I enjoyed the discussion the other day on the various uses and uselessness of super abilities. It is surprisingly difficult to benefit the world, even when you wield fantastic powers. Imagine if you were granted the following:
* Incredible strength. Enough to, say, throw several tons. You can throw a tank, assuming you can get a decent grip on it instead of just ripping off bits of the hull.
* You can fly. Supersonic speeds, but not “light speed” or anything like that. About the speed of a fighter jet.
* You are functionally indestructible. A solid hit with a cruise missile would stun you. Maybe a nuke would kill you, but you’re impervious to conventional weapons, immune to fire, can tolerate extreme cold, and can hold your breath for hours. It would take dedicated effort on the part of a major government to put you down.
But that’s it. You don’t have super sight or hearing or telepathy or a sixth sense or any other bonuses to your perception. You’re just strong, you can fly, and you’re invincible.
Okay, that’s cool. But how do you make the world better?
I’m annoyed at how useless I would be, in the big scheme of things. I couldn’t solve any of the world’s major problems. I couldn’t even solve the small ones.
What about hotspots around the world where fighting is going on? Well, I don’t think I could be trusted to do a lot of good there. If I went to Darfur, what could I do? Without knowing the language(s) and having a solid understanding of the various tribes, I wouldn’t be able to identify the sides in any of the numerous conflicts. I would have to rely on someone else for intelligence, and I’d run a very real risk of being used and misled. Even if there was someone I could trust to guide me, one man alone can’t watch all 493,180 km² of Darfur. The best I could do is guard a single group of people. That would be nice, but it wouldn’t put a dent in the death toll.
So what about drugs? They kill thousands every year and gang violence (fueled by drugs) kill even more. But I couldn’t break the power of drugs over the addicts of the world. I could try to stop the flow of drugs, but how would I go about it? The DEA has agents who know the business inside out, working 24/7, and they aren’t able find most drug shipments. I would have no way of finding really large caches of drugs. Guarding the border of the US (yes I’m being selfish and just “helping” the US right now) would be even harder than Darfur. If drug mules can outwit and out-maneuver the DEA, then they can surely route around me.
Forget about stopping random crime. The classic scene of a superhero stopping bank robbers sounds nice, but when was the last time anyone robbed a bank with machine guns? It’s always one guy who walks in with (maybe) a gun and walks out with the cash. The police usually catch those guys anyway. They don’t need my help. Even if I had some way of getting to the scene of the crime, this isn’t a comic book. The bad guy wouldn’t shoot at ME. If he had half a brain he’d take a hostage, and now instead of the police picking him up without incident a few hours from now, we have this tense standoff that could get someone killed. Way to go, superguy: You just made things worse. Other types of random crime aren’t any better. I have no way of knowing about the crime until after it’s taken place. I won’t be able to reach the scene much faster than the police (imagine trying to navigate by flying around where you can’t see street signs or building numbers) and won’t be any good once I get there.
So random crime doesn’t work. What about organized crime? John Gotti aside, crime bosses aren’t usually that well-known. Even if they were, what would I do? Drag him to the police? The police already know where he is. They need admissible evidence before they could detain him, and I don’t have any way of getting that. Would I take justice into my own hands, and hurt or punish him outside of the system? Hmmm. That leads down a dark road. I’d better hope I never “punish” the wrong people. There is also the question of how my vigilantism would be viewed by society at large. What am I going to tell people? No, really! He’s a bad guy! Trust me!
If there was a good, clear war with well-defined sides of good and evil where everybody wears uniforms, I could probably help. Something along the lines of World War II. But wars like that are rare. Worse, my presence in the world might just convince the aggressors to use different tactics instead. They might resort to terror or nukes, and I’d be helpless again. Just the fact that there is a superhero could make the war worse.
I like the idea of helping a local group of fire departments, although even that line of work is dangerous. Sure, I’m fireproof, but the people I’m trying to save aren’t. I have to know how to get in, find them, and extract them without them getting burned alive, crushed by debris, or suffocating. (And without knocking down the building in my search.) That’s tricky business. Still, with practice and a large enough area of involvement I might be able to make my powers useful.
Acting as a life-flight “helicopter” would probably be my best bet. I wouldn’t need a huge landing spot, and I could get there faster than a real helicopter. I could very quickly find the ambulance (the flashing lights would guide me nicely) and I could just grab the gurney (or whatever) and go.
So here we are with incredible super powers, and the best I can do is sit by the police scanner and help out in the occasional emergency. I might save a couple of lives a year. That’s great, and I’d be happy to do it, but it seems pretty tame in comparison with the incredible powers given. In fact, I think my list is pathetic. Let’s see if anyone else can do better.
So now it’s your turn: How would you make the world better with the powers listed above?
Responses are likely to be long. If you don’t want to pour all that text into the comments, feel free to post on your own blog, link, spread the love around. I’ll link back.
(I know I mentioned Darfur above, which can easily lead to a political exchange. It probably goes without saying, but let’s avoid that.)
LATER: More here. And here.
And here is another great response.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
T w e n t y S i d e d
