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In order to win the World War one faction begins producing clone super soldiers. The war is eventually won, but now the government must do something with the Clones. They can't kill them because of some Civil Right activists. At the same time, they don't have the money to substain the gigantic Army of clones that they currently have. What can they do with the clones without angering the civil rights activist?

Notes:

  • The people that populate this planet are biologically identical to humans.

  • The Clones are psychologically identical to humans.
    Their advantage over humans: super strength, quicker reflexes, above average intelligence.

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    $\begingroup$ find a new enemy, it's been working for the US military so far... $\endgroup$ Mar 30, 2016 at 16:48
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    $\begingroup$ You are this close to writing the origin story of Warhammer 40k Ultramarines. $\endgroup$
    – user8827
    Mar 30, 2016 at 20:59
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    $\begingroup$ "They can't kill them because of some Civil Right activists." Umm, who do you think could kill them? They just one a World War, so they are de facto the most powerful force in your world. The question you should be asking isn't "What will the government do with the clone army?", but rather "What will the clone army do with the government, now that they've won the war?" $\endgroup$ Mar 31, 2016 at 21:22
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    $\begingroup$ Was this question inspired by Star Wars? $\endgroup$
    – Eithne
    Apr 1, 2016 at 12:24
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    $\begingroup$ Easy solution: they become farmers and generate their own food. They are self sustained and they can be profitable, by producing vegetables for exportation. Facy restaurans paying 3000€ to eat a scoop of "hero ice cream", made from milk of the cows that the war heroes take care of. $\endgroup$ Apr 1, 2016 at 18:39

17 Answers 17

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Assuming You Thought This Through

You should have considered this before cloning thousands of battle trained individuals with a propensity for violence.

In which case, you would have engineered them to age at a much accelerated pace, meaning that each clone would only live for maybe a decade - long enough to win the war, but certainly not long enough for the survivors to pose a problem to your government.

Alternatively, you could implement a genetic kill switch which would make them highly susceptible to a certain rare virus or bacteria. You could use that switch to kill them all whenever you wish, and plead innocence, ignorance, and grief at the terrible oversight of the genetic engineers - whom you could use as scapegoats.

I recommend against this, however, as it is a design flaw which might be discovered/exploited by your enemies.

Assuming You Didn't

You are now stuck with tens of thousands of clone troopers who are currently lacking a purpose.

What Not To Do

Simply slipping the chain off the leash and allowing them to enter civilian life is the single, silliest thing you could attempt. They will never successfully integrate into society.

We're talking about clone-soldiers here, not former civilians. These people will have never experienced the love of a parents, will not have grown up in your society, and would not have any experience in dealing with a civilian society. On the contrary, they are trained killers who have been not just raised, but engineered to kill people. We also have to take the many cases of PTSD among their ranks into consideration.

Most people will (most likely) not feel safe having thousands upon thousands of identical, potentially dangerous individuals become a part of their communities. Especially smart ones (higher intelligence) who might replace them in a lot of lucrative positions.

The most simple example I can give you is, in fact, Rambo (first movie): a highly trained, decorated war veteran, who - in his own words (paraphrased) - had been given enormous responsibility on the front, but was not trusted, and treated with disdain back home. He became a troubled man who lived on the edge of society, and was treated poorly by his fellow countrymen.

Furthermore, flooding the workforce with so many individuals with similar skill sets will put entire industries out of business and possibly collapse your economy, or at the very least, shake it right up.

Since the societal response to their arrival will most likely be negative, the only logical outcome is that these clone troopers will form their own groups on the edges of society. Traditionally these have become gangs, which, when lead by a smart individuals (which they all are), become a network of organized crime - identical mobsters; have fun dealing with them! There could even be enough of them - and they could become angry enough - to simply assault, and take over the government outright.

A Possible Solution

What you have to do at that point is find a new enemy to fight. You should, as the present conflict ends, already have one lined up, in fact, because there's nothing more dangerous than a few thousand bored soldiers - especially if some hippies get it in their heads that they should feel slighted in some way.

At this point you're going to have to very carefully manage your troops. You should strategically set your own troops up in such a way that some of them should perish at the hands of the enemy, and no real blame can be laid at your feet.

Furthermore, some clone casualties should quietly be allowed to die, rather than be saved.

The trick here is:

  • Not having the press realize you are doing this

  • Not having the clones realize you are doing this

  • Not killing off so many of your own troops that you lose the conflict.

What might happen in the final days of this new war is that non-clone soldiers might be brought in to "reinforce" the clones and thus cover up the fact that you've been killing so many of them, not to mention reinforce to the public that you didn't really need the clones in the first place - give the glory to the "regular" soldiers instead.

