In scifi, fantasy, and adventure stories, it’s common for one member of a group to have to sacrifice himself for the good of the many. In stories with any sort of military setting, it sometimes happens that the leader of a group has to decide whether to order one of the troops to make such a sacrifice. Today I’d like us to consider whether we’d make the same choice in two slightly different scenarios.
In Case #1, you’re the captain of the Dawn Treader. an FTL ship in Earth’s space navy escorting a wagon train to the stars. The Treader has a complement of 50–eight officers, 42 crew–and is carrying 200 colonists. The ship takes on heavy damage from a space anomaly; the matter/antimatter engines are moments from overloading, killing everyone on board. There’s time for the crew to evacuate via life pods, but not the passengers. It’s possible for one person to go in and make the repairs, but that will mean certain death via radiation poisoning. You lack the expertise to do yourself, and even if you did, the job will require the use of both hands and you’ve got a broken arm.Your chief engineer is the best choice for the job, but ordering her to do it is sending her to a nasty death. And no, she’s not a Vulcan; if she dies, she’s gonna stay dead.
In Case #2, the Dawn Treader is under threat from a different quarter. There are no colonists on board this time, and this time the danger comes from a warship of an alien race with a strange moral system; they’re relentless in battle, but they won’t lie or break their word under any circumstances. A decade earlier, your first officer’s father killed the father of the alien captain, who swore vengeance on your exec in return. Afer long searching the aliens tracked down your exec on board the DT and brought your ship to battle. Their vessel is vastly superior tactically, and help is far off. Once it’s clear you’re overmatched, the captain gives you a choice. Surrnder your exec for execution, and he’ll let the Treader and her crew live; he’ll even give you enough supplies and fuel to limp to tohe nearest base. Continue fighting, and he’ll blow you out of space. There is no doubt in your mind that the aliens will win if the battle continues.
Do you make the same choice in both of these scenarios? If not, why is sacrificing a single life to save many acceptable in one case but not the other?
I think case 2 is easier to decide than case 1. Since the first officer dies regardless of my decision in case 2, sending the first officer to the alien vessel seems to me to be the correct choice, and the one that I would make.
In case 1 the engineer would survive by escaping in the life pods vs a sure death. This makes the first case a much more difficult decision to make. I feel like it’s the cowards way out, but my answer to the first case would be to ask the engineer if she is willing to make the sacrifice and respect her decision either way. I would not pressure her one way or the other.
Not to fight the hypothetical . . . but the bite in this moral conundrum is dulled a bit by the fact that in the first scenario, my engineer has a choice whether or not to obey.
Even if I order her to save the Enter . . . Dawn Treader, she ultimately makes the choice about her sacrifice; I can’t force her to make the repairs.
In the second scenario, I imagine that I could somehow force the exec over to the enemy ship (via sneaky transporter usage or some such).
That said, in both cases I would offer the relevant person (my engineer and my exec, respectively) the option to make the choice themselves. If the engineer doesn’t do it, then I guess it’s bye-bye passengers, and she’ll have to (get to?) live with her choice. If my exec won’t surrender him/herself to the alien . . . I would probably beam the officer over anyway.
I order the engineer to repair the engines in the first case. She (I am presuming, at the very least) knew that life-threatening engine leaks were a possible hazard when she took the job, and while evacuating the crew would save her life, it would make myself and the chief engineer directly responsible for the death of 200 people. The way I see it, either she chooses death in the engine room (saving 200 lives in the process), or she chooses death by firing squad after being court-martialed for cowardice and gross dereliction of duty. I suspect my opinion would be different were she, say, a civilian contractor, but I would still consider it my duty to attempt to force her to repair the engines no matter what. If that means dragging her into the engine room with me and locking the door behind us, so be it. The lives of the 200 colonists and the rest of the crew outweigh any one or two individual lives.
In the second case, I hand over the exec. Her life is forfeit whether I do so or not - there is no saving her, only damning every other soul on board to follow her into the vacuum of space. Any moral system that demands I consign my entire crew to death simply to not be directly complicit in the death of my exec is bankrupt by fiat and merits no serious consideration - not handing over the exec is no different to flushing the rest of my crew out the airlock myself.
Where’s the rest of the space wagon train? If they’re an escort ship, they’re not carrying colonists, they’re escorting them in other ships.
