A very difficult moral dilemma
I'm writing something for the series I'm working on where one of the main characters faces a difficult choice to make.
You're back in BC. You're sent by your family (a very wealthy, influential and powerful family) to an enemy castle who is even more powerful and wants to slaughter and conquer your family. The ruler is a dictator scumbag monster through and through who murders and rapes children, women and men in area as well as your own.. You don't have the numbers to have an all out war with them but there is one hope. The prisoners of the rival's kingdom. There are thousands of them in the jails that even outnumber the actual men this dictator has, however they are criminals so in turn they're likely to kill every innocent man, woman and child as well as setting the place to burn. Your options:
A. Leave the kingdom alone and have a chance of being wiped out and destroyed by this psycho's army
B. Release the prisoners and let everyone be killed to ensure you and your family's safety
Comments
B most definitely.
B
This isn't difficult. B obviously.
And let children and women be raped, murdered or kept as slaves
B
Save your own family over people you don't even know? I'd do that in a heartbeat. Not to mention that in your hypothetical situation the dictator would do the above even if all the criminals stay behind bars.
It's not a very difficult situation, I'm afraid. Would've been more difficult, if, for example, it was about saving your family at the cost of, say, 100 people whom you actually know and care a lot about, almost the same as your family. Random people you don't actually know wouldn't cause you to be so worried about their collective fate, unless you're altruistic as all hell.
Well you've already stated that the person imprisoning them is a tyrant, so most of these prisoners probably are innocent anyways. Besides, while the rabble is tearing down that area I can bring in my own smaller group of professional soldiers and take over, thus ending the reign of tyranny and bringing order. I find that to be preferable to letting a tyrant come and have his army rape everyone in my kingdom, including the women and children of my own family, murder my kingdom, or keep them as slaves.
So yes, without a doubt, this question is not difficult. I would rather a few people get murdered or raped in their kingdom for a short period of time than let their kingdom and my kingdom both suffer those same things until the tyrant dies, and that's assuming his successor won't do the same thing.
B
B. Release the prisoners and let everyone be killed to ensure you and your family's safety
They may be prisoners 'cause the dictator felt like it, without any "true" cause. And, remember: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Option B with a twist,
The plight of the their people is unfortunate, but I gotta look out for me and mine. Ideally, I'd set the prisoners lose and wait while the two sides wear each other down. Then I could send my army in to sweep up the survivors. Then the kingdom can be annexed by the good guys.
Still in this case, it seems like the leader is the problem, not the kingdom. Why not send someone in to poison his food?
I'd go with B.
B.
Not just for my family, but my nation.
A... because everyone else chose B.
C. Buy a ticket for yourself, your family and the prisoners and go to Mars...
Where the aliens kill everyone.
The end.
How is this a difficult moral decision? There is absolutely no positives with the first option, I'm forced to go with the alternative. I guess I'll have to go with B.
"B" it seems like the best answer, "A" seems like suicide.
I guess that the positive part of the A is that the people of the other kingdom won't be killed by the prisioners but still B is the best choice
B, maybe not every single prisioner is a crazy psycho.
That's what i was gonna say, if they have spies good enough to sneak into a prison and free all the prisioners then they should be able to sneak into the castle and poison the dictator or plant a bomb or something like that
Yet they would kill and rape everyone upon release
If you choose A your nation and family will die, if you shooce B other nation will die, B is still the best option and surely some people will manage to escape while the rival kingdom's soldiers fight with the prisioners.
What if the situation was, the children of your enemies were in one room, you take them one by one and have them seated. They are the last surviving member of your enemies family line. You are the only one armed, and all of a sudden a group of zombies bust through , do you save the children of your enemy, that may one day come back haunt you later, or do you do nothing, and let the innocent children die, to avoid a possible war in the future.
I would save the children.
To expand on that, if zombies are around I don't think war will be happening anytime soon, because the world is probably about to end. Either way, I'd save the children.
C. Neither
you're edgy as shit, straight out of the kitchen cabinet.