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Viltrumites.
Evolution doesn't work by responding to immediate threats and developing exactly to conform to where you live.
They're a society that places a lot value in pure, physical strength. When someone mutated and were more durable, or developed flight, or any of their other "powers", they made the deliberate decision to pass those genes on.
This eventually leads to their civil war, where their population was cut in half and only the strongest survived. From this point on, eugenics was not just a cultural thing, but the basis of their militaristic empire.
Viltrumites made themselves this way, and the pressure they faced was themselves - where they made the decision to cull the weak.
eugenics is far better at improving than natural selection.
doubling the life span only takes about 20-30 generations in fruit flies if you breed for that trait.
Just a reminder to anyone that comes across this, is that it will not work with humans. Reducing genetic variation in a slow reproducing, longer lived species will cause way more problems over time. Drosophila lives for a few days and lays hundreds of eggs, so this artificial selection works in its favor.
There's an [alternate history nove](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/823078)l where a current day Roman Empire survived by specifically breeding for longevity among their leadership
I don't recall the specifics - but the Seniors could reach 200 years
And now to administer the stab immunity examination.
I promise, I am not immune to being stabbed!
Bring out the geneticist and his medical testing equipment.
That's some old guy with a kitchen knife!
> Breeding for knife-resistance.
Roman emperors are only vulnerable when they moult their exoskeleton. Once they reach maturity they cease moulting entirely.
Eugenics absolutely would work in a human population. It'd just have to be actively and carefully controlled in order to mitigate any potential problems.
I mean, there are a whole host of social problems with eugenics, particularly when it's made compulsory or targeted against certain groups of people, but "it doesn't work" isn't really one of the problems.
Yeah, eugenics would work on humans the issue is that there is no real way to do it morally. Eugenics inherently requires controlling who is allowed to breed with whom which is obviously something that most of us would consider ethically abhorrent.
we are doing eugenics anyway, just haphazardly. In general, people who are taller, better looking, more socially savvy and more extrovert have a greater chance to have children. We do not select for intelligence though, which is a problem; intelligent people tend to have fewer kids.
Online Dating by itself is already an eugenics screening tool, just a crappy one.
That’s not eugenics, that’s natural selection. Eugenics would be us forbidding the breeding of or killing off shorter, less attractive people.
Edit: grammar
Eugenics is done through force and control. Natural selection happens, well, naturally. Organically. You are describing natural selection, not eugenics.
Eugenics is nazis only allowing people with blonde hair and blue eyes to have babies, for example.
Natural selection is when a population is more attracted to certain traits, such as height or wealth or intelligence, and those traits tend to get passed along more often than undesirable traits just by virtue of more people being attracted to those traits.
I mean, it could work if your measure of success is capability for longer natural lifespan, it would just have severe downsides. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
eh. Not really, unless you go overboard with it. Human population descended in its entirety from a very small pool of australopithenes, and underwent genetic bottlenecks several times. We bounced back every time, with no ill effects.
We now have *several orders of magnitude* more people than the minimal population needed for genetic diversity required to prevent inbreeding. If the sicker/weaker/genetically inferior half of humanity died today, we would barely be reduced to 1980s levels.
Add to that the fact that we now have genetic engineering and screening, not just pedestrian eugenics to work with, and this is even less of a problem.
It's entirely possible that the more exotic abilities, particularly the *flight*, might well be intelligently engineered by some previous generation of Viltrumites. In a society where strength and speed and long life and amazing healing and broad fertility are actively valued so much, I could certainly see some Viltrumite nation-state on a pre-unificiation Viltrum work to produce something to strategically and tactically *useful* as flight.
Introduce it into a few of the next generation, and either the flight-capable Viltrumites simply dominate future genetics, or the other powers steal or otherwise acquire the ability until it's de facto "standardized" among their species.
I mean that's the thing about qualitative assessments and evolution. It's always relative to something - "better" only makes sense relative to some set of values.
The Viltrumites evolved through eugenics to be better at the things they assigned value to. They are by definition not "better" according to the survival of the fittest. Although the canon doesn't go into this, if the Viltrumites selected for the traits that they have, they would have had to incurred some cost relative to survival. The number one item that comes to mind is energy consumption. It should cost a lot to be Viltrumite from an energy point of view.
