Supersoldier

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Supersoldier is a fictional term often used to describe a soldier that operates beyond normal physical human limits. Supersoldiers are common in science fiction literature, films, TV programs, computer and video games, but have also made appearances in other related genres, such as military fiction and spy fiction. Many depictions of supersoldiers treat them as shock troops or heavy infantry, although others feature them as elite commandos or special forces personnel.

Supersoldiers are usually heavily augmented, either through eugenics, genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, drugs, an extreme training regimen (usually with high casualty rates), or other scientific and pseudoscientific means or a combination of any of those. Occasionally, some instances also use paranormal methods, such as black magic. The creators of such programs are viewed often as mad scientists or stern military men, depending on the emphasis, as their programs will typically go past ethical boundaries in the pursuit of science or military might.

Examples

Clone troopers in the Star Wars series are the precursors to the original trilogy's Imperial stormtroopers: cloned troops with superior training, and all-around physical prowess.

Frank Herbert's Dune saga has many examples of entire armies of supersoldiers, such as the Padishah Emperor's Imperial Sardaukar, who hail from the penal colony Salusa Secundus, where six out of every thirteen people die before the age of eleven. The strongest of these prisoners are selected and subjected to inhuman conditioning that kills a third of the remainder. Conditioned with a disregard for safety and human life and an inability to disobey orders, a single Sardaukar was a match for ten soldiers in the service of the other Houses of the Lansdraad. Under the Emperor Leto Atreides II, the Fish Speakers, an all female fighting force who were fanatically trained and eugenically bred, became the promiment and most effective military force in the known universe. The Fish Speakers were eventually eclipsed by the Honoured Matres, evolved from offshoots of the Fish Speakers and the Bene Gesserit organization, that also has a superhuman reputation.

In Battletech the warrior caste of the Clans is largely composed of soldiers created by means of eugenics, intended to give them superiour skills in their respective fields of action. Infantry units (elementals) have superior size, strength and endurance, pilots of air- and spacecraft have improved reflexes, perceptions and cognitive capabilities, and MechWarriors, the operators of BattleMechs are somewhat a combination of the two.

In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium Universe, the Saurons are a genetically engineered race of supersoldiers. The army of the planet Frystaat also fields what might be called supersoldiers, being an elite, highly trained commando force bred to survive on a harsh, high-gravity world. The alien Moties also have a specialized Warrior caste, a subspecies bred for tens of thousands of years to be the perfect fighters and bodyguards.

Though it does not play a large role in the series, Larry Niven's Known Space universe makes reference to a group who wear the Hellflare, a flame tattoo that signifies the wearer is trained to fight Kzinti warriors in single combat. The majority, perhaps all, of these individuals are implied to be Jinxians, another group of Humans adapted to a high-gravity planet by selective breeding. The Hellflare wearers were first mentioned by Niven in the short story "Flatlander" (from the collection Neutron Star) as 'background color'; the first one to be used as a character is the Jinxian Daff Gambiel in the novelette "Hey Diddle Diddle" by Thomas T. Thomas in Man-Kzin Wars V.

The Galactic Patrol of E. E. "Doc" Smith was a military organization made up of the Lensmen, the end results of centuries of breeding programs among several races on dozens of worlds, designed to be not only physically and mentally superior, but morally superior as well, and armed with Lenses that give them telepathic abilities. The Patrol also had ground troops in the form of the Valerian marines, a human-offshoot subspecies bred on a high-gravity world (similar to the Frystaaters and Jinxians, above).

The TV series Andromeda featured the Nietzscheans, a highly competitive, genetically enhanced offshoot of humanity.

In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, the Mobile Infantry could be considered a form of supersoldier.
In the computer game , partially inspired by Starship Troopers, the Strike Forces of the Centauri clans use Powered Battle Armor, similar in nature to the Mobile Infantry.

In the computer game Deus Ex, the player character JC Denton, and his brother Paul are nanotechnologically-augmented agents. Augmentation canisters that can be found and installed in the game allow for new and improved abilities, enchancing agility, stealth or combat.

Captain America was to be the first of a line of super-soldiers, a plan that was ruined when the creator of the Super-Soldier serum was killed. Other characters in the Marvel Universe, such as Wolverine (Weapon X) and X-23 are continuations of those experiments.

The SPARTAN-II cyborgs, including the main character, Master Chief, from the video games and Halo 2. Nicole, also known as SPARTAN-458, in the Dead or Alive series is also a SPARTAN.

In the Metroid series, Samus Aran could count as a super soldier, since she was infused with Chozo blood (and later Metroid DNA). Also, the fearsome Bounty Hunter Kanden is the result of many years of research into creating a Supersoldier - However, the mental strain drove him utterly insane. His only goal is to prove himself the best Bounty Hunter in the galaxy. He has never reached the popularity of Sylux and Samus Aran and seeks out the secret of the Alimbics in order to prove himself the very best.

In , the Dominion genetically engineered the Jem'Hadar.

Also in the Star Trek Universe, Khan Noonien Singh was one of the Augments whose superior abilities and ambition led to the Eugenics War.

In the Wildstorm Universe, Team 7 was exposed to the Gen Factor in order to turn them into super-powered soldiers. This is, directly or indirectly, the origin of many of Wildstorm's major superheroes.

In Stargate SG-1 the Goa'uld System Lord Anubis develops the Kull Warriors (first named supersoldiers or Anubis drones by the SGC personnel).

