Somewhere under the waters of the Pacific Ocean, amongst some of the greatest depths
on planet Earth, something massive stirs.
Feeding off the natural radioactivity present in rocks deep beneath the surface and closer
to the Earth's core, Godzilla awakens, sensing a challenger to its title as King of the Monsters.
Far away on an island at the very limits of human exploration, the jungle shakes with
the footsteps of something big.
Trees part, snapping like twigs as the mighty King Kong breaks through the thick jungle,
pounding his chest and roaring a challenge to the original kaiju himself, Godzilla.
Welcome to another special Infographics Versus show, today we're bringing you inside our
specially constructed battle arena to see a showdown for the ages.
The protective casing of the arena has been hardened to withstand the tremendous blows
these two titans will deliver, and shielded to protect you from the radioactive breath
of Godzilla.
Now, place your bets as we found out who would win in a fight to the death, King Kong or
Godzilla?!
Now in order to make this even remotely a fair fight we're going to have to use the
size approximations that bring the two monsters closest to each other.
Both Kong and Godzilla have ranged wildly in height and weight over the years, with
Godzilla originally being approximately 164 feet (50m) tall, and going up as high as 984
feet (300m).
Godzilla's morphing nature was originally intended so that as Tokyo's skyline grew higher
and higher, the monster could still appear menacing in the original Japanese films- with
his size being boosted to its highest point ever for 2017's Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters,
a Japanese animated film.
For our fight, Kong will appear as he did in 1962's King Kong vs Godzilla, standing
at 147 feet (45 meters) tall, which is also the tallest Kong has ever been.
In the original 1933 King Kong film, his height varied wildly even within the same film, going
from as small as 18 feet (5.5 m) to as tall as 60 feet (18.3 m).
This was so that Kong would always look formidably large no matter where he was placed, from
the jungles of his native Skull island to the mighty skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Godzilla clearly has the size advantage, but what other weapons and abilities are these
monsters bringing to the fight?
Godzilla's powers have varied wildly over the years, gaining the ability to spit fireballs,
have an electric bite, and even fly at will.
We're going to cut out the more obviously ridiculous powers and take each character
back to its origins.
For Godzilla, this means he'll retain the use of his legendary atomic breath, a beam
of superheated atomic energy that incinerates anything in its path.
While a formidable weapon, Godzilla's atomic breath can only be used a limited number of
times, as it's greatly taxing to him physically and requires time for his internal radioactivity
to build up to sufficient levels for a fresh breath attack.
Godzilla also packs a formidable crunching bite.
While his bite force has never been measured, given the obvious difficulties in doing such
a thing, we can approximate his bite force from what we know about the real reptiles
Godzilla is related to- such as crocodiles.
Crocodiles happen to have the strongest bite in the world, with an Australian saltwater
crocodile measuring 17 feet (2.1) having a bite force measured at 3,700 pounds.
That's like having one and a quarter modern cars sitting directly on whatever an Aussie
saltie happens to be munching down on- and this is why we'll never be taking any trips
to Australia's beautiful beaches.
If we extrapolate that bite force to Godzilla's size, we can estimate that Godzilla might
have a bite force of 35,694 pounds.
That's about the weight of a full-sized bus loaded to capacity with overweight passengers,
all coming down on whatever Godzilla's snacking on.
Kong is definitely not going to want to get in the way of those chompers.
But Godzilla also has formidable claws to watch out for, and a tail smack that can take
any opponent completely by surprise, as few expect such a massive lizard to be so agile.
Godzilla's body is also extremely well protected by a thick, scaly hide, making it immune to
all conventional weaponry save for the depleted uranium rounds used by American Abrams tanks.
The mighty autocannon of an A-10 'tankbuster' Warthog might also be able to penetrate Godzilla's
thick hide, but both the Abrams and an A-10 are going to have little effect even if they
penetrate due to Godzilla's sheer mass- sort of the same way a needle is generally going
to do little to slow you down.
To top off its formidable powers, Godzilla also sports a regenerative factor that allows
him to live for hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of years.
This is a byproduct of Godzilla's natural ability to sustain itself off radioactivity,
which also allows Godzilla to hibernate for extremely long periods of time without eating.
