Gnat swarm encounter solved

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

It's getting to hot weather and I was setting up my laptop on the back porch to form a guild on Tormax, play hard for a week, then stop, and a common problem is gnat swarms.

Everyone knows gnat swarms. On a hot day, you can look across the yard or patio and there, rising and falling in some convection fun-time playhouse, is a stack of gnats, swarming to their heart's content.

I consider myself a student of human nature and seeing people come out into the beginning of a warm weekend, readying their good time with humans stuff, I have noticed afresh some things never change, namely, people swatting at gnat swarms. If you just watch for this action -- someone batting away an insect -- and block everything else out of your consciousness, like at a state fair or picnic, it like watching a form of abstract theater in which the actors just move their arms suddenly periodically, and sometimes even rise from their seats to bat their arms.

Why do we accept this as normal?

Ever notice that there is always a gnat swarm nearby you on a hot day? Never all the way across the yard? There may be one all the way across the yard, but there is also one like 4 feet away, and it roams. And then there are more columns of gnats.

I solved the encounter. It helps if you have a friend. What you do is, when you see a column of gnat convection, you do not swat at it. That creates a disturbance but does no damage to the swarm. Instead, you walk directly into the center of the swarm. This reverses the convection current they were using to form a swarm. So the gnats move -- yes, usually about 4 feet away -- and form a new swarm column.

You can do this with only one person if it's a small backyard. Mine is kinda big but I have family over. We broke gnat swarms for about 15 minutes and eventually the gnats must instinctually get a message "can't form swarms here" because they left.

tl;dr: Gnat swarms are bellycasters with a melee range of 0.