themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He has super hearing and super speed, and can hear everything across the city. In NYC, an approximate analog of Metropolis, there are over 37,000 car accidents with major injuries or fatalities every year. That’s 100 car accidents each day, every day, just car accidents. If he were to actually try to save everyone he could, he would never have any time for anything else, not even sleep. It’s one thing to go take a sudden bathroom break when Lois is dangling from the ledge on the roof of a building. It’s something else to leave the room every 15 minutes of every hour because people can’t stop texting while driving.
absentbird@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well metropolis isn’t exactly NYC, and he doesn’t stop every incident. Mostly he is shown focusing on the major disasters, mundane incidents in close proximity, and on protecting a short list of people he looks out for.
Also he moves insanely fast, like he can canonically travel faster than light. So being able to stop even a hundred car accidents could be accomplished in a series of short bursts throughout his day.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure, it’s fiction, and Superman’s powers and limitations are whatever the plot demands.
But if he could move that fast, and he was in a real major city with real people and real problems, then he would be saving people nonstop. Because he could. If he’s faster than light, he could go save everyone without anyone noticing he left the room (setting aside physics, of course). But he’d never be able to stop, and he would never run out of people to save.
And none of it would be supervillains and giant robots or space lasers.
But then, applying any sort of real world rationality to Superman never ends well.
fulcrummed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s super sad and oddly realistic.