How many Batmen would $476m pay for?

Noted this morning that the US Mega Millions jackpot now stands at $476m. Typically, my first thought was "I could be a superhero with that much..."

...but I believe in sharing the karma. And considering that dedicated nerds have united to work out how much it would cost to build a Death Star...

How many cities could get their own Batman for $476m?

Actually...

I'd think Bruce Wayne would have to have far more than that before even considering being Batman.

Tony Stark would need twice that amount.

Half a billion, while absolute overkill to us peons, would go very very quickly for a superhero creating never seen before state of the art tech.
Not to mention the cost of silence and secrecy...

Then you have the added problem that, it's a one time deal. Since it isn't a sustainable income, you'd end up having a busted ol rusty batmobile in a few years.

If you just banked it as investment certificates rather than putting it near Wall Street (no point in giving money to villains),you could probably clear roughly $30m annually off that in interest alone.

Alternatively, you pose as a Silicon Valley dotcom winner, sink the cash into military or tech based R&D-based companies with good track records, and just set the designers the odd what-if "theoretical research" project as a geek treat.

So then you have an income, a backstory, technical consultants, and a source for all those odd spares they just never have in at Radio Shack or Tyre Pros.

Of course, if we're looking at funding as many Batmen as possible, one parent funding company that sources/supplies gear to multiple costumed crusaders (remember the start of The Dark Knight?) would be a more efficient model. It also gives villains the unnerving idea that you really can be everywhere..

Well lump sum is only $341 million and you will lose around half of that to taxes. Otherwise it's 26 payments of roughly $18 million a year before taxes.

Hmm... how much does it cost to buy two bullets?

It'll never happen.

Here's why: Bruce Wayne's father came across a Kryptonian probe that Jor-el deliberately sent that allowed Wayne tech to develop technology so Bruce would have the means to become Batman.

No amount of currency on Earth could develop a technology that could rival a technology that has been developed by an advanced civilization, such as Krypton.

Alien tech reverse engineered to give an earth based tech the edge it would need for a super hero detective?

Area51 territory if you ask me.

The best that someone could do is a very Batman-esque crimefighter, with skills, training, conditioning and a bit of modern ingenuity, But not anything close to the comics.

Case in point. The bat grapple gun. Doesn't exist anywhere but in fantasy.

tiny motors, power source, cables, hooks, strong enough, powerful enough, resilient enough to do all the batman things a batman does?

The closest thing reality has to that is a very large shotgun like device that can't be conveniently tucked away in a utility belt.

You would need alien tech and the means to reverse engineer it, sadly, only our governments have that going on, the most we can expect to see from any of that would be The circuit boards, processors your pc's use.

Tech and cash problems notwithstanding, how often would also have to replace one of your Batmen? Injury, age, killed in action....not to mention ensuring that they stay silent and don't start telling secrets to the media. Bruce Wayne trained since he was eight to become the Batman, so he's spent his life honing his mind and body and he has the zen-will to keep on going. How many people like that are you going to find?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

It could probably cover a Batman, but that Batman might not look much like the one who immediately springs to mind.

It would pay for a fair amount of existing gear, one time, even after taxes. This includes things like Toughbook computers or band-aids for after a fight, not Batman's more fanciful gadgets, let alone his advanced laboratory and its seemingly endless equipment. In many portrayals I've seen, the Batcave essentially contains both a hospital and a beyond state of the art crime lab, neither of which come cheap. (Note how in the real world, both things are generally operated by institutions, not even very wealthy individuals.) And, as others have already noted, if we're dealing with a world realistic enough for the costs of Bat-tech to be calculated, we're also probably dealing with one too realistic for much of it to exist.

Much of the remaining funds would be eaten up by the services of the Bat Support Network. Consider the costs of bribing informants or enemies, paying the people hired to develop the Bat-tech, paying the attorneys and accountants who hide the financial and business operations from law enforcement and criminals, and paying people to train the Batmen in criminology and advanced combat. This will probably runs into the cost of hiring several such professionals full-time. Even with lots of people volunteering their time, this quickly becomes so time-consuming that some of the people you'll need must be paid in order to survive while they complete their Batwork. Services, even more than goods, are not cheap; ask anyone who's ever had to hire an attorney for even a short time.

