Real World Style Super Hero Team...

Let's say you were a billionaire and you wanted to form a "secret" "hero" team. That means no one knows who you are, preferably don't know you exist, and are out to fight crime.

In putting together this team what would you need on this team to effectively infiltrate, attain evidence, keep hidden, and put this team at as little risk as possible while maintaining a kill only if necessary stance on fighting crime.

That means in personnel, gear, or anything else.



You're going to want to have a building that is off the grid. No signals in or out. So you are going to need Generators and/or solar powered.
This building is going to have to have a garage and a medical center as well as a advanced computer system with self built OS.

You also are going to want Signal Stations and drop point buildings that are destructible all which are within range of the primary HQ so that HQ is a primary coordinating point with all the important stuff there, but the safe house stations are where you control have command control system and such. Each of the safe houses will also have to have a med bat of some sort.

You're going to want a hacker, maybe two
You're going to want everyone trained in field medical or whatever its called
You also will want whatever is necessary for any surgery that could arise that you can't take them to the hospital for. And at least 2 people that can lead that group for all those surgeries...what those i don't know...i know bullet wounds, but is there anything else?

You're going to want a field commander and a HQ commander (whatever their called)... How many people do you think should be on the field? However many there are it's certain that they should trained more for hand to hand and pistols than anything heavy. i'd also think you'd want to have a tech expert in the field.

minimum age? Maximum age?

Should the team know each other? It's easier to keep things secret if the team doesn't know who is in charge and how many people they are really working with.

Another addition to the team might be a few cops or lawyers. Those who could "find" the evidence, or weight in on it's legality before they pursue something that ends up not being worth their time.

What should the policy be towards police and capture? How much info is allowed to be divulged?

Also when when we talk gear remember that i think we should be going towards more light weight, easily replaceable either through self making or easy to pick up and are not traceable or are easily destroyed without much thought.

Without any superpowers to speak of, what you'd end up with would be a group of mercenaries. Vigilantes that take the law into their own hands.
Even with a kill only as needed mandate, lethal force would still be the most used method, even more so after the 1st few 'evidence gathering' missions resulted in legal loopholes setting the perp free.

Things would start to fall apart from there. Regardless of how many measures you put in place to ensure secrecy or how well you secure the group the truth will get out.

The suspect would no doubt tell his attorney all about the 'masked men with machine guns' that busted into his place with a flashbang grenade. After the 3rd or 4th such suspect relayed the same information to the D.A. they would have no choice other than starting an investigation. The more this occurs the more likely it is various departments would form a task force, specifically geared towards rooting you out. If they were unable to, due to your funds hiding them and you keep doing it... It wouldn't be long before the feds were involved with the case. No amount of money will keep you in business at that point. At least not in the same manner.

The 1st time your vigilante group kills someone prominent, even if guilty, there will be a public outcry for your arrest. The media, once they get wind of it, and they would pretty swiftly, would be on it day and night. With that kind of publicity, and possible rewards for info, no amount of 'off the grid' will protect you for long. Not while still allowing you to do the job.

Then you have the issue of loyalty. With a ragtag group of Mercs, no matter what the mix is, be it they know each other or not, one or more of them will end up getting upset over something. It could be that their tactics aren't being followed, perhaps they want more pay. Anything from jealousy to guilt will end up making one of your own turn against you. Then it would be game over, as the law doesn't care about motive or justification.

Groups of this nature have been tried countless times in various incantations in various locales. Always ending up being forced to come into the open, to disclose policies and ultimately to cease activity of a vigilante nature. What results is those groups downgrade into WatchDog coalitions. The very inactivity that spurred them to form in the 1st place. Or the more common Bounty Hunter outfits, but they have very strict laws they must go by.

The only way I could see a group like this working would be if they decided to not employ law enforcement. To act as judge jury and executioner. That would eliminate the most obvious issues but then you still have to figure out how to dispose of the bodies without being caught etc etc. Not to mention the ethical considerations invovled with going that route.

What he said.

Real life examples of this are doomed to fail... we can't do in the real world what comics can. Also, any 'evidence' you gather would be inadmissable due to it being arrived at illegally. So, the only justice that will be meted out would be that against the vigilante clandestine organization.

I don't think that is true.
You need only be off the grid for your operations but not completely.
You also can switch up and modify vehicles and find ways of getting around which is one of the ways to track you
You could set up ways of getting around that would make it so you couldn't be tracked back such as through underground passage ways between buildings that are hidden.

As far as evidence goes all that is needed for entering without a warrant is suspicion that something wrong is happening. A 911 call for example and a loud fight or something would certainly fit the bill.

Corporate can be worked from any number of angles...for example an employee that just happens to get files that are incriminating sent to them "accidentally"

I'm sure things like this would work.

Further you could work out a way fund this venture by way of having several groups/people that get orders from others who get orders from others so that noone would know who is in charge per se even if the funder was in the room. You could even go so far as to hand a set of orders to some random person off the street have them give it back to you and then say that "someone handed it to you and told you to hand it to the person at x spot"

It sounds a bit nuts but i think you could pull it off with enough money and ingenuity

I just recently read a book in which the superheroes served mostly as emergency response-type teams. There wasn't much call for crime fighting, as the police could handle that, just as they always did.

But, the ability to respond quickly to disasters and use their powers to rescue people within minutes was something that non-powered first responders couldn't do.

Made sense to me and probably the kind of team I'd put together. I know this doesn't answer the question in the OP, sorry about that.

