People with human abilities have been known to become cops and fight crime; could someone with superhuman abilities become a cop and fight crime? No codename or costume; just a badge and a gun and [list powers here]?
Killing people is not for everybody, or even most people. I personally doubt whether a vigilante who is okay with killing people in cold blood, extrajudicially, even known murderers, could realistically be mentally stable and (otherwise) morally upright. Is it realistic such a person would choose to fight crime, or perpetuate crime? And then as I noted before, assassination itself is a crime, so either way the ‘hero’ is committing a crime.
You noted many murders are not solved but if you only look at known serial killers and ask how many are never caught, I think you’ll have a different answer.
~Max
Well, and that’s been one of the themes that has been explored in the Avengers, particularly in the Civil War story arcs.
But, regardless, going back to the OP, and the idea of a real-world superhero, I think it comes down to either (a) be a vigilante, knowing that ultimately, it’s likely that official law enforcement will see you as a threat rather than an ally, or (b) work with the goverment, for better or for worse.
I also took the OP to consider not that they always would be arrested or killed, but if they could use strategies to avoid it.
Not be like usual super hero type type casting.
It is an interesting moral question.
Suppose you are a soldier. Your squad mate lines up a bunch of civilians to be shot. Do you shoot him first? Defending the innocent civilians. ( you know you cannot dissuade him ).
You are in the presence of a person who has murdered many scum and civilians. You know they will do it countless times again. You can kill them. Do you? You are avenging those dead and probably sparing more in the future. ( calling the cops is useless. They already know about this person and are helpless legally. )
I’m now picturing a version of COLUMBO where the protagonist can read minds.
The episodes — play out exactly the same?
It depends on the circumstances but if I didn’t do it it would be because of fear of being arrested or killed for killing a fellow soldier. If I could kill the soldier and get away with it then I’d do it.
That is the basis for the Savage Dragon comics.
We had a very lengthy and in-depth thread (in CS) from c. 14 years ago about what an otherwise-realistic world with superheroes (which yes would also mean supervillians) would have looked like. The final consensus was that they would have sooner or later taken control of all the reins of societal power, for good or bad.
No joy on a search tho.
It depends so much both on the nature of the powers and on how the person decides to use them. The OP mentions the possibility of being arrested or killed by governments… Is that even possible? With the right powers, it might not be. And of course you could work for the government in various capacities: Police, military, first responder, or black ops, and in any of those, your existence and powers might or might not be publicized.
Or, of course (again depending on your powers), you might choose to go into a field that doesn’t resemble “heroics” at all, and still put your powers to very effective use. A mind-reader, for instance, might decide that, instead of helping police with investigations, they’ll use their powers to broker great business deals and get rich. Any number of superheroes could be great pro athletes, in the sport of their choice. Or maybe you decide to just pursue a normal humdrum life using your normal abilities, and go flying just as a hobby.
How about a 100% natural disaster response hero?
I’ll suggest that there’s a lot of wreckage in a country. Much less a whole planet.
If your superhero crusade is e.g. stopping street crime muggings, shootings, and in more gun-free societies, knifings and severe beatings, well … You’ll be very busy, with thousands of such crimes perpetrated per hour around the planet.
You’re either racking up a very impressive body count (albeit widely dispersed), or you’re only making a pin-prick difference in the ocean of “successful” muggings / shootings you don’t intervene with. That way sounds like a sure path to psychopathy on the one hand and/or irrelevance on the other.
For your crusade to have a big impact on the human world, it needs to be more like “Immobilize all of the Russian military’s equipment, kill Putin, and keep killing every possible successor until they pick someone “nice” to run the country.” Now you’re talking actions with hugely positive impacts on humanity versus the body count you’re inevitably creating. Leverage; it’s a thing. Be sure to use it.
What if you had a magic cocaine / illicit opioid detector and could simply disappear 100% of the production of such drugs at the point of production, and keep doing so such that supply crashes to zero and stays there?