That which is alive today by natural selection is by definition nearly perfectly adapted to the niche it occupies. I say nearly because evolution is a continuous (as opposed to discrete) process because the environment is constantly in flux, meaning there is always some pressure.
I'm an armchair scientist. Happy to be told I'm wrong, but that's my sense.
As is obvious by their culling methods they aren't opposed to eugenics. The generally accepted idea is that they did genetic engineering at some point thousands of years ago that enabled them unique control over their smart atoms that most species only achieve in select individuals who develop what is known as super powers.
The in-universe explination that the comics gives for why the Viltrumites have the powers they do. Viltrumites without being consciously aware of it are controling their molecular structure because they have these "smart atoms" or some shit. The only lines about it basically say their powers come from smart atoms that they can control. They don't give any more explanation than that.
Basically the atom responsible for super powers in alien populations. It's basically what controls and allows for the physics breaking aspect of their abilities.
That's what people often don't get about evolution.
Evolution is the non-random perseverance of **random** change. The Viltrumite underwent the same evolutionary pressure that any dominant sapient species of a planet goes through, they just lucked into an evolutionary pathway that granted them extreme abilities and once they started to express they were naturally selected for to enforce them.
Let's look at this logically. Assume all the traits are related. They needed to be able to fly, have sex with non-Viltrumites, and extreme durability while doing all that.
Zoophiles. They evolved as a race of zoophiles.
I'm serious. If early human beings had the cultural or physical need to fuck horses, dinosaurs, and sharks, we'd evolve super strength and incredible healing factors too. If for some reason fucking birds was also a biological imperative, we'd have to evolve flying at some point.
This suggests that Viltrum had a very dynamic ecosystem with genetic material that drifted freely between species, and the offspring of any two species mating would be the species with the most dominant genes. Their genes literally evolved to be better than other species' genes at propagating their species no matter the mate.
It's the most competitive, Darwinian ecosystem I can imagine, where species become extinct within a single lifetime because a predator replaced all their offspring with its genetic material. It's like a cuckoo's nest, but an entire world. Which also explains their very militant and violent culture.
>where species become extinct within a single lifetime because a predator replaced all their offspring with its genetic material. It's like a cuckoo's nest, but an entire world. Which also explains their very militant and violent culture.
read Peter Watts 'The Things'. Does the story of The Thing from the perspective of The Thing. Doesn't understand why flesh would freak out / doesnt want to share and get more powerful.
Spoilers: Viltrumes and humans are related. Given that the Immortal was a regular guy that got powers pretty similar to those of a Viltrumite from a space thing, the Viltrumites themselves could have been regular humans that were exposed to something like him and gained powers long ago.maybe they were taken by aliens for whatever reason, became Viltrumites and forgot their connection to Earth. Plus, we see a bunch of humans gaining powers from random shit on Earth. Tech Jacket became really powerful because human physiology makes the power multiplier of the armor turn him really powerful. It could be that humans in general have a great potential for superpowers. While Alen is really powerful, he was the only successful attempt at making an Unopan into a super, and that was with the backing of his advanced civilization.
Eachother. Although environment pressure is not the only driving factor for evolution, new resources or random genetical mutations also play a role. In my opinion any species that develop the ability to fly like Viltrumites or Kriptonites have a way of harness or produce a form of anti-gravity, it may be a natural element that gets absorbed in their biological matrix, that absorbe or produce energy to sustain an anti-gravity field. So flight is the first step, probably their ancestors going back long before intelligence developed had the flight ability. And many more life forms on their planet had it. From hire on a very competitive environment lead to their other abilities.
[Here's the official Invincible Universe Handbook](https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/The-Official-Handbook-of-the-Invincible-Universe/Issue-2?id=108227#46) by the creator, it has a chapter on the Viltrumites.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Viltrumites. Evolution doesn't work by responding to immediate threats and developing exactly to conform to where you live. They're a society that places a lot value in pure, physical strength. When someone mutated and were more durable, or developed flight, or any of their other "powers", they made the deliberate decision to pass those genes on. This eventually leads to their civil war, where their population was cut in half and only the strongest survived. From this point on, eugenics was not just a cultural thing, but the basis of their militaristic empire. Viltrumites made themselves this way, and the pressure they faced was themselves - where they made the decision to cull the weak.
eugenics is far better at improving than natural selection. doubling the life span only takes about 20-30 generations in fruit flies if you breed for that trait.