I suspect you might underestimate the ability of simple things currently in place, like stoplight cameras and credit card/monetary tracking, not to mention modern forensic techniques, that would pretty quickly thwart anything like this in the real world. Not CSI garbage, I'm talking about real stuff. I think it's pretty tough to really get away with any kind of crime these days.

The way to make a group or Real World Superheroes would be with tights.

The point of superheroes is to inspire and transform society to emulate their efforts on a smaller scale...to make people better.

So here is a thought:

Instead of employing secrecy as in the OP, you go totally public.

You find and train Alpha Team, a group of idealistic, dedicated veterans with a sense of theatre (probably recruited from the ranks of professional wrestlers and sport fighters). You give them colorful code names, bullet resistant costumes, neat gadgets, and a published code of conduct.

Practicality is a secondary concern: they aren't assassins or soldiers (although they may have specialized gear for special missions); they are icons. The lack of truly 'super' gear will help keep you from being targeted by world powers, since it' s stuff they all have anyway, just packaged in colorful (and often deceptive) forms. Wrist blasters that are basically guns with laser sights, helmets with incorporated night vision goggles/cell phones/SCUBA, cool vehicles, that sort of thing.

You monitor and direct them from an island base.

You see to it that they operate "just inside the law" (gross violations of the code are cause for summary expulsion and they agreed to transponder implants when they signed up). Their primary objective is public relations: cleanup in the wake of disasters, promoting charities, etc but they also investigate crime as citizens (or deputies where applicable).

Fighting crime is simplicity itself (although dangerous); you find out a certain residence is likely a crack house? Walk in, camera crews and all. If the residents open fire before you can so much as get inside, all the better; police are called and the situation is dealt with. They lie in ambush? It's all on Livestream and anything you do is self-defense. They lock up and won't appear on camera? Time to sweep the area for building code violations or squalid living conditions and get the local slumlord/city official on helmet-cam.

Everything is played for drama and bigger than life: tears are shed, heroes rise high and fall hard. Each spends a lot of time on camera, filmed by your crews and livestreamed to the Internet. Merchandise is produced and sold, although sponsorships and bribery are very publicly disdained. Mistakes and accidents are explored in detail, as are successes and milestones.

You build an Academy. Subsequent teams are fans that are recruited and trained, for a price (but scholarships are possible). Anyone can become a superhero, but only an elect few do. More selective than the marines, more selective than the Green Berets. This process is also public, with the reason for every washout given (though even the failures are directed at a career in show business or public service).

The main thing here is to promote the values (and stick to the values) that you beleive heroes should represent. Stay on message above all else. Do not compromise those values, whatever they may be. Whether they love or hate you, the world should understand you. Publish books on the subject.

Anyone who comes after you will be doing so on camera. This will encourage some (some gangs, terrorists and politicians) while discouraging many others.

Thoughts?

I think you'd have to be able to pay off a lot of cops, and as pointed out earlier, a lot of DA's. But then you'd be making them dirty cops, no matter the altruistic reason you might be paying them off for. So you're already creating more crime at this point, which negates a lot of the goals said group would be trying to achieve.

At best, you'd need a very small group of "heroes." 3, maybe 4 people, tops. People who would be in complete agreement not to kill ANYONE. Ever. Once you're group size becomes bigger, it becomes harder to keep everyone in agreement. Once that happens, you can forget about staying hidden.

Also, to avoid immediate suspicion, you'd have to forget day-to-day crimes altogether. The amount of witnesses would become too staggering to ever ignore. Your team would have to be more involved in larger scale espionage (bringing down cartels or dictatorships). That sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but bear with me. You'd be better off bringing people to justice through string-pulling, rather than smash and arrest tactics. So basically, you're talking about anonymous tips to cops after they (the vigilantes) found the evidence. Maybe even setting up scenarios where they (the vigilantes) have taken evidence they've found and placed it in situations cops would more easily find it. Sounds a bit like framing, but at least you're framing the correctly guilty party.

If you want to stay hidden, you'd have to make it so no one would stop to ever think anyone else could have been there. That means leaving little-to-no interaction with the criminals, as well as the law.

I'd take a different route. I'd scour the globe for gifted kids. May not be super powered per say, but obvious talents and natural abilities that are beyond normal can be nurtured to be greater. I'd recruit them from their parents in the pretense of a private school for gifted youngsters, and provide them with the best teachers as well as trainers to help them develop their physical bodies along with their talents towards the ultimate goal.

Once they are old enough, I'd let them become the elite under my guidance that serves to not only inspire the students at the school as well as the public with their abilities.

Professor X had something going with the X-Men. There are numerous kids that display remarkable abilities out there only to have those abilities wasted and lost by parents who do their darndest help their kids fit into society as we know it and peers that hound them to be like them. Kids with talents need to be provided with an environment of encouragement and direction.

I used to be bilingual, but I was pretty much hounded by my teachers to only speak one language in the school and threatened with expulsion if I didn't comply. My parents were new to the country and felt they had no choice but to back them up. That left scars for a long time, and it took years to train myself out of the stuttering problem I developed because of it, the other language I spoke is now lost as far as I can only understand some of it and can't speak or read it at all.

Couldn't do it without some form of clandestine government support or even multinational support. Add in the support of a major religion and you'd be golden. Start off training orphans and move up to include genetic manipulation to breed better operatives. That way you'd have a cadre of personnel that have no official records.