Okay, here is the scenario :
Take a reasonably well-built athletic man, about 6’2", and multiply his strength level by a factor of five.
What could you do with this level of super-strength? Let’s also assume that you will have had several years worth of martial arts training (boxing, grappling, jiu-jitsu, krav maga, etc.) before receiving this strength upgrade.
Could you take on a lion bare-handed and win? How about a gorilla or a grizzly bear?
You could lift 5 times as much as an ordinary man! Or punch someone 5 times harder.
Yeah, I’m just wondering how well that would help against a big cat or a bear…
Are you also upgrading his bones, joints, tendons, etc. to handle the extra strength? If not, your man would likely injure himself the moment he used much more than his ordinary strength.
I don’t know if 5x normal strength would let you be able to tear through skin. If you had a place to start you could certainly tear skin from flesh, flesh from bone, and remove organs by hand.
Assuming you can exert your enhanced strength for the same duration as a normal person, human-powered flight becomes semi-practical.
You might actually get more than a linear boost to effect from punching or kicking, as these involve applying force over a distance, and the energy and momentum would accumulate all along that distance.
Yes, there would be an upgrade to handle the increased strength without damaging the body, as well.
What are the units of strength for your hypothetical muscle man? What technique would you use to verify that a person is 5 times as strong as they were last week?
Average guy at that height is probably between 80 and 90 kg. Olympic weightlifters in that weight class can usually get around 200 kg overhead with a clean and jerk. That’s over 400 lbs. for those who don’t get metric. Raw powerlifting events show squats of 600 lbs. or more at that weight class, bench press at 400+, and deadlifts of 600+.
Five times normal strength means the guy could lift, with serious effort, small cars over his head. Regular-size cars, probably not, though I think he could partially lift and shove them out of his way like you would a piece of moderately heavy furniture. if you assume power output 5x normal also, then he’d be very fast. You might have to upgrade his reflexes while you’re at it to keep him from falling on his face if he tried to run.
Assuming his skeletal system could take the impact (the bones in your hand are quite small and fragile), he’d be able to punch people’s heads off pretty easily, snap normal people’s bones with casual smacks or by grabbing and squeezing. He could throw people around like they were dolls.
He’d probably be able to jump surprisingly high. Regular high-jump records are over 2 m. Without doing a flop, I think he would be able to easily get twice that high or more, making him able to hop over a typical cyclone fence, or jump and grab second-story eaves.
The moon walks would be good examples, except they had to be very careful not to puncture their suits.
It’s actually pretty tough to go from lifting competitions to strength outside the gym simply because barbells are pretty much the easiest things of a given weight to lift. Per Amazon, this loveseat is only about 65 pounds. I can quite comfortably lift a 65 pound barbell from the floor to over my head, but I think the furniture might be a bit of a challenge.
Edit: Maybe not a challenge, but certainly not as easy as the barbell.
Well, if he’s also 5 times faster, he could just run away from the cat or bear. Even a cheetah!
But he still couldn’t kick Chuck Norris’ ass!
On top of the other issues with bones and connective tissues, you would need tougher skin, bigger lungs, and a bigger heart. Alternately, you could go the gorilla route and just move the muscle connections for more power. That would have effects on agility though.
I like the way you think.
In the first “Superstars” competition in the early 1970s recent Heavywight champ
Joe Frazier was unable to reach 200lb in the overhead head. I think he failed at
about 175lb. In another later competition heavyweight contender Ken Norton got
to about 225lb. (I myself watched Frazier’s suprisingly poor effort on TV, in which
he was defeated by pole vaulter Bob Seagren).
Since Frazier and Norton were big men and world class athletes it is reasonable
to infer that a somewhat smaller man in the 90th percentile of overall athletic ability
would be unable to lift anywhere near 200lb without a few weeks of serious training.
So say 5x 150lb = 750lb untrained in reference to OP.
A gorilla, on the other hand, might be able to lift 200lb overhead with no training
with one arm. (No, I cannot cite that, but consider that even chimps have no trouble
matching up against heavier human opponents).
So I will take a gorilla over a 90th percentile human athlete whose strength has been
multiplied by five.
As for grizzly, they are probably much stronger than gorillas, as adults are able to kill
adult moose which can weigh well over 1000lb. (Cite from National Geographic
hard copy article from decades ago).
Consideration should also be given to the possibility that both gorillas and grizzly may
have much faster reflexes then humans. There have been plenty of weightlifters who
could lift literally twice as much as Joe Frazier and Ken Norton did in the Superstars.
However, every one would have been absolutely massacred in a fight against them.
Good point. It is a lot easier to lift a barbell because you can get your center of gravity closer to the center of mass of the object. I obliquely mentioned it by saying that he might be able to lift small cars with effort (theoretical strength for lifting 1-ton overhead) but that he wouldn’t be able to do that with regular cars. On second thought, though, even small cars would be more like a tire flip than a clean and jerk, assuming he could get the leverage he needed to lift it without the car coming apart on him.
Other good points are that the super-strength needs to be fueled, so metabolism and oxygenation would need upgrades. Like so many other comic-booky things, there are necessary assumed powers to make things work the way they appear to. Superman may have the strength to lift a ship, but in real life he’d punch through it like a pin through the skin of your finger, no matter how he tried to brace himself. I understand that some of the later comic writers tried to address this and other physics problems by postulating that his strength is a form of telekinesis.
Sticking solely to the real world, the dude would have to be completely rebuilt and would not look entirely human by the time you’re done. He’d never be able to apply a significant fraction of his strength unless you give him very, very tough skin. I’ve split knuckles with normal human strength when hitting hard stuff. I’ve given myself pressure cuts and broken nails lifting things that the rest of my body obviously could cope with. I’ve accidentally dinged shins and elbows climbing over things and lifting odd-shaped objects. With superhuman strength, I’d probably have ripped the skin right off part of my hand even if the bones themselves didn’t break when I hit something. Those little scrapes and dings would have been major wounds if I were coping with 3x or 4x the forces involved.
Yeah. That is why invulnerability is usual coupled with super-strength.
The metabolism problem seems never to have been dealt with with Superman except obliquely.
A man with 5x the normal strength also has a human brain. That should be a big advantage against less agile animals that probably don’t put much thought into how they fight.