If not for King Piccolo, might Earth have been one of the strongest planets in the universe already?

[YajirobiTheGreat]

So, every generation new techniques are invented and many of these are passed down. New training methods are sometimes discovered or invented. As the previous generation becomes stronger, thus creates stringer training partners for the next generation. Ect... We saw Tien, Yamcha, Krillin, and Roshi learn powerful techniques from their teachers without even being formally trained, which is a good sign of generational progress.

Before King Piccolo showed up, Earth had Mutaito (who was implied to be above both Roshi and Tsuru at the time), who had a martial arts school that evidently had powerful pupils and a powerful teacher. Piccolo however killed all but two of them, who had a feud and were not able to piece the school back together. Piccolo also killed almost all of the other great martial artists (or was that filler?). In the process Earth lost a lot of potential martial arts techniques, teachers, training methods, infrastructure, ect...

If Mutaito's school alone managed to remain united (or at least only branch apart under friendly terms after Mutaito dies) with many pupils, who could each take on many pupils, we could see some really powerful fighters by the time Goku arrives. If we can just get a handful of Roshi/Shen level students trained by each major figure associated with the school, then we could conceivably have hundreds of descendants of Mutaito's fighting style with similar levels of power to what Roshi/Tao/Yamcha/Krillin/Gohan(the grandpa)/Chichi/Chiatzu/Tien/ect... had. Then their students could build on what their teachers gave them, form friendships and training sessions with other branches, find ways to increase power levels faster, ect... A small number could even train with Kami at some point if they were impressive enough, and a handful of outliers (like Yajirobi) with enormous natural strength could emerge as something really special with enough training.

By the time Goku showed up, maybe we could even have a few dozen fighters with power levels in the thousands with world martial arts tournament champions that reach 10,000. Destructo Disk, Solar Flare x100 or Tri-Beam might already exist.

This still wouldn't be enough to fight Frieza or the Saiyans with their transformations, but would still make them very formidable especially with their special techniques.


Thoughts?

[nickzambuto]

Unfortunately I don't really have anything to add. This is just a really interesting theory.

[Beek King]

Even if humans do not have high potential just imagine a whole army of Krillins pooling their energy together. That could be a useful tactic.
On the other hand, I'd be terrified in daily life is an average jackass could learn to casually bust the planet...

[Pantalones]

Kind of a funny thought that if not for Piccolo Daimao wiping out Mutaito's school, we might have had dozens of fighters each strong enough to beat Piccolo Daimao by the time we get to the late-Dragonball time period. Roshi and the other older-generation fighters wouldn't have slacked off. The masters like Roshi and the top Turtle/Crane/whatever-Mutaito's-surviving-school-would-be-called (something like "Flying Turtle" maybe? XD) students like Tenshinhan and Goku would've probably been so strong that Piccolo Jr. and Kami would lose in the first round of the 23rd Budokai if they all entered.

And by the time the Z era rolls around... Raditz's part in the story might be even shorter than it was originally. He crashes down, kills the farmer, then goes for the strongest power level near his landing spot -- "there's a power level reading of 842! that must be Kakarot!" -- only to find that it's actually just Chiaotzu or something... and then he finds out the hard way (via a PL 1600-ish Super Dodonpa or something that finishes him off right away, just like Piccolo's Makankosappo did with the hole in the chest and everything!) that Earthling martial artists' power levels can flare up much higher than the initial scouter reading.

They'd beat Nappa and Vegeta, albeit with some difficulty thanks to Oozaru (they'd probably need to cut Vegeta's tail -- nobody would know Kaio-ken since nobody died against Raditz, so even if the strongest fighters were well above Vegeta's normal form they probably wouldn't have a chance against his Oozaru form, barring something that would affect a much stronger opponent like Shin Kikoho or a lucky Kienzan hit)... but then things would go way off from the original story. For some reason I imagine that Vegeta would escape, somehow figure out that Namek would have Dragonballs and succeed in wishing for immortality (off-screen), returning to Earth a year or so later for revenge. He'd be stronger than before, but unable to go Oozaru since his tail still hasn't grown back, just like how it happened in the original series. It'd be Roshi (or the Crane Hermit, or both) who ends up stopping him after the younger generations fail -- they'd end up having to seal him away using the Mafuuba since he's now immortal and can't be killed or even seriously injured since everything just grows back right away (Garlic Jr. or Zamasu style immortality, basically.)

[floofychan333]

Even if humans do not have high potential just imagine a whole army of Krillins pooling their energy together. That could be a useful tactic.
On the other hand, I'd be terrified in daily life is an average jackass could learn to casually bust the planet...

