Suddenly, Supers!

[christ0pher]

Hey, theoretical question... What social and political changes take place in the modern world when a wavefront of "cosmic energy" hits earth and grants super powers to roughly 1 in 200,000 people. Around 30,000 supers world wide. Ranging from 250 points to over 2000+, the change is literally overnight. Also, due to the genetic melting pot that is the US, the majority show up here.

I'm looking for realistic reactions to a world changing event.

[mr beer]

Are the powers completely random or do they confirm to some kind of a pattern? I think the traditional combat skills will be much less society changing than ones that involve, say, controlling their weather or mind control or tech uplift.

[Xplo]

Everyone gains super powers, but the only super power is being able to ruin cheese. Higher point characters can ruin more cheese and faster.

All of them have Uncontrollable.

Obviously, after six months, everyone has committed suicide.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Xplo

Everyone gains super powers, but the only super power is being able to ruin cheese. Higher point characters can ruin more cheese and faster.

All of them have Uncontrollable.

Obviously, after six months, everyone has committed suicide.

Then vegans and the lactose intolerant inherit the earth. Obviously a nefarious plot by some evil mad scientist.

[Agemegos]

Well, you'll get some kinds of supers and not others, and others will take time to develop, since "cosmic energy" won't [quickly] make a person into a billionaire who put twenty years into training because his parents were killed, a second-generation billionaire-gadgeteer, a surviving 1940s supersoldier, an alien refugee, a Greek god, or the deputy of a galactic law-enforcement body.

Other places that are also genetic melting pots, such as Brazil, the UK, Australia will also get lots of supers. The places that are even more mixed than the USA will presumably get even more supers. Individuals of mixed ethic background will presumably be over-represented among supers.

Most of the supers will lack traditional backstories, including motivating factors.

Most of the supers will lack any particular inclination to be either heroic or villainous. They will deploy their powers for making income, doing good works pro bono publico, doing favours for friends and family, and commiting crimes in about the same proportions as people in the real world today do with their normal capacities. That includes many supers doing some of each. Those that do seek to do good will have the same wide range of opinions as to what is good and what is important as ordinary people have now. A lot will fight etc. for what they perceive as the interests of their nations, ethnicities, religions, clans and families; in this they will be as ill-guided, short-sighted, and ill-disciplined as freedom fighters and vigilantes usually are. They are likely to commit a huge number of very serious mistakes.

The new supers who do volunteer for the regular armed forces and law enforcement agencies of their favourite countries will probably be quite problematic for the existing ways of training and indoctrinating police and service personnel, and perhaps for disciplinary institutions as well.

There will be very little strutting about in fanciful costumes. Those costumes that there are will be tacky.

[DangerousThing]

I think it would be more interesting if only a very few who were present at some event were exposed to cosmic/magical/psionic energy that slowly changed them (maybe around 25 CP per month).

That way you can precisely control who has the powers and who doesn't, with the characters getting them by virtue of having been at that place and time. If it was a comics convention, Brett may get his tacky costumes. :)

[Agemegos]

Cosmic energy sounds are though it wouldn't be affected by human chauvinism. Expect large amounts of super-powered livestock and a few examples of super-powered wildlife.

[Flyndaran]

I'm pessimistic. I'm sure most would use their abilities to "cheat" somehow as technically magic power use isn't against most western nations' laws.
Super edges are simply too tempting for most people, in my opinion.
Very few would go all psychotic cartoon villain, but most would be corrupted by super-humanity even if only hustling and unfair competitions.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by christ0pher

I'm looking for realistic reactions to a world changing event.

Realistic reactions are probably short lived panic, followed by nothing much after everybody calms down. Followed 2 to 10 years later by the release of equipment developed from the study of supers that can do anything any of them were suddenly able to, at which point there is a chance this will do something other than generate a few celebrities.

A handful of supers really aren't going to matter very much, especially if they follow the usual pattern of none of them having the same power set. A technology based on a super power though, that *can* be in enough places at once to have real social effects. If some of these super powers violate the rules of physics - which classic comic book powers typically do - then the new science, and shortly engineering, is even more exciting.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by christ0pher

Hey, theoretical question... What social and political changes take place in the modern world when a wavefront of "cosmic energy" hits earth and grants super powers to roughly 1 in 200,000 people.

Social and political changes.

Most supers are likely to be benign or perhaps beneficial (commercially even if not altruistically). But there are over thirty thousand of them, which means three hundred odd in the top 1% for extremist violence. The combination of violent extremism and random superpowers will be very hard to predict or to guard sgainst. Such militant supers as do exist will find themselves in a target-rich environment. If they employ guerilla/specops approaches of keeping disguised or hidden and applying surprise and violence of action against comparatively soft targets they will do a great deal of damage before they are identified and destroyed. And you have to figure that some will attempt decapitation strikes against enemy leadership.

Large-scales conflicts in which significant populations find themselves bereaved, deprived, and endangered will produce militant supers as certainly as they produce militias and insurgencies. A very high proportion of Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, North Korean, Caucasian, Ukrainian, and possibly Sri Lankan, Afghan, and Pakistani supers will likely be militant.

Super powers appearing at random will tend to appear much more copiously among the oppressed masses than among the oppressive elites. Unless the elites can quiickly identify and either recruit or destroy them supers will tend to counterbalance oppressive regimes' preponderance of armed force. But don't suppose that that means a World Spring for Democracy: snti-democratic ideas of theocratic, statist, and authoritarian character are more widely popular than the principles of democracy are understood.

Outside of places where actual wars are going on, you have to have some concern for crackpot views and nutty fringes. Any political, racist, bigoted, or conspiracy-theorist section of opinion might get a super. Any such body of belief with 200,000 adherents will probably get at least one. So think of anyone who has been demonised in widespread propaganda lately. Muslims. Obama. Putin. Kim. Assad. The Koch brothers. The governors of the Fed and board of the World Bank. Bankers. Senior executives of oil, pharmaceutical, and agricultural companies. Congresscritters. Abortinists. Vaccinators. The Queen of the UK and Duke of Edinburgh. There are a lot more likely targets than possible defenders. And huge numbers of people everywhere believe that these people are engaged in the most terrible conspiracies.