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Somewhere in the far future, an iron mining corporation has worked an ethically questionable deal with the government in which federal prisoners are sent to the mines in chain gangs. The government has less prisoners to maintain, and the mine acquires cheap labor.

But why does the mine have a need for human labor when the mine relies mostly on automation and machines?

I'm looking for a physically demanding, routine job for the prisoners to do. Something dangerous, physically demanding, and requiring a crew of people to perform. Think along the lines of the chain gang from O Brother, Where Art Thou. However, most of physically demanding, routine labor has been automated at this point in time. So what essential role do the penal laborers play? More importantly, why haven't they been replaced by machines?

Edit: Whether they are chained together or not isn't super important, but they do need to work in a group.

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  • $\begingroup$ Clarification request: (a) Are the prisoners actually chained together, or are we simply using a colorful historical name? (b) Are we dealing with today's technology, near-future tech, or far-future tech? (c) How important is the phrase "something dangerous?" Breaking rocks (the old-fashioned "chain gang" task) is hardly dangerous. If it's important, what do you mean by "dangerous?" What would be an equivalent job? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 18:47
  • $\begingroup$ @JBH (a) No, its just a historical reference to a similar-style job. (b) Technology is far-future. I stated it in sentence 1, but I will add a "far-future" tag. (c) There's no specific level of danger; I just don't want them to have a safe, cushy job. $\endgroup$
    – Ronin Frog
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 21:20

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Since they're chained together, a chain gang can hardly be of any assistance in what is likely fully automated mining. Wherever human interference is required—maintenance, guidance, remote control, teleoperation, driver assist— sending in a group of people linked together is completely counter-productive.

The only thing that might suit your needs is when during mining natural or artificial caves are found, and some caving/spelunking is necessary: this could be a prompt for your chain-gang to be sent exploring. This will be heavily impeded by their chains and the lack of manoeuvrability it causes, but that might just make it dangerous and and physically demanding enough for your inhumane schemes.
A proper mining operation will likely have some robot spiders or the like for exactly this task, especially since caves are probably found through scanning well in advance of any visual clues, but that is just more costly, and who wants to waste perfectly awesome robots when a slow, vulnerable group of prisoners can do far less in much more time?

If, however, you're not hung up on the chain-part, and some (re)training is allowed, the prisoners could be sent in individually and well-equipped for the same reasons (from maintenance to spelunking).

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    $\begingroup$ I do like the direction you're taking this. Perhaps something like retrieving broken equipment from cave-ins or something. Also, whether they are chained together or not isn't super important, but they do need to work in a group. $\endgroup$
    – Ronin Frog
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 10:28
  • $\begingroup$ Spelunking is not a good activity to do alone precisely because it is dangerous. If the person falls, gets stuck, whatever, it is good to have at least one other person there to assist / go for help. $\endgroup$
    – Jedediah
    Commented Jan 10 at 11:20
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Small veins of ore that are uneconomical for the Automated machinery to mine

The Mine is big - there are the main Ore deposits which are big and chonky and are perfect for big, expensive automated machinery to mine. However, off of the main ore deposits, there are lots of small veins - the yield per hour means that to take a machine off of the main deposit to tackle one of the veins would result in a drop of output - so under normal operations, these veins are ignored....

However, with a human chain gang - these small veins are about the right size to be tackled by a small team.

