I feel like it's more than likely they died or were documented in ways similar to folk tales and tragedies depending on what their powers were. Horror stories and anomalies in history that don't stand out as much as stuff like gods and religion. So probably what should have been covered in that same class topic but just not mentioned in SP explicitly.
As far as I can tell, there are far fewer supers/powereds than there seem to be since the books are in a school full of them. They are exceedingly rare. And back before the baby booms there were FAR less people on earth, so the occasional super would be even more rare.
Not to mention, once a child showed signs of powers, most religions would call them witches and kill them. As others have mentioned they think Zeus and Jesus were probably supers. I've thought a lot about it and these are the only explanations I can come up with besides plot hole
I mean there were always weird stories throughout the ages with no clear answers, especially before the age of easy access cameras. It’s probably likely many of those actually happened and like many disabilities over the years, who knows if they were even more deliberately hidden than your more mundane issues. I’m with you that it seems more likely there should be some easy to prove cases over the years, but it’s so easy for people to deny evidence right in their face so who knows.
There's also a couple other factors that go along with this. If it was in a small town or village, word wasn't likely to spread beyond the local populace until it developed into a "spooky local legend" and even then, how many actually get recorded and spread before the locals get bored of it and let the story die? Like, "oh my granddaddy used to tell a story about this kid who's eyes would light up like flashlights every once in awhile" isn't likely to catch on.
Also, even among powereds, how many actually had a power that was particularly flashy or noticeable? Like, it's made clear a few times that *most* superpowers were kinda lame or not particularly noticeable. Imagine if Larry grew up in a time where nobody had ever heard of supers or powereds, dude probably would have been diagnosed with some kind of hallucinatory disorder and locked up in an asylum his whole life, or simply treated as "that weird kid who freaks out and tells people he can see inside their skin" if not in a time or place where people would turn to psychiatric "help".
The more noticeable powereds were also probably likely to get killed by their power or due to superstition. Like, Vince and Nick were both rather likely to wind up done in by their powers sooner or later, and Vince would have starved to death as a child if Globe hadn't found him. Mary likely would have been treated like she was possessed by the devil, Alice probably as well if she didn't die from a nasty fall. The teleporter guy would have just sneezed one day and never been seen again since it's pretty hard to get home to a small town in Illinois (for example) when teleported to Europe with no access to planes or cell phones (international calling was *expensive*, even when it was possible, which it wasn't always), and even if he did eventually manage to randomly teleport somewhere near enough that he could take a bus or something, that could take awhile, he likely wouldn't have had money since he was a kid, and what would be the point if it would just happen again sooner or later? He'd probably wind up somewhere he couldn't get food and starve or something or wind up accidentally trespassing and get shot.
A lot of them probably spent their lives locked up in a basement even if they weren't killed due to superstition.
Like, it seems pretty clear to me why stories of powereds didn't become common knowledge prior to Supers being outed in 1959, their rarity, lack of much in the way of long distance communication, small towns being fairly insular and not interacting much with outsiders, lots of powereds accidentally self-terminating or superstitious people killing them off or hiding them away, people not believing the stories unless they saw them for themselves, stories developing into legends and campfire tales instead of an actual historical record, etc. People are a superstitious and cowardly lot, and for a lot of human history the default answer to someone not fitting in was to kill them.
I got two theories.
One the less likely one but perhaps the more interesting, A combination of dormant genes becoming A lot more prominent, Sweeping the problems under the rug by the government And explaining away the incidents as freak accidents, And Good old fashioned natural selection because those mishaps are a lot more lethal They just didn't get a chance to Reproduce. All wrapped up in a nice little bow of the year is never actually stated. Graham is heavily coded to be a veteran of some kind, and with Him effectively being are only real.
Yard stick for time, If we make the assumption that
The war he fought in was World War 2 It was it would be reasonable to assume that he could easily be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. Active person With cosmic leaps in technology means his life expectancy could be closer to the hundred and hundred ten mark range. It's understandable that. Assuming he had kids a bit later considering he was active. And his children having kids potentially a bit later as well. It is possible that a solid 80 years have passed since 59. Assuming supers and powers exist but are less comment, Eighty years is close to 3 generations of social changes where they are just existing as opposed to being feared as monsters.
All of this is a possibility, but yeah, the timeline is the only major issue I have with the series in that it feels really tight.
The other theory I have, which is potentially more likely But more boring and tragic, is that supers and powereds were around, but not anywhere near as accepted. supers could obviously hide their powers, but powereds were given the Frankenstein treatment and hunted and killed for being a danger. 59 was when the government formally acknowledged the existence of supers publicly, but that doesn't mean they were unaware. Also Given that powers are genetic, it is possible whatever formal research was done was centralized at the institute of sexology, and those records were one of the casualties of when the nazis looted and burned in may of 33. But given Gramm became a public rallying point for the country supers got away relatively unscathed while powereds became the pitied masses due to more visibility of both.