Scenario 1. There’s no reason to distinguish between crew and passengers. There’s not enough lifeboat space, making it nearly identical to the Titanic scenario. The difference is the sacrifice thing. If I had the power to give the order, I would give it. And the other person has the power to refuse the order, so we’re even.
Scenario 2. Goodbye, exec. You’ve been a loyal friend, but business is business.
IIRC, Star Trek TNG had an episode exploring scenario #1, in which Troi was taking the command test for a promotion (in the holodeck) – she didn’t pass until she realized that she might have to give an order that would result in certain death for an officer.
The choice for #1 is pretty easy for me (I served in the Navy, by the way, on a submarine): #1, definitely give the order to the Engineer to make the repairs. It sucks, but that’s her duty, and it’s my duty to give that order. My responsibility as Captain extends to the lives of everyone onboard, and it would be a dereliction of duty to refuse to give an order, even if it would kill a crewperson, that would save the life of all the passengers. I’ll note that in this case, the Engineer must obey – if she does not, she’s violating her duty (this is definitely a lawful order) and deserves a courts martial or worse.
#2 is just a tiny bit harder, but still clear to me: duty demands I give that order to send over the XO. That sucks too, but that’s my duty (if, perhaps, not exactly hers), and I must take the responsibility to make shitty decisions to save the lives of my crew.
In my experience in the Navy, the first responsibility of a Captain is to his/her crew, and except in very unusual circumstances (e.g. we must kamikaze charge that Borg vessel heading for Earth or all humanity will be destroyed) or other wartime scenarios, my duty as Captain demands that I make the choice that saves and protects as many crewpersons and passengers as possible, even when the choice is shitty, and even when the choice will kill a crewperson. If I don’t make these specific choices (in these cases, make the sacrifice for both scenarios), I’m guilty of dereliction of duty.
In my view, in scenario #1, anything short of ordering the Engineer to make the repairs is a dereliction of duty, and if she refuses, that is a dereliction as well. If she refused, depending on the urgency of the situation, I might shoot her and order the next most skilled engineer to do it, or I might draw my weapon and threaten to shoot her, or if there was more time, then I’d try and reason with her. Captain’s authority, and a Captain’s duty, are no joke.
Cut and dry, order the engineer to do the repairs. Not only is it the obvious answer to save the most lives, but it’s her duty to which she agreed. And I know you eliminated it as a reasonable possiblity in this scenario, but I’d do it myself, if I could, so I’m not asking her to do something I wouldn’t do, she’s just the only one that can. That said, my mind might be changed if I didn’t have certaint that she could do it. Though, I still think the situation can be partially mitigated by starting an evacuation while she’s trying to fix it so, even if she did fail, we could still save the maximum number of lives possible she just, obviously, wouldn’t be among them.
Interestingly, this one is harder, but still the same answer. The tipping point is based on this “strange moral code”. That is, in my morals, the sins of the father are not inherited, and someone who is threatening with violence isn’t to be trusted to keep their word. Unlike the first case, taking on the sins of the father is NOT a duty that the executive officer took on willingly, so it would generally be unethical to make that order. However, the certainty of their moral system combined with the certainty of defeat makes it still obvious that, even if it’s not the executive officer’s fault, he has to make the sacrifice. In fact, even putting aside the moral system, not being sure whether or not they can be trusted, the certainty of defeat still makes it required, it just makes it an even more difficult choice. Doubt would only start to enter my mind if I didn’t have certainty in being defeated.
I order the engineer to fix it, because that’s her job and sacrificing herself to save 200 is part of the job when she signed up for it.
But I can’t bring myself to order the exec over to the alien ship. The tradeoff is similar: 1 life for 249 in this case. But the reasoning is different. The engineer is sacrificing herself to save us from a threat that was foreseeable as part of the job and is simply due to physics. The exec is being asked to die to satisfy some alien’s misplaced sense of honor. That ain’t right. More importantly, it shows that the space fleet is willing to sacrifice anyone’s life just to placate some aliens. You’re never going to have a space fleet if they say they’re willing to do that. It might be a hard choice for a single ship, but it’s the right choice for the fleet.
