# What does it take to hurt Superman (ASIDE from Kryptonite)?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 25, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039 "2012-11-25T04:33:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/21 "2012-11-25T16:52:13Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> Your deathtrap won’t work, by the way. Even the Man of Steel Superman was pretty much immune to all terrestrial poisons, able to confine masses of toxic gasses in his lungs without harm simply by breathing in, and capable of doing multiple other stunts during said inhalation. Kal’s just going to use bust out of the cage, inhale the gas before it can do any harm, and fly up to the edge of space to exhale it.
His immunity to the poison is irrelevant; it’s just there as a threat to the the people around him, should he choose to break out. The point of the trap is to confine him in an oxygen-free space that he is unable or unwilling to break out of.
As to inhaling all the gas, I don’t believe it has been established, post-Crisis, that he can break physics in that particular way. I don’t actually follow Superman comics, though, so it could have been. Regardless, you should be able to prevent it by adding some smoke to the mix; it’s canon (old canon, admittedly) that Supes can’t inhale smoke. His explanation, as I recall, was that Kryptonian physiology prevented it–some sort of reflex to keep them from inhaling dangerous particulates, I suppose.
---
### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/22 "2012-11-25T17:00:33Z")
> [@Balance](#):
>
> His immunity to the poison is irrelevant; it’s just there as a threat to the the people around him, should he choose to break out. The point of the trap is to confine him in an oxygen-free space that he is unable or unwilling to break out of.
>
> As to inhaling all the gas, I don’t believe it has been established, post-Crisis, that he can break physics in that particular way. I don’t actually follow Superman comics, though, so it could have been. Regardless, you should be able to prevent it by adding some smoke to the mix; it’s canon (old canon, admittedly) that Supes can’t inhale smoke. His explanation, as I recall, was that Kryptonian physiology prevented it–some sort of reflex to keep them from inhaling dangerous particulates, I suppose.
I was referring to a specific post-Crisis comic–it was Byrne’s Man of Steel miniseries, the reboot-- when I mentioned him inhaling gas that way. He did it in his first PC encounter with Batman, to save Bats and a group of thugs from poisonous gas the thugs’ boss. Nobody got killed of course; Supes handled the matter as I describe.
I don’t recall Superman ever being unable to inhale smoke. I can recall plenty of occasions in the Silver, Bronze, and post-Crisis ages in which he did just that.
---
### Author:  [@Reepicheep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reepicheep)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/23 "2012-11-25T17:20:28Z")
> [@Balance](#):
>
> If you’re _not_ Lex Luthor, or Batman in contingency mode, and are constrained by your resources, you might try an old-fashioned moral-dilemma deathtrap. Set up an airtight structure in the middle of a public and densely populated place and lure him into investigating it. Seal it on him and flush it with a mix of argon and nerve gas. If he breaks out, it will flood the area with the nerve gas, killing large numbers of innocent people. Then you hope he doesn’t figure out a way to escape without releasing the gas before he passes out. It’s dicey, of course–heroes get out of stuff like that all the time–but it is a way that a non-powered individual with realistic (though substantial) resources could at least make the attempt.
Easy escape. Lift the box from the inside, fly to the edge of space, break out of the box releasing the gas harmlessly, hunt down maker of box.
---
### Author:  [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/24 "2012-11-25T18:23:12Z")
Poison Ivy managed to mind control him, and that’s not even her go-to schtick.
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/25 "2012-11-25T18:55:43Z")
Given that it was Poison Ivy, I presume that the mind control was achieved through some plant-derived drug? That sets a precedent for him maybe being affected by other drugs.
---
### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/26 "2012-11-25T18:58:50Z")
Throw a gun at him. He’d stand there and take the bullets, but on the TV show he always flinched when the Bad Guy threw the gun at him.
---
### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/27 "2012-11-25T19:01:24Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#):
>
> Poison Ivy managed to mind control him, and that’s not even her go-to schtick.
I think there was some kryptonite involved, though I’m not sure.
I think if you want to kill the son of Jor-El, the best way is to manipulate him into killing a human being. Any human being will doe. The point is not to faff about. No robots and no illusions allowed; just trick him into killing a person. He’ll do himself in afterwards, if not killing himself then at least finding a way to remove his own powers.
