Steve Jackson Games Forums - Suddenly, Supers!

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Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 1860066)

'Containment camp' was the standard euphemism used for the Japanese internment camps in WWII, and has that implication in the US (that might well be an unfamiliar usage to non-Americans).

I've only ever heard of the WWII imprisonment of Japanese Americans referred to as "Internment Camps," not containment camps. (The Wikipedia article has zero sources that use "containment" in the title, three that use " confinement", and 32 that use "internment" )

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by vitruvian (Post 1860438)

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.

They have often failed before.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk (Post 1860553)

Let's not de-rail the thread by busting Anthony's chops over a choice of word. If we didn't understand when he meant when we first read it, we do now. 'Nuff said.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Gedrin (Post 1860512)

Please don't forget C: Benevolent Aliens/Angels/Higher Beings have seeded humanity to help us survive some upcoming event or to, by spreading their genes, speed humanity's evolution.

Not that I'd really believe b or c, but if you have b, you'll have believers in c also.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Gedrin (Post 1860512)

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.

They couldn't assume, perhaps, but neither could they assume the converse. What they'd have to do is do full background on every confirmed superhuman. If everything about a person's history checks out in terms of birth records, no history of childhood abduction, etc., Occam's razor would suggest deprecating the changeling hypothesis, at least provisionally.

That is, if all the evidence is that these were normal people born to normal parents, then the simplest explanation is that they were indeed normal folks until acquiring the powers.

And the requisite background checks can be done within a matter of days, not weeks, if there's sufficient urgency, with the weight of the bulk of the dossiers returned determining which theory they think is most likely. That could still involve a short period of detainment, not on a permanent basis, but just so they can keep an eye on budding superhumans while they figure out what in heck is going on.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 1860514)

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.

Depending on the nature of the powers, it's certainly a possible national security concern, even absent any probable cause to suspect specific individuals of being likely to use their new powers to commit crimes. E.g., somebody seems able to prove they're a long-range, deep probing telepath; even absent any mind control abilities to go along with that, there are definitely some agencies that would be too paranoid to trust such an individual not to sell state secrets or engage in insider trading.

Honestly, you'd probably get a range of responses from different government agencies and levels of government, with a lot of confusion and disagreement and left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing until things shake out. Say one of the early superhumans is a classic flying brick who engages in public rescues, if not vigilante or citizens arrest crime fighting, in a major city; you could have the Mayor of whatever city they show up in offering them a mascot-like position as city superhero, at the same time that DHS wants to detain them, CDC wants to quarantine them, and the Pentagon wants to test their capabilities, while the Secret Service just requests that he vacate any location POTUS is near for security reasons.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by DangerousThing (Post 1860572)

People suddenly acquiring comic book superpowers is so bizarre and specific that I'd have to assume at the least Alien Space Bat intervention.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by vitruvian (Post 1860611)

Which requires fewer new assumptions:

Radical physical changes do not impact the mind.
OR
Radical physical changes impact the mind.

Just looking at my medicine cabinet, I'd say alterations to the body impact the mind enough that there's a lot of time spent warning about the topic, and none of the medicines in my cabinet are likely to be significant enough to give super powers.

Of course, that assumes that super powers are physical in the first place. The change could well be mental, or spiritual, even if "Option A".

RE: DangerousThing
The possibility of Option C is one of the things that actually helped IMC. With the vast majority of supers appearing in the USofA(TM) there was a portion of the society, which might well have responded negatively, that took a "Chosen Land" view of the emergence of supers. Of course, just as many thought it was Option B, and for the same reasons. They essentially balanced each other out.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by vitruvian (Post 1860438)

That's even simpler. If they're born that way, then they are quite obviously not human. So they aren't protected by any legal human rights.

Re: Suddenly, Supers!

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Originally Posted by Anthony (Post 1860514)

As there are no real protocols to determine jurisdiction in such an event, I'm certain nearly every branch of government and authoritarian group like local law enforcement would claim purview.