The surviving clone soldiers - a much smaller group than what you started with - may now be used in other ways (such as what others have suggested), or even allowed to integrate into society (as best they can). The problem you should aim to avoid is having tens of thousands of them do this. (all at once, or at all)

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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, well, if those commissioning the army had thought before creating it, the problems would be only half as big (not least of all that they'd probably have gotten rid of the Civli Rights activists back then already , to allow them to create your cloned army...) $\endgroup$
    – subrunner
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:21
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM How do we know they have never experienced having parents, and have never experienced civilian life? We have no info on how they were raised between ages 1 - 15, they could have been raised by civilian foster parents until they were old enough to begin training. They weren't necessarily dumped straight from the clone vat to the training field to the battle field. It isn't stated in the question why are we asserting it? $\endgroup$ Mar 30, 2016 at 19:56
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM Why would the reaction be negative when a host of for real war hero's return home? Surely a significant number of these "significantly more intelligent" men and women weren't rendered psychotic by the war, and most could be fully rehabilitated. Also if the alternative to a bad civilian life is death we should let them choose, most people think a bad life is better than none. As to public hatred couldn't we just deal with it the same way we deal with hatred of a minority today, enforce equal legal rights and over the course of a generation they reintegrate into the population. $\endgroup$ Mar 31, 2016 at 1:02
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    $\begingroup$ @sdrawkcabdear Well, even the recent past has proved AndreiROM true... $\endgroup$
    – MakorDal
    Mar 31, 2016 at 8:08
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    $\begingroup$ I'm sad this answer is already accepted. I had a perfect one-word answer: Soylentclone. $\endgroup$
    – Lonboder
    Mar 31, 2016 at 19:05
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Start a super-sports organization and have them compete in various sports. Hopefully, the increases in strength and speed will draw large enough crowds that the admissions will pay for the upkeep of the (former) super soldiers. There is a reason that current sports stars gain so much popularity: they do amazing things. Imagine athletes who are specifically bred to do amazing things.

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  • $\begingroup$ +1 haha, I was just about to answer with putting these clones into the sports trade. What better way to ensure glory and fame as you "re-integrate" then making a clone into a super athlete. Surprised all the other answers are about putting to work or something useful. I'd bet with all the war-mongering that went on, you probably need some way to distract all the mindless public from your misdoings. You might even make some of that war money back through marketing deals. $\endgroup$
    – coblr
    Mar 30, 2016 at 21:54
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    $\begingroup$ This is a great lateral-thinking idea, but unfortunately I can see a flaw: they are clones. Spectator sports thrive on the fact that the athletes are distinct people with personalities and back-stories. If they were all clones it would greatly diminish the draw from the spectators' point of view. $\endgroup$ Mar 31, 2016 at 15:40
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    $\begingroup$ @user2390246 They have backstories from the war. Or writers could give them made-up characters to play like in professional wrestling. $\endgroup$
    – Torisuda
    Mar 31, 2016 at 15:53
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    $\begingroup$ @user2390246 I imagine these clones would be very heavily in to assorted body modifications (with a particular focus on things like facial tattoos) once they're out of the military. They'd be very easy to tell apart after a few years. $\endgroup$
    – Tacroy
    Apr 1, 2016 at 16:22
  • $\begingroup$ I like it Ryan, a belated welcome to the site. $\endgroup$
    – James
    Apr 1, 2016 at 20:06
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This situation really isn't terribly complicated. In the scenario you have set up the fact that your soldiers are "super" is irrelevant to how to proceed.

There is an abundance of historic documentation out there for what countries have done with militaries after major conflicts.


The most obvious example would be World War II, it fits your volume of troops better than any other situation from history.

At the end of World War II there were in the neighborhood of 12 MILLION active duty US military personnel.

The post war demobilization effort was named Operation Magic Carpet (which isn't really relevant I just really like the name) took a few years and reduced the active military force to just over 1.5 million.

Most went back to lives in the civilian sector. The expectation of 'care' provided for veterans by the government was significantly less expansive at the time.


Concerns in other answers of soldiers messing up the economy and taking jobs is overblown. If we continue to use the WWII United States as an example we can find that the US total population in 1946 was 141 million. This included the soldiers. Now in the case of the US those people were actually missing from the workforce and returned so there was no issue.

Now if you add 10 million clones to the population (leaving a standing force of 2 million) you are talking about roughly 12 percent more people. While not insignificant it will still not flood the national stage too badly. When you consider that the economy also normally grows after a major conflict, finding jobs should not be too big a deal.

And if I may extrapolate, your society is likely much farther in the future if you are able to create cloned soldiers, you would generally expect that the population would be larger as well. The larger a population gets the smaller the percentage that are in the military becomes, this reduces the impact of integrating these clones into society even further.

To effectively integrate these soldiers you will need a few things.

  • Job training and placement. Many military roles have associated roles in the civilian world, if you can fix a tank you can fix a cadillac, a mechanic is a mechanic. Some specialties do not and those troops would need some job training assistance.

  • Societal integration. Your soldiers have likely experienced the world outside the military in some way. If they are modified humans they still need down time. Maybe they spent their down time on the town hitting bars and erm...dance houses. If that is not the case your military expectations are still going to translate in some ways to the expectations of your society at large. In my personal experience the military culture is a slightly constrained version of our standard culture. So while there is an adjustment to be made that is still true of troops coming back from war today.

