Greatest Super Soldier Design

[isaiahk9]

My friend and I were arguing/talking about what the greatest super soldier what be/look like. We came up comprehensively with this design :
A tall, well-built man. He has been genetically engineered to have strengthened bones, muscular enhancements, large height and muscle growth, increased biolectrical nerves transduction in retinas (better vision), enhanced reflexes. As well, his cells have been treated to immediately reproduce and eat the dead cells in order for the body to instantly repair itself upon need. Another drug was added. When controlled to, aggression, rage and other attributes are raised beyond the norm, giving increased combat abilities with the loss of all sentience. His genes have also been spliced with DNA from a protein-compound strangely based off wolf DNA. An unwanted side-effect came in the form of lupine fur growing on his back. As well, the chemical injections caused the soldier's skin to glow an iridescent green. In his skull are electrical implants that deaden certain nerves - the "limit" nerves. Normally, human muscles only lift 40% of their capabilities, no matter what. This is to prevent damage to the body. However, this limit can be weakened by extreme amounts of adrenaline. If these nerves that control this "limit"are stimulated by the right amount of electricity, they lose all function. Thus, thanks to the body's self repairing cells, a man could be 2.5X stronger without any more muscle mass. As well, his upper arms have been hugely replaced by a tangle of cybernetic equipment to retain maximum speed and reflexes for the arms. Strapped onto the wrists of this man are thick shotguns, which cock when the arm pulls back and fires upon the fist closing. A punch has become a gunshot.
Can you do better? Don't mention his equipment unless its built into him (so don't mention something like Master Chief's armor, but one could mention something like my cybernetic implants).

[Clayton]

[Zeroth]

Yay for comic book physics!

/sarcasm

A realistically designed super soldier: First, admit no one person can be everything that the army needs for every situation. Sometimes you need an O'Hara, or a Sam Fisher, or a Master Chief. Therefore, we will focus only on the kind of soldier the army would produce(if it could) with realistic medical science and technology, for heavy and light combat situations, with a goal of versatility. isaiajk9's is designed because its cool, not because it is particularly useful. For example, what happens when there is no commander to tell it what to do? And wolf-genes don't necessarily impart an advantage in anything except dominance traits. Eating the dead cells means that he would never grow any skin OR hair Or even nails. Teeth. Combat abilities do not stem from aggression or reflexes, but from training and intelligence. All in all, your supersoldier is a hairless, skinless, mindless and useless freak.

Body:

Genes have been identified that control muscle mass, and muscle growth, and in non-mammalian species, we have isolated genes for emortality(live forever, but can still die due to accident, injury or illness). These would be useful for the supersoldier to add strength without bulk. Smaller soldier=more versatile, harder to hit, less gas, less food. Tissue repair and regrowth are handled by an integrated computer controlling nanobots and a boosted immune system. The computer runs off of a small amount of shielded uranium, thus ensuring it'll keep running longer than the soldier. However, it still takes time and resources to repair injuries, so no dramatic Wolverine rebirths. As well, nanotechnology cannot move as fast as usually presented in sci-fi, or else it would create lots of excess heat.

Other useful biotechnology: limited skin sacs like octupuses, allowing for nearly perfect camoflauge when naked; Enhanced eyes, see IR, UV rays, x-rays, radio-waves, all plugged into our resident little super-computer in his spine for analysis; that self-same computer would be able to control the nerve clusters for the arms and legs thus moving the soldier out of danger even before the signals have reached the brain(nerve signals travel at a very sluggish 200 miles/hour); the nanotechnology can alternatively give off heat/gather water as needed.

Training:

Full weapons training, including construction of basic and advanced weapons, chemical formulas for incendiaries and explosives. Full vehicle training, operations and maintenance, social training to be able to lead/manipulate those around them. Tactics training for a variety of situations, and of course trained in gymkata.(That last part was a joke). The super-soldier would be trained to be unnaturally aggressive to achieve their goals, but understand to protect civilians and innocents. Demolitions, communications, and logic enhancements as well.

Overall, this supersoldier is intended to be a one-man wrecking army, able to infiltrate, lead and inspire, destroy enemy morale, outsmart and outmove his or her opponents. Think Rambo, John McClain, Predator, Terminator, etc. He actually looks rather ordinary, so as to not inspire fear/jealousy/hatred/suspicion from underlings/enemies.

[isaiahk9]

Yeah Clayton, I know. This started kinda messed up.

Zeroth : Yeah, its main goal wasn't to function in combat light and heavy with versatility. And yeah, it is more for astethics than functionality.
Wolf genes were supposedly supposed to . . . I dunno, do something. Increase aggression when his cells were told to "go savage", impart hunting instincts. Like I said, not really for the functionality.
You messed up with what I mean with the cells eating cells. let me explain : when a cell becomes damaged, it immediately reproduce asexually to replicate an exact copy of the original cell (undamaged). Then, the new (healthy) cell eats the old (damaged) cell in order to remove the abnormal growth. Thus the body heals itself. Hair, skin and teeth would still grow.
And in pure combat, I'm pretty sure reflexes would help.

The idea of implementing nano technology was smart - allowing all human defects to be thrown away . I liked the idea of the octopus-sacks for camouflage too.
Undoubtedly he would go through extensive training. But, in theory, with nano technology, he wouldn't even need it.
Your last paragraph made perfect sense - your "civilian" supersoldier would trump mine. He could undermine entire armies, and always complete his goal.
But who in their right mind would want to watch a movie/read a book/play a videogame/etc. based on that character?

EDIT : And who says he's mindless? Just because I didn't list what kind of training that he should've gone through?
EDIT : I'm taking this way too far.
EDIT2 : Just kidding.

