Well I mean.... I think what most people would imagine a capepunk type world, I'd imagine 2 possible outcomes to this... one we get powers but our world doesn't gain the necessary physics to use these powers without dying or two we get powers and the necessary physics to use them. The first set up would lead to a lot of deaths, people suddenly get super speed and then burst into flame from friction burn, people gain super strength and suddenly everything even their own bodies becomes effectively clay to them due to their hands being such a small point of focus behind a large amount of force. Super powered people wouldn't be feared they'd be dead. In the second scenario the physics of the world had changed so that means technology has failed, leaving to a post apocalyptic environment where the only people who can make technology work are magicians and mad scientists, making it so that people would try to get in the good graces of these super powered beings in order to survive. Resulting in tribes where the many unpowered civilians try to serve the super powered beings at the top. Over time this would lead to a more feudal government where powered people are effectively nobles. The latter would make for an excellent fictional world, but the former is something I would actually want to live in, provided I wasn't the unlucky few who got super powers.

notears wrote:

Oh well... if the new physics only effect the new powers that would be very different... I'd have to think about it...

Think about the Flash. The Speed Force allows him to change physics around him but only for a small area. Reality itself hasn't altered just the area around flash. Same with Superman flying/floating he altering just himself and how his body responds to gravity.

There are multiple responses.

One some supers use powers for personal gain within law. This also counts Military and law enforcement. Someone with healing powers would be instantly in high demand. Some cases of healers would become walking gods in a way. Faith healers are known now, imagine what would happen if they can really heal.

Criminal activity wouldn't be spectacular. I see more supers taking over gangs rather than rob banks. Mind readers gambling at poker games for example.

Just like being Homosexual how people respond going to be locational and personal. Some places they are hated for being different others accepted. There will be areas where they have considered God touched others Demons. The Middle East I can see going anti-Super very easily. Except for the ones in the already established groups then God had granted them powers to fight the Evil.

We also have to ask ourselves how Powerful are powerful? Are we talking about Superman level of power or way weaker powers? Okay, you have a fellow who can create fireballs he still low power compared to The Human Torch of the Fantastic 4.

Society would accept lower powered supers easier than the truly high powered. A person can move things with his/her mind been searched for generations. If he can bend spoons with his mind great, if he can fling cars around like legos then it's another matter.

Fear is the deciding factor in response. That is directly connected to how the powers manifested in the first place. When the powers appeared did everything goes to heck right away say people burst into flames or caused everyone else in the area to black out because of blooming mental powers? Or did the world gain powers slowly a build up of reactions over time. A fast awaking vs a slow awaking would have effects in reactions.

A set of stories that had the world like this is the Wearing the Cape: The Beginning by Marion G. Harmon

Yeah I think it would be more like Rotten said it would.... not really a capepunk world but one where it's just a tamer version of a superhero world depending on where you are... though that could change when third and second world countries become ruled over by superheroes and the military starts using supers for their own benefit.... the more fanastical elements would be more subdued in first world countries.... people wouldn't use fire blasts to fight crime they'll use them to light stoves or as an alternative to shoveling the walk...

Did anyone here ever play [i]Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura[/i]? Its an isometric RPG from 2001 in which technology and magic coexist in the world, but each has it's own laws of 'physics' such that neither technology nor magic work well in proximity to each other. If you were a mage riding a train, you'd have to sit near the back to prevent interference with the locomotive, for example. It's a cool concept.

You guys reminded me of that game and the concept when you asked if the physics comes with your powers. What if it did and you were up against someone else with powers, I would imagine the laws of physics of each would collide, possibly causing some interesting effects, or maybe just fizzling.

I don't see a mention of what superpower we would get. That really does make a difference in a scenario. If I can turn into inanimate objects, I would probably limit myself to pranks, or other such useless things.

Now if I ever got my dream power which would be weather control, then I have honestly thought about a scenario like this many times. I would first go to the desert to practice controlling my abilities. I cant very well risk creating a tornado in a parking lot, losing control of it, and drawing attention to myself and possibly killing everyone around me.

But the main thing, is I would offer my services to the government in terms of stopping natural disasters. And by offering my services, I would want a really great income, a secure place to live, I want my family to be taken care of, and in exchange, I will be available 24/7 in case there are huge fires, hurricanes, severe snow, etc. Obviously I would need to have a private jet available to me at all times to get to these areas, or maybe I get some flight abilities with my new powers but for the most part, that is what I would do.