  • Education and medical assistance. Get them educated and make sure they have access to both physical and mental health care. War leaves scars on the mind, super soldier or regular soldier.

One additional complication I can see is resentment among the general populace. These soldiers will be better, faster, and smarter than the average worker, meaning odds are they will end up in high paying jobs...that could cause some...consternation.

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    $\begingroup$ This is not the same situation at all, since those soldiers had left behind positions which other men had not been around to fill. These people were already members of society, and already had families, jobs, etc. in America. When they returned they tried to take up their old lives. These clones are not in the same boat. They are strangers to civilian life, and to your society. Furthermore, they are genetically enhanced, so they're not your average human being either. People will most likely hate them as being "better than me", as well as maladjusted to civvy life. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Mar 30, 2016 at 19:39
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM but there may have been casualties in the war or a worker shortage it might be that society needs the new workers. People already hate those they consider better or worse than them see treatment of "the 1 %" or just plain racism. If society can survive the those why not some clones? $\endgroup$ Mar 30, 2016 at 19:47
  • $\begingroup$ @sdrawkcabdear Because they are trained killer that WILL be recruited by criminal organisation as they allready did in a lot of countries post war. $\endgroup$
    – MakorDal
    Mar 31, 2016 at 8:16
  • $\begingroup$ With returning soldiers, there are places to return to. With a clone army, it's more like the unchecked immigration issue the US and many others face today. $\endgroup$
    – JDługosz
    Mar 31, 2016 at 12:00
  • $\begingroup$ @JDługosz and AndreiROM I specifically mention in my answer that it is different but then explain the impact is not as dramatic as perhaps first expected. $\endgroup$
    – James
    Mar 31, 2016 at 13:35
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Just some ideas, combine them or ignore them or whatever...

Cheap work force

When they don't have any education beyond what is necessary for fighting, use them as cheap manual labor. Surely you have a couple of bombed out cities to clean up and rebuild? Some dangerous territories to decontaminate? With the right spin on media reports, your Civil Rights activist will be entirely satisfied.


Put them on ice

Save them for the next world war. Will be a cost-benefit calculation, of course, how long keeping your 2 Million clones frozen is cheaper than constructing a new 2 Million clone army. If the Civil Rights activists complain, ask them where they were when the 2 Million clone army was commissioned.


Give them a one-time severance pay

Dismiss them from the standing army, hand every clone a thousand dollars to get started on their own life and then hope they won't mix up society too much. (PTSD? Since they are clones, they will all be the same gender, so what if they now all want to marry? No clue how to behave as a civilian?)


Reuse specialists

Some of them will inevitably be highly trained specialists with deep knowledge in Mathematics, Technology, and other important specialist areas. Your engineering companies will love you for providing them with such rare talent!


Space, the Last Frontier

Let them explore where no man has set foot before! They are out of your way, and also contribute a lot to science and society!

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    $\begingroup$ "Cheap workforce/One time severance/Reuse specialists" <- this will crash your economy and cause a lot of anger as newly graduated students find no jobs within their industries. Furthermore, there's simply too many of them to simply integrate! All these people will have known is war, and they will not easily adapt to civilian life. Then you'll have tens of thousands of unemployed, violent, well trained individuals who feel rejected by society. That right there is a recipe for disaster. You can afford to integrate a few thousand of them - maybe. But the vast majority have to go. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:06
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    $\begingroup$ Same issue with the 'one-time severance pay' -- just probably with the job in the low-wages sector. Never said it was a good option... $\endgroup$
    – subrunner
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:08
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM You are far to eager to say the economy would crash. This is coming off a world war. If there are no crippling reparations the extra work force is needed to feed the new demand for civilian goods. There will be some difficulty in transitioning soldiers to be civilians so keep them under military discipline. Most units could transition to civilian tasks. Engineering units build, aviation units run air ports, transport units haul cargo. Tank units get transitioned into transportation or engineering. Infantry are the hardest, but put them into parks projects or fighting wildfires. $\endgroup$
    – PCSgtL
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:29
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    $\begingroup$ Also, you have no idea how much it costs to put someone on ice. In the 1980s the actual cost was $10,000-$12,000 for whole body deep freeze. With future tech and in bulk it would be even cheaper. That is far less then paying them. I'd say put infantry on ice, and put the rest to work. alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html $\endgroup$
    – PCSgtL
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:30
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM The question doesn't state clones or how large the work force is or how much of a worker shortage there is. How do you know there are to many to integrate? The clones are fast and smart why couldn't they be educated and successful. The question doesn't state they were philologically conditioned for war or overly aggressive. $\endgroup$ Mar 30, 2016 at 19:42
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Some Assumptions

For starters, I'm going to assume you made some good choices both before building the clone army and in your actual management of your soldiers.

