Superhumans Awakening [Powers/Supers]

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

How much of an impact on society do you think would occur because of 1 billion people dying in a year? I know that the medical systems would break under the strain (2.5% of a population dying in a year would break most medical systems, and we are talking 5x as many people)

Depends how fast infected people die. If it takes months to kill, that will destroy all medical systems in the world. If it kills in hours, that probably won't disrupt most medical systems very much because the dying won't spend very long in the system, though bodies will need to be gotten rid of fast, probably burned, as there won't be the capacity in the funeral system.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Because supers are intimately linked to these mass deaths, that's also going to affect peoples' reaction to them. Expect reactions more like what you see for the X-Men rather than the Avengers: a combination of resentment and fear.

If some of the first supers to come forward are inventors who come up "Virus Hunters/Immunity to Known Viruses [5]" and end the plague and save the world, then I don't imagine so much resentment and fear.

[dataweaver]

Not as much, no. But still plenty. On a visceral level, there will be reactions like “who gave you the right to live when my brother died?” As I said, resentment and fear. Given time to grieve, this will eventually simmer down; but the fact remains that the emergence of superhumans is intimately connected to a worlds tragedy; and that's going to taint peoples' reactions to it.

[ericthered]

The types of powers granted matters as well. If all of the powers are about changing the super's body, that's one thing. If 20% of powers are telepathic in nature, that's another.

And yeah, the plague killing 12% of the population is going to cause some major grief.

[dataweaver]

Agreed. I've been assuming that the powers have the Super PM; but I once did something very much like this exercise where the virus was introduced into the human species by aliens with the goal of empowering us with psionics (which they would later harvest for their own ends). So yeah; it doesn't have to be a Supers thing at all.

That alternate scenario was also what I was thinking about when I mentioned the problem of unstable powers: in the setting that I was developing at the time, the first generation of psions were highly (and self-destructively) unstable, with problems ranging from pyrokinetics burning down their surroundings to telepaths going insane. This intensified an already dangerous situation, massively increased the body count (I was assuming less severe death tolls up front, but more severe ones on the back end; so a 10% die-off overall was still about right). And it also intensified the paranoia directed toward the psions.

Later generations were more stable; but by then, the damage had already been done.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Not as much, no. But still plenty. On a visceral level, there will be reactions like “who gave you the right to live when my brother died?” As I said, resentment and fear. Given time to grieve, this will eventually simmer down; but the fact remains that the emergence of superhumans is intimately connected to a worlds tragedy; and that's going to taint peoples' reactions to it.

50% of the survivors don't get any Powers. This is hardly the first or the worst plague humanity has lived through, wikipedia tells me that the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population; 12.5% is small compared to that.

“who gave you the right to live when my brother died?”
“who gave you the right to live when your brother died? You survived too!”

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Instead of a TL 12 Amazing item; here are some TL 10 ones (I think they all qualify as complex or less):

Artery Cleaners [0] slows down HT loss due to aging.

Nano-Bacteriophages give Immunity to Known Bacteria [5]

Blood Cops give Longevity [2] and Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+8) [15].

Carcinophages give permanent Immunity to Cancer [5] and Extended Lifespan 1 [2].

Virus Hunters give Immunity to Known Viruses [5]

You've cured Cancer and pretty much Disease in general, massively increased lifespan, and probably destroyed every pension plan and medical insurance scheme in the world!

No, I haven't. Because I have to personally hand craft every cure I make with my superpower. Nobody who doesn't have my superpower can copy the things I make with it. TL 8 cultures can't make TL 10 technologies. That's what the TLs are there to prevent. I could probably save hundreds of people a year but that's not going to change the world.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No, I haven't. Because I have to personally hand craft every cure I make with my superpower. Nobody who doesn't have my superpower can copy the things I make with it. TL 8 cultures can't make TL 10 technologies. That's what the TLs are there to prevent. I could probably save hundreds of people a year but that's not going to change the world.

That's your opinion, but that's not RAW. Gadgeteers can still set-up production lines for higher tech items:

Originally Posted by Basic Page 476

Production

The standard rules apply, but use the tech level-adjusted retail price in all calculations. In the example above, retail price would be $60,000 (not $4,000) for production purposes.

[AlexanderHowl]

Mininukes would be where the majority of the mad science money would go, followed by metamorphic plagues. I would think that a metamorphic virus with the nanobot and plague options that turned humans into giant talking sapient penguins would be a far more mad science option than mass producing nano medicines.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

That's your opinion, but that's not RAW. Gadgeteers can still set-up production lines for higher tech items:

I seem to recall the OP putting Gadgeteer off limits.