any setting where all Superpowered Beings are no more sentient than feral animals

[Masonicon]

is there's any Universe where all Superpowered Beings that exists(without exceptions whatsoever) are no more sentient than mindless animals?

let's start with Current Seasons of Pokemon anime(at least when using it's formula) as well World War Z Novel as examples to begin with

and try to limit the universes to ones where all superbeings are limited to non-sentient life, any universe with any sapient superbeings existing there can't be used as examples here

[Rynjin]

Neither of those examples you mention even fit the bill for what you're asking about. Forget sentient, a lot of Pokemon are sapient. And zombies are kind of the opposite of "superpowered", being individually weaker than a human.

[Masonicon]

Neither of those examples you mention even fit the bill for what you're asking about. Forget sentient, a lot of Pokemon are sapient. And zombies are kind of the opposite of "superpowered", being individually weaker than a human.

how about any examples of this that fit the bill better than these?

[JeenLeen]

The only thing I can think of is some horror movies, where the "superpowers" are stuff like being a zombie or essentially a zombie with powers.
But even then not always; even the Marvel Zombies (both comic and (albeit less-so) What If Disney+ show) had the zombies displaying what I'd call higher thought to coordinate hunting.

There was a webcomic called Zombie Hunters that had different types of zombies with different powers (acid spit, a paralyzing gaze, hunting/tool use). Even the "smartest" ones were basically feral animals. It might work.
Monsters in Resident Evil or Parasite Eve? (Well, omitting the main character and big bad for Parasite Eve.)

So, essentially, can't think of an answer.
Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series has all superpowered people become evil. Using your powers causes you to become evil. But they still think; just they are inclined to be selfish and view normal humans as unimportant.

EDIT: Sanderson's short story Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. The "supers" are basically ghosts who react to certain rituals or stimuli. Again, kinda a horror movie type feel, so on par with zombies.

[Psyren]

is there's any Universe where all Superpowered Beings that exists(without exceptions whatsoever) are no more sentient than mindless animals?

let's start with Current Seasons of Pokemon anime(at least when using it's formula) as well World War Z Novel as examples to begin with

and try to limit the universes to ones where all superbeings are limited to non-sentient life, any universe with any sapient superbeings existing there can't be used as examples here

Neither of those examples you mention even fit the bill for what you're asking about. Forget sentient, a lot of Pokemon are sapient. And zombies are kind of the opposite of "superpowered", being individually weaker than a human.

Well, yes and no. They're weaker in the sense that they can be overpowered 1v1 if the human is prepared, but they do have "superpowers" like not needing to breathe/eat/sleep.

Still, I think OP is onto something by looking at horror media. Rather than zombies, I'm thinking maybe something like Bird Box would fit - where the monsters aren't "zombies" but still can't be reasoned with or combated in any way, the only solution is to blind yourself while outdoors.

[Dragonus45]

I feel like "supernatural" beings might be a more accurate read of what OP is looking for rather then super powered.

[Lemmy]

There are many stories where the supernatural / superhuman are basically really powerful animals, and the protagonists are just people trying to survive.

Most of them are horror or Jurassic Park-style action, though.

There's also the very common case where the supernatural creature is technically sapient, but so consumed by hatred/hunger/sorrow/whatever that they might as well be completely feral.

[awa]

I recall one science fiction story where the secret to ftl were teleporting slugs. Friendly but just animals so that is a non horror example.

[JeenLeen]

I suppose a supernatural creature whose motivations are so alien/incomprehensible that they might seem like a feral/random animal to humans. Maybe some Call of Cthulu creatures or some fey. Or goblins in some stories.

[Precure]

Wouldn't make sense as a setting, because all humans would die out soon.

[Mechalich]

Wouldn't make sense as a setting, because all humans would die out soon.

It's actually usually the opposite problem. Unreasoning animals, regardless of their power, are fairly easy for sapient beings to hunt down and exterminate when they are considered a threat. The superpowers in question have to be horror-movie levels of BS (ie. bullets just randomly bounce off their hides, etc.) for creatures like this to actually work. Zombies, notably, don't measure up. Industrial society can exterminate them easily.

In fact, in many settings close to this the superpowered animals become a resource that humans (or aliens) farm or blood, hides, etc. For example, in Anthony Ryan's Draconis Memoria setting the super-powered non-sapient drakes are hunted and farmed for their magical blood, which humans can consume in order to acquire temporary superpowers.