In particular, I'm going to assume that your clones have the following features:

  1. They are clones of some good soldier who also represents your ideal man in other respects. Think Marvel Cinematic Universe Captain America. Honest, brave, loyal, with a natural sense of morality. What I'm going to suggest won't work with Jango Fett clones.
  2. While you have improved the strength and intelligence of your clones, you haven't boosted their aggression "artificially". They will be more aggressive and violent than normal people because of their life experiences, not because of their biology.
  3. Your training and propaganda has instilled in them a love (from a distance) for you country and culture. While they may have no actual idea how to live in a nice house with a picket fence, you have raised them to believe this is what they want.
  4. You have commanded them reasonably and capably. If you treated ordinary soldiers as you treated these soldiers, they would not be mutinous. You have not treated them like battle droids.
  5. You have encouraged a degree of individuality in your troops. The troops may all be identical, and their gear may all be identical, but each trooper still has "my rifle" and "my cot" and "my helmet". You want your troops to form a cohesive military unit, but you don't want them to form a collective organism like described in Plato's Republic or Halderman's The Forever War.
  6. You have exposed them to many non-clones and non-combatants during their growth and training. Especially women. They need to have had female caregivers, teachers, and commanders. You do not want them to be like young spartan men who had no idea how to relate to half the population.

If you haven't followed these best practices, the rest of this guide may not work for you, though some of the suggestions might work with some modifications.

Discipline

Throughout the following steps, you are going to have to keep better control of your troops than is typical with a victorious army. You have some advantages on your side: your troops have uniform upbringing that you have controlled, so you know that you don't have any career criminals or men with heritable mental illnesses in your ranks. On the other hand, your men have less than typical understanding of peaceful civilian life, so you cannot expect your society's norms to apply by default to your soldiers.

Your discipline will have to be unusually firm. There's no dishonorable discharge for a super-soldier clone. He's either going home as a model citizen or not at all. Rape, murder, and desertion will be death penalty offenses.

Occupation

You don't want to bring all your clone soldiers home at once? Well, great news! You don't have to! To keep your soldiers from taking the food, jobs, and women of your homeland, there's really only one solution: your vanquished enemy. No, I don't mean brutal raiding and pillaging, I just mean that (like the US and USSR in Europe after the second world war), you're going to want to stick around in the previous enemy territory for some time.

During this time, give your soldiers intensive training in aspects of ordinary life (ideally you have been doing this since birth). How to shop. How to throw a birthday party. How to sit quietly through an inane romantic comedy. How to change a diaper. Have psychologists document everything a typical man in your society does in his daily life, and compare it to what a typical clone does. Use education and field trips to help repair the deficits. Expose your troops to civilian life in the occupied territory first, so that if one of your soldiers freaks out at the variety of choices in the coffee aisle of a supermarket, it will not be on the home turf of your civilians.

The defeated enemy is likely suffering a manpower shortage, so put your troops to work securing and rebuilding the occupied nation. This gives you great opportunities to teach your troops valuable civilian trades, without immediately upsetting your own economy. Give your troops plenty of opportunity to meet the locals in low-stress situations like helping a farmer remove unexploded bombs from his field.

Historically, there has always been reluctance in conquered populations to marry the occupiers, but there has always been many thousands of cases of it happening. While your soldiers are clones and therefore more undesirable than a typical foreigner, they are young attractive men in a country with a shortage of young attractive men. This is where it's important that you have indoctrinated your soldiers with images of white picket fences rather than strip clubs. When TK421 meets a nice girl (maybe the daughter of the farmer he helped with that UXB), you need him to want to marry her and get a nice ranch house in Wyoming, not have a brief hookup.

Of course you're not going to marry off anywhere near all of your clones this way, but it will help with your problem.

Draw Down

Accept that the occupation will last longer than militarily necessary, as you need it as a place to keep your clones. As you begin bringing your clones home, prioritize those who are married or have at least demonstrated ability to live successfully outside the barracks.

You are going to need a ton of social services, especially for the first clones to arrive. You will need to build tons of cute little ranch houses with nice lawns and white picket fences (fortunately you have the manpower). You will need to have low-cost mortgages for veterans. You will need a GI bill to send your clones to college (to meet girls, if nothing else). Your civilian population will resent your soldiers, but each one is a 6'5" heavily-muscled killing machine with a friendly, respectful, and upbeat attitude who wants nothing more than a minivan, 2.5 kids, and to go bowling with his buddies on Wednesday nights. Your society will get used to him eventually.

Some of your clones will never adapt. You are going to have a large army for a long time, so I hope you have the budget. But overall, a human being is a wonderfully multipurpose piece of equipment, just because you built him for war doesn't mean that's all he's good for.

Economy

So the bad news is over a number of years you're going to be inserting millions of new workers into your economy, and they may displace existing workers. The good news is you're introducing millions of new consumers to your economy, and each one is going to need a TV and a barbecue grill and a station wagon. If you allow it to, and you don't have other serious economic problems, this massive boost to your consumer economy can lead to a great period of growth. I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

Biology

A lot of your coming "baby boom" is going to have (genetically) the same father. This will reduce your genetic diversity some, but shouldn't be terrible unless your clone army is really really big compared to your general population. Assuming you were smart in your selection of who to clone, having a lot of identical paternal genes won't be a big problem (you did make sure he isn't carrying any known genetic diseases, right?). Since you encouraged your troops to marry overseas, all the war brides may actually lead to a net increase in genetic diversity. Just resist the urge to make a bunch of clone women to offset your troops. And hey, now your super-soldier genes are getting spread throughout your population. Nobody will want to fight you!

