History Main / DeadlyEnvironmentPrison

->''You see any barbed wire fences? Any guard towers? No? That's because we don't need 'em. Go ahead, start running away. I won't stop you… You wanna run away, them buzzards'll pick you clean by the end of the third day.''

** ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy: The beautiful-but-poisonous DeathWorld of Phyrr is home to a biological harvesting facility staffed entirely by convicts serving death sentences. There are no guards or other security measures — if the prisoners riot or stop working, their Mechanicus overseers on the planet's moon simply turn off the facility's air filtration, and let Phyrr's toxic biosphere do the rest.

* ''Literature/{{Holes}}''. The juvenile detention camp "Camp Green Lake" has no guard towers or fences, and most of the counselors aren't even armed (and Mr. Sir, who is, says that he will ''not'' waste a bullet on an escaping prisoner)... but the camp is in the middle of the desert, and has the only water for 100 miles, and the desert is inhabited by highly poisonous spotted lizards. Anyone who wants to leave can leave, only to die of thirst or be forced to come back.

This prison doesn't need walls, or guards, or security cameras. No one's stopping prisoners from escaping. The jailor might even point them in the direction of the convenient escape route. The door's right there! It's [[SchmuckBait not even locked]]! Why doesn't everyone just leave?

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Impel Down in ''Manga/OnePiece'' is situated in the bottom of an ocean - which, for Devil Fruit users, [[SuperDrowningSkills is no good news.]] Not just any ocean either; it's in the Calm Belt, a zone on the Grand Line's border where there are no winds blowing and {{Sea Monster}}s are abundant; only Seastone-coated ships (usually that of the Marines) can pass through it easily.

[[folder:Film-- Live-Action]]
* The underground Klingon labor camp Rura Penthe where Kirk and [=McCoy=] are imprisoned in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' has nothing preventing prisoners from escaping--except the extreme cold and storms of the surface, where death by exposure would be a certainty (technically, there's also a magnetic field to prevent transporter use). In fact, prisoners are threatened with expulsion to the surface if they don't work.

* ''Film/{{Outland}}'': The high-security cells on the station's Sheriff's office have no gravity and no oxygen--the prisoners are encased inside of a spacesuit connected to an oxygen umbilical cord and left to float around until their sentences are up or they confess. This comes to bite O'Neill in the ass [[spoiler:when one of the prisoners (which has information he needs to uncover the conspiracy within the station) is "left alone" by the other (corrupt) deputies and this allows an assassin to cut the umbilical, killing the prisoner with ExplosiveDecompression.]]

* In ''Film/Papillon1973'', when the titular character is sent to Devil's Island, he's told that conditions are quite lax there as the sharks make sure no-one escapes.

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[[folder:VideoGames]]
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''

* The Vichy French regime in Algeria ( a puppet government taking its orders from Mussolini and Hitler) interned British and Commonwealth military personnel who fell into its hands in a concentration camp in the South Sahara. Security in this notorious camp was light because there were two hundred miles of desert on all sides and the local Arabs were paid to bring back corpses, rather than living escapees.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crematoria_prison.png]]]]

* ''Literature/{{Holes}}''. The juvenile detention camp "Camp Green Lake" has no guard towers or fences, and most of the counselors aren't even armed (and Mr. Sir, who is, says that he will ''not'' waste a bullet on an escaping prisoner)... but the camp is in the middle of the desert, and has the only water for 100 miles, and the only fauna is highly poisonous spotted lizards. Anyone who wants to leave can leave, only to die of thirst or be forced to come back.

[[folder: LiveActionTV]]

[[folder: TabletopGames]]
* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. The old Dark Eldar codex mentioned that slaves pens in Comorragh don't have walls to keep the slaves in. They can leave any time they want... and wander out into the [[{{WretchedHive}} Dark City]] where they're likely to suffer [[{{FateWorseThanDeath}} an even worse fate]].

[[folder: VideoGames]]

[[quoteright:350:''[[Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crematoria_prison.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Even if you ''do'' escape, where are you going to go?]]

