The most valuable member of your post-apocalyptic refuge has a huge hidden drawback.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Trying out a new voice to text program. I probably won’t be correcting typos. I apologize if this is overlong; it’s hard for me to judge length. Here’s the sitch:

Five years into the zombie apocalypse, you are living in a small and relatively prosperous community of about 400 survivors. You’re the mayor but not not the most valuable resident. That is unquestionably a fellow nicknamed, for Greek Orthodox reasons, the BRIGADIER.

The Brigadier, in addition to being a skilled farmer, is as badass a fighter as Jack Reacher and as gifted in science and engineering as Angus MacGuyve; He has been pivotal of saving the the town in several major conflicts (there are the usual herds of zombies and gangs of bandits to deal with, and there’s at least one rival that settlement that would like to annex your town, kill the men, and enslave the women and children). In the last bad conflict, the Brigadier twice saved your life. He designed much of the compound and was the boss during their construction; he’s the one who comes up with intelligent rules to avoid crises and clever plans to resolve them.

The Brigadier likes women, and they like hi He’s had plenty of offers for both casual sex and committed relationships, but he always declines. Before joining the group he was roaming with his wife, LENORE, and their kids, from whom he was separated during a bandit attack and whom he still searches for sometimes. Until he has absolute proof that his wife is dead, he says, he willbe faithful to her.

This morning, while leading a salvage mission, you met a fprtysomething woman named ANNE; with her are her boyfriend, teenage daughter, and the daughter’s husband. Your group saved them from one of the ravenous hordes. You bring the little group back to the town and let them get cleaned up. All seems well until the newcomers saw the Brigadier. He smiles–and suddenly he doesn’t look like your buddy the hero. The daughter turns her eyes to the ground, while Anne pisses her pants.

Anne is the her middle name, you see. She’s the Brigadier’s ost Lenore. To Anne he is Michael, the son of a bitch who made her twenties and thirties a living hell. She admits they were legally married, but says his account of wedded bliss is bullshit; all she ever was to him was a punching bag, rape victim, and occasional an ashtray. He never touched their daughter sexually, but was no less violent to her otherwise.

The Brigadier doesn’t deny any of this, but he has a different interpretation of the facts. “Lenore is my wife,” he says. "Therefore I cannot have raped her, any more than I can steal my own money. That man she’s with now? I don’t know if they’re fucking, but if they are, he’s a thief. And yes, I chastised my daughter physically. That’s my natural right until she gets married, and I will decide who she marries. Now maybe you don’t agree with that, Mayor Dopername. That’s your option. But I’m laying my claim to them again. You want me to stay here, you’ll honor that. If not – well, you guys are my comrades, and this town is my home. I won’t fight y’all as long as that’s true. What I will do is get my horse and my wagon and all my gear and leave . Maybe I’ll live on my own; I got a hideout prepared for emergencies. Maybe I’ll join one of the other settlements, or one of the roving gangs. Anybody who wants to come with me is free to. Either way, the next time we meet, we won’t be friends. Y’all will be the thieves who stole my family. It’s almost midnight ; I’m going home. Get the elders together and decide what you want to do.

Now let’s be clear. The Brigadier is the baddest badass north, south, east, and west of the Pecos, but he’s not Captain America. It might take three guys to do it, but your troops can certainly beat him in unarmed combat, and he’ll fall ro an arrow like anybody else. But he also is the guy who designed your security measures and trained the troops; he’s got a lot of friends and knows the town’s every weakness. The gear he’d take with him–unquestionably his private property–is the best anybody in town has, and some of the tools are unique. And as said above, he’s largely responsible for the town’s success to this point. Anne & company, on the other hand, are total strangers and nowhere near as competent as he is.

How do you respond to the Brigadier’s ultimatum?

2

I’m not clear on why I need a memer; are we now using memes as currency or just as a product for sale?

3

I don’t want to miss the edit window, but with just the facts in evidence, I’d find someone to surreptitiously help the newcomers escape, make a show of forming posses and looking for them and then express comradely commiseration to the Brigadier, who will of course have no reason to leave now and give no new cause for people to hate on him.

4

That’s a typo for member, I expect. sorry, my vision is pretty bad.

5

Clearly we aren’t going to allow him to treat people as property that he can assault and rape at will. Given that, his prior contributions are irrelevant - his declared plan is now to become a serious threat to the security and integrity of the community going forward. Don’t wait for an elders meeting, this will give him a chance to foment discontent, rally allies to his side and fragment the community. Get wet ops to kill him immediately by executive order. Easy decision. Much easier to manage any grumbling among his friends once he’s dead, they’ll get over it.

He may have done you a favor by escalating this and giving you a valid reason to kill him. He held far too much political power for someone who was not an elected leader. Given his revealed character, that was always going to create a big problem eventually.

6

“Wet ops”? You’ve got 400 residents total. Surely not all of those are fighters. You don’t hvae special forces, you’ve got a few dozen ordinary guys WHOM THE BRIGADIER TRAINED. And given that he’s been thought a hero until nows, he’s probably very popular with them. You think you’re gonna have an easy time rustling up people willing to kill him – especially since he’s the baddest badass any of them know?

Also – and I realize the the OP doesn’t specify this – the above conversation may have taken place in private, between you and the Brigadier. If it did, what makes you think the townsfolk are necessarily gonna believe you? I also am not sure they’ll even believe Anne; they don’t know her from Eve.