Politics

Raise your clones to be political moderates, so that they are unlikely to form a single voting block. This will allow various political movements to appeal to them and keep the rest of the population from resenting their political influence.

Final Thoughts

Admittedly, this is a pretty rosy outlook. The key here is that good preparation avoids problems down the road. It is extremely important that you build your clone soldiers as "dual-use" technology. Normally the term "citizen-soldier" refers to citizens who can also become soldiers, you need to build your clones as soldier-citizens.

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Occupation force

You have won the war, and it is time to settle terms. With your non-clone based army, as soon as the people feels that the country is safe, you begin to be pressured by soldiers and civilians alike to end the war as soon as possible, to avoid the loss of more lives, so you are interested in reaching a fair settlement.

But now there is no such pressure, so you can impose harsher terms to your enemies. Take a chunk of their territory; you already have made an investment in the troops you need to control it, so it is time to get a return of investment from taxing enemy civilians. If reaching to that settlement means that the war lasts one or two months more, it is not much an issue, since your casualties during that period help you solve your clone army problem.

Start a new war

A time honored (Che Guevara in Bolivia, Ifni War) way of disposing of armed elements that supported your bid to power and now might object to your policies is to send them to wage war against someone else. Preferibly, an "unofficial" war against a powerful enemy, in order that you are not dragged in when your agents (hopefully) are defeated. The worst possible outcome is that your troops win and you get to control a new territory.

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    $\begingroup$ This seems to be the most likely outcome, if integration into society fails for some reason. Keep them busy soldiering. $\endgroup$
    – Chieron
    Mar 31, 2016 at 9:51
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Give half of them red shirts and the other half blue shirts. The problem will solve itself.

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    $\begingroup$ You may want to try fleshing out this answer a little, but nonetheless a good idea. $\endgroup$
    – fi12
    Apr 1, 2016 at 22:47
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Peacekeeping Forces

Fighting a World War is a serious endeavor, and ending one is not a simple process. You are not going to be able to simply retire your entire army once the fighting is over no matter if they are clones are mundane soldiers. You now have a (presumably) large number of foreign countries that have just lost a war, and are going to be feeling bitter and resentful of that fact.

Stationing your clone troops throughout the defeated countries will let you use them as peacekeeping forces to prevent that resent from turning violent. Or you could use them as "peacekeeping forces" and have them act more as an occupying army, keeping the defeated populaces in line more forcefully.

Regardless of how they get used you should be charging the countries where they are stationed fees for the service, essentially making them pay for your soldiers. Remember, those countries have just lost a World War, and according to our planet's history that means that they are going to have to suffer through some sanctions put in place by the victors.

The Legion of One

Another alternative is to use all or part of this new clone army as a mercenary group. Think of something along the lines of the French Foreign Legion. You have a large number of trained soldiers, presumably loyal to their causes, and designed to be stronger, faster, and smarter than regular humans. They would be the obvious choice for anyone in the market for hired soldiers.

This would, again, allow you to foist the cost of the army off onto others. The War may be over, but there is a very good chance that during the conflicts different countries or groups on both sides will have come into contact and formed some grudges. Or could be ready to settle existing grudges in the chaotic aftermath of the main fighting. Either way, as long as those groups have money and need soldiers your clone mercenaries will have plenty of opportunity to be useful without being a burden on your citizens.

The Best There is at What They Do

Given the cloned soldiers enhanced abilities, there are a handful of very specialized public- and private-sector jobs that they would be ideally suited to fill. Chances are you will have more clones than these roles, but they should still be considered. Private security forces are the most obvious job, again assuming that an increased sense of loyalty is included with the enhanced strength and intelligence.

Bodyguards that are stronger and faster than normal, plus with known military training, would be in perfect for various high ranking public officials or private individuals. Same with security officers at important locations, defense research centers and the like. There may be some public outcry at replacing the general police force with military trained cloned supersoldiers, but you may be able to convince John Q Public that using the clones for SWAT teams or something similar is better than the alternative.

Mix and Match

Chances are that no single one of these suggestions would be a good, long-term fix for what to do with the clone army. But if you took all of those soldiers and broke them up into a mixture of the three, plus whatever else you can come up with, then you should be able to get most of the clones in a place where they are being useful, without being a huge sink on your own resources.

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Militaries spend a surprising amount of time doing non military tasks. Depending on the context?

Private armed security - or to take a page from the singapore government Auxillary police. Basically well armed, extremely disciplined security guards for banks and installations that need extra security - oil refineries, military bases and so on. Keep em on as reservists, and give them refresher training as needed.

As an extension of that idea - it might be worth looking at the gurkas, who while citizens of one country, have served with distinction and honour in both the militaries of the united kingdom and india as well as an elite wing of the singapore police force. They might be allowed to serve, as a unit in allied militaries, possibly in places that were defeated but are nor friendly.

