Are the Yaks really stupid for threatening war with the ponies?

[Bendy 1,819]

I mean really, are they just plain stupid for threatening war with the ponies? 

All the ponies have to do is block out the sun where they live and make it not rain and then their population would starve to death. Not to mention just get a lot of Pegasi together to create massive storms to lay waste to their homeland. Oh and magic, and many other things.

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by Bendy

[cmarston1 5,951]

Actually yes, they are.

Because now that you mention it, given how much control the ponies can have over the environment such as manipulating whether or even moving the sun and moon, if they were to really take advantage of those abilities they would really be a force to reckon with during war time.

[Castle Bleck 19,167]

Notice how they didn't get a Cutie Re-Mark timeline?

 

In the words of Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender), "Don't flatter yourselves; you were never even players."

[Brony Number 42 9,927]

Why do the ponies let other creatureswalk all over them? They want peace at any cost, and that is stupid. If the Yaks become aggressive then Equestria has the right to defend itself. 

If someone punches you in the face because you did something to offend their culture, you are not in the wrong. You can't let others threaten you into giving up your way of life.

*points to map* "What's this big, barren spot with no life?" 

General Twilight: "That used to be a place called Yakyakistan. Now it's a big, glass desert."

Edited June 6, 2017 by BronyNumber42

[Megas 27,064]

Ponies have strength, agility, speed, magic, tactics, and weather manipulation

Yaks are literally nothing but brute strength. They'd be walking into the slaughterhouse

[Brainstorm 4,092]

Yaks aren't stupid, they just need to learn not to take everything too seriously. 

[ImDaMisterL 532]

It was nice knowing them.

[SugarCoatxMarblePie 701]

Ponies are nice, so its not the dumbest thing when they allowed Hitler (Tirek) to slowly take all of Equestria. Why I say Hitler, is because you give an inch they take a mile, should've stopped him asap before he could give literally everypony ptsd (Pony's Traumatic Stress Disorder). Imagine someone sucking in your direction and you turn pale as you can and you drop weak and can't move then he laughs maniacally and leaves you to die from starvation. None of them were even prepared to fight, and no authorities were contacted when the first victims lost their magic, or rather they were, just the authorities didn't do anything. They said, hide in the closet Twilight and take our guns and ammo. Sure she can save everyone's life but its kinda too late. Like, oh no an abusive father abusing all the children in the daycare, lets call the cops. *cops decide to wait til he abuses all the kids in all the daycares before acting, then they get abused too, their weapons taken away, etc, then the president's protégé simply refuses to give up their friends, then the bad guy somehow loses*

On second thought, it does teach something, if people don't defend each other then bad stuff happens, so be friends with everyone to prevent it from happening. That's what Twi should have learned there. What the audience learns is, during a hostile take over you should listen to the adults and surrender all your things, then learn after the hostile take-over how you should've actually behaved, when its too late. Remember, Celestia's plan involved giving up everything except Twi.

How they should have approached it was attack without magic, like pegasi drop a monsoon on him, then they freeze it over and he gets caught in the ice, then throw him to the icy mountains windigos live at so he never defrosts.

So, while everyone is saying its dumb for the Yaks to do so, its not dumb, they can go terrorize a village and get whatever they want til they themselves learn its not what they want to happen. Unless the mane 6 are there, they will get away with it, even if the other princesses are there lol.

Long story short tl;dr, the ponies abilities mean nothing if they are not willing to use them.

Heck even in the alternate timelines they always needed the mane 6 to defend themselves. They are basically clueless without them.

Exception being that hick episode I guess, and Daring Do.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,284]

The Yaks are quite dumb and I think the ponies would also know this and probably not even take their threats seriously. Just place a bunch of magic shields, and boom, problem is solved and the Yaks will get bored eventually since they seem to have a short attention span.

[Tiny Hoofs 200]

I don't think they're necessarily stupid as a species, just ignorant and somewhat resentful. My personal headcanon is that during the events of Party Pooped, the delegation of Yakyakistan was sent to Ponyville in an effort to ease the tensions between Equestria and Yakyakistan. Perhaps the yaks were angry because they're jealous of the ponies power over the world; the ponies' are pretty much the main players in this setting. They control most of what goes on, including the daily cycles thanks to Celestia and Luna. The yak's culture seems pretty isolationist and barbaric. There's never been much communication between them and the ponies. It was said no pony had ever been to Yakyakistan prior to recent events, and it's probably because the yaks never let them get that far.