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  • $\begingroup$ That is perhaps reasonable for underground mining. However for surface mining this is just not true. For surface/ pit mining its more considered as there is an ore body of variable concentrations, Then where its cost effective to remove the over burden and the ore body material, they do so. Mining of disseminated sulfides is a thing and they typically can have many contiguous cubic meters with nothing that resembles veins $\endgroup$
    – Gault Drakkor
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 19:49
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  • Your mine has miles and miles of conveyor belts for ore and rocks. These belts need to be maintained. Bearings must be lubricated, dust and grit removed before it cakes the belt, etc. All while keeping the downtimes as short as possible. Under the pricing scheme, a chain gang is cheaper than a robot that can clamber up pylons, reach under the belt rushing by, and decide which dirt buildup is problematic.
    A gang is assigned to each belt of section of a longer belt, and they get full rations if the belt runs the full time.
  • Variant, if the prison labor is cheap enough, they walk along the belts and shove spillover onto the belt again. Easier to automate than the previous bullet point, but perhaps it doesn't pay to get a robot for relatively low individual loads.
  • Different scenario, and possibly incompatible with your desired look-and-feel: The company is open-pit mining and it promised the government to leave exhausted mines in a proper state. That is, they remove the overburden and the ore one side of the pit, pile the overburden at the other side of the pit, and send a crew of landscape gardeners to fix things up. The chain gang gets to plant trees, build roads and paths, and arrange pretty rocks at the shore of the future lake (what is replaced is the removed volume less ore). Not mining work, technically, but possibly better suited to people than to robots. Plant a beech today, install a park bench tomorrow and a signpost the day after that, you would need dozens of different robots.
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    $\begingroup$ Maintaining conveyor belts is what free humans should do instead, a chained gang could use their chain to block off a conveyor or have it rip the chain in half to allow escape of some of them. Doing the garden or otherwise covering up - yep a convict or a set of them could do, they are also numerous enough to carry a tree to the place where it should be planted, giving them a reason to employ full force. $\endgroup$
    – Vesper
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 13:05
  • $\begingroup$ @Vesper In a setting with Robots, you don't need literal chains. Tracking anklets/collars/etc. would keep your prisoners enforceably tethered to thier work areas without having to use literal chains. $\endgroup$
    – Nosajimiki
    Commented Jan 10 at 15:40
  • $\begingroup$ @Nosajimiki anyway a chained human can use his brain to break the tools used to make profit for their chainer, thus using them at work where purposeful destruction would cause more harm than a human life's worth is counterproductive. The tracker tools would only display them being "at work" while not exactly triggering upon them wrecking hardware, at least before the damage would be done. $\endgroup$
    – Vesper
    Commented Jan 11 at 6:50
  • $\begingroup$ @Vesper Free people don't wreck stuff because they are afraid of losing thier jobs. Forced labors don't wreck stuff because they are afraid of losing literally everything, up to and including thier lives. There are actually very few historical examples of slaves/penial workers committing sabotage, because if you break something and don't have an escape plan, you are truly and totally screwed. $\endgroup$
    – Nosajimiki
    Commented Jan 11 at 15:30
  • $\begingroup$ @Nosajimiki, the forced labor might have an incentive to work as slowly as possible and to do sabotage which cannot be traced back to them. The cruel answer would be to hold a group responsible for the productivity of the group, no questions asked or excuses accepted as to why they under-performed in their shift. $\endgroup$
    – o.m.
    Commented Jan 11 at 15:43
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Fossils or maybe gems.

Mining for fossils, where you need a delicate touch and a good eye any sort of industrial process will just destroy the fossil. Often we are applying glue to the fossil and extracting it along with a bunch of the rock around it.

There is real world precedence for this. In many real mines there are people who go in whenever they think they have found fossils to extract them, because you can't use the mines normal equipment to remove a fossil. Solnhafen in one of the best fossil localities in existence AND is also an active slate mine.

Amber mining might work as well, where you don't want to risk breaking insects or other fossils trapped in the amber.

Your goal is not to extract the most material but extract delicate things in the best condition from a mass of useless rock. the most efficient fossil extraction i ever saw was a busload of students methodically pulling loose splitting small pieces of shale with knives looking for fossils. It is a lot like shucking oysters, every piece is different.

likewise gemstone mining where the goal is big intact pieces, where more industrial mining would just break the gem apart. especially if the gems are more shatter prone than the rock it is found in.

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  • $\begingroup$ While this task itself is not really dangerous, being focused on prodding at a fossil while there are huge impervious automated machines running around is a good recipe to get squished without buddy to watch your back. $\endgroup$
    – byMaelstromer
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 10:01
  • $\begingroup$ @byMaelstromer yes which is why in the real world there is a very very large safe perimeter set up around such a site, but the author could easily say the company has failed to make this large enough or not clearly marked for the AI mining equipment. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 20:14
  • $\begingroup$ ..or simply didn't care to, since only living things down there are disposable convicts... $\endgroup$
    – byMaelstromer
    Commented Oct 24, 2023 at 6:13
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They can play a role of an outsourced death penalty. That's what penal/slave labour in the mines amounted to historically. For a recent example from a mechanised society, think Soviet Gulag or Nazi Germany's many forced labour schemes; you would not want to be assigned to manual mining labour in any of those.