Peace Corps. You've won the war, but you need to keep the peace. Have these guys build schools, and other infrascture. Have them assist in periods of humanitarian disaster (Which modern militaries are actually really good at). There's also something to be said for big menacing nice guys to convince the local riff raff that trying to snatch whatever they can is bad.

Space exploration You have a large, well trained group of folk, who have many of the skills needed to survive in a hostile environment. Depending on your universe, they might be the perfect folk to act as interplanetary or interstellar scouts and the first wave of colonists - this might also deal with the resentment - since these folks might been as heros instead and in a sense gets them out of the way.

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The obvious answer to me is to put them to work. You say that the government doesn't have the money to sustain the very large population of new citizens, but the question there is why?

If it is due to lack of food, portion off some of the clones to food development. If it is lack of housing, then you teach some of them to build homes and such. Pretty much the only real issue that might be truly limiting would be space, but considering they managed to house the clones during the war, plus there is no doubt a decent number of casualties from the war, then there should be enough space for them to live. This might entail some social changes such as group housing or building more vertically, but it should still be able to be done.

By having the clones trained and doing the work to support themselves, the burden is eased on the government to figure it all out. Plus you get the bonus of keeping all of these likely trained killers under watch and busy doing something productive rather than deciding to go off and conquer a land area of their own.

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    $\begingroup$ Won't work. You have a large number of individuals who are battle hardened, and you expect them to become the equivalent of slave labor? Not only will you bankrupt the construction industry, you will also flood the market with cheap labor. You will not have enough projects to keep them busy, not to mention housing for them, etc. You might do this with a few thousand of them, but not the full army. You need to get rid of a very large number of them before you attempt anything like this. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Mar 30, 2016 at 17:11
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    $\begingroup$ @AndreiROM I don't see why not... They were slaves before, they are slaves now. The clones never chose to fight, and if they never questioned it before, who is to say that they would question their transition to farming. The scope of the question implies that the clones are subservient. $\endgroup$ Mar 31, 2016 at 1:28
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As AndreiROM pointed out, you can't really afford to let them loose on society, since they probably don't have the social background to handle non-war life.

They do have a certain set of skills though that could be useful to society.
They are disciplined, and used to hard work, so put that to use.

First, turn the swords to plowshares. Start something like a farm or kibbutz where they would grow their own food and try to be self sufficient. If there is any excess it can be sold to help pay for necessities.
Provide training, especially in things like law enforcement, where their training as a soldier would be useful, but let them have other choices.
Also provide mental health services to work through any war time mental scarring.

Loan some out to help protect people who are doing humanitarian aid in war torn areas. This will let them use their training, and would also give them opportunities to be around civilians and learn how to interact with people.
These could be short shifts, with a couple months protecting a school for girls in Pakistan then back to the farm for some R&R, while the next shift relieves them.

Bring groups in to work alongside them on the farm, both so that they can learn to be around civilians, but also so that civilians can learn to be around them.
Acceptance is a two way street.

Given enough time they will learn how to integrate, and then you can start phase 3 where some will be allowed to choose if they want to move off the farm.

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Core of Engineers Infrastructure Program

Keep them in the military, but retrain them to be army engineers. Keep rank, orders, barracks, and other military routines nearly identical. Then put them to work in major infrastructure projects.

Psychologically paint the work as a nationalistic and patriotic challenge(or whatever rationale was used in their military training - religion, democracy, communism whatever). It should be reminiscent of battle, but without the danger, killing or anxiety. Rework the conflict into constructive struggle, filling that psychological gap with work, challenge and purpose so the ghosts of battle don't fill it. Treat it like therapy.

Focus on major public infrastructure, dams, roads, railways, hyperloops, bridges, spaceports, fusion reactors and the like. These things are typically too big to be financed by the private sector, and so won't compete for jobs or paying clients. In fact, it will provide a huge boost to your economy. Granted, it will be very, very expensive(though not as expensive as a war), but the immediate economic boost will offset it somewhat, and the long term payoff should put you back in the black in a decade or two.

Meanwhile, your clones are focused, trained and busy. People are enjoying power, transportation, and growth. Your activists are happy because we are making roads not war(Insert catchy flower power slogan here. Hey, it's true!), and the new lifestyle is legitimately healthier and recuperative for the clones.

The only major problem is that if you are close to bankruptcy, the scale of these projects may be too much for you to finance.

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Some old movies come to mind, you might watch Demolition Man (rewiring to normal life), Universal Soldier (problem with mindless mercenaries) and Rambo (problems resocializing). Best so far would be reintegration in an own community outside of civilization (like tibetian monks) and letting them out for mercenary services. Maybe Judge Dreed like police service. You can also "figure out what they want" and let them lead those lifes.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hello user19608 and welcome to this realm of the internet.I like your first take on an answer and hope you find yourself comfortable and stick around some more. While I have seen only one of these films personally I think that they (just as other films/literature) can often serve as source of ideas.Could you maybe add some more information about how every film is relevant here,for people like me who haven't seen them?Try to play a bit with the formatting in the text-editor and add a short description of every film (how it handles the situation), that would change this from good to great (IMHO) $\endgroup$
    – JFBM
    Mar 31, 2016 at 17:12
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It is a very common fallacy that there is only so much work to do, and that any additional workers only hurt. The soldiers-now-civilians need food, shelter, and clothing, so by their existence they create the need for more work to be done.