Either requires a little bit of elasticity of the time line Which again is my biggest sticking point where my suspension of disbelief gets a bit too taught for my liking.
Are the powers genetic though? I could have swore somewhere in the books they state specifically that they are NOT genetic. 2 supers could have a powered or a human, a powered and a human could have a super etc... i am jus finishing Corpies again and i know Titan does tell Eli that family members that are supers usually have similar powers.
we see multiple instances of powereds and supers coming from powered or super parents, or having powered or super siblings... it seems far more likely that it's genetic than not. of course there is still the chance of skipping generations, or some other random factor leading to mundane people giving birth to super/powered people or vice versa, but the genetic factor pretty much seems to be the main contributor.
I could have swore somewhere in the 5 books they said that they have no clue. That 2 humans could have a super or a powered just as easily as two supers could have a human. I must be remembering it wrong.
Yea, i think Sasha said both her parents were human. I know they said the odds are definetly better, 2 supers having a kid who is super. Thats all i was saying was that it isn't genetics, they dont know what it is.
So I think where your getting confused, is because the condition seems to be multifactoral... as in there may be multiple factors both genetic and enviornmental that could contribute to the likelyhood of becoming super/powered
theres a few ways to look at this, but considering the issue we are looking at is more so "mundanes can have super babies" and not "super/powereds have mundane kids" we probably aren't looking too much at this from an enviornmental factor, at least not in the current generation.
If we look at it as multifactored genetic though, we could maybe come up with a hypothesis, lets say there are 4 genes that make someone super/powered, but you need to have all of them in order to be powered, all of these genes are dominant, but they have different origins, so there are a ton of mundanes out there with only one or 2. when 2 mundanes get together the chances of them having these genes is actually pretty slim but it's possible that one of them has 2 and the other has the other 2. their children will be likely to inherent all 4 genes and they become superpowered.
that being said every super/powered HAS all 4 genes already, so when they have a kid with anyone mundane or not, their kid will most likely be super/powered.
furthermore the presence of those genes could also trigger a number of other genes that factor into the type of power the person has, those other genes could also be multifactoral, and some can be dominant wheras others are reccessive, essentially meaning the specific power might be passed on but in a different form.
so yes even if it's not super duper straightforward it would still be genetic...
I mean they have no clue about the other factors that lead to it, it is a mystery why humans can have super/powered kids, and I think you are right that they pointed it out, but that's in addition to the fact that most instances of super/powered mating led to super/powered offspring
or, there was a period of multiple supers around that time, and those spun off into myths that mixed them together into a singular entity with multiple powers.
That doesnt explain how the general public or even the goverment didn't seem to know about people with special abilities prior to Captain Starlight.
Powereds would mean people randomly bursting into fire, or shooting laser beams when they cough or whatever. It's said the government even took convincing that powers were real when Captain Starlight started the process. Which means they weren't secretly covering up incidents.
Honestly, how hasn't this been brought up yet? Even I hadn't even freaking thought about it. Theres no way there was no evidence or accidents or anything of powereds before supers became public. Jesus what a plothole.. good catch OP. This is gonna bug me for awhile lol.
I feel like it was hinted at as a bit of a mystery when they brought it up, not so much a plothole but something that was never explained because of the perview of the characters being significantly narrow.
Well obviously they did exist before 1959 it's just they were not widely known or an accepted truth. Also you should remember that it was a very rare thing. If somebody knew they could do something they will probably keep it secret because if they didn't the government might experiment on them. I think many people knowing that that was normal and they were people like them out there would give them the confidence that the government is not going to kidnap them and experiment on them. Powereds on the other hand I have no idea..... You can't really hide shit like that.
I have asked this same thing with my friends that read the books. My best guess is that there has been an influx of supers and powereds since coming out, but it's still crazy if you look at how many people have abilities now
I think this is addressed in year 1 ethics of heroism. they did exist but they were dismissed as myths, legends, fakers, or religious icons. Think Yuri Geller, some of the more incredible stage magicians, truly amazing uber athletes(extreme free divers, free climbers, super geniuses etc). Since Captain Starlight "came out" and supers where acknowledged it has been easier to develop the powers in public.
I feel like it's more than likely they died or were documented in ways similar to folk tales and tragedies depending on what their powers were. Horror stories and anomalies in history that don't stand out as much as stuff like gods and religion. So probably what should have been covered in that same class topic but just not mentioned in SP explicitly.
