Hypothetical: Real Life Superhuman Registration Act

[Hotfoot]

Superpowered humans are a threat, pure and simple. It's nice and all to say that some have our best interests at heart, but when you get down to it they're almost all self-trained, reckless, egocentric, and entirely unaccountable. Almost all superheroes have a mentality of might makes right and that their views are most important because they have the power they do. Very few supers are humble, even Spiderman has an ego problem.

The simple fact of the matter is that human nature is still brutal in lots of respects, and when you give someone with a might makes right mentality superpowers nothing good will come from it.

Think of what would happen if a common crook got the powers of Spiderman, the Martian Manhunter, or the Flash? Worse yet, imagine a serial killer with Superman's powers.

Depending on the threat of the powers in question, we could be looking at an extinction-level event here. The best case scenario would still include widespread destruction across the world. The concept most comic companies have with a responsible and sparse first generation is keen and all, but in reality, we'd have other problems. Imagine a superpowered brawl in Basrah or the Gaza Strip. Think of a Crips/Bloods brawl with Teen Titans behind each side. Terrorists that could bypass all of our security because they have someone like Nightcrawler who can teleport in all manner of bombs to any point in the world.

After just a handful of these events, people would be out for blood. The only supers that would be left would be those in Military, Law Enforcement, High End government positions, or laying low and waiting to enact vengeance on the world. The legal supers would be left with constant psychiatric testing and research would ensue to neutralize the powers of all superpowered beings. Any new supers would either be immediately recruited by the hidden supers waiting to strike back or by government agencies. We'd have a cold war sort of situation all over again, but instead of another nation, we'd have to worry about the few supers we couldn't find the last time.

Moreover, we could never be entirely sure that some Professor X style super wasn't orchestrating all of the world's governments from the shadows...

Supers IRL = Clusterfuck of massive proportions as far as I'm concerned.

[frigidmagi]

Depressing, but most likely right.

[Josh]

There was another alternative that B5 didn't look at, and that is the use of psi-jamming technology. If you have these devices sprinkled throughout population centres, the psionicists can't read their minds or use their powers easily. This is like cell-phone blockers in parts of the world where terrorists detonate bombs via cell-phone.

Honestly, I found the whole 'join the corps' or 'become a vegetable' solutions to be unsatisfactory.

Ah, but there was a method to the madness, as revealed in the Psi Corps trilogy. Also, as of when Psi Corps was founded, there's no indication of any available jamming technology.

For that matter, so far as we know teeps can't be jammed except by other teeps. If any sort of jamming technology was available, the Shadows would've been all over that.

[spoilers]Furthermore, shortly after its inception, Psi Corps was subverted to a Vorlon agenda, and therefore they wanted all the teeps gathered up for use in the coming war. Then, of course, they get counter-subverted by the Shadows, but that's another story.[/spoilers]

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

The simple fact of the matter is that human nature is still brutal in lots of respects, and when you give someone with a might makes right mentality superpowers nothing good will come from it.

Think of what would happen if a common crook got the powers of Spiderman, the Martian Manhunter, or the Flash? Worse yet, imagine a serial killer with Superman's powers.

Agree with that.

Makes me wonder though; why haven't superhero universes (like DC or Marvel universe) fallen into chaos? Considering someone with personal WMD like Iron Man has drinking problem, and the Hulk being a serious nutcase, the Marvel's Earth should have suffered extinction-level events many years ago; yet it hasn't. Why?

[Hotfoot]

The reasons are legion, but simply it's because they want to tell a positive story about superheroes saving the world. They're power fantasies, pure and simple. The reason there are so many heroes is so that the stories can appeal to a wide range of readers. This is why change is so resisted...changing a major element of the story will alienate the readers, who will then stop buying the books.

The BEST comics involving superheroes, I've found, have been the ones that are limited runs, like Elseworlds, What If?, and so on. The comic that comes the closest to describing the kinds of events I forsee is Kingdom Come, though even that returns to "the better times".

[frigidmagi]

The reason DC isn't a mess is because the first generation is overwhelmingly heroic and overwhelmingly powerful. Superman all by himself is enough to keep the lid on the pot for decades. Add in Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc? It's gonna take some generations.

In Marvel the Avengers are pretty much a front line defense force. In regards to Mutants, the X Men do a good job of scooping up powerful ones before they blow. Them or Magneto and be honest compared to what he could be doing he's restranted.

And above all else... Doom and Magneto don't like competition.

[Hotfoot]

Xavier and Magneto are two of the most powerful mutant in the world, and Cerebro is the single biggest thing keeping the mutant population in line.

The Avengers and the Fantastic Four help keep everything in line, true, but I think SHIELD has a big hand in it too.

But yeah, it's those first generations that keep the rest in line. Remove them, or give their powers to people with less moral fiber, and you've got hell on earth.