Thank you Cyclops this is a fun thought experiment

Cyclops wrote:

To be fair I've never heard of capepunk until this thread.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Capepunk

you can read about it here, what it is basically is the deconstruction of superheroes the way dark and low fantasy deconstructs high fantasy. It's a great genre, but for me atleast some of the fan base can be way too annoying and high brow for my tastes.

notears wrote:

Cyclops wrote:
To be fair I've never heard of capepunk until this thread.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Capepunk
you can read about it here, what it is basically is the deconstruction of superheroes the way dark and low fantasy deconstructs high fantasy. It's a great genre, but for me atleast some of the fan base can be way too annoying and high brow for my tastes.

Ah, now I understand the flood of Deadpool-style "heroes" in the Kindle store. And here I thought it was just the popularity of the movie.

Greyhawk wrote:

Personally, I think sudden introduction of superpowered people into any real world scenario would be disastrous. Remember the Hulk throwing tanks around and knocking helicopters out of the sky? Now imagine that scenario multiplied by 70 million people around the world.
Ordinary humans would be extinct in a fortnight. Ours is a world with a demonstrated taste for genocide. Ours is also a world where generous, open-minded, sympathetic people are clearly a small minority of the overall population. Superpowered villains would outnumber superpowered heroes by a huge percentage.
Sadly, ours is not a world suited to superpowers.
But continue on with your thought experiment. Imagination can be very entertaining.

What makes you think everyone who gets powers is just going to start destroying their surroundings and killing people? I think a lot of people who have power now i.e guns, nukes, are not out there destroying cities. Granted yes there are mass shootings, but regular civilians would still be afraid of being caught, killed, imprisoned if they suddenly felt like destroying everything around them.

And, suddenly, your, um, spit is a lethal weapon.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManOfSteelWomanOfKleenex

Be Well!
Fireheart

Initially, the coming of supers would be slow. People would be afraid of their new found abilities. Governments wouldn't know how to properly respond, and would likely default to military mobilization. The ensuing panic would probably result in nearly all city-based supers being wiped out through pure fear and misunderstanding. After about a year, first world countries would settle down, but the travesties would continue in third world. Highly militarized nations would either try to harness these supers immediately, having them disappear into black bags overnight, or simply want them wiped out for fear of being used in rebellions. Human trafficking and poaching switch accordingly to these new human commodities leading to the birth of one of the first arguable "villain" group.

After the fallout settles, I'd say only about 10% of the initial batch of supers are even left alive. This remaining 0.1% of the earth's super population is afraid to speak up. Statistically speaking, a high-school may only have one or two supers at any given time, depending on the local culture. Supers are very rare in cities, and if they managed to survive there, it was likely because their abilities were "laughable" or "not a threat" to society. Misinformation abounds in the first 10 years or so of this super emergence. People assume they can breed out powers selectively, but to no avail. Some isolated pockets try interbreeding in an attempt to create the ultimate super, but quickly find out that the offspring they bear instead have a tiny chance of becoming super. Initial cruelty by certain individuals with access to experienced lawyers also try to file for a separation of species for those with and those without these powers. Their attempt to do this is based in greed, companies trying to repossess property owned by supers by claiming they don't have a right to property because they aren't "human" and therefore not within certain protected rights. They try to push for supers to be classified as non-human, but testing soon discovers that these powers are just a very recessive gene that is now shared between powered and non-powered beings.

Inevitable political fallout forces certain laws to pass to protect supers from public violence and vice-versa. Using any powers during a fight is classified as being armed with a weapon for the purposes of assault, robbery, and self defense. Incentive programs are developed to recruits supers into law, military, and rescue operations, though the idea of spandex suits only lingers in the public's mind. Instead, these supers just wear the ordinary uniforms of their given branches, assuming their abilities don't destroy them. Those that burst into flames likely need clothing made from their own hair, or the hair of other similarly powered individuals. New labor laws are forced to pass in response to new work safety thresholds, requiring those applying for jobs as supers to undergo physical screenings if their powers are the basis of their employment application. Supers are banned from olympic sporting events, and new reality shows pop up revolving around "My life as a ___" type of super. Despite being a small minority globally, supers are quickly the media's shining interest.

