# The Plight of Prisoners during the End Times? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315 "2011-04-14T01:39:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SubcomandanteMarcos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@SubcomandanteMarcos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SubcomandanteMarcos)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/1 "2011-04-14T01:39:30Z")
After thumbing through my old copy of S. King’s _The Stand_, I was struck with a thought – what would happen to our nation’s millions of prisoners during an apocalyptic event, e.g. super flu, nuclear war, etc? Would the guards be obligated to stay at their posts? If so, what mechanism of enforcement would be brought to bear? It seems to me that many prisons would simply be abandoned, as was the case for Trashcan man and his fellow inmantes in the novel. Is there any precedent or recorded policy for this sort of catastrophe? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/2 "2011-04-14T01:41:51Z")
Very, very interesting question. There would probably be a hell of a lot of rioting, and a lot of prisoners killed by guards trying to put them down. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/3 "2011-04-14T02:01:39Z")
First, if its really bad I do suspect the prisoners are in deep doo doo. However, I think perhaps criminals that are not in for particularly violent or non-violent reasons might just be released without “official” process so to speak. When the shits hitting the fan, I don’t think you’ll be to worried about Wall Street embeezlers or low leve weed dealers running rampant. You’ll be glad you not having to worry about watching them in addition to the pyscho paths and murders. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/4 "2011-04-14T02:13:53Z")
nuclear war or super-flu time is not a good time to flee screaming into the darkness. It might appear to the guards (rightly or wrongly) that staying as a government employee with guns, organization and some at least hypothetical claim on public support is a better idea than cutting and running. So at the very least the police and prison guards bureaucracies would try to stay together, though possibly taking massive casualties just like everybody else. Whether or not those bureaucracies would want to release prisoners, guard and feed them, outright kill them, pretend to guard them while engaging in deliberate negligence leading to quick die-off, relocate them to farms for use as forced labor (with themselves as aristocracy) or various other possibilities, well, that would “depend” 🙂 If you want a disaster that really wipes out organizations and bureaucracies, it would be more like Day of the Triffids or the same Stephen King’s “Cell” novel. You can write stories like that, but they are not very realistic compared to other potential disasters we are relatively likely to face. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/5 "2011-04-14T11:54:53Z")
The simplest and safest (for the public) way would probably be for the guards to just wait until all the prisoners were in their cells for the night, and then leave. The prisoners would then starve. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/6 "2011-04-14T12:33:02Z")
Remember when they had the prison riot in (I think it was NM) and the guards lost control of the prison and the other prisoners broke into the protective custody wards (where high risk prisoner, like homosexuals and sex offenders and snitches etc are kept) and killed a bunch of them? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/7 "2011-04-14T15:42:19Z")
I don’t recall that. In one of the animated shorts on the extended edition DVD for _I Am Legend_, with American society falling apart due to an epidemic, all the inmates in a Federal prison are put on buses to be taken God-knows-where. The Feds plan to turn the prison into a fortress for top officials and their families. It… doesn’t work out so well. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/8 "2011-04-14T16:35:46Z")
The closest analogy that has actually happened is probably WW2 prison camps, and while there is undoubtedly some variation to what happened with them I know Stalag Luft was completely abandoned by the German guards when the Russian forces drew near. I believe they even informed the prisoners what time they would be leaving so they could set up their own chain of command. ---
**Author:** ![llcoolbj77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/32.png) [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/9 "2011-04-14T17:11:01Z")
I vaguely remember some serious shit going down at one of the prisons during Hurricane Katrina. I have a visual memory of a bunch of prisoners up on a roof or bridge, trying to get rescued. I know that one of the federal and local courthouses was completely flooded and they lost a ton of stuff. That resulted in some big changes in how our courthouse stores criminal records, land records, etc… ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/10 "2011-04-14T18:04:11Z")
Yes, I was thinking of Katrina too. I thought there was a jail empties out and most of the prisoners ended up at the stadium? ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/11 "2011-04-14T18:24:11Z")
> [@SubcomandanteMarcos](#): > > Is there any precedent or recorded policy for this sort of catastrophe? Is there precendent for the End of Times? Umm… yeah, it happened last week. You probably overslept or something. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/12 "2011-04-14T18:27:16Z")
