Elon Musk has become somewhat of a super-villain... But, could he defeat Superman?

Elon Musk is one of the most powerful men on the planet

from his multiple business ventures to his celebrity to his enormous wealth

He's someone who just a few people have compared to, well, a super villain

Which leads us to the various obvious question that the masses have been clamoring for an answer

to for decades. Could Elon Musk defeat Superman? Welcome to Total Nerd Explains, the show

where we explain nerdy stuff. And with that, let's do it. This is a job for Superman

Both Elon Musk and Superman are enduring American icons. One having been forged in the heart of the 1930s by two Jewish kids

and the other an immigrant from South Africa. However, they both hold large places in the cultural landscape

Superman has been reinterpreted more times than anyone can count, played by a veritable acting troupe of performers

and help to solve the pain of generations of people through escapism and positive, kind-hearted do-gooding

Elon Musk? Well, uh, you can't say the dude isn't driven. Let's take a moment to examine the backstories of these two characters

Superman is an immigrant from a dying planet, sent here in a rocket and raised by two kindly farmers

He then decides to use his abilities and gifts to defend the meek and uphold the ideals of truth, justice

and, well, you know, which he happened to learn from his adopted homeland

Elon Musk is from Pretoria, South Africa. He moved to Canada, where his mother's from, when he was 17

and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a double degree in economics and physics

He moved to California in 1995, where he began to pursue a PhD in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford

However, he dropped out due to founding a company called Zip2, which quickly was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999

Since then, he's been attempting to better mankind through inventing technologies that will push civilization forward

But also, he has more money and power than you could ever know what to do with. So, you know, what they say about power corrupting

Ultimately, they're both immigrants. They both seem to have an innate desire to do good, and they both kind of look like aliens

Superman, of course, is a literal alien. And then Musk, well, there's just something about those eyes

They're just not right. But since this video is about could Elon Musk defeat Superman, does this backstory mean that

they would be friends early on, just like Clark and Lex Luthor? Maybe. Could Elon probably use

this to get closer to Kal-El in order to set one of his machinations in motion? Possibly

Would Elon Musk learn Superman's ultimate weakness during this time? Definitely. If you're looking for similarities, Superman and Elon Musk both have large families

Yes originally Superman had only Ma and Pa Kent because his birth parents died on Krypton and all that But when DC editor Mort Weisinger took over Superman titles in the 1950s he decided to bring an iterative approach to the character that would result in success

Hopefully just like Captain Marvel, which had taken over the number one spot in sales a couple years prior

So what did he do? He hired Otto Binder, a longtime Captain Marvel scribe

to create the Superman family. Before you knew it, you had Superboy, Supergirl, Krypto the Superdog

Streaky the Supercat, and the bottle city of Kandor that had hundreds of thousands of miniature Kryptonians living within it

Yeah, it was a real thing. Or, you know, fictionally real. Elon Musk also has a large family

How large? Well, guess how many wives he's had. Three and a half

Which, what does that actually mean? How can you have three and a half wives

Well, he married the actress to Lulu Riley in 2010, and then they got divorced in 2012

and then they got remarried again in 2013, and then re-divorced again in 2016

But that's not all because Elon Musk has seven children! Seven! How would Elon Musk use these backstories to get closer to Kal-El

Well, maybe their kids go to the same school, or maybe Elon uses one of his 65—I mean

seven children to bait Clark in a nefarious plot or something. I don't know

The possibilities are endless. Okay, let's get down to brass tacks. How could Elon Musk kill Superman

Well, there's multiple possibilities for that. Let's look at one possible scenario

There are multiple subterranean magical societies in the DCU. You've got Amethyst Princess Gemworld, and you've

got Mike Grell's whole Warlord thing with all his weird barbarian stuff happening at the Earth's core

And also, like, that one Merlin looking mother What was he again

Oh, new comics number three from 1936, right? Oh, I guess he literally is Merlin

So back to the point. Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, one of Superman's primary

weaknesses is magic. The other two being kryptonite and plot necessity. So knowing that, you're either

going to need kryptonite, which, you know, crash lands on earth all the time or something, or you're

going to have to bore into the center of the planet to access these magical dudes. Having a boring

company is going to be pretty vital to this one, which is literally what Musk has. He's the founder

of the boring company. Old dirty Elon really thinks of everything, doesn't he? So could he bore to the

center of the earth, befriend some magical weirdos, and then make a pact to kill Superman? Definitely

Now that that's resolved, let's take this from a slightly different angle. One of Superman's

greatest foes, Brainiac. For those who maybe aren't as familiar, Brainiac is one of the age-old

villains. He's an ancient computer system that was built on Krypton and is now traveling throughout

the cosmos, devouring all sentient life in order to absorb its knowledge. Think the Borg from Star

Trek, but with a real vendetta against the last son of Krypton. That kind of sounds exactly like what might happen with Mr Musk when his Neuralink and OpenAI companies reach their natural conclusion So the question is could Elon Musk use OpenAI and Neuralink to create some sort of homicidal

robot to kill Superman? Because, you know, what else would you do with it

Probably not. He could get close, but let's be real. How many times has Supes taken out Brainiac

