1y ago

What super power would be impractical in real life?

137 comments

A lot of them assuming you don't get the required secondary powers.
Super speed, if your perceptions aren't heightened it rapidly becomes impractical, if they are things are going to get painfully boring real quick. Even thinking at double speed means you are going to be waiting for the world to catch up a lot. Never mind what even relatively low G-forces can do to someone.
Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people's clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren't deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
If you don't get secondary powers then super strength is going to suck. The human body is already capable of injuring itself with its own strength. How many fastball pitchers get arm or shoulder injuries just from throwing something really fast, or power-lifters who have something break or burst. Modern sporting records are starting to push up against the structural limits of the human body.
- Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
  Super hearing would essentially be tinnitus with some variety in the inescapable noise.
  
  Also it would be similar to the experience a lot of autistic people have with their sense of hearing. Feeling overwhelmed by the background noise of every nearby animal, bit of noisy clothing, conversation, and heavy machinery is par for the course for me.
  
  Duuude what if tinnitus is the superpower trying to happen? 🤯
- I think the superhearing power is going to be different than you think. You can already hear your clothes rubbing against skin, the air conditioning blowing, etc. Your brain is pretty good at filtering those out. Now, the conversations will be more difficult, but think about your experiences at a party. Most of the time you can hear another group's conversation if you listened and focused on them, but you can tune them out (most of the time, ignoring the cocktail party effect stuff for now). Unless you have focus issues already, it wouldn't be a big deal. The issue would be the initial period where your brain has to learn what exactly to filter out. Right now, a rustle to my right would be a bad sign, and hearing a rat crawling through the wall would freak me out. After a few weeks though, I bet I'd have adjusted.
  
  Yeah, I don't mean my own clothes, (though I do quite often hear them). I mean everyone's. I've also spent quite a bit of time living in a building where you could hear the rats moving about rather clearly (through a combination of a rat problem and some poor construction decisions.) Yes it goes from a 'what was that?' alert to a 'oh it's the rats' but you still notice. It's very different to continuous background noises like AC or traffic.
  Loving one's life as if always at a loud party is exactly the thing I'm seeing as the problem. Yes you can actively focus on something specific, but always having to do that is going to be unpleasant. Never mind all the stuff you are going to overhear that you don't want to overhear.
- Super speed would come with similar issues as super strength. You would get less than a block, and you'd just be a skeleton.
  Not to mention, the concept of saving someone from being hit by a car, likely results in 1 or (more likely) both of you being turned into paste from the impact.
  Superpowers really only work in comics and movies, in real life there's just too many variables.
- I think there is no situation where you gain super speed without extreme forces resistance, because if you exert the force to move at the speed of sound but aren't resilient then your muscles, bones, and tendons will immediately shred themselves with that first step.
- Honestly the best super power IMO is the ability to open gateways in time and space
  
  Seeing as the earth is constantly moving at 1600 km/h I feel like it would be incredibly difficult to actually open a portal on earth in the past or future

Super strength is something I could see being problematic.
The movies always show the super strong hero picking up buses or trains with one hand, but in reality you have to lift such vehicles in specific places, or they will be damaged. Youtube is full of videos depicting cars falling from mechanic's lifts due to improper lift point placement, or just old fasioned rust. Imagine Mr. Incredible going to pick up a bus in a state where the roads are salted, and just breaking off a handful of the frame.
- This is the kind of gritty reality I'd like to see in a movie. Stuff is constantly breaking when the hero tries to pick it up, he has to go through a montage of classes on structure and how to choose the best place to grab onto things.
  Also leverage. Unless the super strength comes with stability, lifing a boulder from the edge would just make the hero's feet slip out from under them. He has to lift one side straight up until he can fit underneath to balance the thing. Then he has to hope that the ground below can withstand all the weight of the boulder pressing on the soles of his feet.
  
  Also super strong guy has to grow morbidly obese in order to gain a slight mechanical advantage over whatever he's trying to move
- Additionally, see the essay Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven
  Overthinking? Yes, intentionally. Gross and funny? Also yes!
  
  I have a collection of short stories that includes that essay. Long time fan of Niven!
- Also, even if you were that strong, the calories you'd have to eat to pick up that shit and put out that much force would be insane. The Hulk would have to eat wheelbarrows of food after throwing cars around
  
  I have wondered before how many cheeseburgers Cyclops would have to eat to power his laser eyes.
  