The population balance of supers won't be back to it's 1% until well after 70 years, when the initial knee-jerk reaction of super eradication finally balances out with newborns. Society is still uneasy about the supers, because on paper, it looks like the relative super population is on the rise, and regular humans may be wiped out! Studies eventually become published detailing the super-rate and how it's actually just approaching a 1% population rate, and many concerns disappear, but the value of supers suddenly becomes concrete. At a rate of 1 in 100 a super powered baby is extremely valuable to wealthy families. Kidnappings are common and children are sold from fake orphanage fronts. Super parents will have large families in an attempt to get the one child who also has powers, often leading to favoritism and neglect as well as abandonment.

As for myself: I'd find myself to suddenly acquire whatever power/s the cosmic lottery gave me. I would likely be okay in the initial political fallout, as I live in a safer suburb in a more progressive state. I'm one of a very small number of local supers, and from the broad spectrum of abilities available, mine is likely only slightly above average. Sadly, despite being in a higher power range than most, I would still likely be killed by a single well placed bullet, and would not find the relative empathy to throw myself across the world trying to protect or save those involved in all the violent worldly strife erupting right away. Rather, I'd probably try to establish myself as an individual. My end game for life isn't greatness after all. I just want to enjoy what I've been given and help a few people along the way. I don't have the heart for violence for a military life, and being law enforcement or fire rescue would be VERY dependent on the kind of power dished out.

A decade after the event when laws are stabilized and the US is done recoiling, I'd likely establish a hiring firm based entirely around supers. That is realistically the best thing I could do for others. This wouldn't be some "hero agency" or anything like that, but more like finding work for supers at tolerant employment locations, or helping them utilize abilities that makes them special in ways that makes them marketable. Whether the firm flops or fails depends on numerous things, but in all likelihood, catering to such a small population percentage leads to it being a complete wash, only kept afloat by government incentives to get supers working. After all, a working super is less likely to decide their strapped for cash and need to rob a bank, right?

I want Adam Conover powers from, Adam ruins everything. It's basically, you can do whatever you want but only if you know more about something than the person your target does and only as much as teaching them why their wrong. I can effectively go over and tell people why vaccines don't cause autism, or what autism is, or teach people how to write better, and since I can only use it to teach people there is no way that I can become corrupted by that power.

It's pretty much capepunk but set in a cyberpunk future, it's pretty rad yo.

Nyktos wrote:

I hate when people pick X-Ray Vision out of all things. Realistically that would be a really bad power.

It depends on whether the "X-Ray" part is descriptive of the effect or of the mechanics. The ability to see through most materials at will can be handy. Less so if you generate a burst of X-Rays whenever you use it.

RottenLuck wrote:

Foradain wrote:
Nyktos wrote:
I hate when people pick X-Ray Vision out of all things. Realistically that would be a really bad power.
It depends on whether the "X-Ray" part is descriptive of the effect or of the mechanics. The ability to see through most materials at will can be handy. Less so if you generate a burst of X-Rays whenever you use it.
Or do you see X-Rays? Or do you see things like an X-ray machine and see people as bones.

[url=http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/868]Like this? (panel 4)[/url]

I highly recommend that comic as a whole though.

Every time I see the title of this thread, I see Tom Tucker tilting his head and in an increasing pitch say "...in this world?" :P. This has been a common subject of occasional conjecture for quite a while.

Greyhawk wrote:

Ordinary humans would be extinct in a fortnight.

This is almost certainly untrue with 1% of the population having superpowers. Just as one specific (and unfortunate) example, Native Americans are not extinct after meeting Europeans, who had a massively overwhelming advantage in both technology and population as well as virtually no respect for their people or culture, at least 500 years ago. That plus largely unintentional devastation due to European diseases such as smallpox. I'm not saying it'd go particularly well for the nonpowered in the long run, but extinction in a month seems the epitome of hyperbole--which is perhaps what you were going for.

Grimfox wrote:

If you had strong enough X-ray vision (X-ray projection) then you'd be very similar to Cyclops. X-rays are very high energy waves and when concentrated would be exceptionally damaging.

It would be exceptionally damaging, but it would be nothing like Cyclops. It'd be a horrific catastrophe almost every time you used them in any direction except perhaps straight up. Classic Cyclops eye beams are purely concussive. X-rays penetrate most matter that is common on Earth almost completely and travel very far, and at very high levels do catastrophic tissue damage on all levels from molecular to genetic to cellular. Even considering explosive heating, even at very high levels there would be little concussive effect in any non-explosive material, but a horrific, slow death to any and all living tissue and intense ionization to certain dense non organic materials for quite a ways within the arc of the beam.

