Grrl Power #616 – Superhero triage
Max is one of those heroes who actually has to think about whether or not to save the plane of people the bad guy shot down as a diversion, or go and tar the bad guy instead. Superman saves the plane every time. It’s a failsafe diversion. Max isn’t a psycho. She’ll usually save the people, but if the bad guy has a nuke strapped to their back and is heading to a major metropolis, sorry people on the plane, but there’s such a thing as superhero triage.
In this case, Max thinks Sciona represents a continuing threat greater than the danger of a bridge collapsing with 2 dozen cars on it. If nothing else, she can point to the fact that Sciona randomly attacked a bridge to distract her, and if she gets away, she might do it again.
Of course, Sciona didn’t actually attack the bridge, did she? She may have meant to, or maybe she was planning on dropping some vial of infectious crap on the road, or take a schoolbus full of orphans hostage, but that serendipitous deflection kind of chose for her.
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All this talk about who is WRONG and its impact on global socioeconomics misses one key thing… did Max go the wrong way chasing Sciona? In the last panel it looks like her “wake” bends to the right at the river fork…
No, if you look at panel “Exit, stage left” (panel 5), you will see Sci-fright’s wake heading to the left branch, or at least to the mountain on that side
It is also the cop scenario: if they find a person who’s been shot, their first goal will be to firmly establish the shooter isn’t still nearby. This is why they might go past you and even take a minute or more getting back to you if they don’t backup.
Because at the end of the day, stopping to help you could get them shot, and then NO ONE is getting helped.
Sciona is definitely the kind of person who would turn and shoot Maxima in the back while she is busy saving the collateral victims on the bridge and Max knows this. The bridge will probably be safer with Max chasing Sciona away from it.
Agreed. And interesting information HartThorn.
I also just realized that Maxima’s immediate sonic boom right next to her ‘patchwork’ of the bridge might have quickened the patchwork failing even faster. :) Sonic booms cause shockwaves as well.
I thought they mostly caused a pressure wave moving forwards in the direction of travelling, V-ing to the sides. So, it wouldn’t have particularly affected the bridge?
Pretty sure that’s not how it works. There are probably others who might have better knowledge on this, but when a sonic boom happens, I thought that the pressure waves are both in front AND behind it.
It may head in the same direction, butt fairly sure it sucks up air from behind to replace the air being pushed forward and to the sides
A shock-wave is still a wave and doesn’t actually move the air all that much – please refer to the vibrations and waves module from your high-school introduction to physics class.
So sorry Guesticus but being certain and being correct are not always one and the same, as in, I was certain I turned the iron off after the house burned down.
Pander, you are partially correct that there is usually more than one pressure wave BUT they are in a cone pointing in the direction of travel. This is why a supersonic jet makes no noise as it approaches you, a boom a moment after it passes, and then it is just the roar of the afterburners as it fly’s away.
So FFKonoko is correct in their assertion.
Wait… how is FFKonoko correct if the shock wave goes both in front of and behind you? The bridge was behind Maxima when she took off after Sciona and caused the sonic boom.
This is a genuine question btw that I’m asking. I don’t know crap about shock waves beyond what I’ve seen on Mythbusters.
The way that you have paraphrased your reply shows that you are misinterpreting the statements. Allow me to clarify:
This is the air in front of the aircraft/missile/etc being displaced as the object approaches it. However it is not whizzing off in that direction,* it is a pressure wave that is travelling just in front of the object.
It is also useful to remember that the science involved is fluid dynamics, as air has similar properties to water. So just think of a person swimming through water, and you will recall the bow wave that they have ahead of them. Likewise with a ship.
So stick with that visualisation, and you will also see that the wake behind the swimmer is that of a V shape.
These properties are common between subsonic and supersonic waves. Similarly with sub and supersonic travel in water (which creates massively destructive waves). It is just that when going supersonic you are travelling ahead of any sound waves you can form (barring the bow wave immediately in front of you).
* The air has only gained the energy from the object pushing it, so cannot outstrip that.
It might be easier to picture “is a pressure wave that is travelling just in front of the object” if you think of a snow plow pushing snow. The snow isn’t moving that much but there’s always a compressed section in front of the plow.