I would imagine your average jackass wouldn't have the devotion to stick around long enough. If Kim Jong-Un learned how to use ki, on the other hand...

[buutenks]

Interesting theory, however, they'd proly max hit 200+ PL, since i doubt Kami would eye them out much. And the saiyans wouldnt have been an issue had Kami not split. Since Kami was originally a warrior type, aka he was around Nail's level of power. So around 40 k PL. he would have crushed both Nappa and Vegeta easily(King kai said this also, had Kami not split, he would have easily dealt with the saiyans), Freeza wouldnt have learned of the DBs and earth and namek would have been left alone.

So i guess, if Kami hadnt split, DB/Z wouldnt have existed, since Kami would have wiped out all threats to earth. Since Freeza would have never visited earth anytime soon. The saiyans would have been wiped apart from Goku, who perhaps would eventually go to Kami for training, since hed wind up being the strongest on earth apart from kami.

So, its thanks to king piccolo we got DBZ, in universe anyways.

[TheZFighter]

Obviously I'm embellishing here, but I have always assumed that martial arts would've been pretty popular in the Dragon Ball world pre-King Piccolo, and when Piccolo came about and decimated most of the martial artists he severely damaged the numbers of those taking part, and made it a far less attractive past time to others because of the risk of death, etc. Had this not happened, I guess that martial arts would've continued to be popular worldwide, sort of like they eventually became in Dragon Ball online after Gohan wrote that Groundbreaking Science book. There would've been a lot more than just the Turtle and Crane schools. I remember that truly excellent Dragon Ball Elsewhere fan-fiction where there was also a Wolf school (where Yamcha came from) and a Serpent school.

However, as someone said previously, the Earthlings seemingly have limited potential compared to the other races, so I can't really see many, if any of them, going much over the 200 - 300 mark without some kind of external influence, such as Kami.

[ckal9]

I'm not so sure. Mutaito had a PL of 100 something, right? Humans and martial arts have been around for hundreds of years without someone achieving a PL in the thousands. I don't think there's any reason to believe that within a decade that a large amount of martial artists would have achieved power hundreds of times over the stronger martial artist at the time.

I mean just look at the Saiyans. They've been around for a long time and their power had seemingly stagnated, at least not made any significant increases. Their most powerful was King Vegeta/Vegeta around 10k/low teens, and even he seemed to be well above the rest.

[coola]

To be fair, you would think opposite thing would happen, after King Piccolo was defeated, more people would want to learn martial arts, to be ready when such demon appeared.

[Rubens]

I think it's a bit of long stretch. It's true that the earthling z-warriors' battle powers grew from the low hundreds up to 1,000+ in a single year's worth of training with Kami & Mr. Popo, yet I wouldn't see them reach much further from there. I believe that training with north Kaio was what opened the doors to a new level of power for them - then of course we get the super saiyans but leaving them aside, gravity training + kaio-ken catapults them to heights never imaginable before. Without that knowledge Earth could have potentially raised competent warriors, but most likely not capable of contending against the saiyans of old, let alone with the today's warriors from other universes.

[TheZFighter]

To be fair, you would think opposite thing would happen, after King Piccolo was defeated, more people would want to learn martial arts, to be ready when such demon appeared.

Forgive me if I'm remembering things wrong, but didn't King Piccolo kill A LOT of martial artists, essentially making it and unsafe, and therefore unattractive, hobby?

[coola]

To be fair, you would think opposite thing would happen, after King Piccolo was defeated, more people would want to learn martial arts, to be ready when such demon appeared.

Forgive me if I'm remembering things wrong, but didn't King Piccolo kill A LOT of martial artists, essentially making it and unsafe, and therefore unattractive, hobby?

True, but, in world ruled by demons, you could be killed by anytime, by either demon, or criminal that take advantage of anarchy, so either way you would be screwed

[Gog]

I don't really consider this to be the case. Nothing ever really states or implies that Piccolo ever killed off a great many great Martial Artists that it essentially left behind all of the worthless nobodies. Nothing in the manga really implies that Roshi and Shen were apart of some big school that were slaughtered by Piccolo. And I would argue against the idea that Roshi's master is still stronger than him.

In fact I'd argue that Piccolo's existence might have made greater martial artists, considering the fact that they would have to have been capable of surviving the living hell Piccolo created, and the legends of him would perhaps have motivated some noble martial artists to train harder so that an evil like him could never plague the land ever again.