r/whowouldwin • u/Historical_Ostrich • Aug 03 '25

Battle Which superheroes/villains would lose to a real world SWAT team if they were stripped of plot armor?

The SWAT team will employ real world tactics and resort to deadly force if necessary. Whoever they're facing off against has their standard gear and will resist to the best of their ability, but they don't get any of their standard plot armor.

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160

u/Subject_Rub_6697 Aug 04 '25

Any character that is "just" a human dies like doesn't matter your skill or superpower a real world swat will just shoot you. And when I say superpower I mean wall level power of course some that can destroy a city with a thought would win.

39

u/Bright_Brief4975 Aug 04 '25

Tony Stark is 100% just a human, and there is no swat team that is going to take him out while he is in his armor. There are also a lot of others that have no power, but use armor or an artifact, people like Juggernaut, who could take out entire armies.

43

u/PremSinha Aug 04 '25

The thing is, a SWAT team would just wait for Tony Stark to get out of the suit, which he does very often.

25

u/8dev8 Aug 04 '25

I don’t give the swat team good odds of catching Tony by surprise.

40

u/Toptomcat Aug 04 '25

Unless they have been specifically briefed on the fact that Stark can tap his chest and just summon a full-body suit of armor proof against 120mm cannon rounds within five seconds...and they actually believed that briefing...I'm not sure it would do them much good. That capability is altogether out of the frame of reference of your average cop.

13

u/PremSinha Aug 04 '25

That is a good point. I was only thinking of the external suits. This limits the team's options to an ambush that takes less than three seconds, based on the Endgame tower jump. Shooting him in the head will not be easy when he is indoors, but it might be possible elsewhere.

11

u/Business-Ad-5344 Aug 04 '25

what is a swat.

is that like a team of navy seals.

or a team of average cops eating donuts.

for example, my town has swat. one refused to enter a school when a threat was called in. the call happened to be a hoax.

3

u/Echos_123 Aug 04 '25

I'm not American but I doubt Swat across different cities across different states and different million people populations are all going to be as bad as your towns Swat, from what I understand the more crime ridden but cities should have even some former military working there.

37

u/DeepProspector Aug 04 '25

Yeah, they’re not raiding Malibu when he’s puttering around the lab in a suit or in one at the tower or campus. They’re getting him mid-coitus with Pepper after setting off a local EMP.

29

u/woodlark14 Aug 04 '25

Early on that might work. Post Iron Man 3, they are detected and Tony is alerted before they even get to the door. An EMP likely isn't good enough because tech can be shielded against them, and most military tech is. They can't cut the power or communications without being detected either.

13

u/Sekh765 ​ Aug 04 '25

Where is SWAT finding a "local emp".

3

u/fish312 Aug 04 '25

Or they get an assassin to poison his whisky

4

u/PremSinha Aug 04 '25

That is an effective method, but I don't think it comes under the purview of a SWAT team.