  Could be "scientifically" countered by nuclear fusion/fission of the atoms in the food eaten.
- I never thought about that but you're correct. You can mess up your car really bad if you put the carjack anywhere else than the strong parts of the frame.
- Haha I've thought of that. Maybe they can add that to a Deadpool movie or something with a super strong character ripping up a car finding the lift points.
- Yup. Same with 'slowing things down' too quickly - sure you might save the bus but the strawberry jam inside isn't going to appreciate it.
  
  Like when Ironman falls out of the sky and slams into the ground. He's always just fine.

Any sort of super strength without added toughness and motor control. You'd break your own body let alone everything around you pretty fast. Same for juggernaut movement. Or high jump type flight.
- Also, forget picking up buildings or planes. Most things would break or crumble under their own weight as soon as you tried to pick them up.
  
  Insert: >Superman is actually a psychokinetic
- Forever War delved into the problems with super strength. The power armor took a humongous amount of training to be used finely enough in everyday tasks and not break something or someone. A simple handshake between someone in power armor and someone without could result in crushed bones or a ripped off arm. A great show of skill in using the power armor was the main character sitting down in office and writing a letter with pen and paper while wearing the armor!
  Another great example of how dangerous superstrength is when dealing with non-superstrength people was in anime Beastars where one big carnivore accidentally ripped off the arm of his smaller non-carnivore friend. In-lore was said to be a very common thing to the extent that limb reattachment is a common medical procedure.
- My Hero Academia deals with this
  
  I think that's why I love that series. Each quirk has a consequence to it. One-for-all can store and unleash energy, but unless you use that stored power to reinforce the opposite forces, your bones will disintegrate
- Or high jump type flight. Flashbacks to Morrowind. Poor Tarhiel.
- I had always wanted my superpower to be flight obviously because flight is the shit. I went to my local theme park after the Batman ride opened. I can hear what you thinking Batman doesn't fly. This particular coaster, they put you in laying down on your back, lock you in and then the bat wing flips you over. Every negative G turn, unless you're gripping onto things with your hands, you just rag doll. Even if you could magically work out flight it would just be a constant painful workout trying to keep your limbs from looking stupid while you're doing it.
- Being able to turn into metal/sand/water/bats/lettuce or whatever without additional magic would destroy the structure and state of your brain immediately.
  
  I think you guys are overthinking things too much. In a world in which some magical phenomenon can turn you into a lettuce, all of a sudden you draw the line at brain functions?
  
  Disregard modernity. Embrace lettuce.

Teleportation. Unless truly instantaneous, you need to account for the fact that the earth moves 18 miles per second relative to the sun.
- And isn't the solar system moving at like 500000 miles an hour around the milkyway too?
  Teleportation and timetravel both have this issue where you have to take a fuckload of moving parts we don't even completely understand yet, into account.
  
  Time travel would have to imply teleportation as well. If teleportation is actually instant or ftl, it would also be at least some level of time travel as you would be able to move outside your causal envelope.
  
  Why would you teleport relative to the sun or the center of the milky way? Wouldn't it be easier to teleport relative to the nearest surface?
- Inertial systems are all equal in a certain relevant here sense, if there is no need for account for your movement relative to Sun, Galaxy, CMB, or anything else. Yes, in this sense, Sun also rotates around Earth.
- On top of that you need to account for the fact that the earth's surface is moving at different speeds depending on latitude and elevation. Even if you can do the calculations to hit your mark, there is most likely to be some energy mismatch that needs to be accounted for.
  
  Very nicely addressed in the Jumper novels by Steven Gould.
- This doesn't make sense. The earth moves at very different speeds depending on what you compare it to. The only thing that makes sense is for the teleportation to be relative to the teleporter. Maybe it would still require taking into account rotation, instead of linear momentum. idk, still seems complicated.
  
  But if it takes time, there's a moment where you're not there, and thus, the reference is lost.
  Instant teleporting no problems though. I would even be okay with nightcrawler/Minecraft nether-like teleport where you travel through another locked in dimension.
- What if you could "lock on" a target like in star trek?

