User blog:Salnax/Why DBZ Power Levels are Flawed

There have been many arguments about power levels in the Dragon Ball series, and over time I've come to view Power Levels to be a flawed concept in general. So today, I decided to completely end the use of power levels in every online debate forevermore. Because that's how arguing works, right?

In all seriousness, I just want to write out why I don't pay much attention to power levels when looking at the strength of characters in this franchise.

Review
"Power Level" is a concept introduced when Dragon Ball entered the Saiyan Saga and the anime got a "Z" tagged onto the end. In short, it is a measurement of the quantity or intensity of Ki within an individual. Metaphorically speaking, Power Levels are the Temperature to Ki's concept of Heat, or the Meters to its Length. It's a unit of measurement, not the thing being measured.

Note that the amount or intensity of Ki in an individual can apparently be approximated without scouters, the typical tool used to measure Power Level. Goku developed the ability to sense Ki of distant individuals as early as the King Piccolo saga, an ability that became pretty common amongst the Z Fighters.

Last, it should be noted that Ki is only one of the factors that grant an individual power. The energy used by Androids appears to be different enough so that Ki sensors can not detect it. There is also Magic, which has been used on and off from the earliest days of the franchise, pure mechanical force, as used by the various robots and mechanical devices in the franchise, and the multiple components that combine to create Ki.

Examples
Let's focus on the canon material involving power levels. It is useful to use relatively ordinary characters as a base. Hence, I would like to present Farmer with a Gun.

The Farmer, who apparently is wielding a rifle rather than a shotgun, is possibly the only ordinary individual to have their power level measured in the series, ranking in at 5. Although it's hard to be certain, other (often less than official) power levels seem to indicate that 5 is fairly typical for an adult human. For example, the seemingly normal Gohan pre-training clocks in at 1, Kid Goku was ranking in at 10 according to the Daizenshuu at the very beginning of Dragon Ball, Bulma and Dr Kochin were said to be at 12 and 8 according to some questionably official material for the Tree of Might movie, and Future Trunks seems to cap his power level at 5 when suppressing his Ki.

As it turns out, we have a way of measuring the capabilities of fairly ordinary humans: traditional energy measurements. In short, the most powerful attacks from humans, such as punches, tend to clock in the rough range of 100 to 1000 Joules, depending on their physical prowess and training. Let's guess somewhere roughly in the middle, say 250, and assume that 1 power level is equal to 50 Joules of destructive capability.

Now the Fun Begins
When using his Special Beam Cannon, Piccolo reached a power level of 1330, or slightly more in one localization. Using the "50 Joules" method, that grants him about 66.5 kilojoules of energy in that attack. That's roughly the amount of energy you'll find in a car zooming down a highway. A couple of episodes later, fairly early in his training, he destroys the Moon. Frankly, that's not enough to destroy a moderately sized building, let alone an actual celestial object. The fact that Roshi was able to destroy the moon despite measuring in at 159 makes this even more ridiculous.

We can also go in the other direction. Let's say a power level of 1330 is exactly what you need to destroy the Moon, roughly the same size as its real life equivalent. At minimum, that's going to take roughly 10^29 Joules (I'm not writing all of those zeroes). If the Farmer ranks in at 5 in comparison, that gives him an energy output of roughly 3.75*10^26 Joules, roughly enough to destroy a continent.

How about Frieza? He destroyed a planet with a power level of 120 million. Assuming again that he has exactly enough energy to destroy a planet like Earth at his full potential, that makes him 24 million times stronger than the farmer. Which sounds like a lot, but destroying the Earth takes something like 2.5*10^32 Joules, meaning the farmer weichs in at about 10^25 Joules. That's not much lower than the estimate based on the Moon, giving the Farmer roughly enough power to create continent-sized changes to the Earth's surface.

And what if we assumed that Vegeta was correct when he said that could destroy Earth in the Saiyan Saga? That would mean a power level of 18000 was enough to destroy Earth. Based on the info regarding Frieza above, that would give the Farmer the destructive capacity to destroy the real life Moon.

The Farmer is theoretically able to destroy the moon.

Power Levels are *********.