I have nothing against Deadpool per se, and the movie was ok, but, before the movie, I interacted with enough hardcore Deadpool fanboys to know that they are in general even more insufferable than other fanboys--even Wolverine fanboys! I don't know what the specific dynamic is there, but I suspect it has something to do with him often being written as the ultimate griefer.

For me, I'm tempted to say I'd want low-level "cosmic" powers--like solar system level--so I could take a holiday to the asteroid belt on a lark, and even take my wife and son with me. But, with that level of power I'd feel to responsible to take a hand in trying to better the world, which I don't feel I have the right or wisdom to do. And I wouldn't completely trust myself with mental powers. Too easy to have fun at the unfair expense of others.

So, I'd go with relatively low-level physical augmentation to keep it safe and to keep my sense of responsibility down to, say, local crime and do-gooding. I do have strong compunctions against being a bully. So, mabye physically 10x normal human in every way--lift a ton, see far, move fast, resistant to smashing damage but still gotta watch out for those bullets, and they come fast!--or a "feral" mutation where I have speed, strength, senses, and healing. Extended lifespan maybe, but not immortality because I've lived long enough to know I don't want to be stuck here forever.

Having put some further thought into it, I can technically say that I already *do* have something of a superpower. Like most of my mother's family, I have a rather enhanced form of magnetoreception. Where this means that my mother and others have an uncanny awareness of the direction of north at all times, I can use my sense in a much more detailed fashion. While I'm not more reliable than a GPS when it comes to navigation (because I'm a bit of a troll and love taking the back roads), I'm within a reasonable margin of error when it comes to accuracy. But the fun isn't in the superior navigational and spatial reasoning - it's a little more than useful when it comes to predicting the weather - and earthquakes. Still very minor when compared to some of the other species on this planet, but considering a good number of scientists didn't believe human magnetoreception existed until magnetite crystals were found inside human brain tissue in ~1992, I'll take what is still considered an odd/rare ability.

I ran into this article a while back, and found it very interesting:

[url=http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/we-are-nowhere-close-to-the-limits-of-athletic-performance]We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance[/url]

Meanwhile I can’t wear electronic watches, keepnalarm cloxks near me, or carry cell phones all day either.

For whatever reason, my bio-magnetic field seems to always mess them up. Watched and clocks end up running either too slow to too fast.

The clock in my car is currently 2.5 minutes behind. My precious car it ran up to 22 minutes ahead before each a Day Light Saving Time.

I think if we ever got super powers it would be more like Life is Strange. If a real person got super powers they wouldn't really use it to fight or commit crime. They're still the same person after all and just because you get heat vision that still wouldn't do much because the person with that heat vision is still just an ordinary guy. People would use them for party tricks or for making their lives better.

So what? I'll get noticed. If you actually look at the history of the world it's very unlikely that I would get dissected. We've had plenty of people that would be considered to be superpowered, we've had circus strongmen, Buddhist monks that can survive hammers to the chest and we even have people that can do this

[youtube]bBicopRHNs4[/youtube]

Did we chop these guys up to see how they work? Of course we didn't!! If people got super powers they wouldn't need to worry about being dissected, and this thing that people would do that in Capepunk stories doesn't really make sense because we've never dissected people, I mean yeah sure in Renaissance times we did but in modern day? We don't do that!! Most trouble I'd get in for revealing my powers would be people wanting me to do tricks for them.

notears wrote:

Did we chop these guys up to see how they work? Of course we didn't!! If people got super powers they wouldn't need to worry about being dissected, and this thing that people would do that in Capepunk stories doesn't really make sense because we've never dissected people, I mean yeah sure in Renaissance times we did but in modern day? We don't do that!! Most trouble I'd get in for revealing my powers would be people wanting me to do tricks for them.

Again if you could reliably toss off thermonuclear explosions at will there would likely be plenty of people and government organizations who'd want to at the very least "interview" you about that. The dissections could always come later...

Again how people would react to you having a "super power" would greatly depend on what you could do with that super power.

notears wrote:

If they do find a use for my heat vision all that really means is a job offer.

One more time if you can't accept that there'd a pretty big difference between a guy (apparently) setting pieces of newspaper on fire with "powers" and a person who could light off thermonuclear explosions at will I don't know what else I could do to convince you.

Trust me when I say there would be somebody out there who'd at least be "interested" in dissecting Mr. Thermonuclear Explosions, you know, just out of curiosity. Most of those people would work for government organizations that are abbreviated with 3 letters. ;)