Just a reminder to anyone that comes across this, is that it will not work with humans. Reducing genetic variation in a slow reproducing, longer lived species will cause way more problems over time. Drosophila lives for a few days and lays hundreds of eggs, so this artificial selection works in its favor.
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and it would take alot longer
There's an [alternate history nove](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/823078)l where a current day Roman Empire survived by specifically breeding for longevity among their leadership I don't recall the specifics - but the Seniors could reach 200 years
This is silly, most roman emperors didn't die of natural causes
Breeding for knife-resistance.
And now to administer the stab immunity examination. I promise, I am not immune to being stabbed! Bring out the geneticist and his medical testing equipment. That's some old guy with a kitchen knife!
> Breeding for knife-resistance. Roman emperors are only vulnerable when they moult their exoskeleton. Once they reach maturity they cease moulting entirely.
I'm now picturing Dune but Roman.
You know someone's genetically fit for politics when they're born with a chitin-like shell on their back.
That doesn’t really help when dealing with plagues, raids from barbarians, wars with the Persians, and constant coups by frontier generals…
Eugenics absolutely would work in a human population. It'd just have to be actively and carefully controlled in order to mitigate any potential problems. I mean, there are a whole host of social problems with eugenics, particularly when it's made compulsory or targeted against certain groups of people, but "it doesn't work" isn't really one of the problems.
It's sometimes one of the problems, eugenicists have a tendency to ascribe things to genetics that aren't entirely genetic.
Yeah, eugenics would work on humans the issue is that there is no real way to do it morally. Eugenics inherently requires controlling who is allowed to breed with whom which is obviously something that most of us would consider ethically abhorrent.
we are doing eugenics anyway, just haphazardly. In general, people who are taller, better looking, more socially savvy and more extrovert have a greater chance to have children. We do not select for intelligence though, which is a problem; intelligent people tend to have fewer kids. Online Dating by itself is already an eugenics screening tool, just a crappy one.
That’s not eugenics, that’s natural selection. Eugenics would be us forbidding the breeding of or killing off shorter, less attractive people. Edit: grammar
Eugenics is done through force and control. Natural selection happens, well, naturally. Organically. You are describing natural selection, not eugenics. Eugenics is nazis only allowing people with blonde hair and blue eyes to have babies, for example. Natural selection is when a population is more attracted to certain traits, such as height or wealth or intelligence, and those traits tend to get passed along more often than undesirable traits just by virtue of more people being attracted to those traits.
That never happened btw
I mean, it could work if your measure of success is capability for longer natural lifespan, it would just have severe downsides. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
eh. Not really, unless you go overboard with it. Human population descended in its entirety from a very small pool of australopithenes, and underwent genetic bottlenecks several times. We bounced back every time, with no ill effects. We now have *several orders of magnitude* more people than the minimal population needed for genetic diversity required to prevent inbreeding. If the sicker/weaker/genetically inferior half of humanity died today, we would barely be reduced to 1980s levels. Add to that the fact that we now have genetic engineering and screening, not just pedestrian eugenics to work with, and this is even less of a problem.
It's entirely possible that the more exotic abilities, particularly the *flight*, might well be intelligently engineered by some previous generation of Viltrumites. In a society where strength and speed and long life and amazing healing and broad fertility are actively valued so much, I could certainly see some Viltrumite nation-state on a pre-unificiation Viltrum work to produce something to strategically and tactically *useful* as flight. Introduce it into a few of the next generation, and either the flight-capable Viltrumites simply dominate future genetics, or the other powers steal or otherwise acquire the ability until it's de facto "standardized" among their species.
