Why does the Conjoined Alliance of Space Travellers keep producing red uniforms?
The Conjoined Alliance of Space Travellers (Nope, not that one) is a generally nice completely peaceful group of heavily armed species exploratory organisation.
Using ships such as the Exciting Undertaking and bases like A Long Way from Anywhere V C.A.S.T. has spread across the stars, often culturally annihilating civilising other species in their quest for shiny things knowledge.
Some time ago C.A.S.T. scientists noted an alarming trend: When people were given shirts, tunics, snoods, kilts or other items of culturally appropriated tat clothing that were coloured red, they showed a much greater chance of dying. This trend was directly correlated with the proportion of red to other pigments in the clothing, and is as yet unexplained. Rigorous testing (on background crew members, obviously) has confirmed the causal link: Red uniforms cause a 10 fold increase in chance of death. This isn't a statistical fluke, it's been confirmed using a carefully planned variety of uniform styles over multiple seasons years to eliminate various sources of bias.
Despite this research being passed up to the higher levels of the command chain it is still mandated that certain positions within the organisation wear red.
Given that the leaders of C.A.S.T. have sensible advisors... are generally not idiots... are quite clever... are some of the smartest people in the known universe: Why might they still be producing items of clothing in a colour they know will cause higher casualty rates among the people who wear them?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/95033. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
They want people to strive for a better position and sort the weaklings out
By making the lower ranks wear red they incentivise people to get better. After all everyone knows that Redshirts die more often than others. If you are a Redshirt you are seen as expendable and you don't want to be expendable. So you better get moving and try to climb up the corporate intergalactical ladder.
This is a form of "survival of the fittest" engineered by the leaders. Something kills things in red - so the weaklings get sorted out. But if you were a Redshirt and you survived a few missions and proved to be competent then you surely are a great asset and should be allowed to jump a few rungs.
At the same time they are protecting their more important people. If whatever exactly is killing is occupied with Redshirts it can't possibly kill the others at the same time. Probably.
Space is cruel. You have to show that you can survive the dangers and prove your worth. This is just a form of pecking order where the stronger ones thrive and the weaker ones get sorted out when danger approaches. Your only hope is to get out of that position as fast as you can.
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