heavier than 50 tonnes, maybe way more. 7 Eddie Hall's are not lifting Smaug, DEFINITELY not throwing him.
That being said, it's your story, do what you want. Make the dragon have hollow bones like birds so it's super light, give your character a potion of superstrength, do what works for the story, not what works in the real world. The great thing about fiction is that physics do not apply. Just focus on writing a good reason that this realistically implausible thing CAN happen in your world