[[Gandalf]]

Haha wow. All this reminds me of are these guys:
http://personal.inet.fi/viihde/sg1maailma/kuvat/rodut/kullwar.jpg
and these guys:
http://www.lowpings.net/images/Gaming-News/Ubersoldat.jpg

Who needs humans when you can have cyborgs! (Right Dan?) Apart from that, this thread is ridiculous.

[isaiahk9]

lol, nice. Yeah, I know this thread is ridiculous. That's kinda the reason it was started.

[Zeroth]

Uh huh... and how does hair, nails and skin form? They are formed from successive layers of dead cells. On the way to dead, they are damaged... its not a binary situation. Either they're alive, or they are dead. Now, the way you meant doesn't work either... your asking the damaged cell to reproduce undamaged? Thats like asking a copy of windows to copy itself to disk when half of System32 gets deleted.

[HellblazerX]

isaiahk9 wrote:

when a cell becomes damaged, it immediately reproduce asexually to replicate an exact copy of the original cell (undamaged). Then, the new (healthy) cell eats the old (damaged) cell in order to remove the abnormal growth. Thus the body heals itself. Hair, skin and teeth would still grow.

That's actually not possible. Once a cell is damaged, it'll either lose its ability to reproduce, or if it did manage to reproduce, you'll just end up with another damaged cell.

isaiahk9 wrote:

But who in their right mind would want to watch a movie/read a book/play a videogame/etc. based on that character?

Actually, the Master Chief went through a regiment very similar to the one Zeroth described (yes, I'm a Halo geek ).

[md]

I think I'm going to go cry now... this threat makes me scared.

[Zeroth]

isaiahk9 @ Sat Nov 08, 2008 5:13 pm wrote:

But who in their right mind would want to watch a movie/read a book/play a videogame/etc. based on that character?

You asked for greatest super-soldier, not one thats good for drama

[isaiahk9]

@zeroth - okay, skin and other needs are made from dead skin cells. I agree, but then how is that hospital in USA working its magic (I forget where)? I believe they were treated injured patients with some form of gene/cell therapy. And as for a cell that cannot repair after being damaged : ever heard of that special type of plant cell usually in the plant's roots? The one that after any part of the plant is damaged, this cell can become that damaged part, so the plant repairs itself? Again, I forgot the name of the cell.

@Hellblazer : Look above. If you still don't believe me, then well . . . this thread never started out to be a serious argument anyways. lol, I love how we suddenly got over an argument of what is possible in a "super soldier" situation. And yeah, I've read some of the Master Chief books as well, and I liked them. But would you like them if they were based on a normal-looking guy, who will never use combat abilities, and we don't even know what he is doing?

@md : ?

@Zeroth : Yeah, I know. Just wanted to throw that out there.

@everyone : I think we should end this thread before some hairless, skinless, teethless, mindless freak comes charging at us.

[andrew.]

This topic reminds me of a question I've been thinking about: When will AI become as smart as humans and when will that be applied to robotics? I had this question after watching Terminator.

[isaiahk9]

Doubts. Closest we've ever come to artificial intelligence is a computer the size of a garage that can't keep up with a three year old. I think civilization is safe for now.

[gitoxa]

isaiahk9 @ Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:45 am wrote:

Doubts. Closest we've ever come to artificial intelligence is a computer the size of a garage that can't keep up with a three year old. I think civilization is safe for now.

For now, yea, but you know how much technology has gotten smaller in the last 50 years, right? Soon that garage could be an everyday household pc.

[Zeroth]

isaiahk9 @ Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:00 am wrote:

@zeroth - okay, skin and other needs are made from dead skin cells. I agree, but then how is that hospital in USA working its magic (I forget where)? I believe they were treated injured patients with some form of gene/cell therapy. And as for a cell that cannot repair after being damaged : ever heard of that special type of plant cell usually in the plant's roots? The one that after any part of the plant is damaged, this cell can become that damaged part, so the plant repairs itself? Again, I forgot the name of the cell.

...You've very plainly misinterpreted so much stuff. Don't get your science from the MSM or from popular fiction. First of all, the cells you are thinking about are called stem cells. They are not unique to plants, but exist in all multi-cellular living creatures.

All cells(except red blood cells) contain the full genetic map for the body. However, they have 'chosen' to be only one type of cell, and so only a specific part of the map applies. That part guides the shape of the cell, what proteins it produces, and how it behaves. This is only on a small scale. Think how ducks and geese flock together? Cells work like that, they have rules for the small scale that somehow(we don't quite understand this part yet) builds something bigger. Muscle cells known to link to nerve tissue, nerves know to grow as far as they can, ligaments connect to bones, and bones grow lengthwise. Stem cells are cells that are none of these, and can be induced to be a certain kind of cell. The research is extremely complicated, but needless to say, doctors are trying to figure out A) how to turn the stem cells on B) how to stop the stem cells before it becomes cancer C) how to make stem cells reliably and D) how to tell them what kind of cell to become.

What you are probably thinking of in regards to gene/cell therapy is two things: initial tests involving stem cells and extremely positive results, and use of viruses to transplant new genes into people's DNA. The second has been proven to work experimentally and there is about a hundred people that are living today solely because of it. Pretty much what happens is the dna code of the viruses is replaced with the segment they want to transplant. The virus then infects cells and as per what all viruses do, subvert the cell's machinery to produce more of itself, only in this case, all it does is transplant new dna into the cell instead of reproducing. Even if this isn't what you are thinking of, remember, these are only trials to determine the safety and effectiveness of a treatment. What is reported in the MSM almost always leaves out information, like side effects, low efficacy, etc. They always focus on the dramatic ZOMG future stuff!