Poll: Would having real-life superheros be good or bad for the world?

[Lord Garnaat]

Alright, let's say that tomorrow a strange phenomenon happens, and a random 1% of the world's population has super-powers. None of the powers would be so powerful that the user's would be impossible to kill or indestructible, and the gaining of said powers would not directly affect a person's psyche or personality. They would get the normal mix of powers like super-strength, flight, invisibility, or super-speed; and how they chose to use them would be entirely up to them.

That being said, would you want this to happen? Do you think it would be good or bad for humanity as a whole?

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Potentially bad... I think the majority of people who get super powers would act like the kids in Chronicle. Use them too goof off or for personal gain.

You gotta keep in mind it's not the powers that really matter, it's who they are as a human being, and I don't necessarily trust that those powers would fall into the hands an our-world clark kent.

At best? We'd probably end up with someone like Hancock...

 

[Heronblade]

Utterly random selection of people get a random power?

Bad

I am not an adherent of the principle that power corrupts. Instead I am of the opinion that sudden acquisition of power simply shows an aspect of a person that may or may not have been seen before. While there is a chance that the person in question will flourish and become even better than before, that aspect is more often than not rather ugly.

If something like this were to occur, even excluding the possibility that the public panics and attacks the new "superheros" without provocation, there will be a lot of chaos and harm as a result. Frankly, most people would use their gifts for personal gain in most cases, almost no one has it in them to become some kind of selfless superman. The only question for most individuals is whether or not "personal gain" stops at the point where it harms others.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Watchmen called. It all ends with psychic doom squids.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Bah, governments would try to control them. When that failed, they'd try to kill them, turning half of them into corpses and the other half into superVILLAINS.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Tough call. Sure, they might save a lot of people, but on the other hand... there'd be a lot of super villains too...

 

[Erja_Perttu]

I get the feeling we'd end up with a Batman situation - the superheroes would attract the supervillains, freaks and psychopaths with noting better to do and wham bam, suddenly everything is getting blown up.

 

[Yokillernick]

What's the first thing someone would do when they get super powers ? Dick around. Now think of around a million people shooting lightning out of their arse all at the same time and you see what happens. That's before the plans for world domination or bank robberies set in.

 

[deadpoolhulk]

i'm not sure what i think and would just like to add a point.
If i was in the 99% i would be as green with envy as possible to be, if someone i knew was suddenly more powerfull then a locomotive and able to jump tall buildings in a single bound. So would a LOT of other people. and that too could lead to things ending badly.
(plus i firmly believe all goverments would anounce "all superhumans have the choice between our soldier or a corpse." but that's just me and my teenage hatred for authority talking.)

 

[Thaluikhain]

Er...why would that 1%, taken at random, be heroes?

Generally, very bad.

 

[Imthatguy]

Bad... and it would be in baseline humanity's best interest to exterminate them.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I'd say the majority of them aren't going to dedicate their lives to fighting crime but instead just have fun with their superpowers, which is going to be bad.

Assuming they do want to dedicate their lives to fighting crime I can't say they would be very useful, there aren't any super villains going around murdering people with deathrays[footnote]Except maybe EA.[/footnote].

The problem with a superhero is that they are just one person so they can't really cover much on their own. Sure its easy for them to save the day when all they have to do is beat up some crazy guy with a giant robot or some kind of doomsday device but in reality I doubt a superhero would be all that useful.

Unless they have a power that lets them see the future then its very hard to anticipate crime, I mean more often than not the police are trying to figure out who the murderer is after he has killed rather than stop him before he kills, right?

All I can see a superhero being useful for is roaming around the streets stopping muggings when they occur and maybe being hired as a really effective security guard. The bad guys don't all wear penguin suits and clown makeup. In reality, they are more difficult to find than your typical super villain.

 

[Riddle78]

A random portion of the population becomes Supers? The world's fucked. Entire cities,especially ones with notoriously corrupt police forces like Montreal,will become warzones if not smoking craters,and the planet will be torn apart in war as governments and other Supers try to take down the bad ones,and then many governments will attempt to control,eliminate,or copy the remaining Supers,leading to an all new bag of Hell.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Utterly random selection of people get a random power?

Bad

I am not an adherent of the principle that power corrupts. Instead I am of the opinion that sudden acquisition of power simply shows an aspect of a person that may or may not have been seen before. While there is a chance that the person in question will flourish and become even better than before, that aspect is more often than not rather ugly.

If something like this were to occur, even excluding the possibility that the public panics and attacks the new "superheros" without provocation, there will be a lot of chaos and harm as a result. Frankly, most people would use their gifts for personal gain in most cases, almost no one has it in them to become some kind of selfless superman. The only question for most individuals is whether or not "personal gain" stops at the point where it harms others.

Added to this fine point that you need to measure society as a whole before this happened. In our parents day, the word Hero meant a little more. People did not want to seem like a bad person. There were standards that people measured against.

Today, the most popular things on youtube, the internet, media and the like are people being terrible to each other. Those who are genuinely good and want to do the right things are outright ridiculed today. Our heroes are those who can outstep-on each other and seem like the cruelest dick.

Let's switch the question around. Say if there was one guy who was the epitome of Superman's old ideals. He believed his purpose was to use his vast powers to aid humanity... Would any of you trust him? Would our ideals of what humanity is eventually convince us that he had ulterior motives and could not be trusted?

 

[Luna]

I expected this thread to just be about people putting on costumes, training, acquiring gadgets and fighting crime and was gonna say that virtually nobody could actually pull it off like how Batman does it. But regarding super powers... I wouldn't trust random people in the world to have them. I would however like to have them myself just as most people would.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Superheroes would be more or less useless in well-developed countries tht have a functional military and police force. Where they would be most helpful is third-world areas with a limited, non-existent, or corrupt police force, or some kind of dictatorial rule.

 

[Promethax]

It depends: would I be the only one with powers?

 

[Risingblade]

The chances of 100% of those 1% being assholes is pretty high you know.