Also someone else did the math for superman and the shock-wave of a human sized object going supersonic isn’t that big. While a jet might break windows a super-human wouldn’t do more than rattle them (if that, there were large error bars in the one I saw).
Actually, the reason a supersonic jet reaches you before the sound of it’s engines, or the sonic boom is because it is literally moving faster than any of the aforementioned sounds.
It’s exactly that simple.
I’ve been reading the posts, and here’s something that I think no one has mentioned.
Every one here is talking with the benefit of hindsight here: the thing is that at the time before Max decided to fire she MiGHT hit the bridge (not WILL), just as if she doesn’t fire Sconia MIGHT ran off and kill everyone in the city (because she’s a supernatural being). If the former happens (which she fires and actually did happen) she’s liable for the damage. But if the latter happen (she didn’t fire and Sconia proceeds to do a lot of damage and killed a whole bunch of people) she is possibly liable for negligence because of her duty of care. For example, I don’t think police are allowed to just twiddle their thumbs and says “nothing we can do” when they know that someone has strapped a bomb around them and walked into a parade, and I know that in Australia, doctors have been successfully sued for negligence for not assisting people in distress and later on died outside their clinic even when they are not their patients.
The question whether or not the risk of Sconia runnng rampage is higher than accidentally hitting a bridge (and whether or not it is reasonable for Max to be able to determine that in half a second) is another matter and is what an inquiry and investigation is for.
A good angle to pursue. I suspect that the ‘do nothing’ option will be favoured by any cops who do fear negligence claims however. As far as I can determine failing to act just results in loss of their job. Rather than that and getting hit with an unafordable claim.
I dislike using examples from present day tragedies, however they are pertinent, and if there are flaws in the legal system it is worth airing them. As such I can point at the recent school shooting. Where a cop, who had heard the shots, stood outside for several minutes, whilst the shooting continued.
Whilst he maintained that it sounded like the shots were coming from the outside, that was not believed by his superiors. However the only consequences (other than public condemnation) seemed to be him getting fired.
Some countries have ‘good Samaritan laws’, which require that citizens lend assistance in situations where they can do so without undue risk to themselves (so would not apply to countering an active shooter). But it does show that it is possible to enact relevant laws and prosecute someone for failing to help.
Even in the UK, which does not have such a law, a guy was prosecuted this year, for failing to help when his date fell off a dock into rough seas and drowned. There were life rings nearby, that he could have thrown in, with no risk. Further he even failed to raise the alarm. Choosing instead to go down the pub for a drink!
I can’t remember the charge but guess it was something like ‘negligent manslaughter’. Whatever it was the judge ruled that any reasonable person in the circumstances would have rendered assistance, called for help or phoned the emergency services.
So it is possible that something similar may be done for a negligent by inaction cop, in the U.S., who would be expected to expose themselves to danger as a part of their job. Even without a specific law to that effect.
It would seem to be just. Either in the real life example (assuming his excuse does not pan out) or if Maxima had failed to act.
Well, Max is operating on the Napoleonic Code, apparently…since Sciona has not been *proven* guilty. All evidence incriminating her is, thus far, circumstantial as far as Archon knows. Even in our mundane world, a cop can’t randomly shoot a fleeing suspect, no matter what they’re suspected of or how much evidence they have. Archon…and Max…are supposed to be a super-powered police force, in effect, not super-powered judge, jury, and executioner.
So a case could be made for Max getting in a buttload of trouble over her actions. While I do (not so) secretly want Max to kick major amounts of butt, we have to look at the larger picture.
Max just opened fire on a suspect essentially driving peacefully along in her car. The damage to the bridge is *all* on Max, as are any injuries or deaths. If a random cop starts shooting at me and I duck, causing him to miss, and the bullet goes on to kill an expectant mother? That’s on the cop, not me for ducking. Sciona wasn’t shooting at Max, may not have even known Max was there (from her reaction in the first panel, I’d say she was more than a bit surprised to see Max). This `arc’ or episode or whatever we call it is nicely illustrating some serious grey areas. We (or most, my opinion is still undecided) the readers `know’ Sciona is a Bad Guy…Max only *suspects* she’s a Bad Guy. We know (or suspect) she’s a thief (no definitive proof what was in the Council’s vault wasn’t hers to begin with and she was only reclaiming her stolen property) and isn’t particularly nice to her hirelings.