In the Metal Gear video game series, the Les Enfants Terribles project is used to develop the ultimate soldier and spawns the main character, Solid Snake, as well as his brothers Liquid Snake and Solidus Snake. In addition, many of the main characters throughout the series would be considered supersoldiers, due to their superhuman and paranormal abilities.

The Combine Elite is referred to as a super soldier in Half-Life 2. They are heavily augmented cyborgs and have faster reflexes and can endure more than the other human and trans-human forces of the Combine Overwatch.

The Terran Ghosts from the game StarCraft are psychic Special Forces soldiers trained from childhood to focus their powers into enhanced combat abilities. Most are also cybernetically enhanced.

In No One Lives Forever 2, supersoldiers are created by H.A.R.M. an evil crime organization.

In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, there are Nazi machine-men, created by a mad scientist named Wilhelm Strasse, aka. "Death's Head". They are created through a "bizarre synthesis of robotic and biological engineering", and they serve as a springboard toward the creation of paranormal Dark Knights. Despite their interim status, they were formidable in their own right. Their equipment included highly-advanced armour, autocannons, and rocket lauchers, among others.

In , Dark Troopers are a class of robotic Imperial Stormtroopers, tougher and deadlier than ordinary stormtroopers. In the Expanded Universe, they are cyborgs of Elite Stormtroopers.

In The X-Files, Super-Soldiers are human-alien hybrids that exhibit extreme strength and seemingly cannot die. They were apparently designed to colonize the earth.

In Warhammer 40,000, Space Marines are elite soldiers, modified through gene therapy, surgical modifications, and hypnotic indoctrination.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, Saruman's Uruk-hai would be considered a form of supersoldier, combining the strongest traits from Orc and Man, while eliminating hinderances such as the Orc's weakness to daylight.

In Rifts, there exist many forms of supersoldier mercenaries such as the Borg, or full-conversion combat cyborgs; the Juicer, a chemical-enhanced soldier gifted with incredible speed, reflexes, and strength from a constant supply of performance-enhancing drugs and substances, but with a severely shortened lifespan; and the Crazy, named because of the M.O.M. conversion (Mind Over Matter), that rewires their brain to increase their speed, reflexes and ability, but leads to mental instability and eventually insanity.

In the film Universal Soldier, the two lead characters are biologically-enhanced reanimated cyborg soldiers as part of an American supersoldier project. Robocop also has a similar premise.

The movie Soldier was based entirely on the premise of supersoldiers, particularly the psychological effect of raising someone to be a human weapon.

The 1977 film Shock Waves, where Nazi zombies were failed subjects in a project to develop a soldier who can survive in a multitude of hostile environments (such as the freezing cold of the Russian winter) with a minimum of protective equipment. The subjects became impervious to normal weapons but went insane in the process and where eventually abandoned on a deserted island.

Shane "Goose" Gooseman, one of the heroes of The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, was the result of a government genetic engineering experiment to develop "supertroopers". Other supertroopers exist, but many were exposed to a gas to speed up their mutation and became aggressive and unstable in the process.

The Manticore project and the Familiar cult from the TV series Dark Angel, whose shared end goal is the creation of supersoldiers, either through genetic manipulation or selective breeding, respectively. The heroine, Max, is one of the results of the Manticore project.

In the animated television series Exosquad, the Neo Warriors were mass-produced as brutish shock troops, while the smarter Neo Lords were designed for infiltration and commando activities. Even the common Neosapien troops are physically superior to humans in strength, reflexes, endurance, and senses.

In Warcraft, the Chaos Orcs become supersoldiers after drinking Mannoroth's blood.

The PC game ÜberSoldier. You play as a German soldier in WW2 who is killed in battle, but reanimated by scientists who give you superhuman abilities. With the help of other rebels, you escape and turn against the Nazis.

In the PC game F.E.A.R. the player is an experimental Special forces operative with superhuman reflexes, who must fight against an army of cloned soldiers that are telepathically linked to their insane commander.

In most games of the Command & Conquer series there appeared tiberium-enhanced infantry soldiers.

In the survival-horror video game series Resident Evil, the Tyrants can count as super soldiers, they are humans infected with the T-Virus to turn them into Bio-Organic Weapons. Also the villains Albert Wesker and Alexia Ashford are infected with special versions of the virus.

Rogue Trooper and the other G.I.s are genetically modified troops designed to be resistant to all known NBC dangers.

In the virtual band of Gorillaz it has been revealed indiscreetly that Noodle is a supersoldier.

In the movie , Shin- Ra used mako to turn anyone in the army, or SOLDIERs, into superhumans. Also, the characters Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz seem to be superhumans with incredible speed and deadly accuracy with their weapons.

In Illuminatus!, Hagbard Celine claims that a division of Waffen S.S. troops were ritually sacrificed and sunk under 'Lake Totenkopf', so that they might be reanimated as mystically-enhanced supersoldiers at some later date. Due to the intervention of Eris, these soldiers destroyed each other in a fight over the Apple of Discord; however, it is later implied by Joe Malik that the battle with the Nazis was an illusion, meant to give a comprehensible form to what was actually a metaphysical conflict between Celine and the Saure siblings.

In Crysis, the player controls a Delta Force soldier who wears a "nano muscle suit", allowing him to dynamically enhance either his strength, movement speed or armour protection.

Supersoldier

Examples

See Also