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    $\begingroup$ That's the goal, I'm just struggling to find a specific job for the prisoners to be doing. $\endgroup$
    – Ronin Frog
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 23:44
  • $\begingroup$ @RoninFrog, thank you. They would dig out rocks with hand tools. If you intend to work them to death, why give them machines? $\endgroup$
    – ihaveideas
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 18:28
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Human labour required

We live in an age of automation. Yet if you look around, there's ine thing very clear. Humans are still required, regardless of the amount of automation. Server farms? Actual farms? Drones? Car factories? It doesn't matter. They all have human operators or maintainers somewhere.

Your guys could do anything related. Maintenance of the servers? Maybe a high level controlbof a group of drones? Maybe retrieving some heavy duty equipment or a malfunctioning robot from deep underground?

You can put them to great use in other areas. Something like visually inspecting and separating some rocks, or maybe dysting and storing them properly. Or the machine to pick up rocks and throw them in a truck has broken down, and while they wait to have it fixed they send in the chain gang. They might just be cheaper for certain hard work on the mine.

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Frame challenge,

Construct useful infrastructure

Have them construct masonry projects retaining walls, sewers etc, things that labor intensive but can last hundreds of years an d most importantly have low maintenance. Ie the sewers of London are about 500 years old. So this would improve that standard of living of their community by reducing long run maintenance costs.

Why not mines?

An iron mine would be an open open pit or some other surface mine type.

For a surface mine, the chain gain would be just shoved to the side. and given a pointless make work project. Since that would be the safest, lowest risk thing they could be doing, for al parties involved. Surface mines move hundreds of tonnes of material per vehicle a person can move tens of kilos. That is in production it would take several days of labor to equal one minute of production of the collective machinery. So unless they were operating machinery Their labor would be a net loss.

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The Prison Mine

A normal, manual mining operation has about 3-4 people work the front of the tunnel while the rest move to remove debris and ore but also erect struts or lay infrastructure.

Access control to a mine shaft is surprisingly easy: shafts only have one main entry, the central shaft. People and food go in there, ore goes out there. The simple solution is to ditch the chain and treat the whole mine as a prison. Don't even bother with the chain. The place is deadly enough on its own, and with just pickaxes, it is a slow and tiresome process. Prisoners only get food per their mining output, so they are burning out sooner or later.

Chaingang pit mine

If you absolutely must have a chain gang, go for a pit mine, where the chain gang monotonously works to clean up right after the giant shovel passes, picking up any minerals or gems that the shovel did not pick up from the ground. They don't get tools, and the moment they are returned to the barracks they are striöpped and undergo cavity searches. They are not allowed to defecate anywhere but special toilets that inspect their excrements for any attempt to smuggle goods.

At the same time, while working, just a meter or so above them dangerous machinery operates with deafening noise. The job is tiresome and every so often debris falls from the machinery above, making it deadly.

The benefit here is that the chain gang is cheaper and prevents scavengers from coming in to steal surface pickings.

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Human life is cheap

Your corporation is greedy, and your government is morally corrupt. Prisoners are sent into the mines to do any dangerous work that is likely to decommission the expensive automated equipment, like investigating the structural integrity of the deepest mine shafts, for example. Hell, depending on the state of your civilization, the government might be paying the corporation to take these prisoners off its hands.

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I think the key here is that humans are more tolerant to certain kinds of electromagnetic disruption than the robots. There are different ways this could play out:

  1. You are mining magnetonium, an extremely power natural ferromagnetic mineral that interferes with your robots' transistors. (Or maybe you are after a rare earth metal that tends to be found in veins with high magnetonium concentrations.) Either way, you tried increasing your chip architecture size, and adding redundancy, but in the end the increased materials and power consumption are just too expensive.

  2. You are mining boring old iron in an open pit mine on a planet with a decaying magnetic field or ozone layer. Somewhat regularly, a burst of ionizing radiation will corrupt the memory state of a droid. You spent most of your engineering budget patching the droid software so that it powers down when this occurs, rather than attacking other robots or personnel, as it did on v1.0. A wise investment, but now you can't automate robots resetting each other until the next budget cycle. In the interim, chain gang prisoners are easy to train for the job, and less costly to replace than managers.

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