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Now consider this picture:

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Ignore the fact that The Hulk clearly needs to go to the bathroom; we've been over that.

See that guy on the left? He's effectively immortal and invulnerable -- nothing he's facing is capable of putting a scratch on him. See that woman next to him? She's a regular person. A stray piece of shrapnel can put her in a wheelchair or erase her from the universe forever. They're standing side by side, facing the same threat, but one of them has nothing at stake. It's like a game of Russian Roulette in which Thor gets to use a Nerf gun during his turns.

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A hundred years later, when all of those other people are long dead, will Thor even remember them? How well do you remember your friends from kindergarten? Hell, do you even remember who you were back then? Those of you in your 30s and 40s -- do the decisions you made as a teenager make any sense to you now, or do you see them as the actions of a different, stupider person? You change so much in just those couple of decades ... so who would Thor be if you found him 500 years from now? Or a thousand?

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How do you deal with having the same family arguments for millennia?

What about Superman, a million years from now? By then humans would have long evolved into some kind of albino squid creatures communicating via telepathy. Would he still be tromping around in his red and blue suit standing up for truth and justice among the squid people? Would their concepts of truth and justice be so strange to him that they'd regard him as nothing more than some kind of inscrutable ancient beast that speaks only in indecipherable grunts? Would they worship him as an eternal god? And if one day Superman decided to just squat down and take a shit on one of them, what would that even look like?

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David Wong is the Executive Editor of Cracked.com and a NYT bestselling author, his long-awaited new novel is about cybernetic criminals and other futuristic shit like that. Pre-order it at Amazon, B&N, BAM!, Indiebound, iTunes, or Powell's. You can read the first seven chapters for free by clicking below:

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For more from David, check out 5 Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Protesters and 5 Helpful Answers To Society's Most Uncomfortable Questions.