Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

And?

The subject is not "what should happen" but "what would be likely to happen". It is likely that white eventers would be restricted from flying on commericial planes without at least special vetting.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

And if rather than a New Universe style white-event, space aliens or mad scientists from a hidden Nazi cult kidnapped people and grafted weapons to their arms, the victims would be subject to the weapons-carry restrictions of their jurisdiction (none in some places). If the weapons were part of their original make-up, a la mutants from Marvel, things get dicier.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

It's not really a euphemism though. They really were camps to contain innocent civilians in conditions similar to most American zoos. The misunderstanding has to be a willing one of the listener to imagine rainbows and unicorns for involuntary confinement of people for merely having faces similar to one of the enemies.

It is horrible how quickly every nation whitewashes its history. It's not as if I or even my parents were alive to witness the atrocity let alone be responsible for it.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

It's only dicey if you know, are related to, or can easily imagine yourself as one of the oppressed.
If it's even remotely conceivably possible to construct a barely passable theory for why they deserved their fate, all manner of bigotry becomes inevitable.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

There's no such theory for people born with a trait, however. There might be theories, but none of them would be even barely passable to anybody with more than two neurons to rub together.

Hopefully all the SCOTUS judges at the time will fall into the latter category.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

I don't know... depending on the level of powers and public notice, especially at first, you could conceivably get some extrajudicial detainment, experimentation up to (but probably not extending to) vivisection, and brainwashing or coercion into working for intelligence or military services. It's just that it would get less tenable over time to pull this sort of 'Firestarter scenario' as superhumans became better known by the public and the regular institutions of government including the courts and the legislature got involved, although an unfortunate few possessing powers considered a specific national security threat might still be subject to such treatment.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

Probably depends on the specific nature of the power. If one guy's superstrength is simply a couple orders of magnitude increase in the force applied by muscle contraction (and sustained as load by bones and other tissues), and another's is essentially contact TK, they'll get different results in this regard.

Take a Flash expy... in order to use superspeed him or herself, they'll need some kind of immunity to acceleration or reduction in inertia in order not to mash themselves or at least knock themselves out when getting up to speed or slowing down too quickly, and this needn't (indeed, pretty much can't be, beyond certain limits) be down to the actual composition of their bodily tissues... so if they're generating some kind of inertial damping field anyway, it's not immediately ridiculous to consider that they might be able to extend it to other people they're carrying or dragging along, if they so choose.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

As Devil's Advocate, I have to ask how people can tell, in the immediate aftermath of a super producing event, the difference between the following:

A: Cosmic MacGuffin triggers super powers in normal folks. They react as normal people would.

B: Aliens/Demons/Malevolent Forces seed humanity with changelings designed to cause chaos, disunity, and destruction in preparation for bad things.

For the sake of sanity, lets assume that rational people will eventually realize that one, or possibly BOTH, of these is true. However, at the time of the event, no one knows. I suspect the responsible course of action is to get ahold of a sizable sample, and unless that sample is just the criminal ones, you wind up needing otherwise innocent people. Of course, "otherwise innocent people" is again assuming that the people who suddenly can crush cars with their minds aren't soldiers/weapons of malign powers or otherwise so alien that they are inimical to human existence.

I don't think a responsible law enforcement organization or similar could assume that suddenly-supers are normal people who just happen to have gained miraculous powers. The civil liberties arguments get a lot less compelling if supers are bio-weapons from the invading forces of Planet-X, and I don't think you know if that's true or not in the first few weeks after such an event.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!
 

Reasonable law enforcement wouldn't even consider the appearance of superhumans to be a law enforcement problem; rather, it's a public health and safety issue (individuals are, of course, still potentially law enforcement problems). Quarantine until we have a better idea of what's going on isn't absurd on the short term.