Prison Planet

Due to the numbers of solly prisoners, they will need infrastructure to handle them. Haven could help contain them, then had an entire planet for a prison. Placing them beyond the reach of the league, even potentially, would limit the damage they can do. Eventually they will need to build more, are there any empty planets near of in alliance space? They might have to create a colonization package to allow the prisoners to create a working colony.

Why go to all that trouble? They've still got Hell.

SYED wrote:Due to the numbers of solly prisoners, they will need infrastructure to handle them. Haven could help contain them, then had an entire planet for a prison. Placing them beyond the reach of the league, even potentially, would limit the damage they can do. Eventually they will need to build more, are there any empty planets near of in alliance space? They might have to create a colonization package to allow the prisoners to create a working colony.

I rather think shipping them to Hades is probably not a good idea.

Right now the SEM has about 400,000 prisoners in Spindle and between 1.4M (just from the SD's) and 2.0M
(if they captured the smaller ships and Marine transports off-screen) in the Manticore system. The POW barracks from the Havenite Wars should still be around (heck, Lester and his folks just got out of them less than a month or so earlier), so there shouldn't be any problem.

Right now the SLN has about 1500 active SD's, each with about 6,000 crew, or around 9,000,000 personnel. Figure in the smaller (but probably more numerous) ships and the crews at the various stations plus the paper pushers and the numbers are probably close to 20,000,000-and probably higher.

But I seriously doubt that all of them are going to become prisoners. Once their ships are destroyed, I think they'll be repatriated (to their home planets, mind you) relatively quickly (and the cost of transport billed to the said home planet by the MMM).

Because making most of what constitutes the SL realize that the Manties are not the bad guys here is critical to not having to fight a full-scale war with the SL, with all the time (and cost) that would incur.

We shall see.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

I'd be interested to know if Haven still uses Hell, or if they dropped it after Theisman's coup due to the extremely nasty connotations.

NortonIDaughter wrote:I'd be interested to know if Haven still uses Hell, or if they dropped it after Theisman's coup due to the extremely nasty connotations.

I'd be very surprised if they did. The restored Republic doesn't want political prisoners, and that's what mainly Hell was; a place to put prisoners too valuable to kill but politically unreliable. As well, we saw how the Manty prisoners of war were being treated after Admiral Henke was captured. Their accommodations were quite well-thought out and prepared, and nothing like the brutal conditions on Hades.

One additional thought - If the GA wants to use Hades as a prison planet, they have to station some fleet units there - to make sure that Honor's break from hell doesn't get a copy But if they have them in an already inhabited system with a naval base like ... oh, say Manticore or Spindle - the local forces are guarding the prisoners, too ... that hits 2 birds with 1 stone

Uroboros wrote:

NortonIDaughter wrote:I'd be interested to know if Haven still uses Hell, or if they dropped it after Theisman's coup due to the extremely nasty connotations.

I'd be very surprised if they did. The restored Republic doesn't want political prisoners, and that's what mainly Hell was; a place to put prisoners too valuable to kill but politically unreliable. As well, we saw how the Manty prisoners of war were being treated after Admiral Henke was captured. Their accommodations were quite well-thought out and prepared, and nothing like the brutal conditions on Hades.

Actually, if they weren't concerned about perceptions, or if the cost factors were great enough, Hades would make a perfectly good prison planet without the brutality. The big problems were the climate, the lack of food, and the abuse of prisoners. The misuse should be easy to stop with new management. The lack of food (and medicine, etc) is only a problem if you're not giving people enough, which is another easy fix; and of course deterring people from leaving their assigned areas is not actually a bad thing for a prison. As the climate-- well, it could be worse, and you certainly don't have to put all your camps on the equator!

The place already has defenses and permanent bases, so it's not actually a bad bet for renovation-- but again, only if Pritchart and Theisman don't feel like publicly nuking it from orbit, instead.

*Edit* - guh, messed up the quotes the first time...

NortonIDaughter wrote:
Actually, if they weren't concerned about perceptions, or if the cost factors were great enough, Hades would make a perfectly good prison planet without the brutality. The big problems were the climate, the lack of food, and the abuse of prisoners. The misuse should be easy to stop with new management. The lack of food (and medicine, etc) is only a problem if you're not giving people enough, which is another easy fix; and of course deterring people from leaving their assigned areas is not actually a bad thing for a prison. As the climate-- well, it could be worse, and you certainly don't have to put all your camps on the equator!

The place already has defenses and permanent bases, so it's not actually a bad bet for renovation-- but again, only if Pritchart and Theisman don't feel like publicly nuking it from orbit, instead.

The problem is, all parties in the GA absolutely do have to worry about perceptions, and not just from outside the Alliance. If Pritchart started using Insec/Statesec's favourite dumping ground again, or allowed her new BFFs (who were shooting at Havenites not so long ago) to use it, there'd be rioting in the streets of Nouveau Paris at an absolute minimum.

Oh, I absolutely agree-- it would be a terrible move, and I can't see them doing it except under dire necessity. I'm just saying that RH!Hades doesn't need to be the hell (...sorry ) that PRH!Hades was.

I don't know much (anything) about real POW camps, so I can't say what criteria they'd use for where to stash people in the Honorverse. I did think it was a trifle odd that they used Haven itself-- is that normal?

NortonIDaughter wrote:Oh, I absolutely agree-- it would be a terrible move, and I can't see them doing it except under dire necessity. I'm just saying that RH!Hades doesn't need to be the hell (...sorry ) that PRH!Hades was.

I don't know much (anything) about real POW camps, so I can't say what criteria they'd use for where to stash people in the Honorverse. I did think it was a trifle odd that they used Haven itself-- is that normal?

Apparently it is in the Honorverse. Manticore leaves it's prisoners in the system they were captured in, at least so far. They have the advantage of knowing that their POWs will not be mistreated wherever they are incarcerated. Haven is still in the formative stages and is bucking the perceptions left by the Legislaturists and the CPS. So they want any of their POWs close so they can keep an eye on how they are treated. Where better to do that than under the eye of the Secretary of War, who has at least some credibility with the SEM high command.