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How to Become A Real-World Superhero
utherdoul writes "Batman isn't from outer space and wasn't born with a mutant gene --he uses his riches, raw determination and technological know-how to equip himself to fight evil. So why couldn't the average geek do the same? I've written a story for Forbes.com that breaks down the Dark Knight's expenses and explains what it would cost to become a real-world Batman using commercially available training and technology." From the article: "Batman's suit is a modified piece of infantry armor built by the applied sciences division of Wayne Enterprises. It's waterproof, bulletproof, knife-proof and temperature-regulating. Paired with an impact-resistant, graphite-composite cowl and spiked ninja-style gauntlets, it allows Batman to protect himself against everything from swords to machine guns."
> Batman isn't from outer space and wasn't born with a mutant gene --he uses his riches, raw determination and technological know-how to equip himself to fight evil. So why couldn't the average geek do the same?
Did you miss the part about riches?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
ans several years of your life for training.
The Bottom Line
Final Cost: $3,365,449
The Training: $30,000
The Suit: $1,585
The Belt: $290
The Car: $2,000,000
The Cave: $24,000
The Alter Ego: $1,109,574
The Butler: $200,000
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
If you can't do it from the comfort of your terminal, it ain't worth it.
Also, Batman isn't real.
Why doesn't anybody aim at his chin? (no armor there)
All it requires is a sniper.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Even being totally l33t equipt and fit like Rambo wont give you the magic "perfect Luck" factor batman has.
... If you go crimefighting every night, after a few months youre chances of being a corpse in some alley are really really good.
Even if your suit will stop 99% of all bullets, and your fit enough to beat thugs people into submission 95% of the time....
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Furthermore, the average geek doesn't need to "count on forking over $297,000 a year on gifts, including Tiffany diamond earrings and necklaces for your lady friends."
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What is this mystical fifth film?
1)Batman
2)Batman Returns
3)Batman Forever
4)Batman & Robin
5)???
6)Batman Begins
Oh I remember now.
5)Batman My Ass
---k--
</stupid>
Looks remarkably similar in content to:3 1&tid=97&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/15/22392
and just 6 days later.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
This reminds me of a quote from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:
:(
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
It's funny, because I used to think that exact thought. Then reality hit, and I realized I'm just a big pussy
These Chinese keep claiming to be communists but I just don't see it.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
The batman I know and love from comics to cartoons to movies to even the hokey 60's Adam West has always been a brilliant detective and keen scientist.
I loved Batman Begins, but I really think they missed the mark when it comes to Batman's CSI savvy.
My head was spinning when Bruce Wayne says "Am I supposed to know what that means?"
So if you want to be a real Batman, figure in another several hundred thousand dollars for advanced degrees in science and criminology.
(Also... $30,000 + 3 years in China != the ability to fight like the movies, but only the keenly stupid would think otherwise, right?)
Well it's good to see yet another spot for a crappy movie. I am glad to see that while there is so much going on in the world in technology and geekdom in general we need to beat a 4 times already dead horse. Wow this is almost as bad as the last Batman commercial... speaking of which....
I AM GETTING REAL FUCKING SICK OF THE FUCKING COMMERICALS ON SLASHDOT THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DISGUISED AS ARTICLES!! FIX THIS SHIT TACO YOUR SMARTER THEN THIS CRAP!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I always wondered how nobody knew about him being batman, where he's got all this high tech stuff that sometimes gets blown up (the batmobile in Batman and robin). Do they kill the contractors after they're done? There's gotta be one guy who gets drunk in a bar and says "you think you're job is cool, i just fixed the anti-lock brakes on the batmoboile at wayne manor"
They made the content a pop-up that auto advances to the next page after a set amount of time.
Dumbest. Thing. Ever.
It's a no-brainer. Also, we are geeks, right? Real life is a bit too ... real. Especially when it comes to engaging in violence with unsavory characters.
Now, a badass remote-controlled robot to roam the streets, beating the crap out of the bad guys, that would be something else ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
You mean Tom Cruise's fiancee! (Don't you follow the celebrity gossip?)
in comics, but they do in real life. That is the real secret of Batman's success.
If your average doughnut fattened geek would try it, he would be in for a rude awakening and would come down to earth rather quickly at 9.8m/s/s...
Oh well, what the hell...
ALL this guy's stuff is from the Whatever-Whatever division of Wayne Enterprises. You'd think this "Batman" fellow owned the freaking company or something... ;-)
Let's not forget the legal costs here. He'll need a fulltime team of lawyers.
- copyright/trademark infringement (obvious) - *BIFF* *BAM* *POW* must all have TM after 'em
- defense attorneys to get him out of jail/represent him for all of his speeding tickets
- civil attorneys to handle all the lawsuits from the criminals he "wrongly assaulted"
- insert obvious comments about riaa/mpaa/gitmo
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Says it all, really.
The second act discusses the life of a woman who named herself Zora and decided to, from an early age, learn all the skills needed to become a comic book style superhero. She achieves her goals but then learns that there are very few job opportunities that require all the skills that she now possesses. It's well worth listening to.
You could spend $3.4 million on the batman shtick, or you could spend that money on hiring a vigilante army.
Think about it, what are they paying contractors in Iraq to do protection and security jobs where they are getting hsot at constantly. So pay for them, and then the equipment to arm them, and you'd have a wrecking crew far superior to you on your own.
Figure $250K/vigilante/year for salary and benefits and you could hire 10 of these guys for $2.5 million. Then you'd have about $1 million/year to spend on equipment for them. Body armor, assault rifles, etc.
Then whenever you want justice to be done, you give them a call and they crack some skulls for you. If you want, you can even give them bat ears to put on their helmet so they can keep with the theme.