His healing factor is only strengthened by radioactivity, meaning you'd never want to
use nuclear weapons against him if he came around to stomp your city into the ground.
King Kong is believed to be an extremely rare and now extinct species of primate known as
Megaprimatus kong, evolved from Gigantopithicus.
While very long lived, with an estimated lifespan of around 140 years, Kong is not nearly as
long-lived as Godzilla given the fact that he is very much a mammal.
In nature, mammals tend to live shorter lives than reptiles, and require far more energy
to remain alive.
It begs the question of which is truly the best species adapted to survive.
Kong is best known for his great strength, befitting a giant ape of his size.
Pound for pound, apes are amongst the strongest animals in the world, with gorillas coming
in at number five when comparing strength to weight ratios of living species.
An adult silverback can lift up to 1,796 pounds (815 kg), and scaling that up to Kong's size
means we could expect him to be able to lift over 47,000 pounds.
That means Kong can deliver some truly crushing blows with all that mighty strength.
Unfortunately though, Kong doesn't have many other natural weapons or abilities, except
for his keen intellect.
Not as intelligent as a human, Kong is nevertheless far smarter than Godzilla, and in a fight
may be able to use that to his advantage.
Kong also has a speed and dexterity advantage on Godzilla, retaining the agility inherent
to apes.
So who would win in a fight?
We're not going to sugarcoat it- Godzilla has all the advantages here.
His thick, scaly hide will work like body armor against Kong's mighty punches, dissipating
the bone-crunching force of his mighty blows over a wide area and lessening the overall
impact of each hit.
Kong's big fangs may find purchase and even penetrate the thick hide, but that would mean
getting into range of Godzilla's own crushing bite.
With so much bite power, Godzilla can break Kong's bones if he manages to chomp down on
a limb- forget what you saw in Peter Jackson's King Kong, when a huge lizard bites down on
your arm, you're gonna lose the use of that arm.
With Godzilla's big size advantage and superior bite strength though, Kong might end up losing
the entire arm, not just the use of it.
Kong could use his environment to his advantage though, perhaps using natural and manmade
objects as improvised weapons.
Kong would have more than enough strength to pick up a large tractor-trailer and smash
Godzilla over the head with it, but given Godzilla's small, reptile brain and thick
skull, it's not likely to do much damage.
Kong on the other hand, sports no natural armor, and any claw or bite attack from Godzilla
is going to do devastating damage.
Godzilla's ultimate weapon though comes in its atomic breath attack, a devastating fiery
beam that Kong best avoid at all costs.
Problem is, Kong is going to enter this fight with no knowledge of Godzilla's breath attack,
and while after seeing it used once, he might have the foresight to avoid it in the future,
one hit may be all that's needed to win this fight.
Searingly hot, at thousands of degrees in temperature, Godzilla's atomic breath will
incinerate Kong, immediately delivering third-degree burns over major portions of Kong's body.
However, that's not the true danger in Godzilla's breath attack, though it is still enough to
be lethal against Kong, as the real danger comes from the radioactivity of Godzilla's
atomic breath.
While it has never been accurately measured, Godzilla's breath is well known to be extremely
radioactive, and odds are that a single blast of that breath will be enough to deliver a
fatal radiation dose against even Kong's massive girth.
Even if one blast- and the resulting third-degree burns penetrating down to the bone- aren't
enough to finish Kong off, the debilitating effects of immediate radiation sickness are
going to severely sap Kong's strength.
And because of its radioactive nature, Godzilla doesn't even have to score a direct hit with
its atomic breath to expose Kong to a massive does of radiation.
Even near misses will still give Kong a large enough dose to make him ill, with immediate
effects of acute radiation poisoning being nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fatigue.
Though to be fair even without its breath weapon, Godzilla's regenerative factor and
superior physiology simply give it an unfair advantage in this fight.
Any wounds Kong delivers will quickly be healed by Godzilla, while the terrible wounds that
Godzilla delivers are pretty much permanent.
In this fight to the death the big ape has more than met its match in the form of a much
larger lizard with atomic breath, bullet-proof skin, and Wolverine's regenerative factor.
Ready for another epic matchup?
Check out Pennywise vs The Joker!
Or check this other video out instead!