I don’t think we ever had a plan for a zombie apocalypse but the New York State prison system does have a plan for what we’d do in a nuclear war. We have stores of emergency food, fuel, and medical supplies. (And they actually do work - if you had flown over New York during the Ice Storm of 1998 or the Blackout of 2003, the only places where you would have seen lights on would have been hospitals and prisons.) A lot of employees would stay at work (and probably bring their families in) because a prison is actually a good place to be during a major disaster. But if it was a long-term disaster that went on for weeks or months, we’d eventually run out of supplies. And when we run out and can no longer feed people, the policy is to let them out. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/13 "2011-04-14T18:51:09Z")
In the movie **The Rapture** , I seem to recall that they got out of prison. Can’t remember how, though. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/14 "2011-04-14T20:00:02Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > In the movie **The Rapture** , I seem to recall that they got out of prison. Can’t remember how, though. Is this a whoosh? The bars of the cells fell apart. Divine intervention, y’know. ---
**Author:** ![SubcomandanteMarcos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@SubcomandanteMarcos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SubcomandanteMarcos)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/15 "2011-04-14T22:53:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And when we run out and can no longer feed people, the policy is to let them out. Very interesting. Is there any sort of tiered release, i.e. the non-violent guys get out a day before the death row folks? Do you think that this is actually how it would play out if the federal government were to collapse? I can imagine some wardens and guard captains would debate the morality of executing the death row inmates before releasing them into mass chaos. But that’s more like a GD thread. ``` In your opinion, would the guards adhere to the established protocol? Would the prisoners start a riot before the supplies were exhausted? ``` ---
**Author:** ![SubcomandanteMarcos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@SubcomandanteMarcos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SubcomandanteMarcos)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2011, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/16 "2011-04-14T22:56:09Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > Is there precendent for the End of Times? > > Umm… yeah, it happened last week. You probably overslept or something. Hah must have just missed it… If I were to restate my OP a bit more accurately, it would simply refer to an historical precedent set during a break down of state/federal authority. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Presidente](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c2a13f/32.png) [@El\_Presidente](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Presidente)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/17 "2011-04-15T04:55:32Z")
This might be the closest account we have of a prisoner surviving a truly apocalyptic event: > **[Ludger Sylbaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Auguste_Cyparis)** > > Ludger Sylbaris (1 June 1874 – c. 1929, aged 55) was an Afro-Caribbean man who was one of the survivors in the city of Saint-Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique during the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902. Saint-Pierre, known as the "Paris of the West Indies", was in the direct path of a pyroclastic flow, which destroyed the city and killed an estimated 30,000 people. > Sylbaris later travelled with the Barnum & Bailey circus and became something of an early 20th-century celebr... ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/18 "2011-04-15T08:57:03Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Remember when they had the prison riot in (I think it was NM) and the guards lost control of the prison and the other prisoners broke into the protective custody wards (where high risk prisoner, like homosexuals and sex offenders and snitches etc are kept) and killed a bunch of them? I remember most from the description of the [New Mexico State Penitentiary riot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_State_Penitentiary_riot) the guy getting taken apart by a blow torch, only stopping screaming when they finally took off his head :eek: ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/19 "2011-04-15T09:34:47Z")
just ask them what they’d do. i’m sure their manuals cover SHTF, especially during the cold war 😃 all i know is that prison captors are also held responsible for the welfare of their inmates. POWs, when the captors face eminent defeat or are forced to retreat, are relocated if time allows. otherwise, they are left behind in which case, they will not likely die but be released by compatriots. not sure how soldier-captors would behave in a SHTF but there were cases of varying severity in world war II. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315/20 "2011-04-15T18:24:55Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And when we run out and can no longer feed people, the policy is to let them out. …and THAT would be the beginning of the real disaster. Letting huge gangs of convicted criminals out free to prey on the public is probably the worst idea ever conceived. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plight-of-prisoners-during-the-end-times/578315.md?page=2)