The trainers bring up a final but critical issue: the Batmen themselves. Physician and martial artist E. Paul Zehr addresses these issues in his book, Becoming Batman. While he spends much of the book reviewing relatively straightforward concepts of growth and genetics, he also devotes some time to Batman's combat training. For purposes of this discussion, let it suffice to say that his training is "extensive." There very few people in the world with the physical qualifications and background even to become a Batman, even before the training begins. You are probably looking at a lead time of at least a couple of years before you have any Batmen on the streets. (Note how this is true to the source material, too.)

Zehr's most original and interesting point, however, is that it's very, very hard to maintain that physical edge for more than a few years. Being Batman puts a tremendous strain on the body. A Batman in a world realistic enough to calculate how much he costs will not continue working to The Dark Knight Returns age. He will physically give out long before that point. And, of course, all of this isn't even beginning to consider potential psychological trauma. All of this means high turnover among the Bat-Corps, requiring even more training and candidate selection costs.

All in all, assuming we have the $476 million in a lump sum and needn't worry about taxes (NOT the conditions of the original question), I'd estimate that could finance about one Bat-franchise, for a single city, for about two years of preparation time and about two to three years of Bat-operations, which probably means two to three individual Batmen playing the role, hundreds of support personnel (many volunteers), and a decent gear package, though little or nothing that has to be newly developed for the project. By the end of year three, defending against criminal investigations and, more costly, private lawsuits will eat into the money so significantly that it outstrips the return on any invested assets.

The Batman of fiction doesn't need to worry about money, by definition. Bruce Wayne doesn't have "$500 million" or "$50 billion"; he has "as much money and as many friends and incidents of good luck as he needs to support being Batman." Batman stories are not generally about the monetary costs and mechanics of being Batman, because those issues generally aren't very interesting. The wealth is a MacGuffin trotted out whenever it's needed to explain something, then put away. A Batman in a fairly realistic world wouldn't have this luxury, no matter how large his bank account.

Have been looking a little further into it. As well as training to physical perfection, Bruce also gained knowledge of forensics and multiple scientific analytical disciplines.

One could circumvent this by having your Batmen (or, considering the attrition rate the theories above are incurring, perhaps we should call them "Blasters"?) trained only in evidence gathering, hooked up via video/audio links to a centralised crime lab.

Unless you're going to go with one supergothgirlgenius on a continual caffeine drip-feed, that needs a team and a building. Rochester,NY recently installed a new crime lab for $30m plus $5m annual budget, which considering the case volume generated by,say,five to ten Batmen, would be perfectly adequate.

So if we can't do a perfectly accurate Batman (grapnel guns, the works) IRL, what could we conceivably deck our caped crusaders out with?

Let's start with this...

..combination weighted bulletproof arm glove, flashlight, laser pointer, HD camera, and 300,000 volt taser (though, to my mind, the discharge points are in the wrong place).

I'd just hire some ex Marines and Special Forces members. Their cheaper and have already been trained to be real heroes.

Forget hiring Batmen.

I'd buy myself an island in the Caribbean and start my Evil Headquarters. Granted, I'd be on a budget for the first few years till the evil really starts trickling in. Maybe I could wear a shiny mask. Blue uniforms are good too. Snakes are scary, maybe I could work them in there somehow...

The company is called ArmStar (oddly enough) and is doing product demos at law enforcement shows across the USA. Not sure whether "Justice League Of America" badges are sufficient ID for purchase.

Now for some wheels. And if you're looking for something a bit more like the Tumbler than the classic sports Batmobile: behold the Marauder, as reviewed by Top Gear. ("Wait, that gap's not big enough... *CRUNCH* ...it is now.")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDoRmT0iRic

Yours for a mere $450,000 plus options.
(Proof required that you're not a villain and don't live in a volcano, apparently..)