As a partial extension of another OP from a few years ago… Let’s go with the following hypothetical - ignoring the actual scientific and and physical viability aspects of it:
You discover, somehow, that you have Jessica Jones/Bruce-Willis-Out-Of-That-Film style powers of enhanced physical strength. You are able to punch through sheets of steel and bend rebars with your bare hands. However, you are not invincible - bullets still hurt and you still get sick and age like normal people. And your epidermis is normal - so punching holes through walls will hurt and still make you bleed a lot. You have a normal external musculature - you don’t look buff.
You also know that if people knew what you could do you would be the interest of all kinds of scientific and governmental organisations. You don’t want to get kidnapped by shady military research type folks (and want to protect your loved ones from them), so you have decided to keep your powers on the down-low.
However, being hella-strong must count for something. We can make this work for us, we just have to be clever and careful about how we do so…
So, you want to use these powers for personal advantage, but not in such a way that other people could clock that you have them. And you are not particularly bothered by ethics. What now?
A few ideas off the top of my head, along with problems associated with them…
a) Attend some kind of illegal gambling event. Beat the shit out of people, take money and leave. Sounds great, but they’d have armed people at these events - and superhuman strength is great until you have a bunch of people shooting at you from all angles. Plus, being strong doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be good in a fist-fight, although I’d assume that being superhumanly strong might offset lack of skill to some extent.
b) Wear a mask and rob banks. Use brute force to smash your way into cash stores and make away with it. Same problems as above.
c) Become a professional sport fighter (boxing, UFC, whatever…). In whatever weight category you were in you would win, but experts would pretty quickly spot that you were winning without good technique or any sort of training. (or maybe you wouldn’t, as per #2) - big questions would be asked publicly and quickly.
d) Randomly mug people for the change they have in their wallet. Okay, but most people could do that with a weapon anyway - superhuman strength doesn’t add much more advantage, and this isn’t really much profit - most people don’t walk around with much cash these days.
So far, I’m leaning towards concluding that suddenly acquiring superhuman strength would not lead to any immediate risk-free material benefits - but happy to be proven wrong.
Well, hell, being strong in general is an asset and will benefit me in my current employment. Sure, from a physical standpoint I’d be wildly overqualified, but so what? Right now I’m mentally wildly overqualified, I still show up to work 'cause I gotta pay the rent.
But, meanwhile, I would also have the strength/energy to do a lot of volunteer work, help build houses for habitat for humanity, help senior citizens do their shopping, etc. which would build my social network and I’d leverage that to improve my lot in life.
Stuff explicitly using my strength? Performance. There are men (and a few women) doing strongman stunts for fun and profit. Just be careful not to be too good at it.
The problem with mugging people, robbing banks, and thievery is that there are so damn many cameras around these days, sooner or later you’re going to get caught.
Maybe I could go into some sort of construction work - super-strength would let me keep up with the young guys and I could make money that way.
Fact is, there’s not as much call for brute strength as there used to be.
Your bones would have to be made of something other than calcium phosphate, or you wouldn’t be able to support the weights you lift and your muscles and tendons would break the bones when you exert yourself. And your skin would probably tear off your hands from gripping as well.
But, assuming magic -
Not a life of crime. Strong != bulletproof. Enter, first the world powerlifting meet and total 2000 kilos or something. Then the world Olympic lifting championships, and snatch 230 kilos and clean and jerk 300. Then get an agent and do professional shows.
If bullets and knives are still dangerous to me, then regardless of ethics, anything involving transgressions against other people will eventually result in ruination. Rob an illegal gambling event? Expect to get shot/stabbed. Random muggings? Eventually the police will catch up to you and use physical force to subdue you. They would fail at hand-to-hand combat, but they have guns, chemicals, tasers and blunt instruments; they’ll win eventually.
In fact, if being punched can hurt, then any kind of UFC/boxing competition that involves a risk of being hit/kicked seems like a bad idea. You need a contest that relies only on strength. Start small and work your way up. Visit state fairs and win first place in arm-wrestling contests. Eventually you can enter the World’s Strongest Man contest. The feats of strength in these contests are astonishing for someone of my build, but given that these feats do get performed by legit competitors, they’re not outside the bounds of human achievement, and so shouldn’t attract the attention of devious government agents.
If we’re looking to use our strength to profit from illegal acts, we need ones that nobody will witness. Find places where surveillance is non-existent and security is based on people not being physically able to get in. Then use your strength to get in and swipe whatever valuables you find. Pick a small business, break in, tear the safe apart, take the cash, leave quickly. Don’t do this more than a couple of times in any one town; keep moving around.
I’d avoid the shadowy research labs by going straight to the well-lit and transparent labs. If that mysterious super-strong guy that’s being studied by Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, the National Institute for Health, and the Mayo Clinic and is talked about in all of the news sources disappears, people are going to want to know why.
I’d have fairly modest ambitions. Just be an NFL lineman and use my newfound strength (but not too strong - that would lead to suspicion) and blow away opposing linemen. But - well, wait, that would still lead to suspicion, since I’m just a 5’8, 140-pound guy…I’d have to somehow bulk up to 270 pounds and gain a few inches - never mind.
Maybe just boxing. Throw that first punch and end each round right there.
I think you’ll be limited mainly to being an entertainer (which includes sports)… strength just really doesn’t matter so much and has been replaced by machines and chemistry.
Since you are still bound by the limits of your body tissues you couldn’t compete against machinery in any significant way; your muscles may be capable of producing enough force to cleave away mountainsides or smash buildings like Wreck-it Ralph, but you’d just snap apart your own bones or grate your hands into mush when you try to pick up massive weights which usually require expensive lifting or processing equipment.
Crime is pretty much out, because the successful criminals are the smart ones who know how to avoid detection by other people rather than blaze through passive defenses like vault walls or locks. Having a crow bar already basically gives you super human strength and allows you to bend steel and pry apart wood frames. Nobody’s making much money using one though. You need to actually sell the priceless art to someone in order to profit from the strength to bend the bars protecting it.
I’d say becoming some sort of entertainer would be the best path to take; the road is already paved in a few strength-based sports which have monetary prizes. But AFAIK there’s only a handful that pay enough to live on purely through prize money alone. Athletes tend to make more money getting sponsorships and endorsement deals… but that requires a different skill set or money to hire someone to put the deals together for you. A 20,000 lb bench press just moves 10 tons of material a foot or two up and down. You need some influential people around you to make anyone care about the feat.
Also with sports I say you’ll need to stick to those where technique/timing/stamina/strategy are minimal and mainly pure strength wins the competition. For most sports strength helps but is only a fraction of the puzzle. Something like boxing requires a huge amount of skill beyond pure strength. Lots of strong men get their asses handed to them by pros who understand positioning and timing and technique. And again, few athletes make money purely off their physical abilities alone; it’s through the people they hire to represent them that deals come through to actually get paid to do things like move rocks or toss logs around.
Construction or mining, maybe. Use tools that will protect what’s delicate while taking advantage of the strength. Sure, there already are machines to do a lot of it, but there are also probably applications where on-the-spot judgment and adaptability would count for a lot.
Squeeze carbon into diamonds, maybe.
Sure, the difficult part would be keeping the abilities secret.
But I can still be hurt and the other boxer with good form and training could beat the crap out of me. I would go arm-wrestling and “professional wrestling”/WWE. Those people would know how to promote/show off my strength while keeping me safe. I don’t remember the name but there was a wrestler way back when (late 60s/early 70s) who mastered the trick of having cinder blocks broken on him with a sledge hammer; he had quite a fair run for a number of years with the trick.
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