It turns out many super powers by themselves are terrible in real life without support powers or mguffins. Take:
Super strength: ok. Your muscles are super strong. But your bones and tissue aren’t. If you lift up a train- before it’s over your head you’d rip your arms from their sockets and likely break several bones. But if you do lift it up- your legs and spine will accordion under the force. And mass is important too. All the weight in put to the ground through your 2 tiny feet instead of many wheels. So the full weight of many tons is focused on a few square inches of ground- you’d likely cave through or fall over and crush yourself to death. IF it worked at all. Planes and cars and boats aren’t made to support their weight in random single places on their structures.
You have the strength to poke your fingers through the steel hull of a boat- but once you start lifting the hull comes apart. If you don’t a suitable handhold- the many feet of boat that are hanging in the air are likely to break apart. Likewise- you currently have the strength to break glass, but it will still cut you just the same- so being strong enough to rip metal doesn’t mean you’d be able to do so without your skin being flayed. Stopping a speeding bus? Same deal. Your tiny hands or body wouldn’t stop it as much as they would rip through it. Like pushing meat through a metal grate with a pneumatic press. Of course... that’s IF that even. More likely because of the mass and total energy behind the object- strong or not- you’d just be flung through the air and likely die. Even IF you actually stopped it and didn’t get cut up or go right through it..
... you’d still absorb all the energy of a massive fast moving object through your bones and soft tissue- and die from massive trauma. The list goes on- but that’s IF you make it that far. Anything that causes muscles to tense from a jolt of electricity to a sneeze or orgasm or even flexing your own muscles could kill you. Human muscles already have the strength to rip tendons apart and break our own bones. When people get shocked by high voltage and go flying? That isn’t the electricity. Their muscles do that. A normal person could leap across a room in a flash of their body didn’t stop their muscles from using their full potential as a safety mechanism. In fact many steroid users injure themselves because of the rapid and drastic increases in strength.
And that’s IF getting super strength doesn’t kill you by itself. It would have to be a VERY specific and TAILORED method or an evolution so precise that it’s almost impossible. Many conditions and drugs cause changes in muscle mass or composition and the fact is... your body has muscles that shouldn’t be bigger or stronger. The heart is one that often kills people. A “buff” or large heart could kill you very quickly. Super strong eye muscles... doesn’t sound good.
What about laser eyes? Well- asides vein. Near impossible to aim- and really- how are you going to see anything but laser while your eyeball is engulfed in laser? Lasers powerful enough to be useful generally.... mess up human tissue. So the first time you used your laser eyes you’d likely go blind or die. Also to focus the beam your eyes would either need a special lens that would make normal vision impractical, or just wouldn’t focus it and your have scattered lasers. The chances of someone not wanting to get a hold of your eyeballs to try and research a biological material capable of withstanding or generating lasers is pretty high too. And you’re still otherwise vulnerable. It’s not really better than surgically impacting a gun behind your eyeballs in terms of making you dangerous.
Invisibility would mean no light could teach your retinas and you’d be blind as well. Flight? Asides your meat body being unlikely to survive many forces and objects encountered in flight- high speeds and altitudes would be very cold. You’d have things to worry about like not freezing to death or burning up, birds and bugs hitting you, power lines etc, and electrical buildup and discharge that could kill you along with staying pressurized and being able to breath. Landing could be very dangerous, and good luck navigating. Trained pilots have instruments and radios and get lost or crash all the time. Without lots of training things that seem simple like where is the sky and where is the ground can be life ending.
Shrinking? IF the human body could function correctly at that scale (probably can’t...) and even IF it didn’t hurt like hell to shrink (it may or may not,) how do you breath if you become smaller than air? What about temperature? When your surface area shrinks like that you now have much less ability to rid yourself of heat to the air. You’d likely die quickly if you survived long enough to shrink at all.
Fire? The human torch? The power to make fire and the power to not be hurt by fire are different powers. How does not being hurt by fire work exactly? What constitutes “fire?” It must be some temperature thing since it’s the heat that burns. Well- even if you managed to not suffer third degree burns- what about body temp? You’re in a fire. Your body can’t regulate, there’s no air to draw. Oh man. You also ant breath- what with the fire using up the air and all.
What? You can freeze time? That... that includes the movement of molecules no? Like... air? So another “suffocate/overheat/becomes toxic” situation. If it’s a bubble around you... how long before your bubble is full of C02?
Regeneration can be a mixed bag. There’s stuff about maybe not wanting to live forever or whatever- but maybe it’s not that strong regeneration? Well... it gets picky and complicated- but if we say regeneration is like an accelerated version of normal body processes- you’d die faster not slower. A cell can only replicate so many times before it goes bad. You’re looking down the barrel of cancer more or less not to mention crazy scaring- but what if it’s not just an acceleration of normal processes but like a “save” state and your body returns to that state? So I guess no cancer, but.....
