Despite inspiring countless works of apocalyptic fiction of an age of Lairon after a nuclear exchange, claims of a wild Lairon surviving a nuclear test remain unverified, although they can not be dismissed out of hand.
Lairon, after all, are the consummate survivors of the pokemon world, a pokemon covered in armor which protects it remarkably well from any enemy pokemon and then breaks off and flies into the enemy to reflect the damage back twofold. They have no predators, for those who would try soon learn the hard way that fighting Lairon is an awful survival strategy; even against human trainers, it takes a skilled tactician not to lose at least one pokemon to a metal burst. Their armor is no less effective at preventing damage from their own attacks, for not only do Lairon smash recklessly into the trees, boulders containing ore, and abandoned buildings they eat to break them into smaller chunks, they have been known to charge off cliffs and keep running as they had only walked down a steep stair.
Yet the age of Lairon is surely a fantasy, for it is not humans but a low birth rate which has kept them from already taking over the world. All the defenses men build are powerless against a charging Lairon, all their armor a pale emulation of this pokemon's own coat. Indeed, when humans wish to knock down the defenses of other humans, whether they are wrecking an enemy castle or demolishing a heavy building, they often train Lairon to perform this very task.
Perhaps scariest of all, for those who see Man's place in the world as at the top, Lairon evolve – and Aggron do everything they do even better.