Is Fortnite giving our youngsters combat skills?

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been killed over 100 times by people who are not even in secondary school yet.

These youthful assassins have not had any military training or met up with a wee Yoda-esque figure to become skilled in the deadly arts.

No, all they have done is play a game called Fortnite.

If you haven’t played the game – as I hadn’t until last month – then here’s the lowdown.

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You and 99 other players jump out of a zeppelin school bus and freefall down to an island.

Scattered throughout various landscapes is everything from machine guns to sniper rifles, dynamite to hand grenades, bazookas and balloons.

As I later came to learn, you can also chop down trees to get wood to make impromptu shelters when the bullets come raining down on you.

Now I’m a veteran – well, just plain old – gamer who has played to an adequate level of difficulty on shooters like Goldeneye, so when my son started using Fortnite to socialize online with his pals, I jumped in with both thumbs.

And proceeded to be massacred.

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I didn’t stand a chance. These online aces – most of them yet to have hair sprouting from their armpits – are trained killers.

Through constant gameplaying they have learned survival skills and combat tactics which it would take a real soldier at least a few tours of active duty to come by.

So is Fortnite effectively turning our youth into tiny terminators?

I know one thing, if aliens ever do attack Earth then I’ll be putting my faith in the younger generation.

After what I’ve witnessed on Fortnite those poor aliens don’t stand a Murray Mint’s chance in a microwave.