How do you form memories? If you regenerate physically to a set state- how do you form new mental pathways without them reverting to the previous state? How would you ever grow stronger if your muscles always revert? How would you increase aerobic function or cardio vascular function? You couldn’t lose weight either most likely- and if you have any hereditary defects Or chronic conditions... well you’re kinda screwed. Then there’s all the other functions that regardless of how we want regeneration to be explained- would likely go haywire if the bodies functions were changed to make regeneration possible. Does your hair grow super fast, or not at all? Considering it’s dead cells generated by your body. Do you sluff more dead skin or now is it none? What happens to your metabolic processes and endocrine function? You’re base energy needs would likely increase greatly as would your protein synthesis.
What does your body do when you lack the energy and building blocks to regenerate? Currently the body “cannibalizes ” itself when we enter this starvation mode. Would it be a meltdown as your body eats itself for lack of energy and attempts to repair what it has broken down in a cycle that rapidly kills you from wasting away? What of blood cells that can’t die? Immune function? Do you regenerate bile and acid and mucus then at an accelerated rate? Would you possibly choke on your own mucus? The body makes 1.5qts a day on average. Is that supercharged too? What about all the waste products in the body made through normal function? Those must increase along with body heat from all the extra activity.
Talking to animals likely sucks too. First off- most animals do not likely think in a way that would make sense to us. They tend to communicate in a broader sense of intent or emotion generally, using pheromones and context and gesture from the best we can tell. But let’s say animals could just be communicated with. They still don’t subscribe to human culture or ideas. They have their own cultures and ways, for instance some animals are solitary by nature or exclude those not in their group, or only respect one who is their “alpha.” Animal Logic is likely very different than human and it’s unlikely most people could understand and effectively communicate even in plain English.
Super speed is another one where you likely can’t survive the forces applied to your body, G force of acceleration or stopping, friction, wind. Vision is one that is important too though. Even wearing some tripe of protective gear and keeping your G force in check somehow- how do you see and react? A human being traveling 60mph in a car will travel 88 feet in one second. That means your time to react or adjust at any “super speed” isn’t enough to do much or anything. If you do react... Gforce. Say you are going right and need to stop or pivot right? If you don’t slow down first you’re in trouble. Again at only 60mph speed for you or any part of your body, a sudden stop or change in direction would be like being in a car that crashed. You’d need to slow down before you could stop or change directions and that could take hundreds of feet just for sub triple digit speeds. And forget about punching or catching people or anything. Imagine slamming your body into an object at those speeds?
For some- learning is fun. The great thing is that you aren’t obligated to read or reply to things you don’t like. You’re free to post your own comments or memes that are fun to you. Then there are fun things of many types for all sorts of people who enjoy different things and everyone can have fun. Yay.
I had fun. So, force field generation? Sounds to me like this might be the ultimate super power? Able to lift things by their entire surface, float yourself or others, etc. Thoughts?
That one is a safer bet- but.... there are some unknowns and some questions. We have to speculate certain things because force fields aren’t well developed or understood. Physics says we cant just “generate” a force field. So we have to have some sort of organ or structure which would allow us to do so. Likewise- our forcefields would require energy. Everything we know suggests it would be a tremendous amount of energy. The human body consumes a lot of energy, and we radiated a lot of energy as waste heat, and obviously the matter in our bodies contains a lot of energy. But in terms of “useable” energy- humans aren’t good batteries. We produce less voltage than an AA battery and max out at about 2000 watts for very short periods in the most elite of athletes. What’s more, the amount of time it takes to recover from these levels of exertion, and the toll of repeated expenditure are very high.
So a human being generating a force field wouldn’t be likely to be able to create a force field that is very strong and likely not for long- or kill themselves on accident from over exertion. Of course- maybe they don’t generate the power- maybe they act more like a “relay” manipulating natural forces and the power comes from outside their body... that wouldn’t have that draw back. Being drunk or asleep or impaired could be dangerous of course.
But overall I think you’re right. Since we don’t really know too much about the mechanics of force field generation the biggest “danger” is the unknown. There’s likely some sort of radiation involved- wether that’s harmful.... can’t say.
Super strength: ok. Your muscles are super strong. But your bones and tissue aren’t. If you lift up a train- before it’s over your head you’d rip your arms from their sockets and likely break several bones. But if you do lift it up- your legs and spine will accordion under the force. And mass is important too. All the weight in put to the ground through your 2 tiny feet instead of many wheels. So the full weight of many tons is focused on a few square inches of ground- you’d likely cave through or fall over and crush yourself to death. IF it worked at all. Planes and cars and boats aren’t made to support their weight in random single places on their structures.