How long can superman hold his breath

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. While researching for this question , I came across a couple of conflicting images of Superman in space. This scan seems to be from Superman Volume 1, Issue - published in August Now, you could easily argue that the helmet wouldn't really do much there as there is no oxygen tank, but the image still implies that he needs to breathe.

The first image, however, really contradicts that though. I found other images of him speaking in space without a helmet, but I think the one image demonstrates the point well enough. Superman's powers have been inconsistently shown since his inception. The best way to keep track of his ability to breathe in space is to consider the depiction of the character and the time period. Most modern comic versions, his invulnerability allows him to exist in any hostile environment with little difficulty.

This includes environments without air or under extreme pressure. See: As of , how many different canon versions of the Superman character exist? So they ate, slept, breathed much like normal humans did. They could suspend their need for longer than normal humans, hold their breaths for long times, go without sleep for days, not eat for longer than a month, but eventually they would need to partake of these things because the emphasis was on the MAN not the SUPER.

Superman became bigger than the other heroes of the DC Universe. His powers let him go without breathing, sleeping, eating and we assume excreting. His invulnerability seemed to include his ability to resist the harsh environment of space and his ability to survive without any of the things humans normally need to live. He became a static thing impervious to all environments including underwater and deep space.

His adventures in space never had him using a helmet or suit unless he was visiting a world with a red sun under which he would revert to a normal human physiology, unbolstered by his strange solar energy conversion.

Animated Adventures: However, when they decided to create the 90's versions of Superman for Superman Adventures based on the popular series Batman Adventures which started in he was significantly depowered. He was a bit stronger than the Fleischer Age Superman but much less capable than the Earth-1 standard we had grown used to. He seemed a revision made for television allowing him to be powerful but not unstoppable and thus able to be written for on a regular consistent basis.

This Superman could not breath underwater, though he could hold his breath for a while, and could not breath in space and needed a suit designed for him at Star Labs. This would remain the status quo in the series. Man of Steel, John Byrne: In the comics, for the most part, the only time he lost the ability to go without breathing and interacting in space was during Byrne's Man of Steel era.

Again, an attempt to use a bit of science to explain the Man of Steel's powers. His hair grew, he ate food, he shaved with a mirror though he did that in some of the Curt Swan era work as well. The New Like most of the modern versions of Superman he does not appear to need a spacesuit though his current costume is far more capable technologically-speaking to survive in space. As far as communicating in space: Superman is inconsistently shown being able to communicate in space.

In the Silver Age, Superman was said to be able to "throw his voice using super-ventriloquism" allowing him to communicate with others in space Modern era Writers who pay attention are sure to make a technological reason for his communication the JLA used tiny ear-bud communicators, or Martian telepathy when they had a Martian. In the example above, I don't think Green Lantern is helping him breath, he is making it possible for them to communicate.

How different is Superman's physiology from a normal human? Why was Superman made practically physically invulnerable? Is Superman incapable of averting the catastrophe of an earlier-than-expected nova? The answer of this question explains with enough details what you want to know. It depends heavily on the period of time you're talking about and on the writer's needs. The only problem is the Radiation that comes out of those bombs. Goku can die from a heart disease, so why not radiation. So if we talk the blast then yes.

If we talk long term like 1 year, they would die from being exposed to the radiation of a nuclear bomb. But the cinematic Superman is an entirely different beast from the one on the printed page, and the rules governing his behavior vary wildly from movie to movie. They actually have conversations with astronauts on the moon, and their voices can be heard in the vacuum of space, which is a scientific impossibility.

By the time we get to the execrable fourth Superman movie, Supes is rebuilding the Great Wall of China with weird blue flecks shooting from his eyes. As I pointed this out, however, my sister made an excellent point. Fictional universes matter to us, largely because they provide causality without consequence. We can see and learn from choices made by characters on a page or on a screen without having to live with any of the real-world results. Everyone accepts that Superman breaks the rules of reality.

But when he starts rebuilding Chinese landmarks with some funky blue eye sparks, it breaks the deal. It makes it impossible to invest in a story that is so lazily and clumsily depicted. The nourishing aspect of the atmosphere can be explained concisely in a video like this:.

The breathing of Earth atmosphere did not grant Superman powers. Superman would have been powerless in all of the examples we gave in our first answer. Breathing is an autonomous life function and reflex.

Moreover, it is a key component of basic communication. If Superman had held his breathe and not said a word, he could have maintained his strength, but he would have no reason to do so having no foreknowledge of this Kryptonian atmospheric effect. First, they were uncertain whether the World Engine would even have an effect on him.

Third, no expedient man-made respirator would have survived the trip. Superman traveled 12, miles in about a minute, which is about , miles per hour or roughly Mach For reference, the Space Shuttle tops out at about Mach 23 for reentry into atmosphere and the fastest theoretical ballistic missile we can build today would be Mach 5. The speed would tear up anything he tried to carry.

This is an October 29, update to a December article. This is an April 19, update to a December article. The most obvious additional point of data and support is Superman taking Doomsday into the upper atmosphere to mitigate collateral damage.