* ''Film/Alien3''. Incarceration on the penal planet of Fury 161 is entirely voluntary. There's a minimal staff with no weapons, as there's no place for anyone to escape to without a functioning spacecraft. However, the facility used to house several thousand prisoners, so presumably security was more expansive when the site was fully operational.

[[quoteright:350:''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crematoria_prison.png]]]]

->''"There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying."''
-->-- '''Bane''', ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises''

* ''Film/Alien3''. Incarceration on the penal planet of Fury 161 is entirely voluntary. There's a minimal staff with no weapons, as there's no place for anyone to escape to without a functioning spacecraft.

** In ''Discworld/GoingPostal'', when Vetinari is meeting his new BoxedCrook Moist von Lipwig, he tells Moist that if he doesn't like the offer he [[SchmuckBait can simply walk out that door]]. When Moist goes to check, the door leads to a deep pit, possibly full of spikes; it's so deep Moist can't even seen the bottom.
** In the sequel ''Discworld/MakingMoney'', when placed in the same scene and offered the same choice, Moist theatrically goes to test the depth of the "alternative"... only to find that now it's an ordinary exit door, because this time Vetinari really is giving him the option to refuse.

* One issue of ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' has TheVillain contain a pair of hostages within a magnetic force field generated by one of his devices. The field generator and the hostages are hidden within an active volcano, where the extreme heat would boil away the hostages in seconds without the protection that the force field offers. Superman's dilemma is how to extract the hostages and also keep their compartment intact.

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[[folder:{{Literature}}]]

* In [[Creator/JackVance Jack Vance's]] ''Throy'', the [[BigBad Big Bads]] of the entire ''Cadwal Chronicles'' series end up marooned in one of these, one that they devised for [[HoistByHisOwnPetard imprisoning their own enemies]]. Just a small stockade with no guards at the top of an extinct volcano, smack in the middle of a DeathWorld continent where ''everything'' is [[HungryJungle a predator]].

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. The old Dark Eldar codex mentioned that slaves pens in Comorragh don't have walls to keep the slaves in. They can leave any time they want... and wander out into the [[{{WretchedHive}} Dark City]] where they're likely to suffer [[{{FateWorseThanDeath}} an even worse fate]].

* When ''Film/{{Papillon}}'' is sent to Devil's Island, he's told that conditions are quite lax there as the sharks make sure no-one escapes.

Often serves as an example of MortonsFork. May be how a villain carries out ReleasedToElsewhere. If there's any chance at all of success, the escape route is likely to be a DeathCourse; sufficiently Badass prisoners may theoretically [[WinYourFreedom win their freedom]]. Being imprisoned in such a facility, however, may lead to the realization that HopeIsScary. Some prisoners may choose to commit suicide using the escape route, [[IDieFree preferring death to imprisonment]].

* The underground Klingon labor camp Rura Penthe where Kirk and [=McCoy=] are imprisoned in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'' has nothing preventing prisoners from escaping--except the extreme cold and storms of the surface, where death by exposure would be a certainty. In fact, prisoners are threatened with expulsion to the surface if they don't work.

Well, because escape would be suicide. The secure facility remains secure because it is located in an ''extremely'' [[DeathWorld inhospitable environment]]. It might be in the middle of a vast desert or tundra, such that anyone foolish enough to leave would die of exposure. Alternatively, the surroundings could be populated by [[SuperPersistentPredator Super-Persistent Predators]] or other deadly creatures. In extreme cases, the prison may be smack in the middle of the ocean, or at the top of a mountain with a hundred-foot drop on all sides. Needless to say, it's safer just to stay inside.

* A reason why [[DeathWorld Australia]] was chosen to be the primary PenalColony of the British Empire.

** In ''Discworld/GoingPostal'', when Vetinari is meeting his new BoxedCrook Moist von Lipwig, he tells Moist that if he doesn't like the offer he [[SchmuckBait can simply walk out that door]]. When Moist goes to check, the door leads to a deep pit full of spikes.