[Draconi Redfir]

the left 4 dead universe maybe? the "Superpowered" beings being the Infected / special infected, who (to my knowledge at least) aren't any smarter then animals, mainly focused on killing humans and eating. They might have some ability to strategize and set up ambushes, but so do many feral animals.

Similarly, the infected of the 28 days later universe might also apply.

Perhaps the first "Cloverfield" movie as well? the other two idk about, and i don't think they count since they take place in alternate realities from one another or something.

In fact, in many settings close to this the superpowered animals become a resource that humans (or aliens) farm or blood, hides, etc. For example, in Anthony Ryan's Draconis Memoria setting the super-powered non-sapient drakes are hunted and farmed for their magical blood, which humans can consume in order to acquire temporary superpowers.

the Monster Hunter franchise maybe then?

[Gnoman]

Sin from Final Fantasy X might be a pretty good example, for reasons that are spoilery.

Spoiler

Show

Sin is basically a rogue superweapon - an incredibly powerful summon created as a last gesture of defiance by a bitter summoner who was on the losing side of a war. It has no real thought, merely roving and destroying on what amounts to a set of very simple subroutines, and respawns after it is killed by absorbing the power of whatever killed it. The only reason the protagonists are able to kill it for good is that this incarnation of Sin is not yet mindless because it has not fully absorbed the last person who killed it.

[Rodin]

It's actually usually the opposite problem. Unreasoning animals, regardless of their power, are fairly easy for sapient beings to hunt down and exterminate when they are considered a threat. The superpowers in question have to be horror-movie levels of BS (ie. bullets just randomly bounce off their hides, etc.) for creatures like this to actually work. Zombies, notably, don't measure up. Industrial society can exterminate them easily.

In fact, in many settings close to this the superpowered animals become a resource that humans (or aliens) farm or blood, hides, etc. For example, in Anthony Ryan's Draconis Memoria setting the super-powered non-sapient drakes are hunted and farmed for their magical blood, which humans can consume in order to acquire temporary superpowers.

Horizon: Zero Dawn also does this. The trailers set it up as "robot animals rule the land", but in actuality humanity had no trouble building a medieval society using farmed robot parts as a handy supply of metal and steampunk weaponry. It's only when a higher intelligence takes over the machines and starts designing nasty variants that the humans start having problems.

[Rynjin]

the Monster Hunter franchise maybe then?

Hunters are explicitly superhuman. There is no gameplay/story segregation in that franchise.

Wyverians are also semi-immortal "elves" in that setting, which would disqualify it as well.

how about any examples of this that fit the bill better than these?

I didn't give any because I can't think of any, except zombies by your criteria. It's not a particularly interesting storytelling niche for the most part, so it's relatively unexplored. You'd have to really broaden your criteria for "superpowered" to stuff like "monsters who are big and strong", like dinosaurs to get a ton of examples.

Stretching it that far, various Kaiju stories (Godzilla etc.) sometimes count, but even Godzilla is often sapient as well.

[Draconi Redfir]

The Xenomorphs from the "Alien" franchise would probably count, and not be zombies.

They're intelligent yes, but i don't think I'd call them "Sapient" personally. They've never shown to see non-xenomorphs as anything other then prey, even that freakish xeno / human hybrid from resurrection only liked Ripley because it saw her as it's "mother".

Naturally this doesn't work if you count the Predators, which i think at this point the two are canonically the same universe, but still.

[Lemmy]

TBF... "Super-human but non-sentient" is pretty much the real world. Basically every animal out there is stronger, faster and tougher than humans... And with sharper senses too. And they still aren't a match to human ingenuity and cooperation.

That's the problem with a setting that has the same limitations. Unless they are so powerful that humans can't even scratch them even with advanced tech... Eventually humans (or whatever other sapient race takes our place) will turn them into resources and/or entertainment.

[Talakeal]

Most kaiju movies are pretty close to this.

[ben-zayb]

Wouldn't many "attack of the killer <insert superpowered animal here>" type of movies meet this? Eight-Legged Freaks, Anaconda, The Host, Black Sheep, Slugs, etc

[awa]

TBF... "Super-human but non-sentient" is pretty much the real world. Basically every animal out there is stronger, faster and tougher than humans... And with sharper senses too. And they still aren't a match to human ingenuity and cooperation.

That's the problem with a setting that has the same limitations. Unless they are so powerful that humans can't even scratch them even with advanced tech... Eventually humans (or whatever other sapient race takes our place) will turn them into resources and/or entertainment.

