Concerning the prison bus:

[Khan_Drichthyes]

So, since we encounter a prison bus outside of Milton, it makes me wonder about three possibilities:

1.  Bear Island has a prison.

2.  There's a bridge connecting Bear Island to the mainland.

Or...

3.  Bear Island relies on a ferry service.

I hope it winds up being the 2nd one.  It would be nice to have a way off the island.

[Cr41g]

my guess would be the first HAS TO BE TRUE... with 2 OR 3 as a possibility.

[ajb1978]

45 minutes ago, Khan_Drichthyes said:

So, since we encounter a prison bus outside of Milton, it makes me wonder about three possibilities:

1.  Bear Island has a prison.

2.  There's a bridge connecting Bear Island to the mainland.

Or...

3.  Bear Island relies on a ferry service.

I hope it winds up being the 2nd one.  It would be nice to have a way off the island.

1 and 3 seem the most likely to me.  It would make tactical sense to put a maximum security prison on an island that doesn't have a bridge.  If someone were to escape, they'd be confined to the island, and the only way to get to the mainland would be by boat.  Of course there could be a bridge, since Mackenzie did ask why everyone didn't just drive out.  He seemed to be marginally aware of the island's existence when Astrid brought it up, so he may be aware of a mainland connector that we as players haven't seen yet.  Also since Grey Mother mentioned having things delivered by drone, we know the island must be reasonably close to the mainland.  Assuming gas-powered drones were used, the island would have to be at most 40km from the mainland, or a drone wouldn't have enough time to deliver the package and safely return.  If Great Bear was simply the largest island of an archipelago stretching to the mainland, a bridge would be feasible.

Meh...speculation.  Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Khan_Drichthyes]

I figured it could go either way, if the prison was on Bear Island or the mainland.  The bridge and/or ferry would explain the bus' presence, if the prison was on the mainland.  Around here, it's not uncommon to see a prison bus parked on the side of the road, with prisoner work crews cleaning up the area.

If a ferry was used, maybe it would be docked at a terminal, as "The Event" occurred at night.  (Or it could be docked at the mainland terminal.)

If a bridge, would it be barren, clogged with vehicles, or a mix of the two?

A prison on the island might be a disturbing scene, with numerous frozen bodies, trapped in cells.

[ajb1978]

2 hours ago, Khan_Drichthyes said:

A prison on the island might be a disturbing scene, with numerous frozen bodies, trapped in cells.

Indeed.  And I know I've been playing this game too much when the first thought to enter my head was "That's a lot of toilets to get water from."

[Khan_Drichthyes]

And while most of the bodies are empty, one or two will have a scrap metal shard (Like the "knife" you start with in Wintermute).

[Cr41g]

nice.... shanks for everyone !!

[Khan_Drichthyes]

Easter egg idea:

An elevator, which becomes usable during an aurora, takes you down to a basement area. 

Just past a security desk and open gate, you face a dimly lit hallway.  Cells take up the left side of the hallway, all filled with frozen corpses abandoned in the chaos of "The Event." 

At the end of the hallway you observe the final cell:  Polycarbonate glass has replaced the steel bars found in the other cells.  A one-way pass-through drawer is set into a stone portion of the wall.  The cell is the only one vacant of its former occupant.  A radio sits upon a solitary chair in the middle of the hallway, facing the cell. 

As the Aurora renews life into its components, it plays pieces from Bach's Goldberg Variations.

[Soul Sojourner]

When @ajb1978 thinks of prisons, he thinks of toilets. 
When I think of prisons, I think of armory. 

[ajb1978]

A  is about all you'd get too!  Pretty sure an M4 doesn't quite fit the TLD theme

Although the armory of a prison would be a good place for the rumored revolver to appear.  Y'know it's interesting, in most games a pistol is like the weakest weapon.  But in TLD, being able to fire six shots in rapid succession without reloading would make it look like a friggen BFG compared to the rifle or bow.

[Luciën]

Although shooting a bear in the face three or five times doesn't matter. Only one hit per body part counts in minimising blood out time.

[ajb1978]

Depends on the caliber I guess.  If you're shooting a Saturday night special, you could probably unload every chamber directly into its face and still not drop it.  Compared to a .500 Magnum Smith and Wesson.  Kicks like a moose, and can drop one too.  It was designed specifically to kill any animal you would encounter in the wild, yet is compact and lightweight (2kg).  The idea is if you're going backpacking deep in the wilderness, you take one of those for protection.

[Khan_Drichthyes]

I doubt you'd find that caliber in a prison setting.

