Where would Superman put all these nuclear weapons? Toss them into the sun? Bury them on a distant planet? Could they be locked up in the Phantom Zone?
If he could just vaporize them with heat vision, then I agree with the posters who say he could wipe out most of them while TPTB are still saying “Whoa, what???”
That plan would lead to a lot of collateral deaths, something he’s usually not ok with.
How far along in the Cold War are we talking here? There farther along we go, the more countries that have nuclear strike capabilities, the less chance he has to control the situation.
I suppose he could just throw his S at them.
For that matter, they can all go kiss his shiny metal S.
Could lead, not would. Depends on how he works it. But yeah, sheer kinetic would get messy. How about: spot-welding the launch doors on all nuke subs, then getting kinetic on the Chinese silos, punching down through the doors into the missile. Repeat with the Soviets. Minimal collateral damage. He could even take his time if the first thing he did was cut communications with whatever is the lowest PAL.
A sloppier method would be to goad/force a launch after welding the subs, then kinetic the missiles during boost phase. Or blast them with heat vision. Then go after the remaining launchers.
But the fact is, Kal could easily disarm the Soviets and Chinese, who were the biggest threat. I don’t think even the French would go with “Use them or lose them” after that.
I recommend the Injustice comic if you haven’t read it, which I believe is a prequel to the game. Supes gets tricked by the Joker into murdering a pregnant Lois Lane, which in turn triggers a nuclear bomb which levels Metropolis. Unsurprisingly he gets a tad miffed, murders Joker and decides it’s time to him to enforce peace by force, with the other superheroes dividing up with him or against him. It does not make for happy times.
But Superman was still better than the aforementioned Authority. Man, when I think of what they did to poor Italy…
I’m probably biased, but being from America, I’m sure we are the good guys and would never attack first. NATO does nothing in this regard. Even if Russia rearms, we’d just be where we were before, so we’ve lost nothing.
I don’t think it would work that way over everything. Superman’s not going to get himself involved in every little piece of legislation. Nukes, on the other hand, can destroy the earth. I think Superman takes out the nukes but leaves us free to fuck with each other in other ways.
Given that we had democracy and it led us to nukes and almost the destruction of the human race, why not let someone try it for a change? The human race is not so smart and great that we should be masters of ourselves at any cost. We’ve done terrible things to fellow human beings so much so that I’d happily take a chance with an alien dictator.
If the result of being ruled by fellow humans are genocides and nuclear wars, then what the hell are we afraid of the aliens doing that’s much worse?
All of this presupposes that Supes tries to take all of the nuclear powers by surprise. What if he’s instead up-front about it? He goes to the UN, and negotiates a treaty whereby all of the nuclear powers voluntarily step down their arsenals according to some fixed schedule. Any nuclear power who doesn’t sign the treaty, or who does but then doesn’t follow the schedule, gets themselves involuntarily disarmed by Superman.
If he did it surreptitiously, would any country admit that it had happened? I mean, if you didn’t know for sure that it wasn’t just you that had been disarmed, you’d want to tread very carefully and you certainly wouldn’t want it getting into the media…
What if he just disposes of all the “lost” nukes that have gotten into the wrong hands, and all the nukes that don’t officially exist in any country’s records?
Those are a lot harder to find.
Well yeah…if you don’t have x-ray vision, super-speed and hyperintelligence.
One of the many things butchered in the editing of the movie (not that it would have been good anyway). I remember it making a lot more sense in the comic adaptation, though I haven’t read that in at least 30 years, but I remember that it (being based on the script, not the finished film, like man adaptations) it made slightly more sense. I think there were even two nuclear men, a failed prototype cut from the movie, then the regular one.