The best part is, you don't have to worry about getting bruised or scarred. You can go to your rich parties, party it up and know that you've kept the streets safe without personally lifting a finger.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The real Batman doesn't have, want or need armor. The real Batman (the one in the comic book) uses the arcane fighting techniques known as "dodging" and "hiding" and a psychological trick called "FUD" to protect himself.
The idea behind "hiding" is simple. It is based on never letting your foe to know that you're there, therefore not giving them a chance to strike back. It helps a lot to wear black and operate at night when it's dark - just like the Batman does.
The idea behind "dodging" is somewhat more complex, but not tremendously so. It is based on never occupying the same point in time-space as anything that might harm you. In practice, you observe your opponent, and when you see him aiming at you with a gun, you move away from the line of fire. Obviously, this becomes exponentially more difficult the more people you fight at once, so it is recommended that you use "hiding" to find lone targets.
The last tactic, "FUD", stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt". It's idea is to strike fear to the hearts of your opponents, so that they stop thinking clearly and start making stupid mistakes (such as spreading out, buying Windows, or paying SCO for Linux licenses).
Ironically enough, there was a pretender Batman in the comic books once - a guy the real Batman had appointed to stand in for him while he healed from wounds given to him by Bane. That pretender Batman wore armor, and went mad, and got soundly beaten by the real Batman.
The point of all this is that this particular article makes me less, not more, likely to see "Batman Begins". Dear advertiser, please make sure you understand what you are advertising before you design your advertisement. Batman is not Terminator or Robocop, he's closer to a ninja.
But then again, if they cast Batman as a martial arts expert, they'd need an actor who actually knows martial arts to make it look believable. Just compare Darth Maul to Count Dooku - which one has better fight scenes ?
Maybe whatever school actors go to should include martial arts lessons in its curriculum ? They might become handy even outside the movies, once the actor becomes famous and starts attracting mentally unbalanced fans.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This is basically the story of the evil Syndrome character from the Pixar movie The Incredibles: a geek so obsessed by super heroes that he invents his own super gear to beat them at their own game.
The Training: $30,000
The Suit: $1,585
The Belt: $290
The Car: $2,000,000
The Cave: $24,000
The Alter Ego: $1,109,574
The Butler: $200,000
I'd love to see some rich twit spend under 32k on martial arts training, a belt, and a poor excuse for an armoured suit, then spend over 3 mill on jewelry, a car and a butler. Better yet I'd like to see the first time they take on a drug dealer and get shot in the head. This is obviously a fluff piece but what's the bet some idiot takes it seriously.
Someone's been smoking a bit too much weed and Forbes.com paid them for their rantings.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The Butler =mom or dad
you could probably save a significant part of the $1,109,574 by sticking with 'local geek' or 'comic book guy' as an alter ego...
It's called "monomania". It's a type of paranoia.
...have you seen any bullet-proof vest that extends below the belt? Is there nothing important to protect there, or do they think snipers play by boxing rules?
That would be with me.
Here are the procedures for application:
1) Give me the million in cash.
2) Take superhero test*.
*super hero test is a two parter.
a) drug yourself heavly
b) jump off Empire state building. If you survive, congratulations, you're now a super friend.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and if you had the riches what would you do?
There are no cartoonish supervillians. "Street crime" is usually taken care of by the police and is really none of your business. Imagine some moron busting the heads of the local pot dealer out of respect for "justice." If someone is really concerned about the safety of their streets and trains then they can always get a Guardian Angels' t-shirt and the little matching beret and play vigilante.
Big crime happens all the time by power structures like governments, organized religions, corporations, etc. The tools for fighting these nasties don't involve tights. They involve activism, raising awareness, getting others involved in politics, and other things that don't look real cool in graphic novels.
Not to mention if you had insane wealth, you're probably part of the problem. Check the holdings of some wealthy people, they sometimes fund some very shady companies or governments which do some fairly nasty things. Real world problems are rarely fixed with just a punch in the face and a snazzy batmobile.
I'm sure the editors of Forbes magazine have no problem with the worldview that if we just beat up some low level street criminals then everything would be fine.
They're called the police. They patrol the steets at night looking for the bad guys. They are equipped with pistols, fast cars, body armor and even sometimes heavier weaponry and stun gas. Doesn't stop them from getting severely hurt and sometimes killed.
I think the average geek would have a better chance of being Rorschach for the Watchmen. A black and white mask and a mind that divides everything into black and white.
Real world snipers aim for the center of mass. Right in the middle of your chest.
Now, in a comic book world, where the sniper knows that the action hero is heavily armoured, the sniper COULD aim for the crotch area and hope to sever a main artery that supplies the leg.
Or said sniper could shoot for the buttocks and hope to hit the sciatic nerve and end said action hero's action days.
In fact, it's very difficult to armour the hips without limiting mobility.
But such stories wouldn't be as interesting as the ones where the bad guys never think or learn.
something being legal doesn't make it right, either...
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
The generally regarded LD50 (lethal dose where 50% of the involved die) for height is about 4-5 stories. I do a lot of trauma orthopaedic surgery, and I have to say that we don't get many people alive who've fallen more than 50 feet. We do get some exceptions, but just remember the good old E=1/2MV^2 rule - survivability falls off sharply at height greater than 50 ft (roughly 40 MPH).
..........FULL STOP.
You're talking about a guy who came up with a diabolical plan involving taking over commercial airplanes to knock down several large, occupied buildings, successfully executed said plan, and you're objecting to the idea that he has an underground lair? The man's certainly supervillian material (though more Bond than comic book, I'll grant you).