8 Superpowers That Would Actually Suck

7. Super Speed

So, The Flash can supposedly run as fast (or faster, depending on your standpoint) than the speed of light. This would be amazingly useful for long journeys, getting boring tasks out of the way and evading super-villains. This super speed, however, comes at a price, and we can blame Einstein for this one. According to special relativity, an object's (or superhero's) velocity will affect the speed at which time appears to run for them.

Basically, the faster you go, the slower time appears to run, and time will slow down exponentially as you approach the speed of light. Even at a relatively "low" speed, say, 10% the speed of light (about 68,400,000 mph), clocks slow by around 1%. Hit that up to 95% the speed of light, clocks will slow to a third of their usual speed. The really mind melting thing, however, is that to you, the person travelling at super speeds, time would seem to pass normally, but you're actually travelling much slower through time than a stationary observer. If you could catch a glimpse of a stationary clock as you whizzed past, it would appear to be running far too fast.

This means that, by the time you have stopped, everyone else will be a little bit older than you are. The cumulative effect of this, depending on how often you use your power (which is probably going to be a lot, because screw sitting in traffic), is that all of your friends and loved ones will appear to whither, age and die at a faster rate than you. That's if the friction of the air around you didn't cause your skin to attractively slough off. This, of course, indirectly gives you a secondary superpower of eternal (or at least extended) youth, but only because you end up missing a lot of stuff, which sort of renders super-speed a bit pointless.