Modern Tech Security Measures Against Flying Superheroes...

[Spacescifi]

Just curious if modern technology could even provide security in the following setting:

 

Scenario: 1 in 1000 of people gains BOTH superpowers of the following variety:

 

Tactile kinesis and flight: Tactile kinesis means anything they touch they can move as if moving the entire object at once... instead of just the part they are touching. The limit is ten tons, after which the powers won't work on any object either heavier or massing more than ten tons. Such  a power would enable one to not only lift a car with their pinky, but spin it too assuming the ground was not in the way. Supers can get around the weight limit if multiple super-people grab the same object which multiplies their tactile kinetic strength by the number of supers (for example 3 people could lift 30 tons max).

Flight: An extension of tactile kinesis really... just using your own body and moving it with mere thought. You can also use tactile kinesis at the same time, meaning you could literally swoop across the freeway and pick up a car or two (average cars only weigh 3 tons).

Flight while powerful has limitations such as wind chill freezing you if you fly too fast and of course flying into stuff is still deadly.

Power activation: Tactile kinesis is present from birth but flight does not become available to use until age 20.

 

The Problem: For every sane and safe human there are insanely dangerous ones. Since only 1 out of a thousand is born with these powers, larger populations with densely populated areas (cities) would be the most at risk.

 

The Solution: Part social part technology. Monitoring from childhood as well as well as isolating superpowered folk from society at large would be helpful. Draconian but effective. Visits would be okay but extended stays at best would be monitored heavily.

 

Technology solution: Dealing with a rogue psychopathic superhuman would be difficult to say the least.

But I suppose guns and anti-aircraft guns would suffice in cities. The bad thing is the high potential for collateral damage. Maybe knockout gas missiles I dunno, or gas cannons that shoot it at close proximity.

Something most superhero films do not address. Cities would have to be redesigned to deal with such a threat.

 

Maybe densly populated cities would only be far away from known super populations... that could work too.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Explosive collar and relatives as hostages.

If the early recognition is possible, then isolation since birthday and brain washing.

[Spacescifi]

35 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Explosive collar and relatives as hostages.

If the early recognition is possible, then isolation since birthday and brain washing.

 

Oh it will be easily recognizable since the way I intend to do it they will either  totally glow (flight) or partially glow (hand and forearm) when using their powers.

 

Explosive collars seems rather harsh though.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Spacescifi

[razark]

As the D&D manual states: A dagger through the eye is a dagger through the eye.

If these people present a danger to the status quo, they will very quickly be eliminated.

 

  

26 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Explosive collars seems rather harsh though.

Yup.  But you gave these people superpowers.  How else to prevent them from disrupting society than through harsh measures?

Edited November 9, 2022 by razark

[Spacescifi]

45 minutes ago, razark said:

As the D&D manual states: A dagger through the eye is a dagger through the eye.

If these people present a danger to the status quo, they will very quickly be eliminated.

 

  

Yup.  But you gave these people superpowers.  How else to prevent them from disrupting society than through harsh measures?

You have a point, but with powers this potent, AND the ability to have babies, chances are someone would escape monitoring.

At any rate it creates a good and natural backstory to an engineered race of supermen and superwomen and why they are exiled off from humanity to found their own homeworld...  with human help.

Since clearly Earth is not big enough for humanity to house a rival that could potentially beat them at some point in the future.

Earth... exporting new life based off the human or animal template to the rest of the galaxy... the future.

Nice premise actually.

 

Just don't come back guys... please don't haha! We sent you away for good reason.

[kerbiloid]

Another reason to keep them childish and ready to co-operate for a candy in this weird, weird, horrible world around them.

Let them feel safe only inside their orphanage, and their mentors be their only parents.

[Scotius]

Ah, yes - go-to answer to any problematic minority: Oppression, isolation, extermination.

Identifying markers, constant invigilation, ghettos, segregation, forced sterilization and the final solution of death camps.

Just read "X-Men" comic books.

Or "Wild Cards" series of novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards

Or even better, read history books.

[Beamer]

Provide a solid dental plan and hire more of them than your enemies.