IMO all kinds of “interesting” things would happen. Millions of addicts worldwide would enter uncontrolled withdrawal simultaneously. Far more than can be treated even in the countries with extensive treatment resources in place already. Very quickly lots of unemployment and poverty would set into the drug-growing and producing areas. Do those low-level farmers, mules, and criminal chemists and what not go straight, or turn to a life of violence to support themselves? And what of the bosses? Their revenue crashes of course, but they still have vast assets. They’re gonna buy into something legit to sustain their own wealth; they’re not stupid. Including buying governments they don’t already have.
My bottom line:
Real quickly your actions will either be invisibly irrelevant, or so out of control that lots of people and lots of formidable organizations will want you corralled or killed. That won’t end well.
Of course you can posit your powers are too great for any of them to matter. In which case you are now God-King of Earth. Good luck doing a good job with that. Sounds difficult to me.
Looks like it may be defunct, but the blog Law and the Multiverse has a lot of interesting takes on this kind of thing.
But, just to make sure we’re on the same page: what I had in mind was a cop who doesn’t make clear that he’s got powers. He just shows up to do police work like any other fit guy who earned a badge after qualifying on the pistol range and passing the written exam and so on — except he uses his powers when doing so, while trying his best not to be showy about it.
Maybe he’s got powers that let him excel as an undercover cop. Maybe he’s the best homicide detective you’ve ever seen, or the best hostage negotiator you’ve ever seen. Whatever it is, the point is that he passes it off as mundane skill, is all.
Yes, but if word spread and crooks realized what was going on, the superhero’s actions would potentially have a lot more deterrence than police, and crime might drop very steeply. Crooks are well-versed in how cops behave and how to avoid them; the crime profession has had centuries of experience and street smarts. Cops have all the limitations that humans face with physics and psychology/biology.
But if going up against some superhero who is known to read minds and is aware of all crimes being committed (this is probably the most important factor), or can teleport, or can instantly suck all iron out of your bloodstream from a distance away, or is invisible, or block bullets, knives and fists in mid-air, or exert 4,000 pounds of force in a punch - and, especially, if do all of this with no legal repercussions, and is a superhero known for being pretty cruel in how he inflicts pain - a lot of crooks would be deterred from committing further crime in a way that they wouldn’t even if living in a nation with the strictest laws. It might not stop some petty shoplifting, but big-ticket felonies might drop by 90%. IMHO.
Where’s the “Ask The Guy Who’s Good at Science Fiction Story Identification” thread when you need it? I remember a short story about a shape-shifting alien is loose in a warehouse, after a killing spree. The cop who goes in after him is just that – an ordinary homicide detective. After chasing the baddie through the warehouse, and trying to detain and then shoot him. the cop finally confronts him. The shapeshifter taunts him, manifesting tentacles and horns and claws. But the cop simply turns himself into an amorphous puddle and flows out of his suit, telling the killer that it takes far more control to dissolve yourself, tremble on the verge of dissolution, than to turn yourself into a horror movie monster. The murderer is surprised: “You’re one of my kind?” “I’m one of your species, but not your kind.” The cop engulfs the killer, eventually suffocating him.
The premise is the same - the homicide cop is a shapeshifting alien (the story mentions in passing that he doesn’t sleep) - but he passes as a human, uses mundane methods when he can, and only resorts to his special abilities when he has no other choice.
The TV show Heroes had a character who was exactly as you described. He was a cop who developed telepathy, so he wasn’t throwing cars around or shooting lightning bolts out of his eyes. With his powers being pretty subtle, he was able to use them for a while without people knowing. Here is a page describing him:
Eventually he also gained the ability to not only read thoughts, but control them.
With the show being what it was, with conspiracies and threats to the world and all that, he wasn’t able to just quietly be a cop with secret powers. But theoretically, absent all of that other drama he might have been able to stick with it.