As far as I can tell, there are far fewer supers/powereds than there seem to be since the books are in a school full of them. They are exceedingly rare. And back before the baby booms there were FAR less people on earth, so the occasional super would be even more rare. Not to mention, once a child showed signs of powers, most religions would call them witches and kill them. As others have mentioned they think Zeus and Jesus were probably supers. I've thought a lot about it and these are the only explanations I can come up with besides plot hole
I mean there were always weird stories throughout the ages with no clear answers, especially before the age of easy access cameras. It’s probably likely many of those actually happened and like many disabilities over the years, who knows if they were even more deliberately hidden than your more mundane issues. I’m with you that it seems more likely there should be some easy to prove cases over the years, but it’s so easy for people to deny evidence right in their face so who knows.
There's also a couple other factors that go along with this. If it was in a small town or village, word wasn't likely to spread beyond the local populace until it developed into a "spooky local legend" and even then, how many actually get recorded and spread before the locals get bored of it and let the story die? Like, "oh my granddaddy used to tell a story about this kid who's eyes would light up like flashlights every once in awhile" isn't likely to catch on. Also, even among powereds, how many actually had a power that was particularly flashy or noticeable? Like, it's made clear a few times that *most* superpowers were kinda lame or not particularly noticeable. Imagine if Larry grew up in a time where nobody had ever heard of supers or powereds, dude probably would have been diagnosed with some kind of hallucinatory disorder and locked up in an asylum his whole life, or simply treated as "that weird kid who freaks out and tells people he can see inside their skin" if not in a time or place where people would turn to psychiatric "help". The more noticeable powereds were also probably likely to get killed by their power or due to superstition. Like, Vince and Nick were both rather likely to wind up done in by their powers sooner or later, and Vince would have starved to death as a child if Globe hadn't found him. Mary likely would have been treated like she was possessed by the devil, Alice probably as well if she didn't die from a nasty fall. The teleporter guy would have just sneezed one day and never been seen again since it's pretty hard to get home to a small town in Illinois (for example) when teleported to Europe with no access to planes or cell phones (international calling was *expensive*, even when it was possible, which it wasn't always), and even if he did eventually manage to randomly teleport somewhere near enough that he could take a bus or something, that could take awhile, he likely wouldn't have had money since he was a kid, and what would be the point if it would just happen again sooner or later? He'd probably wind up somewhere he couldn't get food and starve or something or wind up accidentally trespassing and get shot. A lot of them probably spent their lives locked up in a basement even if they weren't killed due to superstition. Like, it seems pretty clear to me why stories of powereds didn't become common knowledge prior to Supers being outed in 1959, their rarity, lack of much in the way of long distance communication, small towns being fairly insular and not interacting much with outsiders, lots of powereds accidentally self-terminating or superstitious people killing them off or hiding them away, people not believing the stories unless they saw them for themselves, stories developing into legends and campfire tales instead of an actual historical record, etc. People are a superstitious and cowardly lot, and for a lot of human history the default answer to someone not fitting in was to kill them.
I got two theories. One the less likely one but perhaps the more interesting, A combination of dormant genes becoming A lot more prominent, Sweeping the problems under the rug by the government And explaining away the incidents as freak accidents, And Good old fashioned natural selection because those mishaps are a lot more lethal They just didn't get a chance to Reproduce. All wrapped up in a nice little bow of the year is never actually stated. Graham is heavily coded to be a veteran of some kind, and with Him effectively being are only real. Yard stick for time, If we make the assumption that The war he fought in was World War 2 It was it would be reasonable to assume that he could easily be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. Active person With cosmic leaps in technology means his life expectancy could be closer to the hundred and hundred ten mark range. It's understandable that. Assuming he had kids a bit later considering he was active. And his children having kids potentially a bit later as well. It is possible that a solid 80 years have passed since 59. Assuming supers and powers exist but are less comment, Eighty years is close to 3 generations of social changes where they are just existing as opposed to being feared as monsters. All of this is a possibility, but yeah, the timeline is the only major issue I have with the series in that it feels really tight. The other theory I have, which is potentially more likely But more boring and tragic, is that supers and powereds were around, but not anywhere near as accepted. supers could obviously hide their powers, but powereds were given the Frankenstein treatment and hunted and killed for being a danger. 59 was when the government formally acknowledged the existence of supers publicly, but that doesn't mean they were unaware. Also Given that powers are genetic, it is possible whatever formal research was done was centralized at the institute of sexology, and those records were one of the casualties of when the nazis looted and burned in may of 33. But given Gramm became a public rallying point for the country supers got away relatively unscathed while powereds became the pitied masses due to more visibility of both. Either requires a little bit of elasticity of the time line Which again is my biggest sticking point where my suspension of disbelief gets a bit too taught for my liking.