 

[DeadJohn]

18 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Scenario: 1 in 1000 of people gains BOTH superpowers of the following variety

Please clarify how you think this has worked throughout history, or if it's just a sudden thing:

1. These superbeings have always been around. Your world history wouldn't have much in common with our world. Technology would have developed differently and maybe aircraft and cranes would have never been invented. Historical warfare would be very different than what we know. Society could have reached orbit much earlier by equipping flying people with spacesuits instead of building massive rockets. Europeans might have reached the Americas much earlier. The British Empire's historical naval superiority wouldn't have been much help colonizing many places. (the list of changes is near-infinite so I'll stop)
2. No one has powers, then a switch flips and suddenly 8 million people can fly and transport 10 tons. There would be a period of chaos until society adjusted. There might be supersoldier armies, religious cults worshipping superbeings, other cults opposing superbeings, some cultures try extermination, other cultures led by the new supers, etc.
3. Like #2, but it's gradual with only newborns having a chance to receive powers after the change. This would be much less disruptive than #2. Some countries might contain it, other countries might not, and some parents would hide their children from containment. In a few decades the world would have a lot of flying people.

Regardless of the scenario, also consider the health impact of flight and telekinesis. Your supers might end up very unhealthy if they rarely used their muscles to walk and lift things. Or, if these mutants are more like a new race than they are humans, maybe they have other biological changes that lets them breathe thin air and survive colder altitudes.

How many calories does a flyer have to consume? If flight uses a lot of energy, most flyers would be limited to infrequent relatively short distances, and superpowers wouldn't be as disruptive. If flight is effortless then the world would be transformed around this highly cost-effective travel.

Edited November 9, 2022 by DeadJohn

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Scotius said:

Or even better, read history books.

You see! No records in the books.

It works, nobody even knows about the superhumans living in our world.

42 minutes ago, Beamer said:

Provide a solid dental plan and hire more of them than your enemies.

Until they have realized that they can take what they want from the employer on their own.

***

We should also refer to the old books about the imprisoned jinns, daemons, etc.

While a jinn can be a pretty person imprisoned in a lamp, releasing him/her may cause a lot of troubles because actually he/she is a cold-blooded daemon forced to stay friendly.

Edited November 9, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Beamer]

52 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Until they have realized that they can take what they want from the employer on their own.

I was made to understand their superpowers were limited to telekinesis and flight. The ability to work together as one with other humans from a plethora of different cultures and backgrounds was never mentioned . In general, power makes people bigger egomaniacs, not smaller ones. Most superhero comics and films do a good job of ignoring this of course. In the real world, a 'superhero' would just be a supervillain whose goals happen to align with yours.

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Beamer said:

limited to telekinesis and flight

6 minutes ago, Beamer said:

limited

X-Men and Lucy clearly explain what does this "limited" look like.

[wumpus]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Explosive collar and relatives as hostages.

If the early recognition is possible, then isolation since birthday and brain washing.

Works until an unknown man wearing glasses hurries the hostages away and uses his super-strength (even though he doesn't match any known super-hero thanks to his glasses) to remove the collar.

13 hours ago, razark said:

As the D&D manual states: A dagger through the eye is a dagger through the eye.

I thought the D&D manual stated 1d4 damage (through the eye might count as a critical hit, so maybe (1d4)*2).  D&D was never very good at simulating damage.

I never followed it, but I though most of the X-men stories centered around how "the status quo" treated mutants.

[Nuke]

the biggest defense is that the hero archetype is kind of phony. superpowers or no, no human could live up to it. not many war veterans are self proclaimed heroes, despite the fact that they have done heroic things on the battlefield.  i like super hero depictions that acknowledge this, like dune or watchmen (movie). and thats if they are the "good guys". star trek (classic) acknowledges the other side of this with its augments. superior ability, superior ambitions, pretty much tyrants. granted if superman turned bad it wouldn't be long till people were loading their guns with kryptonite bullets. 

[razark]

46 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I thought the D&D manual stated 1d4 damage (through the eye might count as a critical hit, so maybe (1d4)*2).  D&D was never very good at simulating damage.

Combat vs. non-combat rules.  In fighting, you get short sequences of action, the enemy can defend itself, move around, etc.  Things get abstracted.

If you stab a sleeping character in a fatal spot, the rules are allowed to align better with reality.

 

[Gargamel]

Moved to the lounge, as it's really not a S&S thread. 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, wumpus said:

Works until an unknown man wearing glasses hurries the hostages away and uses his super-strength (even though he doesn't match any known super-hero thanks to his glasses) to remove the collar.