Like, a lot. So, on this one, we're giving Superman the upper hand. You've been waiting for it this whole time

For us to say, kryptonite, haven't you? The shard of rock from Superman's home planet that weakens him when he gets close to it or is exposed to enough of it, you know, it can, like, kill him

Elon Musk would have no problem finding kryptonite. He's got so much money and influence, at this point, it's just a cinch. It's no big deal at all

Could he kill Supes using kryptonite? No, for two reasons. One being, it's literally never happened. All the times Superman has died, never because of kryptonite

And two, Elon Musk is an eccentric rich dude. He's not gonna wanna go just for the easy kill, you know

He's gonna wanna do it in a little bit of style and panache, something related to his own companies

He's gonna wanna make this death of a beloved cosmic do-gooder a brandable moment

So Kryptonite is, you know, it's out. Unless Musk starts a company named Big Green Rock

where he 3D prints massive chunks of Kryptonite or something, which is plausible now that I'm saying it

It's pretty hard to put Superman in a position where he can actually be killed

But it's not as hard as putting him in a position where the whole world hates him

which is exactly what Lex Luthor did when he was elected to the President of the United States of America

Now, Elon Musk can't do that because he wasn't born in America, but he can run for another public office, senator, governor, or mayor of Metropolis, perhaps

And with this increased level of power, he could turn the public against the Big Blue Boy Scout

One of Lex's plans in the comics was he just used his insane wealth to buy the Daily Planet

That would go a long way to making Superman's life a living hell. Elon Musk might have made his initial fortune in online currency and exchange banking

but things have changed quite a bit since then. He's expanded into a variety of businesses and scientific exploits

but the one that's the most relevant is SpaceX. Musk is the chief designer, CEO, and CTO, and founder of SpaceX, a company spearheading space travel, which will be available on the consumer level

You know what else comes from space? Namely a planet named Krypton? If Elon and his team did even a bit of research to understand how Kryptonian DNA canonically works

they would find that it absorbs radiation from the yellow sun, which allows Kryptonian bodies to interact with Earth differently than humans

You see, on Krypton, they had a red sun. So, when Kryptonians come to Earth, they're able to fly, shoot lasers out of their eyes

and have super strength and blow freezy breath or whatever Does it really make sense Mmm no not really But have you seen duck penises Them f don make sense either So with all of this knowledge of Kryptonian anatomy

Elon Musk would know if he wanted to kill Superman, he would just have to cause an upper

Earth atmosphere event that would block out the sun for long enough to depower Superman. And then

he could kill him because Superman would ostensibly lose his powers. And he could easily accomplish

this by using a, you know, SpaceX facility that has a bunch of satellites or networks or something

in space. I don't know. No problem. It's space stuff, right? That's what SpaceX does

Some people might be thinking, why are you comparing our holy technological savior to

the villain in all of these scenarios? Superman has been brainwashed by Darkseid before, right

He's been mind controlled by Max Lord, right? He could be the evil one. Sure, that could happen

but let's take a look at Elon's more recent comments about COVID-19. On March 6th, he tweeted

the coronavirus panic is dumb. Later in the year, he tried to advance the false narrative that

children were essentially immune and that the deaths in Italy were leveling out. On March 18th

he tweeted, my guess is that the panic will cause more harm than the virus if it hasn't already

He tried to promote the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution to COVID

which has not been scientifically proven at all. Then he got in a very public fight with the state

of California over health restrictions, wanting Tesla factory workers to show up to work despite

health risks. And then when Tesla gave permission to employees to stay home, you know what showed up

in their employees' mailboxes? Pink slips, baby. Tesla fired them all. So, you know, Elon Musk is

just Lex Luthor because he, you know, probably wants to kill Superman because Lex Luthor has been

failing to do that for 80 years, so why wouldn't Elon try? Doomsday is the only character to ever kill Superman. He literally punched him to death

Meaning, because we've basically said that Elon Musk is Lex Luthor, he should probably try to kill

Superman and fail. As previously stated, Superman has been fending off Luther's harebrained schemes

for 80 years. He's used to them. And he always figures out how to overcome them. In fact

Luther's very presence in his story basically guarantees that Superman is going to be fine

But here's a quick question. What if Elon Musk turned himself into Doomsday? Just like that stuff

from the New 52 where Superman was being turned into Doomsday or whatever. It was really confusing

I don't remember the specifics, but it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Moving on. You've noticed that Elon Musk is getting bigger and bigger every day, right? Like his head seems to be just

expanding just like every second. You know who else evolves and gets bigger and bigger and stronger

every day? Doomsday. Does that mean that Elon Musk is secretly doomsday? Maybe. So what is the

ultimate verdict? Could Elon Musk defeat Superman? No, but he'd definitely get close. Unless we're

talking about all of this happening when the sales on the books are really low and they necessitate

at killing Superman again as some sort of publicity stunt. Because if that was the case, then there's a real possibility