Is that deserving of blowing her out of the sky? Do we want superheroes making those sort of judgment calls on the fly? Are superpowered /supernatural individuals guilty until proven innocent? Do we want Archon hunting down and killing super-power/natural individuals unless they agree to join Archon and have a biometric tracker implanted in their brain?
Pretty much everyone ever read one of my comments knows Max is my favorite character…but in this instance, I can say her actions are questionable at best (c’mon, she basically lied to everyone by saying Sciona attacked the bridge!), and I’d love to see her having to face the consequences of her actions. Get a rousing debate over the morality and such…do suspected supervillains have any rights? Can we shoot them because we suspect they might be doing something bad?
Heck, I’d love to see Sciona fly directly to a police station screaming about how some gold-skinned flying chick just tried to kill her. Get a really good lawyer, sue Archon and Max for every dime…maybe even get them disbanded as too dangerous and undisciplined. Have it turn out that the Council and Archon are the Bad Guys; Sciona is Queen the Council deposed so they could steal her country’s unobtainium and she broke into their vault to retrieve her Crown of Absolute Innocent Authority.
Somehow I think Max’s defense of, “Well, the evidence Archon has makes her a prime suspect and she was flying way from me, so I shot her and my shot accidentally hit a bridge and killed a truckload of puppies…” wouldn’t do so well in front of any sane jury….
I know. I’m just pointing out that people seem to have discussing with the benefit of hindsight rather than judging her actions at the time when she made time (ie she MIGHT hit something else not she WILL) and that she could have a duty of care to the public.
And I wouldn’t compare this with a suspect running away peacefully in a car: it’s more like a suspect with a suspected nuclear bomb (ie suspect just raided a nuclear arsenal somewhere and we know that the nuclea4 warheads are missing) driving to the city, It’s like the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney again, only on a much larger scale.
It would also be very interesting, if Max got into trouble later on for this, to have someone else (possibly Halo), to face a similar situation later in another story arc and do this by the book (ie NOT shootings try to stop the enemy) and have a city leveled and millions die as a result.
Sure, Sciona hit the bridge. Totally unassisted.
Face it, Maxima, you screwed up.
In as much as intent matters, Max had no way of guessing that could happen, while Sciona was planning on doing something just as bad if not worse on purpose. And as results go, Max fixed her mistake with apparently no loss of life or failing in her mission, whereas Sciona got her “blow things up to slow Max down” plan done “for” her. On a scale from Spider-Man accidentally getting drunk to
Jigawatt accidentally turning the Moon into electrons/Eidolon accidentally creating the Endbringers I give this oopsie a 0.2.I don’t like that she’s lying about it, though. Maybe it’s just to avoid distracting the team and she’ll come clean at debrief time. . .we can hope.
Modus matters more than intent, and the means reveals the modus. Sciona’s means of murder and treachery to acquire what she intended to have wasn’t because it was necessary, but because she took satisfaction in expressing her contempt for the lives of others. If she thought she could produce adequate killbots by destroying a bridge loaded with motorists, she would have. Hanging the blame for blasting the bridge may not be right, but it’s fair.
Reading back through this and not sure if I mentioned this before but this reminds me of the anniversary Superman comic where Lex Luthor got his new power armor. Thanks to Superman provoking a battle on Lexor he got the planet destroyed instead and yet despite it being Superman’s fault really people blame it on Lex instead. Maxima’s reckless haste lead to the problem yet she’s blaming Sciona for it. Sure Sciona’s got plenty of evil things she’s rightly meant to be blamed for but this is on Maxima.
Maybe Max thinks that Sciona intentionally deflected her attack to hit the bridge? Has anyone considered that?
I would have said “Wow, didja see that meteorite smack that bridge support. Luckily I was passing by and was able to keep the bridge from collapsing.” OK, Maxima is a better person than I’ll ever be. Besides, Sciona shooting at the support at the same time Maxima’s bolt arrives is more plausible than an energy bolt ricochet (outside of a Spielberg movie).