---
### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/28 "2012-11-25T19:01:45Z")
He can’t die. Oh, you could chop him into little bits, but like Sherlock Holmes before him, DC would find a way to bring him back. Again.
You might be able to use his weakness to trap him. Use a Kryptonite lock, he will be weak against those. But their weakness is a pen cap. I’ll bet Clark Kent carries a pen (standard 1940s nerd equipment), not sure if he transfers his pocket contents.
---
### Author:  [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/29 "2012-11-25T19:31:19Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> I don’t recall Superman ever being unable to inhale smoke. I can recall plenty of occasions in the Silver, Bronze, and post-Crisis ages in which he did just that.
It’s rather obscure. It was in a minor story, maybe from the early 80s, but I can’t find the issue. Superman was doing a charity thing; he told the audience that there was something any one of them could do that he couldn’t, and a donation would buy them a chance to guess what it was for a prize. There were a number of guesses–the only one I recall offhand was someone guessing incorrectly that he couldn’t shave. (He had prepped for that one by growing a stubble under a red sun lamp and making a razor of some unnamed Kryptonian metal.) He gets called away to deal with a fire, which provides a clue to the answer, but no one gets it right…until after the event, when Perry tosses in a donation and reveals that he has put the pieces together. I forget if he puffed cigar smoke at Supes, or offered him a cigar, or what, but they establish that the thing Supes can’t do is smoke, because Kryptonians can’t inhale smoke.
I’m sure it’s been contradicted or actively retconned any number of times, if only because most of the writers probably didn’t know about it, but at one point, we had it right from the horse’s mouth.
It occurs to me that it might be fun to see an issue/episode in which Superman gets caught between dueling fans, with his powers shifting as they remember and cite different bits of canon.
CBG1: “He can’t lift that! It was established in episode of [series Y] that his maximum lift capacity is [Z].”
_Supes goes bug-eyed and collapses under the building he’s carrying._
CBG2: “He was younger in that episode. As an adult, he can lift it.”
_Supes heaves the building back up, looking confused._
> [@Reepicheep](#):
>
> Easy escape. Lift the box from the inside, fly to the edge of space, break out of the box releasing the gas harmlessly, hunt down maker of box.
I said “structure”, not box. Why would you make it liftable? By design, it needs to be relatively fragile, so that breaking out will release all the gas. Lifting it would presumably cause enough damage to release the gas. Also, if you put it in the middle of a building, like a mall or office building, he’d either have to smash it out of the building, or lift the whole place, people and all. The latter would sort of defeat the purpose.
Still, as I said, heroes get out of this sort of thing all the time. I’m not offering it as a foolproof Superman-killer. It’s just something an ordinary human could try that would at least have the potential to do the job.
---
### Author:  [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/30 "2012-11-25T20:33:36Z")
For Silver Age Superman, it was pretty much Kryptonite, magic or red sun energy. There was also something called Q Energy that was introduced in like the mid 70’s, which was just a lame attempt to add some variety to the constant use of krytonite.
> [@Balance](#):
>
> Enough of pretty much anything can hurt him, at least post-Crisis. Big jolts of electricity seem relatively effective, at least at causing him pain and stunning him a bit, and energy weapons can mark him. It takes a lot to do him any significant harm, though. He’s also at least somewhat vulnerable to psychic assaults. Trapping him in a dream seems popular. That might incapacitate him long enough to come up with something.
Yeah, Byrne was also doing a kinda subtle thing where his invulnerability was willpower enhanced: his skin, bone and muscle were very, very tough and it was almost impossible to physically injure him, but attacks that caught him by surprise would cause him pain, stun him, or even knock him out. I say it was kinda subtle because no one ever really talked about it…it just seemed liked shots to the back would have more of an effect, or in the case of massive electricity, it would incapacitate him, until he stopped everything else and basically concentrated on not being harmed.
Of course power creep set in not too long after that. And since I don’t keep up with DC much at all nowadays I have no idea what the current New 52 Superman’s power limits are.
