Supersoldier

The supersoldier (or super soldier) is a fictional concept soldier, often capable of operating beyond normal human limits or abilities either through genetic modification or cybernetic augmentation.

Not to be confused with the Amalgam Comics character Super-Soldier or the Marvel UK title Super Soldiers.
Concept design for exoskeletal amplification for body armor.[1]

Overview

Supersoldiers are common in military science fiction literature, films, and video games. Examples include Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein and The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Supersoldiers are also prevalant in the science fiction universes of Warhammer 40,000 and The Horus Heresy. Critic Mike Ryder has argued that the supersoldiers depicted in these worlds serve as a mirror to present-day issues around sovereignty, military ethics and the law.[2]

Fictional supersoldiers are usually heavily augmented, either through surgical means, eugenics, genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, drugs, brainwashing, traumatic events, an extreme training regimen or other scientific and pseudoscientific means. Occasionally, some instances also use paranormal methods or technology and science of extraterrestrial origin. In entertainment, the creators of such programs are viewed often as mad scientists or stern military personnel depending on the emphasis, as their programs would typically go past ethical boundaries in the pursuit of science or military might.

China

In 2022, the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences reported that a team of military scientists inserted a gene from the tardigrade into human embryonic stem cells in an experiment with the stated possibility of creating soldiers resistant to acute radiation syndrome who could survive nuclear fallout.[3]

Cyborg soldier

Some fictional supersoldiers can also be categorized as cyborgs or cybernetic organisms because of augmentations that are intended to enhance human capabilities or to exceed physical human restrictions.[4]

U.S. Army

In the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), Welsh journalist Jon Ronson documented how the U.S. military repeatedly tried and failed to train soldiers in the use of parascientific and pseudoscientific combat techniques during the Cold War,[5] experimenting with New Age tactics and psychic phenomena such as remote viewing, astral projections, "death touch" and mind reading against various Soviet targets. The book also inspired a war comedy of the same name (2009) directed by Grant Heslov, starring George Clooney.[6]

See also

Archetypes in fiction

Fictional examples

References
  1. The future soldier. Archived 2019-08-06 at the Wayback Machine A Soldier Domain for Full Spectrum Warfare. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
  2. Ryder, Mike (2021). "Conscripts from birth: war and soldiery in the grim darkness of the far future" (PDF). Fantastika. 5 (1). Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  3. Chen, Stephen (March 29, 2023). "Chinese team behind extreme animal gene experiment says it may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  4. Armin Krishnan (24 October 2013). "The Cyborgization of Human Soldiers". Footnote1. Archived from the original on 24 May 2015. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  5. Tim Adams (21 November 2004). "Acting the giddy goat". Book review. Guardian News. Archived from the original on 10 September 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2013. The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, Picador, pp.240.
  6. Heussner, Ki Mae (Nov 9, 2009). "Psychic Spies: Any Truth in 'Men Who Stare at Goats?'". ABCnews.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 13 July 2013. Ronson, Jon (2009). The Men Who Stare at Goats. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1439181775.
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