The soldiers have the capacity for ordinary civilian work. Anyone who has worn the uniform of any military service can tell you that the bulk of any soldier's duty hours, when not in actual combat operations, are consumed by duties that are similar (if not identical) to work done in the civilian sector. There are ditches to dig, papers to push, machinery to maintain, etc. The Army doesn't care how fearless you are or how well you can shoot. There are 1,001 peacetime functions that soldiers do every day, and if you can't do them, the Army most definitely does not have a uniform in your size.

So it's an issue of matching ex-soldiers to jobs for which they are suited, and providing education for the rest to fill openings in the economy of your fictitious world; unless you have wished away the laws of economics, your fictional world has many, many labor positions for which no suitable candidate has applied.

It is true that some of your clones have PTSD issues that preclude an immediate return to civilian life. However, these are in the minority (or else American society would have self-destructed in 1946); if you have the resources to field all of those guys, you have the resources to provide treatment for the minority who need it.

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You have won the world war, so the world is yours. Use your clone soldiers as a security force in all countries. They are the best in doing their kind of work, so give that work only to them. Bring back your original human soldier to the country and ask them to rebuild the nation. This will result in financial growth for the country that you can use for maintenance of the clone soldiers.

It will take some time but you will recover quickly from the war and that is the most important goal at that time.

Do not disturb society by including them in the society.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is very similar to how Rome kept it's military apart from the populace, until it was time to discharge them from service. $\endgroup$
    – Efialtes
    Mar 12, 2018 at 0:49
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One situation you need to take into account is how the Civil Rights Groups felt about the creation of clone soldiers just for the purpose of fighting a war. If the soldiers were created to advance in age quickly, what would those groups have said about the age advancement? And then come care of cloned troops. LEt's say that the creation passes the civil rights groups, what kind of care do you give them during the war? Were they treated like regular folks who are in the war? Are there any regular people in the fighting ranks? Do the clones have a rank system allowed to them? Now for after the war, are there more clones being created, or did they cancel the program once the war was over? Or can the program be used for other clone types (labor for instance)? Perhaps what made the clones fighters (mind-manipulation) could be used to reprogram them to do other jobs. A few questions to think about before wondering what to do wtih them after the war.

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The government will do whatever the clone soldiers want them to do because the clone soldiers will be the government.

As Mao observed in one his breaks from sociopathic mass murder, "political power flows from the barrel of a gun." Governments are at their heart merely instruments for collective violence. The most basic government is a general/warlord and his victorious army. In all times and places, the military decides the form and nature of the government.

I consider the idea of the malicious creation of super-soldiers even on the small scale in "secret" experiments to be one of the stupidist tropes in Science Fiction. You don't give off scale military effectiveness to someone you don't trust and don't deal fairly with because they will kill you.

There are many historical precedents for the scenario you envision. The two most famous would be Malmuks of Egypt and the Janissari of the Ottoman Empire. In both cases, rulers created armies of foreigners, usually starting with slaves.

The Malmuks, were a mishmash of young men of many different subcultures and non-muslims faiths swept up in the Islamic conquest of Christian north Africa and their non-Christian surrounds. With their homes destroyed and the under foreign rule, their families dead, enslaved or scattered, the opportunities offered by a life of slave soldier didn't seem so bad. At least you got to eat.

The Janissary where Christian children from the area of modern Romania, Bulgarian and Balkans taken around the ages of 6-9 as a mandatory tax tithe (hand over your son or we burn your village down.) Christians were taken, as enslaving fellow muslims, well true muslims often defined on the fly, is forbidden by the Koran and the Ottomans didn't want the hassle. When they grew to adulthood they could convert to Islam and "volunteer" to continue serving. But as they had no memory of their families or how to find them again, they had little choice but stay. Telling, the symbol of the Janissary was a large wooden spoon worn on the front of their headgear, a symbol of the Sultan's pledge they would never go hungry. (Food was the major concern of humanity until the Corporate-Industrial-Fossil-Fuel Age.)

The Sultans turned to slave armies first as internal security troops, as a force wholly dependent and loyal to the Sultans and not some noble or clan as were the rest of military. If some noble rebelled, the slave armies put it down. (Its the same reason they relied on eunuchs. Family pull was so strong only someone without testicles and a hope for a descendants could be trusted. Eunuch taken as slave from far away where even better)

Since the slave armies lacked any families or birth status, the only means of promoting them lay in judging merit. Very quickly the officers of slave armies became comprised of individuals who rose by proving themselves in battle. They soon became the most elite units of their respective polities.

As time passed the Sultan became more and more dependent on the elite slave armies. Things worked fine for a century or so but eventually there was some instability in the realm and the slave armies looked around and thought, hey, we don't have to take orders anymore.