This adds a wrinkle I hadn’t though of – I don’t think it changes my position, but if I had reason to believe that sacrificing the ship in a dangerous battle might save lives in the future by dissuading the aliens from taking such a hard line, then I might consider fighting to the death with the intention of doing the most damage possible.
But short of that, my duty is still clear – the XO must be sacrificed.
A very valid point that I hadn’t personally considered - and, I suppose, one of the consistent issues with utilitarian lines of thinking. If a cogent argument can be made that sacrificing the lives of the entire crew by fighting back fiercely, then it is perhaps the responsibility of the captain to refuse to hand over the exec.
Consider, however, the following: We know that the alien race in question is extremely warlike and ascribes to a system of morality where one may be held morally responsible for the failings of a closely related party. If, say, a captain in the Earth’s navy decides to fight to valiantly to the death, and in doing so causes grevious harm and many deaths among his alien killers, can we be sure that the aliens do not in turn decide that the navy itself is responsible for those deaths, and decide to annihilate it outright? You justify refusing to hand over the exec on the grounds that taking a strident line with the aliens and sacrificing yourself and your crew may discourage them from further aggression, but what if your refusal to comply encourages it instead? What if by refusing to hand over the XO, you start an outright war that humanity cannot win?
Give the engineer the order to fix the engines, for the reasons stated by several posters above. It’s what he signed up for after all. If he refuses, drag him into the engine room and force him to do it, even knowing I’ll die as well - it’s what I signed up for after all.
What’s my Navy’s policy on surrender? Generally surrendering to an overwhelmingly superior force is an honorable and acceptable course, if there’s no chance of victory and continuing the fight has no military purpose. So surrendering out of hand would probably be acceptable, without the demand of turning over the first officer. But that adds an interesting wrinkle - usually surrender is done on terms of honorable treatment, which they’re absolutely not offering. So if the first officer volunteers, I’d regretfully turn him over, but if he doesn’t - send off a message to my HQ of my intentions to fight, and do so.
I’d ask the engineer to do the job, and explain to the alien that when I took my post, I swore to protect every single person in my ship - so he’s asking me to break my word.
Only if Riker had some form of information which could endanger more people, if they got it out of him, would I try to keep him. Or I’d try to bargain to deliver him to them, dead. But first I’d point out to them that their hunt for revenge is completely imbecilic and they should reconsider their war priorities.
I’d try to come up with a cunning rescue plan for Riker, otherwise.
I have a problem with option 2. If we are at war, and the first mate killed the alien’s father in honorable combat, then I would expect a species relentless in battle to honor the victor and not swear kanly. If they have sworn kanly, then I don’t think I would trust any previous encounter where they kept their word because they aren’t as trustworthy as expected.
However, if they were on deep space 9 and he murdered his father in a bar fight that would be different. So how, exactly, did the first officer kill the alien’s father?
Option 1 is hard too, because I would expect the Chief Engineer to be volunteering to save the people. I shouldn’t have to order someone to save people, and I have a hard time envisioning anyone making it to Chief Engineer without passing multiple levels of evaluations on how they handle those around them and more importantly, how they handle those they’ve been assigned to protect.
They have the advantage of living in a fictional world where it’s implicitly understood that they can never actually lose to the bad guys, and no one has any meaningful children or other family beyond the people on the deck.
In reality, by not handing over that one guy, you’re devastating the families of thousands of people. Imagine if you happened to survive and get back to Earth. How many of those families, do you think, are going to be saying, “Oh yeah, that was completely reasonable to get everyone killed, just to be able to say, ‘Well yeah, the first mate still died, but gosh golly, I didn’t hand him over!’” ? None of them.
S2: Fight to our noble deaths. As sated above, to do otherwise is setting a precedent. And who knows? Maybe war mongering aliens might find some respect for us and stop killing us once they’re convinced intended target is dead. So, at the risk of fighting the hypothetical, maybe some of the crew will survive? Or if not that, future promises to kill the first born of whomever might not get made in the first place.
This is what I would do in theory, if put to the actual test, I’m not sure I’d actually be that brave.
The traits are applicable to the real world, even if the scenario isn’t
Yes, that would be a tragedy. But it seems like this tactic of “hand over someone if it will save lives” would be harmful. Say, if someone threatened to blow up Union Station unless we turn over the President because the President’s dad killed the bad guy’s dad.