Now Flash has had many revamps over the years and his origin changes around a little each time so I'm going to use the most widely accepted form of his origin and work from there. Barry Allen was a forensic scientist known for being slow, forgetful, and frequently late for just about everything. Until the fateful day when he stayed late at the lab only to be struck by a bolt of lightning and dowsed in a cocktail of unnamed chemicals.
This combo gifted him with the power of super speed and he went on to don the scarlet spandex of the hero Flash. A highly unlikely and shall I say impossible occurrence for any real person to have, but as I have stated before superhuman feats are possible through the hormone control in the brain.
What are the symptoms of fear I have stated before? The rapid creation of glucose increasing the level of energy the body has on hand to perform tasks. One of the accepted quirks of the flash is how much food he has to consume in the down time after he is fighting crime. A 'super' metabolism so to speak. Possibly of byproduct of a rapid usage of glucose in the fear state to force the body into faster movement. Flash is also known to heal rapidly from wounds another symptoms of the fear state due to increased blood flow and platelets moving around faster.
Among Flash's other feats it has been noted that his brain is able to function at a much faster level than before the incident. While not a symptom of the fear state this can possibly be tied back to the lightning bolt. Nerves run on a series of impulses much like electric the lightning could have possibly done something to the nervous system in Flash's body.
My final point of evidence is I have already spoken of the hormone that creates the fear state, epinephrine. What is to say that the random assortment of chemicals found in a forensic lab couldn't have created a large release of the hormone epinephrine into the body coupled with the lightning throwing his nerves out of wack the brain could forget to turn the fear response off leaving him in a constant fear state and granting Flash super speed as a side effect.
Food for thought
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Very interesting stuff with all this talk about superpowers and such. I'm not sure if you've researched or addressed this but when the body is pumped full of adrenaline in a fight or flight situation, what would you say the upper limits for the human body in terms of speed?
ReplyDeleteI will talk about that in the second part.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I was waiting for a post like this one! XD It's always awesome getting to talk about superpowers and what-not.
ReplyDeleteSo you said that he could be in a constant fear state... is that similar to the fear gas that the villain Scarecrow uses then? Would his victims be considered examples of the side-effect(s) of trying to "unlock" the hidden speed, strength, etc. that comes with the state of fear?
Something to that effect it would more like being in a mild state of lethal shock of how all they can do is react negatively another example of this in a more extreme circumstance could be the joker gas.
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