Imprisoning supervillains on an alternate Earth

Basic story idea; A SHIELD Expy agency that deals with supervillains (or at least those with powers that make keeping them in a cell infeasible) by dumping them on an alternate Earth where human civilization collapsed before the agency discovered it (but recently enough for the prisoners to at least sometimes scavenge technology, supplies, etc). I imagine that some kind of society would emerge after enough people were sent there, but would that be likely to be anything other than followings the more powerful or charismatic prisoners manage to accumulate? More generally I don’t know what kind of story to really tell.

Planet Australia.

You're describing Planet Australia if there are native survivors of the collapsed civilization, and considering how much better equipped the supervillains probably are than any surviving natives of the collapsed earth, it might still be Planet Australia without them. (Of course, it would probably be less stable because Australia in real life did have a lot of unindentured british colonists too who used the indentured people as slave labor, and thus had government infrastructure already in place.)

Though why the non-supervillain people wouldn't be interested in using a whole relatively uninhabited planet for anything other than a penal colony is unclear. If they can get back (which they must be able to otherwise they wouldn't know this place exists) they'd probably set up a settler colony to extract valuable resources instead of using it as a penal colony, or use it for disaster tourism. If there isn't a way to get back conveniently enough for whatever reason, suddenly you've got an excellent hazardous waste dump site.

Some questions that I have: Does this exile come with any possibility of parole? And then if not, how do people—the public, lawmakers, employees of not-SHIELD, superheroes, supervillains, etc.—react to this?

Does anyone decry it as a violation of human rights? And if so, do they do anything about it?

I think that this would likely depend heavily on the personalities and experiences of the prisoners being sent there, including how they're treated after capture, etc.

If enough of them are repentant, then perhaps a fairly stable society might emerge; if enough of them are unrepentant and power-hungry, perhaps you might end up with endless gang wars; and likely other potential outcomes besides!

Well, what kind of story draws your interest? And what drew you to this idea in the first place?

Or, to approach this from an alternative perspective, what about finding some characters and then just sitting down and writing, and seeing what emerges from that?

Perhaps they have access to enough such alternate planets that they have plenty to spare: they have a "waste dump" planet, and several "tourism" planets, and a "mining" planet or two—and, indeed, a "penal colony" planet.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 1st 2022 at 9:37:02 PM

A society made up of criminals has already been done in the Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat book series. Criminal cats(cats are/were aliens) were sent to planet Earth as a punishment many many years ago. The prisoners did survive, but over time their descendants dumbed down, becoming the cats we know today.

Maybe the supervillains over time would become dumber and lose knowledge, the resulting society being primitive and reliant on superpowers. Granted, the cats were influenced by humans but I think that humans would overall become less intelligent if we were dumped somewhere and forced to completely start over. Some knowledge would inevitably be lost. Unless it's the super smart kind of villains which could somehow figure out how to make a rocket through whatever kind of plot-thing.

In a nutshell: The society of villains would be primitive and reliant on superpowers once many generations pass as knowledge is lost, unless the prisoners' knowledge combined would equal everything we know today.

I would see an option like this being considered, but only for the worse of the worse (like school shooters, war criminals, etc) and even then some people might consider it a bridge too far (esp those who favor rehabilitation over punishment)

You might do some reading on San Pedro prison to work out how such a place might have come to exist and how it might function. (San Pedro is autonomously governing, but crucially not independent - it relies heavily on tourism revenue and bribing the perimeter guards to remain sustainable.)

Well I do have an idea of prisoners who aren’t sent there for life being given a high-tech bracelet or something with their sentence length programmed into it that sends them back when that amount of time has passed. Again, this is mainly to detain those who are strong enough to break out of any conventional prison, have phasing powers, that kind of thing, but I suppose the possibility exists of (someone in) the agency deciding it’s more cost-effective to just send everyone over and get rid of their conventional prison facilities entirely.

Regarding those bracelets, I would expect them to become of great interest to the non-temporary prisoners. Some might try to examine or tinker with them in the hopes of replicating the technology as a means of jailbreak; others might simply try to steal such bracelets for themselves—perhaps with violence.

Either way, it could make for an uncomfortable time for the temporary prisoners...

I think the MCU Loki haw had a similar concept, sealing variants at the end of time, but in that case it was so they would be consumed by resident Clock Roaches.

In hindsight, this may end up creating a Kodoku pot. A kind of survival of the fittest scenario where only the most deadly supervillain ends up surviving.

Huh, so no little bit of working together and instead just a chaotic free-for-all? That's gonna require some changing on how the story is told.

Instead of it being portrayed as a soulless prison or a harsh place where people try to survive, it could be shown as an "arena", at least to the prisoners ripping each other apart. Maybe a death world and not a prison or it could be seen as defacto-death row because of it being a Survival of the Fittest scenario where death is likely.

Keep in mind that these are superVILLAINs. If they were sane and rational they wouldn't be in jail to begin with.

That being said, you could have cooperation forced through hierarchy. The biggest supervillain just says "do what I say or I'll kill you all" and such.

A specific flaw in the whole concept recently dawned on me. "it is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven".

Like think about it, the idea hinges on the group mostly likely to have Take Over the World as a goal and yeeting them into an alternate world. It they are able to cooperate, congratulations, you basically give some of them what they wanted. Like if they are able to restore the planet then a lucky few would have the playground of evil they little black hearts wanted. Would it keep them docile, perhaps unless their ambitions grows. But odds are that they are as likely to serve out their Unisment as the most free prisoners.

The Wardens are gonna have to be very hands on to prevent such a scenario in a way that would prolly make them seem like the bad guys including methods that could be seen as war crimes or crimes against humanity in any other context. A build-your-own-miiror-universe in the making.

Would make for an interesting treatise on morality at lest.

Considering that they've been isolated from the people they were a threat to, I don't see how them getting to declare themselves Grand Duke of the Greater Wasteland and Newer Jersey is a problem.

This isn't a rehabilitative effort, it's a containment effort, and if it's a containment effort, then there shouldn't be any worry about whether or not they enjoy being contained in an inescapable location relative to everyone else.

The issue is more for those unlucky enough to be born in that hellscape and those convicted of minor crimes and temporary placed there.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 5th 2022 at 9:04:12 AM

Not to mention any natives who happen to still be alive.

You could perhaps (attempt to) prevent births by having separate worlds for each reproductive sex, while monitoring all for signs of technology and/or magic that could allow alternative methods of reproduction. (It might not work perfectly—but hey, there's a plot for a story. ;P)

Or, alternatively, allow reproduction but then take the resulting children into foster care. (Likewise, an imperfect measure, but again one with story-potential.)

As to temporary placement, I still think that such is a bad idea—at least if the temporary prisoners are sequestered in the same world as all the rest. If you do want to have it, then I'd suggest finding yet another uninhabited world for the purpose.

[edit] It does occur to me, however, that something being a bad idea doesn't mean that it's a bad worldbuilding element: it could give rise to plots, after all.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 6th 2022 at 2:53:52 PM

There's also a good chance that they'll rebuild the ruined world and attempt to get back home.