You'd have people killing themselves and possibly others while trying to learn how to use or control their new abilities. People so scared by their powers that they cower in the middle of nowhere, afraid of hurting others, themselves, or being hunted. You'd have people who would use their powers for personal gain, either covertly or overtly. You'd have people who would use their powers to hurt others. You'd then have those who would use their powers to help others. What would matter here is how many of the final category there would be, and how effective they'd be. A single superpowered being can do untold damage, but the defenders have to be everywhere at once almost.

Let's assume that out of every thousand people, one person becomes superpowered. This means out of the entire membership of, say, SDN, 3 become superpowered. We don't have any control over who, we just get three randomly superpowered beings.

Imagine what would happen.

[Comrade Tortoise]

There will be hell, I am not saying there wouldnt be. However, that does not justify enslaving people. I can see a mandatory training program. I really can. but compulsory government service? How will that keep these individuals from doing the same thing they would if they were on the streets? The same person who would have robbed a 711 untrained now has a certain amount of legal authority and the equivalent of a police Blue Wall. Copulsory government service will allow just as many problems to arise.

Unfortunately anything we would do would probably end in a lot of lost lives. My ruthlessly subjugating metahumans we will perpetuate a cycle of violence that wont stop until one side or the other is destroyed.

If we leave them to their own devices (maybe with some kind of education program that instills a sense of civic duty in them or something) then there will be super-powered crime... but also super-powered cops eventually.

The real solution is not to subjugate them (though I have no illusions...that is what would happen) but to integrate them into society so that super-criminals exist at a systemic level. As opposed to creating the sort that want to strike out at the normals for killing his cousin.

[frigidmagi]

Ben did you catch the post on causalities? The lowest level of causalities in the US is 758,000 people. Everyone is going to freak the fuck out.

[Hedgecore]

Has/does anyone read Powers or Ultra? In these comics, (also Rising Stars, and the DCU and Marvel U to a lesser extent) super-types are huge freakin' stars-- beyond stars. Brad Pitt times a million.

And I really think this would happen, too. First of all, plenty of people are crazy about super heroes when they're just fictional. Secondly, Americans are fascinated by movie stars, rock stars, celebrities, whatevers. We, as a nation, eat that shit up. If it was supers? Even more so. Brad Pitt pretends to do awesome stuff on screen. Spider-Man does awesome stuff in real life. Who wouldn't be into that?

Okay, there would be plenty of 'haters,' (if I can borrow a phrase) no different from now, but on the whole I think they'd become the center of pop culture: Magazines, tv shows, probably movies and records too. They'd have agents, fanclubs, publicists, the works.

Now, why do I bring this up? Two main reasons: One, as I said before, America would, predominantly, love them. Then the government is going to try to subjugate/ enslave/ outlaw them? Imagine if tried to do something like that today, to movie stars (I can't think of a fitting paralell). People would be enraged! Marches, protests, petitions, again: the works.
Think about everything Americans let celebs get away with: drunk-driving, anti-semitism, assualt, and worse (Mel Gibson, Mel Gibson, Russel Crowe, and R. Kelly, respectively).

Reason the second: Money. Sure, there are bound to be super villains, but I honestly believe people would find it so much easier, and safer, to make money as a hero, or at least super powered media sensation.

A super-villain could rob a bank or even Fort Knox, but not all supers are invincible, so there's inherent danger, and really, how are you going to spend that? You're a Power, you're going to attract attention, and some do-gooder is going to at the very least be a pain in the ass every time. Anyone with powers can be an instant celebrity. I swear, there would be agencies for it. The whole "Famous for being famous" thing made easy, next stop: product endorsements.

[SirNitram]

Hedgecore, you hit on a topic that Aberrant delves into a great deal: Those with superpowers are huge. Even Divas Mal, on just about all the good guy's hit lists, churns out a massive retail empire: Action figures, comic retellings, and of course, an entire counter-culture movement who wants to wear 'Mal Made Me Do It' T-shirts.

One of the most wealthy Aberrants isn't even a 'hero': He generates a material called Eufiber instead of hair, and at a prodigious rate. He's become a fashion designer because the stuff is amazing, able to reshape itself according to the wearer's thoughts, and functions as cheap, plentiful fiberoptic(Plus, another Aberrant can invest it with power that makes it far more durable than normal armor). He was a beach-comber, now he's a media superstar and has people walking his creations down the catwalks across the globe.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Ben did you catch the post on causalities? The lowest level of causalities in the US is 758,000 people. Everyone is going to freak the fuck out.

Oh, I know... I am making a statement on what would be BEST, why "freaking the fuck out" is the exact opposite of what SHOULD be done. But then again, when do people ever do what SHOULD be done? They dont, they react rashly and perpetuate their own problems.