Krypton: An Inspiration To Us All, A Warning To Us All

So are we expected to believe that Kryptonians, living as they did under a red sun, could have evolved bodies capable of producing all of these incredible powers that only manifest when exposed to yellow sun radiation?

Not necessarily. Remember that Krypton's was a very ancient civilization. It's possible that the race (and their amazing powers) evolved under the nurturing glow of a yellow sun, becoming so dominant and so advanced that they were able to compensate with technology for the crippling and possibly unexpected loss of superness that occurred, when their sun matured into its later bloated and ruddy state.

But if so, what a species! Imagine having to cope not just with your sun's expansion into a red giant, but also with a concurrent loss of the greatest portion of your sensory ability, as well as your physical strength and speed. To say nothing of the ability to fly at will! Their whole society would take these capabilities as given. I doubt they'd even have known what a flight of stairs was for.

With its population transforming into veritable cripples (compared to their previous might), the entire civilization would have to be redesigned quite literally from the ground up. Even if their scientists had predicted the stellar expansion (probably) and the attendant loss of their super powers (possibly), what a task to deal with both catastrophes at the same time!

Well, over the billions of years that the stellar expansion process takes, anyway.

Maybe their powers would have been magnified many times over, from their sun's steady increase in power output during the billion years or so prior to its transition to a red giant? If so, that might have helped them to begin their construction of a refuge, a new home for their civilization, on a planet further out in their star system. Even if it were not engulfed by the inexorable stellar expansion, their original homeworld would be far too close to the surface of the new red giant to be habitable. The relocation would be just as well, since as we've observed, the old cities would have been unsuitable - no handicap access for the flight-impaired.

What a dismal task! To stand up as a civilization and resolve to continue on, despite such drastically changed conditions! What grit and stick-to-itiveness was then displayed, by these brave Kryptonians! And what a pity, that they were able to weather such storms, only to let their planet blow up for some jackass reason that Jor-El totally warned them about. We should all be proud to play host to the last surviving son of this once-great, but flawed, race.

And there's a lesson to be learned there, as well. We need to look forward to our own solar crisis. We need to begin now, to develop a plan to deal with it. To move on. To survive.

We might not be able to count on Superman, for this one.