Funny enough, not all superheroes have actual powers beyond what a normal person could conceivably do. The most common example is Batman, whose only real superpower is being rich enough to afford gadgets and training beyond what a normal person could afford, and also the luxury of having lots of free time since he didn’t need a regular job. In his case, he was just a costumed vigilante, and such people actually exist in real life.
One of the most prominent ones was in my local area, and went by the name Phoenix Jones. He dressed in a mask and outfit with body armor and pepper spray, and used his mixed martial arts training in confrontations.
For a few years he led a group of similar vigilantes in Seattle.
If you’ve ever seen the Kick-Ass movies, they bear a lot of resemblance to real life efforts to emulate superheroes. Obviously they aren’t particularly realistic, because movie fans want something more exciting, but they come fairly close.
Phoenix Jones and others like him have at best a complicated relationship with law enforcement. They are basically doing what the police have been trained and authorized to do, without the training or authorization. And that leads to legal trouble and arrests of the would-be heroes.
There is a reason for that. Let’s give an example of a criminal who is going to break into a car who is stopped by a superhero. They tussle, the criminal is injured and submits. Now what?
Does the hero tell the criminal to leave and give up his criminal ways? He’ll probably be breaking into another car after his injuries heal.
Does he tie up the criminal with a note in Spider-Man fashion? What are the cops going to do without any evidence of the guy’s crimes? And what if nobody finds him? What if he asphyxiates from his restraints or has a heart condition and can’t get medical help and dies? Now that hero is responsible for manslaughter.
What if the hero calls the cops to come get the guy? The cops are going to show up, see a crazy person in a wacky costume and an injured person. That person with the injury is going to deny trying to break into a car, and there is no evidence that he did anything wrong. Meanwhile, he is injured and the nutjob claims he is responsible for it. Which one is more likely to be arrested?
Superhero stories are wish fulfillment for juvenile power fantasies, but don’t make a lot of sense in the real world. I am a huge fan of those stories despite knowing full well what they are. When actual superpowers are involved, generally you end up with a supervillain trying to do bad things and a superhero who stops them, and then the hero is praised and everyone is happy. But that’s nonsense. If that was real, what you actually have is a massive danger to society that is extremely bad. The supervillain is causing real harm, whether that involves robbing banks or trying to conquer the world or blowing up the moon because they hate it. The only value the superhero has is in being the only real counter to the threat the villain poses. That is not a net positive in any way. In the best case scenario, that superhero only ever uses their powers to help people and stop villains, and how likely would that be? And all of that is ignoring the inevitable collateral damage when superheroes and villains clash with each other.
The best situation, in all seriousness. is for there to be no superheroes or supervillains. That crimes and other emergencies are responded to by people who have training and equipment that helps them handle things quickly and effectively, and accountability for the authority they wield. We already have a much better world than any that exist in a superhero story, as flawed as it may be.
This guy was probably the prototypical real world sorta-costumed vigilante of the modern era:
With all the pros and cons that @Atamasama so ably explained. The article is a decent potted history of those arguments.
From a practical point of view, when it comes to someone like Superman, who is going to stop him from fighting crime. I read comic books for a number of years, Spider-Man and Batman were my two favorite heroes. I can enjoy their antics much in the same way I can enjoy a Dirty Harry movie. But the idea of a cop who doesn’t play by the rules and complains about perps getting off on technicalities horrify me in real life. I feel as though I’d be horrified by someone like Batman and Spider-Man in real life. J.J. Jameson is right, he’s a masked menace.
In many ways various government agencies that conduct direct and indirect actions can be considered to have some measure of super powers compared to an individual human. Super hearing, super vision, a level of super intelligence due to computational and massed human power to sort and classify information in huge amounts. They can direct force in tiny to massive amounts in fairly short time. Of course every super human must have their weakness. In a way their Kryptonite is the mass of their control system. Moral, legal, political, inter political, etc…
An individual super person is freed of many of those things. Maybe all of them if they are zealot. Which may in itself add one more aspect to their super powers. Almost free and almost instant application of their powers.