I’m not sure the Brigadier’s unelected position matters. The OP calls you the mayor; it doesn’t say you were elected to that post. Rick Grimes has led several lincarnations of his community without any vote. and even if teh mayora’s job is an elected one, his great competence,I’d not be surprised if the majority of the townsfolk consider him the actual leader and you just a figurehead.

Bear in mind also that some of your hest fighters, told that the Brigadier wants the authority to treat his wife as a slave, may think, “Hmm. If he gets that, then I will too.”

In sum, I don’t think the Brigadier’s going down as easy as you think. And while I didn’t think of this while writing the OP if he made the demands in private, it may have been in an attempt to trick you into doing something precipitous.

7

Hmm, well I thought the original hypothetical pretty much told me that I had fighting men loyal to the community of which I’m a leader who could take him down. “Wet ops” was a joke, I just meant get the men to kill him.

This seems to be turning into more of a practical challenge than a political/ethical one. And even on the policial/ethical side, if the hypothetical has changed and I’m not an elected leader… well, I don’t know.

I still think the right thing to do is to kill him. If I’m likely to fail as a practical matter, I guess he’ll probably kill me.

8

Between the three of them, Hawkeye, Black Panther,and the Falcon COULD take down Captain America. That doesn’t mean they WOULD. And if Tony Start told them to do so, they might very well not.

It’s both a practical and an ethical problem. And the seemingly pragmatic choice of giving the Brigadier what he wants is fraught with danger.

9

I guess I’m going to be taking a trip, because I’m going to gather what supplies I can and then escort Anne and her new man to perhaps the most distant settlement of which I am aware. When I get there and see the shape of it and hear about their neighborhood, I’ll decide whether I’m staying there too or going back to the Brigadier.

10

I guess if you want to make a hypothetical like this about a practical problem, one of political strategy and negotiation and power plays, then it becomes difficult to answer – so much of that kind of thing depends upon the subtle details of all of the social relationships, it’s quite difficult to answer in a meaningful way for a fictional scenario with a simple description.

11

That’s why it’s not a poll.

I think Chimera’s answer is a good one; it grasps that the situation is far more parlous than at first glance.

12

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

13

With business, and other things, go big or stay small. Middle sized is fraught with peril.
In this case, it is worse because due to size of grouping, battlers have to be fought. This group is not big enough to hold their ground and too big to move quick and/or hide effectively.

My family and a few others would have already been gone from there and never hang around where a guy like that is entrenched.

Run like the wind from there or kill him quick and way earlier, you were asleep at the switch to let him get to the point of the hypothetical.

Your willingness to kill may vary…

14

Great story, and, sometimes, it’s the only answer.

The Brigadier is vitally necessary to the community. If he’s also a huge moral jerk, then the community has a painful decision to make. In purely utilitarian terms, “eaten by zombies” is worse than “harboring a rapist.”

Still, if I catch him in the act, I’ll arrest him. Even in the zombie apocalypse, there are moral laws.

15

In writing the scenario, the choices I envisioned were

  1. Handing the Brigadier’s wife & daughter over to him with the understanding that he has the right to treat them as property;
  2. Taking them into the community but not handing them over to them, with the understanding that he’ll probably depart (leaving the townwithout his talents) and may well ally himself with the town’s enemes; and
  3. Trying to kill him

You seem to be embracing a fourth option: takingthe women in and trying to restrain the Brigadier from abusing them further. while retaining him as a member of the community Is that what you meant?

16

It’s an interesting dilemma but the setup of a man with no long con game on the table being helpful, participating, chaste, respectful to the community with no gains for himself expected, and then being a violent, abusive, insane psychopath on the flipside who views his family as chattel just does not jell for me as a reasonable hypothetical.

If he had murdered a group of people as a solider in the past or something that would be more plausible than the good guy/nutcase flip flop you posit.

17

I’m wondering why, if the Brigadier is this otherwise-heroic badass, why you’re on the throne not him?

But surely the answer here is to grant Lenore a divorce with her getting custody of the child?

18

It seems to have the best overall benefit to society: Brig saves us all from zombies, and we save his victims from him.

Of course, if he refuses to accept this compromise, we have to fall back to one of the others. (We don’t have to kill him; we can imprison him, like any other criminal.)

19

I saw the Brigadier’s chastity as creepy more than anything else. He’s fixated on Anne and wants to be with no one else. You don’t think the fact that he calls her “Lenore” was significant?

As for the rest: being a productive member of the community was in the Brigadier’s rational self-interest. Even Jack Reacher has to sleep sometime; even MacGuyver might need help installing solar panels from scavenged parts. Just because the Brigadier is the most valuable player on in the group does not mean he wasn’t profiting too. You think he wants to shovel the manure himself?

No throne; mayorship. And the obvious answer is that he doesn’t want to be mayor. The Brigadier may just think that being the titutlar leader is a bullshit position. Some people would. The mayor probably has to do borning stuff like decide who works which shift at the bakery or the hog pens; the Brigadier might easily think, “I’m a badass engineer and I don’t have to deal withthat shit.”

As for the custody ofthe child: She’s married (though not in the Brigadier’s eyes), so tht may not be an issue.

20

The Brigadier has committed no crimes during his time with the town. Do you think none of his friends will object? What are you prosecuting him for? How long will you imprison him? What will you do after you let him out?