In the case of he Malmuks, they merely replaced the ruling class of Egypt and survived until Napoleon crushed them. The Janissary kept the superficial appearance of the Sultan being in charge but were in fact a Praetorian guard who selected who could and could not be Sultan. In both cases, as they came to power, began to marry and form clans, they lost merit promotion and with it military effectiveness.

The moral is that its impossible to politically control highly effective soldiers if they don't want to be controlled since they themselves form the basis of coercive political power of the state.

The form of government is dictated by dispersion of military force in a society. If most of the population is disarmed and only a small elite allowed weapons and training, you have an oppressive, authoritarian regime. If the majority of the population is armed and trained, you get some form of democracy e.g. Athens, Roman Republic, Britain and the U.S.

There are no historical examples of any degree of democracy in societies where the majority of the population is disarmed and conversely, no examples of authoritarian regimes where the majority of the population is armed.

So, the real question in your scenario is not what the "government" will do with the clone army but what the clone army will with the government.

I would also point out that any society which cannot muster enough internal cohesion and form enough political consensus to muster an army from its own population, is dead anyway.

You can see this in history in Carthage, the late Roman empire and Byzantium. Once they could no longer raise a military from their own population, they spiraled down hill. All had plenty of population, they just did not have the internal cohesion and trust to build a military.

So, the fact that your society resorted to a clone army, unless faced with an enemy using super soldiers themselves, would indicate a disintegrating polity.

Even if the society was willing and capable of defending itself without the clone super-soldiers, the clones will still be the de facto rulers of the society once the war ends. They might take over like the Mamaluks, or they might leave the illusion that the old regime is still intact like the Janissary but they will still rule.

You might want to investigate the actual scientific evidence about what makes a good soldier. To much of what we think we know comes from smug, morally self-rightous pseudo-intellectuals who bloviate with based on no empirical evidence.

In the case of industrial warfare, strength is largely irrelevant but low term physical endurance and ability to function with less sleep become more important. Intelligence might be a bonus depending on what you mean by "intelligence." Visual spatial skills are the most important for all types of soldiers from ground pounders to pilots to generals.

The most important qualities for soldiers are emotional, not cognitive.

You'd want to make them calm and hard to excite so they keep aware and thinking as everything explodes around them. Also, give them a touch a ADD to they will be more aware of changes in their environment and not get fixated on one aspect of it.

The most important quality for military effectiveness is unit cohesion i.e. how strongly individuals bond with and trust other soldiers both those immediately around and the greater organization. Highly cohesive militaries have defeated much larger otherwise equivalent militaries repeatedly throughout history.

The second most important quality is a belief in a higher good, something the soldier will love enough to willing die (and kill for.) Both these attributes require that the soldiers have high levels of empathy, something counter-intutive but obvious once you think of it.

You could create "super-soldiers" merely by making clones highly empathetic, cooperative, trusting and then indoctrinate them with an ideal to protect. They would be more effective than ordinary people even with the same IQ and strength.

The problem you might have after the war would be when the clones encounter the real world and find out that the rest of society is cynical about the clones ideals and that far to many civilians lack empathy, won't cooperate and don't trust each other. The clones might be shocked to be lied to or cheated by individuals that they consider part of their group instead of enemy.

The clones might well decide to take over in order to enforce their ideals and ernest behaviors on their imperfect natural brethren.

Regardless, the super-soldiers will decide the outcome and no one else.

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    $\begingroup$ There are no historical examples of any degree of democracy in societies where the majority of the population is disarmed and conversely, no examples of authoritarian regimes where the majority of the population is armed. Western Europe for the first point, look at this map (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libia, Angola) for the second point upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/… (Yes I know you will try to pull a "true scotsman" fallacy here, but you are simply wrong). $\endgroup$
    – SJuan76
    Mar 31, 2016 at 9:07
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    $\begingroup$ "There are no historical examples of any degree of democracy in societies where the majority of the population is disarmed" is ridiculous and certainly does not apply to the UK. $\endgroup$
    – pjc50
    Mar 31, 2016 at 9:37
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    $\begingroup$ Once you got to that passage that earns all the downvotes, I don't know whether to beleive anything that came before. Prior to that, I supposed it to be a good answer with reference to actual history. So, how about editing: remove the contentious part and editorializing and keep only the historical examples, and add references. That woukd turn it into an answer that should get a lot of upvotes. $\endgroup$
    – JDługosz
    Mar 31, 2016 at 11:58
  • $\begingroup$ "There are no historical examples of any degree of democracy in societies where the majority of the population is disarmed". Wrong dummy. Even a tiny bit of research would show you Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom are majority disarmed (less than 5 guns per 100 people) and are democracies (upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/…). $\endgroup$
    – Tyler Mc
    Oct 11, 2020 at 18:48
  • $\begingroup$ "no examples of authoritarian regimes where the majority of the population is armed" Also wrong. Yemen is authoritarian (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) and it has 52.8 guns per 100 people and has the third highest level of gun ownership behind Falklands and the United States (worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/…). $\endgroup$
    – Tyler Mc
    Oct 11, 2020 at 18:58

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