I disagree with this first you are underestimating human physical potential are ancient ancestors did fine with our combination of extreme endurance and ability to throw things really hard. While many of our senses are inferior to other animals our binocular color vision is actually pretty good.

Second its easy to create setups where humans are neither helpless or able to trivialize them particularly when the supernatural is involved. Imagine a hypothetical setting where shadows roam the world killing with a touch however shadows can be driven off by light. So in this hypothetical setting cities are constantly bathed in a perimeter of light always worried about power shortages. So that took me like a minute to create a rough draft of a setting where advanced technology is only able to keep the monsters at bay but not actually trivialize the problem.

Third who says we get advanced tech? If saber tooth tigers could fly and breath fire it would have been a lot harder for those ancient cave men to get to the position where guns would eventually be an option. And if eventually they do and wipe out the monsters all you need to do is set the story before that happens.

[Lemmy]

I disagree with this first you are underestimating human physical potential are ancient ancestors did fine with our combination of extreme endurance and ability to throw things really hard. While many of our senses are inferior to other animals our binocular color vision is actually pretty good.

True... But none of those things would have done our ancestors any good if they aren't smart enough to create and use tools and tactics. It was their big brains that allowed humans to become more than just a local species of apes.

Second its easy to create setups where humans are neither helpless or able to trivialize them particularly when the supernatural is involved. Imagine a hypothetical setting where shadows roam the world killing with a touch however shadows can be driven off by light. So in this hypothetical setting cities are constantly bathed in a perimeter of light always worried about power shortages. So that took me like a minute to create a rough draft of a setting where advanced technology is only able to keep the monsters at bay but not actually trivialize the problem.

While there was a little bit of colorful hyperbole in my previous post... This setting very neatly fit into the 'humans can't scratch it". Because, as you mentioned, these shadows aren't destroyed... They are just driven away. Assuming the shadows are non-sentient, the most likely development of such a setting would be that humans would either be wiped out early in their technological development or eventually create the tools and infrastructure necessary to basically trivialize the threat... But of course, you can always have the story take place in the period before such an infrastructure is built.

I mean, we have humans living rather comfortably in places of extreme cold... Cold that will kill anyone exposed to it for a little while and can only be driven away by heat sources. That's not all that far from roaming shadows killing anyone who strays too far off the light.

Third who says we get advanced tech? If saber tooth tigers could fly and breath fire it would have been a lot harder for those ancient cave men to get to the position where guns would eventually be an option. And if eventually they do and wipe out the monsters all you need to do is set the story before that happens.

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, you can always have the story take place in the time between "threat shows up" and "threat is trivialized".

The point is... If the shadows (or any other threat) lack the sentience to learn and adapt (and never gain said sentience) it will eventually be made trivial unless it destroys whatever sentient beings are around before they can develop the tools, technology and infrastructure necessary to deal with it.

So a non-sentient threat has a time limit before it's "defeated"... Although, admittedly, said limit can be extended due to scarcity of resources and/or focus of the sentient beings (e.g.: if they decide to fight a war among themselves instead of dealing with the shadows).

[awa]

True... But none of those things would have done our ancestors any good if they aren't smart enough to create and use tools and tactics. It was their big brains that allowed humans to become more than just a local species of apes.

While there was a little bit of colorful hyperbole in my previous post... This setting very neatly fit into the 'humans can't scratch it". Because, as you mentioned, these shadows aren't destroyed... They are just driven away. Assuming the shadows are non-sentient, the most likely development of such a setting would be that humans would either be wiped out early in their technological development or eventually create the tools and infrastructure necessary to basically trivialize the threat... But of course, you can always have the story take place in the period before such an infrastructure is built.

I mean, we have humans living rather comfortably in places of extreme cold... Cold that will kill anyone exposed to it for a little while and can only be driven away by heat sources. That's not all that far from roaming shadows killing anyone who strays too far off the light.


As I mentioned in the last paragraph, you can always have the story take place in the time between "threat shows up" and "threat is trivialized".

The point is... If the shadows (or any other threat) lack the sentience to learn and adapt (and never gain said sentience) it will eventually be made trivial unless it destroys whatever sentient beings are around before they can develop the tools, technology and infrastructure necessary to deal with it.

So a non-sentient threat has a time limit before it's "defeated"... Although, admittedly, said limit can be extended due to scarcity of resources and/or focus of the sentient beings (e.g.: if they decide to fight a war among themselves instead of dealing with the shadows).