---
### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/31 "2012-11-25T21:12:52Z")
That’s of a piece with Byrne’s silly insistence that all of Superman’s powers were actually psionic.
---
### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/32 "2012-11-25T21:34:29Z")
My impression is that not even Kryptonite by itself would kill him. It just makes him incredibly weak and sick. And he does seem to acclimate to it, to some extent. There are times when someone just has enough Kryptonite to make Superman about human in strength (even if another color of Kryptonite would make more sense).
I personally am a big fan of earlier Superman who always seemed to just barely have enough strength and energy to deal with what came his way. Like those old cartoons, where he has to brace himself to tear open an airplane or punch back a laser that is aimed at him. In that universe, it would seem that most stuff could potentially kill him if he wasn’t smart enough (and, yes, determined enough) to deal with it.
---
### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/33 "2012-11-26T02:48:57Z")
**What does it take to hurt Superman (ASIDE from Kryptonite)?**
Batman, if he’s prepared.
---
### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/34 "2012-11-26T02:58:29Z")
> [@kunilou](#):
>
> **What does it take to hurt Superman (ASIDE from Kryptonite)?**
>
> Batman, if he’s prepared.
Bats’ preparations for Superman always involve Kryptonite.
Anyway, the Batman thing is overrated. He can handle a mind-controlled Supes being used as a puppet, sure. But if Kal-El truly turned rogue and decided to take Martha & Tom’s boy out, one glance of heat vision leaves Bruce a pile of ashes.
---
### Author:  [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/35 "2012-11-26T03:18:44Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> Bats’ preparations for Superman always involve Kryptonite.
>
> Anyway, the Batman thing is overrated. He can handle a mind-controlled Supes being used as a puppet, sure. But if Kal-El truly turned rogue and decided to take Martha & Tom’s boy out, one glance of heat vision leaves Bruce a pile of ashes.
Right, so when Superman is no longer Superman, he’ll win. Their egos and morals, of course, are just as integral to the fight as their powers and weapons.
---
### Author:  [@Lochdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lochdale)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/36 "2012-11-26T03:22:08Z")
PC Superman you’d need a plot device weapon.
Post-crisis you just need some magic or someone more powerful like the Silver Surfer.
---
### Author:  [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/37 "2012-11-26T03:28:30Z")
> [@Lochdale](#):
>
> PC Superman you’d need a plot device weapon.
>
> Post-crisis you just need some magic or someone more powerful like the Silver Surfer.
Even pre-Crisis, there were characters more powerful than Superman. Vartox handed him his ass in every single encounter, for instance, and Kal’s internal monologue always made it clear that he, Kal, knew he was simply outpowered. Mongul took Supes down in their first battle, though Jon & Martha’s boy did better in rematches. Validus was more than a match for Super(boy) and Mon-El at the same time. Faora what’s-her-name from the Phantom Zone kicked his ass on at least one occasion. I’d list more but I don’t want to further expose my geekery.
---
### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/38 "2012-11-26T04:24:22Z")
> [@Lochdale](#):
>
> PC Superman you’d need a plot device weapon.
>
> Post-crisis you just need some magic or someone more powerful like the Silver Surfer.
Even Superman can be laid low by Unauthorized Similarity Litigation Man.
---
### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/39 "2012-11-26T06:49:10Z")
I remember a comic in which Supes flew from our solar system to another. He took a tank of air with him, only needing to draw breath once every several hours. But it seemed as if that one breath was essential to his survival. So if someone sabotaged the air tank, to fail half way between stars, he’d die.
In \*The Dark Knight Returns \*a nuclear bomb nearly killed him, and he was still weakened several days later.
---
### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2012, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039/40 "2012-11-26T07:27:02Z")
Benadryl’s Kryptonite SoftGels™. Surely even Supes gets bouts of insomnia; a runny nose; dry, irritated eyes? If the kryptonite doesn’t immediately get him, the diphenhydramine will. That stuff makes anyone delerious. _Anyone._ He’d try to fly off the top of the Daily Planet in a drug-induced fever dream and hit the pavement hundreds of stories below.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-it-take-to-hurt-superman-aside-from-kryptonite/642039.md?page=3)