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The Spartan Way: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[The Forever War]]''. While the initial training is brutal enough, it is later mentioned to the lead that [[Designer Babies|growing]] and [[Tyke Bomb|programming ideal soldiers from birth]] was tried and didn't work (the aliens do suicidal valor better). The training was [[Justified Trope|justified]] by the fact that the environments they were fighting in were [[Death World|just as lethal]], and that they had to be trained to fight in them. Considering that they were training on an airless rock where one wrong step could kill them, the casualties taken were probably low.
* In ''[[Dune]]'', the incredibly harsh prison planet Salusa Secundus serves as the secret training grounds for the Emperor's elite [[Super Soldier|Sardukar]] shock troops. And the incredibly lethal deserts of the titular planet Dune serve to make its indigenous people, The Fremen, hardy enough to overcome even the Sardukar.
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** The Ginaz Academy, which trains the best warriors in the Empire. It's a grueling eight-year program, and roughly one-third of all students do not survive training. Another third simply wash out, and the final third join the ranks of the Ginaz Swordmasters.
* The Unsullied in George R. R. Martin's ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' are trained from birth, not only to be superior warriors, but also to be unswervingly loyal. This training involves raising a puppy from birth as their only friend, and then ''personally strangling it'' to prove they can follow orders. They're also said to be able to stand until they collapse of starvation and are fed a mixture that dulls and eventually eliminates their sense of pain. To demonstrate this, a slaver ''hacks the nipple'' off one of the Unsullied, who doesn't even flinch.
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** Before anyone's suspension of disbelief entirely implodes, some points: {{spoiler|the Operatives required years of preparation, their acts of sabotage included the use of tacnukes, bioweapons, thermobaric attack on city infrastructure, sabotaging arcologies, and nerve gas, and there were very few Operatives who survived the massive Earth-wide manhunt for them after their attack and that being aided by good fortune bordering on divine providence. It also helps the commando tactics were backed up by a conventional attack afterwards.}}
* In the [[Sven Hassel]] [[WW 2]] novel 'Monte Cassino' the 27th Penal Panzer Regiment is commanded by Major Mike Braun, a German-American and former US Marine.
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Then began one of Mike's usual exercises. We hated him because of them, but they made us hard and inhuman. If you are to be a good soldier, you have to be able to hate. You have to kill a man as if he were a louse. }}
* In the ''[[Wolf Breed]]'' series, which is an ''[[Elfen Lied]]'' [[Expy]], [[The Teutonic Knights]] do this to a bunch of werewolf children in an attempt to create [[Super Soldier|Super Soldiers.]] Results were...mixed.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[System Shock]] 2'', which is [[Cyberpunk]] and therefore quite [[Justified Trope|justified]], has one option in the player's character creation being a survival course with a "21.2% mortality rate". This actually seems quite low, considering it takes place on [[wikipedia:Io
* Surprisingly, GDI's (the good guys') commando program in ''[[Command and Conquer]]: Tiberium Wars'', with a 22% fatality rate among the recruits and a 95% failure rate among the survivors.
** To make matters even more ridiculous, the Brotherhood of Nod's commando program is ''even worse.''
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* Quite possibly ''the'' most abused trope on [[Nation States]], sometimes taken [[Up to Eleven]] by turning an entire state into this.
* Parodied in ''[[The Insane Quest]]'' when Sir Rustynuts recounts his days training to be a knight:
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'''Rose:''' "According to that logic you went to sleep thirty minutes AFTER you woke up and did all that stuff."
'''Rustynuts:''' "That's why we fell half an hour behind schedule every day. [[Grumpy Old Man|Cheeky little brat]]." }}
* Nilenira, in [[The Movolreilen Saga]] combines this with [[Matriarchy]].
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