1) my understanding is that the current belief in science is that humans got good at hunting (through endurance running) and stealing from other predators (by our ability to throw rocks) and only then once we had the protein did we start to get the real big brains. It does not take a huge brain to out endure prey, nor does it take a huge brain to throw a rock real hard.

2) fine we could say prolonged exposure to light does destroy a shadow (or makes them vulnerable to conventional weapons what ever fits the type of story we want) but more shadows are born so that an equilibrium is maintained.

3) who says the shadows are their from the beginning? I actual pictured it as something appearing around the time of the cold war, where their arrival puts things into a post apocalyptic state, where their are communities holding on but not really producing new technology.

I mean if I were designing a game/book/movie I would tweak all these things to get the kind of story I what this is just the hyper rough stream of conscious version. (at least partially inspired by a vampire anime I recently saw now that I think about it for literally more than a minute.)

edit
also are criteria is no more than a feral animal, well feral animals can be pretty clever their not mindless

[Draconi Redfir]

Second its easy to create setups where humans are neither helpless or able to trivialize them particularly when the supernatural is involved. Imagine a hypothetical setting where shadows roam the world killing with a touch however shadows can be driven off by light. So in this hypothetical setting cities are constantly bathed in a perimeter of light always worried about power shortages. So that took me like a minute to create a rough draft of a setting where advanced technology is only able to keep the monsters at bay but not actually trivialize the problem.

oh hey that reminds me of another setting.

Final Fantasy: Spirits Within.

The world's been taken over by super-powered ghosts, and while some of those ghosts are formerly sapient entities, the ghosts are more feral and just care about consuming the living. At the very least, none of them seem interested in communicating.

[Precure]

I don't think any prehistoric human civilization would survive against superpowered animals.

[Draconi Redfir]

I don't think any prehistoric human civilization would survive against superpowered animals.

why do the super powered animals need to be everywhere while human civilization is prehistoric?


Just have the super-powered animals in one place, the humans and non-super-powered animals in another place, and then it's only once Humans get up to an industrial-era level that the super-animals start noticeably branching out from their original environments, either due to human intervention or not.


Or the super-animals could all just stay on their continent while the humans and non-super animals stay on theirs. nobody said ALL animals or ALL feral creatures had to be super. Only that all supers had to be feral.


You can easily have a world where the only "superpowered beings" are one or two species of feral dragons or other creature, and the entire rest of the ecosystem is made up of mundane creatures.


The setting of "Impossible Creatures" could work as well if you're okay with the super-beings being man-made... and if you consider an animal created by fusing a snapping turtle with a cheetah "super-powered".

[Mechalich]

One of the things about having non-sapient super-powered creatures suppress the development of human society is that those beings is that for such suppression to work those beings have to treat humans as preferential prey. This is fairly rare, for some very good ecological and evolutionary reasons. So if you want them to suppress human development - especially preferentially, rather than simply suppressing all development the way Godzilla stalking the world does - you need to engineer a human targeting mechanism into them.

[Draconi Redfir]

One of the things about having non-sapient super-powered creatures suppress the development of human society is that those beings is that for such suppression to work those beings have to treat humans as preferential prey. This is fairly rare, for some very good ecological and evolutionary reasons. So if you want them to suppress human development - especially preferentially, rather than simply suppressing all development the way Godzilla stalking the world does - you need to engineer a human targeting mechanism into them.

one way to get around it could be to have the super-powered animals be an invasive species. From another continent, time, or planet maybe.

See for example the Dragons in "Reign of fire", the Death Angels from "A quiet place", or the creatures from "The Silence". All of them are invasive species that manage to upend modern human society due to serval key factors.

-Their introduction was fast and unexpected
-They came in Bulk
-They saw everything alive as prey.


Granted by the end of their respective films, humanity has found a way to if not completely eradicate them, at least fight back to some degree. But there was still a period of years between their introduction and humanity managing to get back onto it's feet.

[awa]

I don't think any prehistoric human civilization would survive against superpowered animals.

oh I don't know it depends on the nature of the being. A deer that never ages is no harder to hunt then a regular deer, a stone goat that eats rocks is not a significant threat to humans. An invulnerable elephant is just something to be avoided. A tiger with poison claws is only slightly more dangerous than a normal tiger and can be killed many of the same ways.

grabbing some random mythology critters
most variations on unicorn are either a non issue or actively helpful
kelppie while dangerous are easily avoided by the knowledgeable
Mongolian death-worms can simply be avoided by not wondering around in deserts
actually a lot of the magic horses are either helpful or avoidable and since I was looking at mythology many are highly isolated so maybe our prehistoric humans just know here be dragons.

