Heh at this point no one can really compete with the Sci Fi horror scenarios. Training at the entrance to Hell itself is obviously more brutal than anything else that can be imagined.
I was going to mention the Spartans from Halo, but they are just pussies next to those Chaos Marines. 
Washed out? Do you mean dismissed for cause (insubordination, etc.), or people who just didn’t make the grade? What happens to the latter? Since the whole point of signing up is to earn citizenship, being involuntarily dismissed kind of defeats the purpose of the system being a meritocracy.
Yes, but they actually debated whether to increase the ratio of live ammo in their training exercises. That sounds positively squeamish to me. 
Nah mate… having some dud ammo means the stupid ones mess up and get killed more easily. They think they can take the chance die.
Let’s see… the trainig of the Emperor’s Crimson Guard was supposed to be awesomely brutal in Star Wars. We never got to see one fight in the films, but they were supposed have approached the Jedi in combat ability (which was a deliberate choice, I’m sure, because the only threat to the Emperor was a Jed assassin). This comes from a Dark Horse comic, of course, and may not be as canon as otherwise. The recruits were chosen from the best and most loyal from across the galaxy, and those bright red robes hide substantial armor and an small arsenal of weapons.
You can wash out if the doctors decide you physically can’t make it as an MI. You don’t have to accept a medical discharge though - you can go back into the mill and be assigned to a different service. This is specifically mentioned in the book - Johnny runs into a guy who was at Camp Arthur Currie with him but got reassigned to the Navy and was now a cook.
Hee! Just what I came in to mention. I love love love this movie, though I’m not going to say it’s not terrible. I actually think it’s the best work I’ve ever seen from Kurt Russell.
But remember–Ender’s experience at the school was deliberately atypical throughout his time there. It was less difficult for the other students.
A major way that Battle School differed from a lot of the ones mentioned–the training was mostly mental/psychological rather than physical. Clearly they needed to be very physically fit to succeed in the battle games, but it’s not like they were being trained in hand-to-hand combat or something.
One of the things I loved about that book is that it didn’t seem like Heinlein was trying to come up with the Worst. Training. Ever. Really, really difficult and grueling, yes. But believable.
IIRC, the Crimson Guard were supposed to be the best non-Force fighters in the galaxy. And since they were chosen out of a galaxy of trillions of possible candidates, they were very tough indeed. The impression I got is that they trained until you got a small number of Batman-level survivors, and then they fought each other to the death until there was one survivor per cohort.
The random citizen’s in Harry Harrison’s ‘DeathWorld’ trilogy. At least the ones on the world itself.
It’s a world in which all creatures on the planet…
[spoiler]are psychic and a positive feedback loop develops between the colonists and ALL life on the planet in which an implacable hostility is the norm.
It’s at the point where everything on the planet near the colony is actively evolving to become more lethal and the colonists are getting tougher and tougher. And it happens at warp speed.[/spoiler]
So it is, by definition, the toughest place to be because nothing can be any less than totally lethal.
There was also mention that suffrage-winning military service could be as hazardous as testing spacesuits on Pluto, or as innocuous but mind-numbing as counting the individual hairs on the back of a caterpillar, IIRC. It’s whatever the Terran military needs at the time.
Your second example is what a doctor told Johnny when he asked how many people fail the physical. The doctor said no one failed - the purpose was to see what kind of job you’d be suited for. But if you showed up at a recruiting station blind, deaf and paralyzed from the waist down, they’d have to find something for you to do “count the hairs on a caterpillar by touch, maybe.”
Pssst! Terry Goodkind wrote the Sword of Truth series. And I’ll believe he’s capable of recognizing irony when I see it.
Oh, duh! :smack:
VILTRUMITES.
The fascist planet-conquering race of ultra hostile and violent supermen from Kirkman’s Invincible. If you’re not familiar it’s like a planet of Superman-level beings with Ancient Roman-style conquest coupled with a kill or be killed eugenic-warrior society.
Have you read the book? It may sound funny, but it comes across as quite horrible in the context of the story (it’s described as being harder than the soldiers’ “graduation” test, which is to kill an infant). Martin is perfectly capable of irony, but he’s not using it here.
Seconded. Those are some badass soldiers, and they don’t get to be that way by accident.
Maybe I haven’t read enough fantasy to have a good estimate of what counts as ironic hyperbole in the genre, but „puppies“ … really?
When would you have considered the mentioning of puppies ironic? When Martin had said that the Unsullied were so badass, they wore loincloths of their fur? Come on, puppies are pretty much a meme and are used so regularly with satirical intentions that I have trouble imagining Martin not grinning while he wrote that one down.
I think he is too good a writer to not realize the potential for the absurd that he delivered here.
Still, it might just be me; most of the time when I read about such over-the-top badassery, it strikes me as laughable and not awe-inspiring at all.
Take this for an example:
If this is an accurate description and meant sincerely by the author … well, then I know why fantasy, the serious fantasy, has never been a favourite of mine.
Badassery? It’s a story about child abuse. The purpose of the passage is to show how broken the Unsullied are, not how tough. It’s a condemnation of the culture that created them.
Yeah, I don’t see how dead puppies are humorous.
You just have to picture the puppy as being Scrappy Doo.
Well, OK. It was a lasergun and a flak jacket. The problem is that such weapons didn’t do a damn lot against the major enemies. The weakest vehicle in the game would ignore it, and more or less any enemies they faced were capable of killing several guardsmen. Basically, the next weakest fighters in the game have things like machine-guns with exploding rockets and power armor. Many players in fact deliberately give up the armor of the guardsmen in favor of more offensive power, figuring their defenses are not worth bothering with.