Imperial Marines

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

There may not be, but over the sixty-year lifetime you're looking at, how many of those years could nominally be given as "at war", with respect to the career of an average troop?

Marines spend about 33% of their deployments in what you might call war-zones. 27% in Fleet Protection with occasional direct action operations. 27% in Public Duties with occasional counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and civil aid. 13% in training and transit and on furlough.

Originally Posted by martinl

I would not join a service with a 12.5% KIA unless I thought the need was truly dire. ... This is probably a feature then.

Well, 13% of the male population of Australia joined the first AIF, and 18% of them were killed in four years. Figures were similar for New Zealand in WWI. So this is only 1/21.6 of the fatality rate that combat troops can sustain in war. 0.3% per annum would be 450 per year among the 150,000 US troops in Iraq during most of the war, or a total of ~3,600 during the invasion and occupation. That is somewhat fewer than actually suffered, but people are still volunteering for the US armed forces.

The Imperial marines are doing work that can easily be portrayed as essential, noble, and heroic. The need is dire for someone to do something about the propensity of colonials to bomb and shoot one another and chop people up with machetes. I like to think that I would join if I could, though perhaps I'm flattering myself. And with only 9,000 new recruits per year out of a population of 815 billion not very many people do volunteer.

Finally, in a universe where a lot of people can't afford anagathic treatments 87.5% of marines live to eighty: and they are still middle-aged and vigorous when they get there. In a universe where most people can't afford interstellar travel, a marine will visit about sixty foreign worlds in the course of his career.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

12.5% over 60 years isn't likely much higher than civilian rates (especially on some of the tougher colonies).

An 87.5% chance of being fit, healthy, and middle-aged at eighty, with sixty years of good health ahead of you, has got to seem pretty attractive if you come from a world with an average life expectancy of 50 to 70, when in your experience octogenarians are feeble and decrepit. You meet an inactive-Marine recruiter in the ISRB with three rows of pretty ribbons on his uniform: to you he looks like a fit and well-preserved bloke in his fifties—sixty at most. Then you discover that he is ninety, flying his own goddam aircar, and still pulling. Seven chances of that and one of a noble death are going to look good to a hot-blooded youngster compared with forty years on construction sites and little chance of making eighty in any shape.

That's part of the reason why my working model has colonies with development equivalent to TL5 to TL7 producing twice as many marines recruits per head of population as colonies in the TL10 (advanced) Suite.