Wonder Man vs Airline Passengers

[Beadle]

Yes. That’s right. The poster child for “You must be this tall to ride the Class 100 rollercoaster” vs a stacked composite of every human being who is in the air travelling at a single point in time (peak time).

Standard rules.

Have at it.

Edit: No flying for Simon.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

So roughly eight million people fly per day. 333,333 or so, an hour. I don't know what that clocks to strength wise, or what have you, but it's certainly an amusing series of Google searches to obtain that information.

[Beadle]

Google came up with something like 660K people in the air right now, which I would guess is somewhere NEAR peak time, given that all of the Americas, Europe, Africa and most of Asia are up at the same time.

[Sharpandpointies]

Okay, here we go. In true XKCD style, I'm going to run with very generalized estimates.

This page lists it as a possible 660k people at a time. Let's just round that up to 800K, for fun.

Let's say that an average human can press overhead 100 lbs.

So that puts the comp. human at roughly 3600 tons overhead - let's say that's roughly in the Thing's area, by feats. Class 80-85, as the comics put it (sigh, comics and your scales).

Let's grant them durability somewhere in the same range.

Sadly, this isn't even close to Simon, who eats hits from people who lift mountains and can roughly operate in the same region. And can beat the Thing down.

But speedwise, he's in trouble.

This composite human is about 660 000 times faster than a regular human. So let's say the average running speed is 15 mph (Quora again, high-balling it). We're approaching Mach 18 000. This sounds awesome, but it's 'only' a small fraction of lightspeed: [Edit] ~ 3333 miles per second, so closing in on 2% of lightspeed.

Which...is still better than anything Simon has shown.

We're into an area where Composite Human can beat Simon up with impunity. If he's strong enough to cause any injury whatsoever to Simon, he will eventually pummel Simon down due to being SO fast that he can just keep delivering that kind of damage while being impossible to hit.

Anyway, that's a ridiculous generalization and isn't precise at all (possibly not accurate), but barring the STRENGTH being off by an order of magnitude, Simon is screwed here unless he has feats for someone roughly in the Thing's ballpark whaling on him and accomplishing scratch-zero.

Also, I haven't bothered to verify my math, so there's that. ^_^

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Google came up with something like 660K people in the air right now, which I would guess is somewhere NEAR peak time, given that all of the Americas, Europe, Africa and most of Asia are up at the same time.

Oh really ? Well now.

I guess if we're going off of the average, a male can deadlift 155 pounds. Stacked, and by using terrible addition, that's something like, 102 million pounds.

Stacked run speed is 1.84 million MPH or something.

So I'm guessing Wonder Man can't touch the guy(gal), until they fall asleep ?

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

To clarify this composite can move at like, 823k meters per second. Assuming my math isn't wholly invalid, this thing is kinda stupid fast.

[The Arbiter]

Is comp human really only at 3,600 tons?

Because I don't think that works out as a comparison for Thing's weight class. Using compressed buildings as swords and what not.

Like that big ice breaking boat being pulled in Batman v Superman was an estimated 20,000 tons, and I don't see Ben being unable to slide it around with a grunt here or there.

[Sharpandpointies]

Is comp human really only at 3,600 tons?

Because I don't think that works out as a comparison for Thing's weight class. Using compressed buildings as swords and what not.

Like that big ice breaking boat being pulled in Batman v Superman was an estimated 20,000 tons, and I don't see Ben being unable to slide it around with a grunt here or there.

There's a huge difference between 'lifting overhead' and 'sliding around'. Especially when there's water involved.

Say you can lift overhead about 1/3 of what you can slide around (I have NO idea how this works out, but the world's records for military press and benchpress are in the 'close too 500 lbs' and 'just over 1000 lbs' respectively). That puts someone lifting 3600 lbs roughly capable of sliding around more than 10 000 tons, going by a silly calc based on extreme guesswork and generalizations. ^_^ I'm not even getting into 'what you could potentially pull through water'.

If that's not in Ben's weight class, it's at least getting close. So the question then becomes 'Can someone closing in on Ben, strengthwise, hurt Simon?'

[Beadle]

How big of an outlier do we consider the ‘swinging a skyscraper like a sword’ feat of Ben’s? Because that’s way more than 3,600 tons.

As far as Simon’s durability is concerned, I’m not sure a Ben-level character could hurt him appreciably.

Hulk’s stomped on Simon’s head, and Simon just wearily wondered what the poor people were doing at that time of year. He’s pretty durable - more so than he is strong, I think.

[Sharpandpointies]

How big of an outlier do we consider the ‘swinging a skyscraper like a sword’ feat of Ben’s? Because that’s way more than 3,600 tons.

As far as Simon’s durability is concerned, I’m not sure a Ben-level character could hurt him appreciably.

Hulk’s stomped on Simon’s head, and Simon just wearily wondered what the poor people were doing at that time of year. He’s pretty durable - more so than he is strong, I think.

Let's set aside the exact strength level.

If an enraged Hulk REALLY has to work to hurt Simon, then the Thing doesn't stand much of a chance of doing so. If that's the case, then someone of lesser strength than Thing is really out of the running.

[The Arbiter]

Ive always had the impression Simon was more durable than strong as well.

So despite his other disadvantages, that settles this in my mind.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Given how much Simon's power level has fluctuated over the years however, I'm reluctant to say that's his baseline.

[Beadle]

Fine. So we’ve scientifically proven that Composite Air Passenger can’t beat a Class 100 opponent.

Although I’m sure Namor’s been at least slightly hurt by Ben before, so...

[The Arbiter]

Fine. So we’ve scientifically proven that Composite Air Passenger can’t beat a Class 100 opponent.

Although I’m sure Namor’s been at least slightly hurt by Ben before, so...

In a fine showing of PIS, Namor has actually flat out /lost/ to Ben whilst underwater at least once. :P

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

In a fine showing of PIS, Namor has actually flat out /lost/ to Ben whilst underwater at least once. :P

Did the distortion of being underwater change Ben's color, making Namor mistake him for blonde?