Ability to stop time.
As soon as you stop time, everything will go pitch black. The photons which refract off everything will be absorbed by your eyes instantaneously.
Assuming you could still see, it would be freezing everywhere as the heat would dissipate the moment you touched it.
Assuming you could still see, and wouldn't freeze to death, if you were to unfreeze time, the human-shaped vacuum tube you created while walking from point A to B would collapse violently, killing you, and anyone else standing close to it.
This also assumes that with time stopped, you can push microscopic particles around. If not, then any movement at all will make every molecule around you act as radiation, and and dust will feel like tiny razor blades, ripping through your body.
Also, the ability to stop time doesn't guarantee the ability to start it again.
- Also, the ability to stop time doesn’t guarantee the ability to start it again.
  That's some Monkey's Paw shit right here
- Lack of light is something that does come up with the History Monks in Discworld. Although they only slow down time, so they can see things, just very dimly lit.

mind reading. it would make you super sad super fast, because you'd always know when you're being lied to.
- I remember one of the tidbits I picked up from a psychology textbook was that people who were worse at knowing if their partner was lying were in happier relationships. Turns out that white lies are important.

Invisibility. It would also make you blind.
- I think this is really the only thing there is, without assuming there isn't "complete control" over it. You either sacrifice total invisibility to be a floating pair of eyes (or at least 1), or you're blind but totally invisible. Making it truly impractical even if you have full control over the ability.
  
  Great take on this in a D&D setting where a players character was able to roll incredibly high to notice an invisible person. The DM came up with this solution on the spot and made fantasy and logic weave together for a believable solution and an awesome situation:
  https://youtu.be/ODgncMuS5Xg?si=773fotkfn-_kMz1e
  
  What if light is just refracted around you. You would be able to see, but it would look all rainbow like.
  
  If everything but your pupils were invisible, and your pupils were 90% invisible, it'd probably be fine. Most humans can comfortably see with 10% of the light.
- There is a character in My Hero Academia that can phase through objects, but when he activates his power he can't see or hear anything as a result.
- Assuming that the invisibility is based on a physical property. You could also be psychically invisible where you manipulate others minds so they don't see you.
  
  But that would me more like "imperceivability".
- It depends on what kind of "invisibility" you mean, if you'd be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you'd be invisible but could still see. If you mean invisibility by breaking light you can't really say, since we don't yet know how we could use this to make a human body invisible, thereforce we don't know the counter meassures yet
  
  if you’d be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you’d be invisible but could still see.
  That's not invisibility just camouflage.
  Like, you can have the same texture as the wall you are standing in front of, but you'd still show up as a human-shaped piece of wall protruding out. Or if a bug was to crawl on the wall behind you, you'd block it's view.

There was a TV show about a guy with super senses -hearing, smell, touch, vision. I grew up with brothers, learned to breathe defensively to not smell things, and remember thinking there is no way I would survive having a supernaturally sensitive sense of smell. There are just more bad smells than good in an average day.
I think also that hearing people's thoughts would drive anyone crazy.
What I would like to have is super jumping and landing, sort of like flying but just bouncing.
- I mean, my dog thinks garbage and shit are the greatest smells possible and he's the most trustworthy person I know, so I have to assume it all circles back on itself somehow.
- The Sentinel. I watched that back in the 90s.
  
  That is it! I remember thinking what an awful boyfriend he would be. Like, it would just be so uncomfortable to think he was always thinking you stink because everything was dialed up to 2000%. Never wanting him to go down on you because any taste/smell would be so magnified. Perfumes would hurt him too. And he'd probably want you so quiet as well.
- I mean, dogs somehow manage

Super speed. Even if you ignore the air friction and possible "everything moves too damn slow for me" problems, it doesn't come with super endurance.
- Fun fact! There's a theory that the reason humans can't run faster than ~25 mph is because at that speed the injuries from an impact become much more life threatening. So everyone who was capable of running that fast would generally die by running into something or tripping
  
  Neat theory, but I dont think I buy in. When we have tools and packs to keep us safe from predators, and any old human can run down a gazelle by just jogging after them for an hour til they collapse from heat exhaustion, where is the evolutionary pressure to be a super-sprinter?

