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Jim Harbaugh knows the world is a hard, cruel place.

The weak perish, the strong survive, and all life forms bow before Darwin’s immitigable statutes as they squirm to stave off extinction.

Harbaugh understands this. It’s why he celebrated his wedding by hunting down a child in a smoke-filled labyrinth.

MLive.com’s Nick Baumgardner brings us the story of Harbaugh’s most dangerous game, which occurred during a bachelor party celebration.

Baumgardner reports that the San Francisco 49ers coach took his buddies to play laser tag to coronate his second wedding. In the murky abyss of the laser arena, Harbaugh did two extremely Harbaugh-ian things.

First, he chose the name “Captain Comeback” as his gamer handle, paying tribute to the nickname he earned during his playing days.

Second, he found the other team’s weakest link and exploited it relentlessly. In this case, that unfortunate link was a 10-year-old child.

Harbaugh’s team won (of course), but the coach’s youth-poaching strategy wasn’t apparent until his friends analyzed the scatter plot of his game-high kills. They quickly noticed a pattern in the data.

“All his shots came against this 10-year-old kid,” said Eric Bakhtiari, a former 49ers linebacker who had played under Harbaugh during his pro and college days. “He just sat there, hunting this 10-year-old kid so he could win.”

From Harbaugh’s perspective, the massacre is easy to justify. This child has none of his genetic material. It cannot carry on his lineage. Rather, the child’s very existence threatens Harbaugh and his tribe’s way of life and access to resources. Throw in the fact that this kid could one day grow up and challenge his reign as Laser Quest alpha male and it’s almost as if Harbaugh had no other choice.

Bakhtiari attributes his former coach’s strategy to mad genius.

“(He’s crazy), but in the best way possible,” Bakhtiari said. “I mean, hey, Steve Jobs was crazy, too.”

If only Jobs were still with us today. He and Harbaugh could settle this nonexistent alpha male feud with a laser-tag battle on General Zaroff’s island. Winner gets high score, loser gets fed to the hounds.

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