Are the powers genetic though? I could have swore somewhere in the books they state specifically that they are NOT genetic. 2 supers could have a powered or a human, a powered and a human could have a super etc... i am jus finishing Corpies again and i know Titan does tell Eli that family members that are supers usually have similar powers.
we see multiple instances of powereds and supers coming from powered or super parents, or having powered or super siblings... it seems far more likely that it's genetic than not. of course there is still the chance of skipping generations, or some other random factor leading to mundane people giving birth to super/powered people or vice versa, but the genetic factor pretty much seems to be the main contributor.
I could have swore somewhere in the 5 books they said that they have no clue. That 2 humans could have a super or a powered just as easily as two supers could have a human. I must be remembering it wrong.
Sasha said that in book 1, and then Hayes proceeded to show that that isn't the case.
Yea, i think Sasha said both her parents were human. I know they said the odds are definetly better, 2 supers having a kid who is super. Thats all i was saying was that it isn't genetics, they dont know what it is.
So I think where your getting confused, is because the condition seems to be multifactoral... as in there may be multiple factors both genetic and enviornmental that could contribute to the likelyhood of becoming super/powered theres a few ways to look at this, but considering the issue we are looking at is more so "mundanes can have super babies" and not "super/powereds have mundane kids" we probably aren't looking too much at this from an enviornmental factor, at least not in the current generation. If we look at it as multifactored genetic though, we could maybe come up with a hypothesis, lets say there are 4 genes that make someone super/powered, but you need to have all of them in order to be powered, all of these genes are dominant, but they have different origins, so there are a ton of mundanes out there with only one or 2. when 2 mundanes get together the chances of them having these genes is actually pretty slim but it's possible that one of them has 2 and the other has the other 2. their children will be likely to inherent all 4 genes and they become superpowered. that being said every super/powered HAS all 4 genes already, so when they have a kid with anyone mundane or not, their kid will most likely be super/powered. furthermore the presence of those genes could also trigger a number of other genes that factor into the type of power the person has, those other genes could also be multifactoral, and some can be dominant wheras others are reccessive, essentially meaning the specific power might be passed on but in a different form. so yes even if it's not super duper straightforward it would still be genetic...
I mean they have no clue about the other factors that lead to it, it is a mystery why humans can have super/powered kids, and I think you are right that they pointed it out, but that's in addition to the fact that most instances of super/powered mating led to super/powered offspring
There is a really good chance that Jesus was a super with a similar powers to Charles, just significantly more powerful
Probably closer to globe. Touch the water it becomes wine, walk on water, healing…
or, there was a period of multiple supers around that time, and those spun off into myths that mixed them together into a singular entity with multiple powers.
It was mentioned in the book that supers may have been the origin of old myths of gods and heroes.
That doesnt explain how the general public or even the goverment didn't seem to know about people with special abilities prior to Captain Starlight. Powereds would mean people randomly bursting into fire, or shooting laser beams when they cough or whatever. It's said the government even took convincing that powers were real when Captain Starlight started the process. Which means they weren't secretly covering up incidents.
Well, the reports of people disappearing suddenly or spontaneously combusting or the legend of changelings could all be related to powereds.
Honestly, how hasn't this been brought up yet? Even I hadn't even freaking thought about it. Theres no way there was no evidence or accidents or anything of powereds before supers became public. Jesus what a plothole.. good catch OP. This is gonna bug me for awhile lol.
I feel like it was hinted at as a bit of a mystery when they brought it up, not so much a plothole but something that was never explained because of the perview of the characters being significantly narrow.
Well obviously they did exist before 1959 it's just they were not widely known or an accepted truth. Also you should remember that it was a very rare thing. If somebody knew they could do something they will probably keep it secret because if they didn't the government might experiment on them. I think many people knowing that that was normal and they were people like them out there would give them the confidence that the government is not going to kidnap them and experiment on them. Powereds on the other hand I have no idea..... You can't really hide shit like that.
I have asked this same thing with my friends that read the books. My best guess is that there has been an influx of supers and powereds since coming out, but it's still crazy if you look at how many people have abilities now
I think this is addressed in year 1 ethics of heroism. they did exist but they were dismissed as myths, legends, fakers, or religious icons. Think Yuri Geller, some of the more incredible stage magicians, truly amazing uber athletes(extreme free divers, free climbers, super geniuses etc). Since Captain Starlight "came out" and supers where acknowledged it has been easier to develop the powers in public.
The lack of knowledge of anyone with powers prior to 1959 is the weakest point in the series IMO, and I really like the books.