As you can read above, keeping them infantile, uneducated, and isolated is an important part of the countermeasures plan.
That's the first part about the ability to take off the collar themselves.

The second part is even simpler. The collar may even be not explosive, it can be an antidote injector, while the superhero is poisoned (or have an implanted genetically modified tissue producing a toxic agent).
To recharge the antidote, he should periodically return to the complex.

Also there is no sense in taking the hostages away if everyone outside the pandaemonium complex is panically afraid of them, and deadly hates their relatives, which are still alive exactly because they are evacuated into the complex.

So, the expulsion of the hostages from the co-imprisonment is the worst what can happen to them, let alone their own escape.

Not "surrender, or we'll find and kill your relatives", but "surrender, or we'll make them get out and stop protecting them".

[Spacescifi]

On 11/9/2022 at 9:26 AM, Beamer said:

I was made to understand their superpowers were limited to telekinesis and flight. The ability to work together as one with other humans from a plethora of different cultures and backgrounds was never mentioned . In general, power makes people bigger egomaniacs, not smaller ones. Most superhero comics and films do a good job of ignoring this of course. In the real world, a 'superhero' would just be a supervillain whose goals happen to align with yours.

 

Hmmm... yes and no about power making superpowered folk egomaniacal.

Supergirl has had a ton of variations through the years, but by far my favorite comic book run of her was from the early 2000's onward (do not like the New 52 era after).

Supergirl as a character was not simply a stunning blond beauty, but displayed again and again that she had a tendency for recklessness and even naivety at times... but she means well... at least when she is trying to be good (sometimes she acts up like an angsty teen).

The difference between her and Superman is that people both know and respect Superman, but people in general don't know her as well and neither respect her as much but she also wants the same same respect he receives.

This drives her to speak and act rashly... driving her to make a promise she intends to keep no matter what.... not fully realizing yet that being Super does NOT mean we can or SHOULD do whatever we want.

It stems partly from her concern for the boy, but more so from her own insecurity over being in Superman's shadow.

 

 

https://arousinggrammar.com/2012/11/01/supergirls-unfortunate-promise/

Edited November 11, 2022 by Spacescifi

[Beamer]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Hmmm... yes and no about power making superpowered folk egomaniacal.

Supergirl has had a ton of variations through the years, but by far my favorite comic book run of her was from the early 2000's onward (do not like the New 52 era after).

Supergirl as a character was not simply a stunning blond beauty, but displayed again and again that she had a tendency for recklessness and even naivety at times... but she means well... at least when she is trying to be good (sometimes she acts up like an angsty teen).

The difference between her and Superman is that people both know and respect Superman, but people in general don't know her as well and neither respect her as much but she also wants the same same respect he receives.

This drives her to speak and act rashly... driving her to make a promise she intends to keep no matter what.... not fully realizing yet that being Super does NOT mean we can or SHOULD do whatever we want.

It stems partly from her concern for the boy, but more so from her own insecurity over being in Superman's shadow.

 

 

https://arousinggrammar.com/2012/11/01/supergirls-unfortunate-promise/

Superman and Supergirl are not human though.

 

[Spacescifi]

43 minutes ago, Beamer said:

Superman and Supergirl are not human though.

 

 

True but they act human... only difference really is the sheer difference in power.

Indeed... the most popular fictional characters are all too human.

 

Granted there is Godzilla... but he is hardly known for or watched for his character.

[SkyFall2489]

The whole issue seems to be, if suddenly a small fraction of the population is different, maybe seen as dangerous...

It's not the powers themselves. It's society.

How would we come up with a solution that guarantees safety to ALL, while ensuring that no one would get angry because they are "lower"? How would we avoid any sort of hierarchy forming? If we have a difference, we have a divide, and if society has a divide...

Someone is bound to want to be on the other side. Conflict will likely result. If one side is suppressed in any way, the system will fail eventually. And then society will destroy itself. Alternatively, if no side is suppressed in any way, then safety takes a hit. When that happens, someone would be bound to attempt to suppress the other side, leading to disastrous results.

And, to make this worse...

As long as one side exists, so will the other. Humanity, locked in everlasting conflict, will be bound by our own nature. These powers at first seem to be a blessing to humanity, but when it all plays out...

It will be far more of a curse.

No technology can help us. In the above argument, technology plays no role - only human nature. Until technology lets us cast even that away, we have no defense against ourselves.