Super Speed. Is this the best power?

Super Speedster

You all know about super speedsters, I'm sure.

Can run as fast as lightning, or perhaps faster than light. Can take out any opponent in the blink of an eye.

Or can they?

Being a super speedster comes with some pretty large disadvantages that tend to get ignored.

For example: acceleration - the speedster runs forwards at superspeed, from a standing start. Lets say 1000 miles per hour - from a standing start and not building up to that. So around the speed of a normal bullet. They would experience a crushing gravity effect of around 46 gravities in one go. Enough to make them black out pretty much instantly.

So your speedster sets off at pace, only to crash as he blacks out. Ouch.

So lets say you get up to speed and are jogging along nicely at 1000 mph. You see an obstacle ahead. You need to swerve to avoid hitting it. The absolute latest you can leave it to begin swerving (and that assumes it is a small obstacle that can be avoided with a quick twist) would be o.5 seconds. Yes, half a second to respond, or you crash. Ouch.

So, accelerating that fast is a problem, but how do you stop? If you look at comics, the speedster runs up and stops dead in front of someone. How the heck does that work? To do that, he would have to have an inertialess field up (think like in E.E Doc Smith's classic Lensman series - spaceships using inertialess drives) or you are going to go flying past wherever you tried to halt. Or you slow at the same speed you accelerated, which means every movement will take twice the time, to start and stop.

But, you say, with superspeed, you should think and react quicker, surely?

Yes, quite possibly. But that has a downside too. Can you turn this faster reaction and mental speed down or off? If not then the faster you can move, the more your mind will race too.

Lets take an extreme example to show what we mean. You can race at lightspeed. So you run at 186,000 miles per second. So assuming your mind races at the same proportionate speed, your mental processes are probably about 32million times faster than a normal person (assuming a person can run at 10 yards per second, which is fast for a human). So for you, at that speed, one ordinary second to a normal person is like 370 days to you. If your brain races that fast, just how awful is life when you have to wait over a year for someone to move a bit.

And then of course, at that speed, everything will be effectively immovable, so you can only run in space or be stopped by the atmosphere (molecules of air or dust) or heaven forbid, a wall or something. Hit a solid object at that speed and you will probably just explode from the impact. And it would be a big bang!

And then there is the other element to being a super speedster, even if only able to run at less extreme speeds. That being everything around you and the friction and impact of everything on you as you move. Just moving at 1000 miles per hour (which is around mach 1.31, will generate aerodynamic heating on the skin of about 100 degrees celsius. That should boil you nicely. Start your run and wind up cooked from the friction.

So, just like with super strength, a speedster is going to need a package of adaptations to survive. And I don't just mean fast healing, as that won't cut it when you hit a brick wall at 1000 mph because you couldn't dodge in time. The impact is going to turn you to mush - think the opening episode of "The Boys".

So you need a personal forcefield to protect you from impacts (that flying moth, hitting you at 1000 mph is going to do serious damage as you run, otherwise).

You probably need that inertialess field too.

You need some form of enhanced skin and organs to deal with the heat and friction.

Your internal musculature has to cope with such rapid movements, so has to be stronger than normal otherwise your bones will shatter under the g forces and the internal heat generated by the energy expenditure in running fast will boil you anyway unless you can find a way to cool the whole body.

And of course there is the need for food. Using physics as the base for estimating a single second accelerating a body of 70kg (an ordinary person) at 1000 mph, would require about 1,600 calories, or a large pizza for one second of running. You're going to need a lot of food to offset the energy expenditure.

Having said all the above, the idea of super speed is cool and exciting and a major standard super power. Just don't assume it is all fun.