What would the Canadian Prison System issue to their prisons?  12 gauge shotguns, maybe.  What about those sidearms?  9mm semi-automatics?  .38 revolvers?  .357 Magnum?  Tazers?

[stratvox]

CSC gives out 9mm semis when handguns are issued to guards, afaik.

[Khan_Drichthyes]

56 minutes ago, stratvox said:

CSC gives out 9mm semis when handguns are issued to guards, afaik.

Thanks for the info.

In that case, there's a potential for acquiring a 9mm semi-automatic and ammo, should the developers choose to put that in.  Ammo probably should be hard to find, centered around the prison with increased scarcity the further out you go.

[private duksworth]

10 hours ago, Khan_Drichthyes said:

I doubt you'd find that caliber in a prison setting.

What would the Canadian Prison System issue to their prisons?  12 gauge shotguns, maybe.  What about those sidearms?  9mm semi-automatics?  .38 revolvers?  .357 Magnum?  Tazers?

hell yeah tazers we can electrocute wolves now (that just seems cruel now that I think of it)

I dunno if a 9mm would do much against a bear or moose. maybe they would have desert eagles. 

another thing we could get from prisons is some kind of body amour.  I'm thinking some kind of kevlar jacket. it could be like the combat boots with high protection but a low warmth bonus. just spinning some ideas around

[piddy3825]

On 9/6/2018 at 10:41 AM, Khan_Drichthyes said:

So, since we encounter a prison bus outside of Milton, it makes me wonder about three possibilities:

1.  Bear Island has a prison.

2.  There's a bridge connecting Bear Island to the mainland.

Or...

3.  Bear Island relies on a ferry service.

I hope it winds up being the 2nd one.  It would be nice to have a way off the island.

I do believe it's number 3.  Bear Island relies on a ferry service, although an argument could be made for the bridge premise.

If you look at logically, if there was a prison on the island, it would be there for players to find.  Since we don't find a prison anywhere on the island it would make sense that there isn't one.  As to a bridge connecting Bear Island to the mainland, that premise has some plausibility considering the broken bridge in Desolation Point has got to lead to somewhere, same goes for the broken bridge out near the maintenance yard.  But if that is the case, why were the logs from the logging operations being floated down river to the log sort off the coast out on the Coastal Highway.  If there was bridge to the main land it would probably be cheaper to truck them out over the bridge rather than "float" them?  

So that brings me to Number 3,  Bear Island relies on a ferry service.   But why are prisoners on Bear Island then, you ask?   Simple answer to that, Canadian Prisons utilize Work Release programs as part of the rehabilitation process for their inmate population. They would have been transported by bus Via the ferry system so the inmates could fulfill their work release contracts.  

Citing a 1998 Canadian Prison Study, "...One important change in the CCRA was the introduction of work release. Work release provides opportunities for offenders to work away from the institution, but generally requires a return to custody, or a halfway house each day. Granting authority for work releases rests with the Correctional Service of Canada and these releases do not require approval from the National Parole Board. The supervision and other criteria for work releases make them similar to temporary absences. However, the length of work releases, 60 days with opportunity for renewal, makes them similar to day parole. In many jurisdictions  work release is used to provide full time employment opportunities prior to full parole or sentence completion, but its function is different in Canada. In the Canadian federal prison system, the purpose of work release is to provide offenders with meaningful work opportunities at any point in the custody portion of their sentence, not just close to their release date. Work releases provide offenders with opportunities to work outside the prison as part of community projects, in support of non-profit organizations and for paid employment such as work on forest fire crews and crop harvesting.

Considering that the island was systematically being logged, employing inmates for fire suppression, timber harvesting, railroad maintenance and/or other such hard labor projects, it would make perfect sense to employee prison labor.  Since these inmates would have most likely been model prisoners, the requirement for Guards to carry weapons would most likely be greatly reduced.

 

[CGTv]

Lots of dead bodies are wearing tactical vests and there's a rather large array of military grade items availible in the game.
Perhaps we will come across a training yard somewhere sometime.

Like piddy3825  said, i was also thinking of prisoners being sent there to work but i don't think we will necessarily  ever come across a prison.

~CGTv

[cullam]

Actually, a Taser would be amazing, from a game play perspective. Sure, you can hunt and electrocute wolves! But only during an Aurora... 

[huntergathers]

This was talked about in a Mailbag recently, I believe there may be a prison on the island in our future. I highly doubt we would ever find something as convenient as a bridge to escape the quiet apocalypse.