Imagine
How
Slowly
It
Seems
Like
Everyone
Is
Talking
To
The
Flash.
- Can you imagine what it's like when they ask him to search the entire city for a bomb? To him he's spending months or even years just walking around looking in every room, every trash can, under every car, etc.
- They actually address this with the super speed character in I'm a Virgo. Flora's superpower is that she's always bored x_x
  
  Same in Invincible. The speedster basically has ADD because everyone else is so slow in comparison

Immortality. If you go to the bottom of the ocean or space without protection your muscles won't get any more oxygen and you'll get rigor mortis and basically be stuck forever.
- Eventually Kars stopped thinking
- Cuz that would be an irl situation. Lol
  
  I mean, if you lived 987,643 years and counting then what are the chances you don't end up somewhere absurd at some point or another? I think there is just a point where getting stuck is a statistical certainty.
- This happened in the movie the guardians

Russia

Laser eyes/heat vision where you can't see where to shoot.
- Unless you get magic oakleys, a là Scott Summers.

Shape-shifting would almost certainly be agonizingly painful.
- Not sure why it has to be. Being a superpower, it already defies logic. Why is it necessarily painful? I don't see why the brain can't temporarily shut off pain receptors if it's already doing something fantastical.
  I'm reminded of the Animorphs books, where they describe the process as grotesque and the odd sensations they feel.
- The Animorphs series explores this quite well. It's not actually painful for them, but should be and is plenty disturbing.
- Only the first time. Then just leave out the nervous system going forward?

When you step the air under your feet turns solid so you have to go infinitely up
- I find this amusingly humorous.
  and not so much a superpower. More like a disability. Wouldn't be able to walk anywhere and would have to resort to living in a wheelchair.
- What if you sit down while in the air? Or do a backflip?

Super speed. You'd have to slow down or die of heatstroke from air friction.
- unless u use the speed force
  
  I want to know what he writer was smoking when he came up with the 'speed force' idea.

Super speed. Either you would need to also think and react at super speeds, which mean the world would be agonizingly slow, or you would have normal speed reaction in which case you would crash and die.
There is also the option of super reaction time on demand, but in any case non of this matters as super speed would make the air as "thick" as a concrete wall so you would also need to me super strong and super durable.
- This might not be a problem, since you could regulate how fast you run, in which case you could run as fast as a car which wouldn't necessarily require other super stats
- Also friction

x ray vision, pretty sure you need to expose things to x rays to see skeletons. You gonna walk around irradiating people with an x ray source?
- Eh I don't think this is meant to say it's actually x-rays. Wouldn't that require a receiving end on the other side of the person?
- Sort of. You don't really see things on x-rays, you see shadows created by denser material.
  Projecting X-rays at your target wouldn't be very useful, as they are usually absorbed rather than reflected back (I think). You'd be able to see if somehow the subject got between you and a significant source of x-rays
- It would be good if you’re a super villain

Unless your power is to control fire, the power to create fire or engulf yourself in fire would be mostly useless. Finding or making fireproof (not fire resistant) clothing would be a pain and uncomfortable to wear all the time. Plus, a lot of things are flammable, so unless you plan to be a super villain you're more of a menace shooting flames everywhere than you are a hero.
- The Venture Brothers played on this.
  Mr. Impossible kept him alive in a vacuum to prevent Cody the human torch from bursting into flames.... until he became evil and trapped him in an oxygen rich chamber to power his skyscraper.

Hearing everybody else's thoughts all the time, X-Men is probably the most popular example
- EVERY superpower is a curse if you can't turn it off.

Laser cock.
- my first thought was laser eyes. i pop in to see the comments and this is a way better answer

Super speed. That doesn't necessarily mean you have super reaction time.
- And doesn't grant you invulnerability. Any small bump at a high speed will hurt like hell.
- Or your like the Red Rush and experience EVERYTHING in super speed. Normal conversations will take weeks from your perspective
  
  I think in that case I'd just ask them to write it down and I'll come read it and write a response when they're done, then could go do something else in that time- I guess it's like my life now.. text me or what you said doesn't exist... 😆😩
  
  when I visit relatives in the south it seems like this sometimes.

close to all of them if we take real physics into effect. Anything impractical can be made practical by just making its practicality part of the story.

Black hole manufacturing.

Superman's powers would be totally impractical in real life. I mean, destroying any building you're in with a fart you didn't catch in time doesn't sound very practical to me...
- Larry Niven covered this in 1974's, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" which discusses the impracticality of Superman/Clark Kent having sex.
  The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.
  Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?
  Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.
  Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.
  https://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html
  
  The more you think about the "super" genre the dumber it gets. And that's quite apart from it's gross political subtexts...
- And if you clamp those steel cheeks you create the paradox between an immovable object vs an unstoppable force. Turns out super humans also get the super shits.