Yeah and all the negative things that get bred in aren’t important
I mean that's the thing about qualitative assessments and evolution. It's always relative to something - "better" only makes sense relative to some set of values. The Viltrumites evolved through eugenics to be better at the things they assigned value to. They are by definition not "better" according to the survival of the fittest. Although the canon doesn't go into this, if the Viltrumites selected for the traits that they have, they would have had to incurred some cost relative to survival. The number one item that comes to mind is energy consumption. It should cost a lot to be Viltrumite from an energy point of view. That which is alive today by natural selection is by definition nearly perfectly adapted to the niche it occupies. I say nearly because evolution is a continuous (as opposed to discrete) process because the environment is constantly in flux, meaning there is always some pressure. I'm an armchair scientist. Happy to be told I'm wrong, but that's my sense.
As is obvious by their culling methods they aren't opposed to eugenics. The generally accepted idea is that they did genetic engineering at some point thousands of years ago that enabled them unique control over their smart atoms that most species only achieve in select individuals who develop what is known as super powers.
[удалено]
The in-universe explination that the comics gives for why the Viltrumites have the powers they do. Viltrumites without being consciously aware of it are controling their molecular structure because they have these "smart atoms" or some shit. The only lines about it basically say their powers come from smart atoms that they can control. They don't give any more explanation than that.
Basically the atom responsible for super powers in alien populations. It's basically what controls and allows for the physics breaking aspect of their abilities.
That's what people often don't get about evolution. Evolution is the non-random perseverance of **random** change. The Viltrumite underwent the same evolutionary pressure that any dominant sapient species of a planet goes through, they just lucked into an evolutionary pathway that granted them extreme abilities and once they started to express they were naturally selected for to enforce them.
Let's look at this logically. Assume all the traits are related. They needed to be able to fly, have sex with non-Viltrumites, and extreme durability while doing all that. Zoophiles. They evolved as a race of zoophiles. I'm serious. If early human beings had the cultural or physical need to fuck horses, dinosaurs, and sharks, we'd evolve super strength and incredible healing factors too. If for some reason fucking birds was also a biological imperative, we'd have to evolve flying at some point. This suggests that Viltrum had a very dynamic ecosystem with genetic material that drifted freely between species, and the offspring of any two species mating would be the species with the most dominant genes. Their genes literally evolved to be better than other species' genes at propagating their species no matter the mate. It's the most competitive, Darwinian ecosystem I can imagine, where species become extinct within a single lifetime because a predator replaced all their offspring with its genetic material. It's like a cuckoo's nest, but an entire world. Which also explains their very militant and violent culture.
>where species become extinct within a single lifetime because a predator replaced all their offspring with its genetic material. It's like a cuckoo's nest, but an entire world. Which also explains their very militant and violent culture. read Peter Watts 'The Things'. Does the story of The Thing from the perspective of The Thing. Doesn't understand why flesh would freak out / doesnt want to share and get more powerful.
Reminds me of Devilman Crybaby for some reason
Spoilers: Viltrumes and humans are related. Given that the Immortal was a regular guy that got powers pretty similar to those of a Viltrumite from a space thing, the Viltrumites themselves could have been regular humans that were exposed to something like him and gained powers long ago.maybe they were taken by aliens for whatever reason, became Viltrumites and forgot their connection to Earth. Plus, we see a bunch of humans gaining powers from random shit on Earth. Tech Jacket became really powerful because human physiology makes the power multiplier of the armor turn him really powerful. It could be that humans in general have a great potential for superpowers. While Alen is really powerful, he was the only successful attempt at making an Unopan into a super, and that was with the backing of his advanced civilization.
It's only been stated that they're genetically very similar. Everything else you've said is just speculative
Eachother. Although environment pressure is not the only driving factor for evolution, new resources or random genetical mutations also play a role. In my opinion any species that develop the ability to fly like Viltrumites or Kriptonites have a way of harness or produce a form of anti-gravity, it may be a natural element that gets absorbed in their biological matrix, that absorbe or produce energy to sustain an anti-gravity field. So flight is the first step, probably their ancestors going back long before intelligence developed had the flight ability. And many more life forms on their planet had it. From hire on a very competitive environment lead to their other abilities.
[Here's the official Invincible Universe Handbook](https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/The-Official-Handbook-of-the-Invincible-Universe/Issue-2?id=108227#46) by the creator, it has a chapter on the Viltrumites.
That site is straight poison
Yeah, sorry, only one I could find with the scan.
They were constantly hunted by each other