Actually thinking about this as I write this could be an interesting setting you have these wise old hunters who have learned all the tricks of these deadly animals and they have built their society around them maybe they live in trees at night to hide from terrible nocturnal animals that don't climb, maybe they live in bogs where the soft ground greatly hinders super dense predators.

You just need to tweak the monsters strengths and weakness to get the required level of threat.

[Lemmy]

1) my understanding is that the current belief in science is that humans got good at hunting (through endurance running) and stealing from other predators (by our ability to throw rocks) and only then once we had the protein did we start to get the real big brains. It does not take a huge brain to out endure prey, nor does it take a huge brain to throw a rock real hard.

I'm not sure. I'm an engineer not a biologist... But even so, if we never developed our brains, we'd have stayed just a local species of ape. I mean... A lot animals survive with even more limited capabilities than our fragile human bodies have, but there's a reason we don't see any other vertebrate come even close to human's level of prosperity, no matter how awesome they are (well, unless they are tied to humans).

2) fine we could say prolonged exposure to light does destroy a shadow (or makes them vulnerable to conventional weapons what ever fits the type of story we want) but more shadows are born so that an equilibrium is maintained.

3) who says the shadows are their from the beginning? I actual pictured it as something appearing around the time of the cold war, where their arrival puts things into a post apocalyptic state, where their are communities holding on but not really producing new technology.

I mean if I were designing a game/book/movie I would tweak all these things to get the kind of story I what this is just the hyper rough stream of conscious version. (at least partially inspired by a vampire anime I recently saw now that I think about it for literally more than a minute.)

edit
also are criteria is no more than a feral animal, well feral animals can be pretty clever their not mindless

Sure... I'm not disagreeing with you.

The thing is... If a threat can't learn and adapt (or be guided by something that can), then humans will find a way around it... Now, that may not matter for the setting, because the story can take place during the gods-know-how-many years it takes for that to happen...

The issue is: Players are humans too.

So, if the threat only acts mindlessly, players WILL find a way to make it effectively irrelevant... Or at least not nearly as threatening as it was supposed to be. It's why so many zombie stories and games either focus on humans-vs-human conflict or add some sort of super-zombies. A threat that can't adapt won't stay much of a threat for long... Unless you add external factors to it, but that's basically confirming that by itself, the original threat as much of as a factor anymore.

[awa]

I'm not sure. I'm an engineer not a biologist... But even so, if we never developed our brains, we'd have stayed just a local species of ape. I mean... A lot animals survive with even more limited capabilities than our fragile human bodies have, but there's a reason we don't see any other vertebrate come even close to human's level of prosperity, no matter how awesome they are (well, unless they are tied to humans).


Sure... I'm not disagreeing with you.

The thing is... If a threat can't learn and adapt (or be guided by something that can), then humans will find a way around it... Now, that may not matter for the setting, because the story can take place during the gods-know-how-many years it takes for that to happen...

The issue is: Players are humans too.

So, if the threat only acts mindlessly, players WILL find a way to make it effectively irrelevant... Or at least not nearly as threatening as it was supposed to be. It's why so many zombie stories and games either focus on humans-vs-human conflict or add some sort of super-zombies. A threat that can't adapt won't stay much of a threat for long... Unless you add external factors to it, but that's basically confirming that by itself, the original threat as much of as a factor anymore.

I dont disagree that biologically our ancestors were built for large open areas and we are far less effective in say jungles if you take away our brain, but my point was that saying all animals are super-powered compared to humans is denying the fact that a proto man with a rock somehow found a way to get enough calories to feed that big brain of his. Those proto humans might not have dominated the world but they were a top predator within their specific biome.

Humans do a lot of things few animals do are upright bipedal-ism allows us to see very far at an angle that most animals cant, and frees are hands for carrying things we have absurd accuracy and power when it comes to throwing things a chimp literal cant throw overhand only underhand tosses. An underhand toss might be good for throwing poop but can you imagine want a half dozen major league pitcher could do to something with a baseball sized rock?

In regards to rpgs yes d&d does tend to foster the idea that all problems can be overcome and defeated rather than simply avoided and survived but this is the media discussion thread not the d&d or even rpg section so I dont know that it matters.

Edit
again feral animal is not mindless, humans have been competing with animals for our entire existence.
Though thinking about it many of the biggest problems like the toads or rabbits in Australia and other invasive species are kinda dumb. And that's a species without supernatural ability if those toads I dont know released emps when killed it wouldn't make them easier to get rid of.