I reckon that the yaks were probably looking for an excuse to declare war anyway. They were jealous and yet probably still didn't understand the full extent of Equestria's power due to lack of experience. They had little understanding of what they were getting themselves into. It was only through the ponies hospitality and willingness to show the yaks the good in Equestria that they were willing to set aside their differences and befriend the ponies. That was pretty much the entire theme of Party Pooped, anyway.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Tiny Hoofs

[AlbaTross 1,581]

On 2017-06-06 at 6:24 AM, Bendy said:

I mean really, are they just plain stupid for threatening war with the ponies? 

All the ponies have to do is block out the sun where they live and make it not rain and then their population would starve to death. Not to mention just get a lot of Pegasi together to create massive storms to lay waste to their homeland. Oh and magic, and many other things.

 

This may be a tad late, but I think this thread belongs in Show Discussion so it has been moved there.

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

There are many, MANY cultures and societies throughout history that have been this stupid; cultural postering is a common thing, and many cultures take it to extreme levels-- the deciding factor is how willing their neighbors are to put up with crap, and how malevolent their neighbors are.

Like, look at north korea: threatens war with the entire world, including china, and only continues to exist because China allows it. The yaks are similiar, if not as malicious. they're a culture built on belligerence to the point of idiocy and stupid pride.
the point is that the the ponies are trying to be good friends with them, and just telling them to piss off and beating the crap out of them wouldn't really be conducive to friendship, now would it?

Given how they live in a VERY tiny area in the middle of nowhere, with seemingly no allies or trade routes, it honestly seems like their history has been one long parade of pissing off other countries, getting their crap kicked in, and being pushed farther and farther away from other civilizations in the aftermath, until they only occupy a tiny area that exists because no one else wants to go there its that terrible.

[Zel 56]

Don't forget that ponies have also as a whole a pretty big weakness : they're nice sometimes to an absurd point. They are in general a pretty pacifist species and even if they have crazy control over their world their mentality could get in their way during a time of crisis. All their culture is based around finding what they can do to help society via their Cutie mark, preserving the balance and the harmony so if a crisis come they always had been pretty slow to react and it can also lead to bad decisions.

This is shown during the fight against Tirek for example. Celestia and Luna are aware that Tirek musn't get his way but they decided to only use Discord to track him down with no backup to help him or to even keep him in check. They there so trusting in Discord and his ability to stop Tirek that they didn't even send some ponies to check at all times that was going in different parts of Equestria : they waited until Discord and Tirek were getting too powerful even for them to get a new plan of action so either they were not informed enough of that was going on (which is a very dumb thing to do in time of crisis) or either they were just too caught up in their vision of life to react fast and send the 4 princesses against an ennemy before he was too powerful.

They're absurd nice way of thinking cause also all that arc with Chrysa : when she was send flying a normal country would have track her down and at least keep in check the Changelings because they attacked once so they always could come again with a new plan. But when it happened it's like they didn't even see it coming. They didn't even consider that the Changelings could come back for revenge. And they let Chrysa escape AGAIN and nobody even make a move to prevent her escape as she was slowly flying away. Because they can't imagine that she would be back for revenge. They wait until being under attack to attack.

Yeah some ponies are meaner than Sunbutt or Twillight and her friends like for example Starlight, Flim and Flam or even Trixie with the alicorn amulet. But even them have this "nice and oblivious" core in the end. Starlight really believed Flutter when she said she accept Starlight's way (she didn't 100% trust her but let her make things on her own without monitoring her nontheless), Flim and Flam are mischevious but they made a bet with Applejack in spite of just going elswhere buying cheaper apples, making more cider thanks to their machine and selling it to the ponies to make Applejack go bankrupt.

So yeah I think if the Yaks declare war to the ponies it would be stupid for them. But the fight would not be so one sided because at first the ponies would try to find a pacific way to end this and try to appease them, they also would make some stupid decisions because they wouldn't want to hurt the Yaks and even after the war they would let the Yaks live in peace somewhere until the next attack.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Zel

[Skyling 14]

Yes, they were. Even discounting things like magic and flight, there is something even more basic that dooms them horribly - population numbers. Yaks live in the freaking arctic - there is only so much population that such conditions can support without heavy use of magic (Crystal Empire). It would be like an angry Eskimo tribe declaring war on Canada. The first Equestrian border city they could try and attack has a good chance of having more population than the Yaks have combined.