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T4 Work Camp

A Skynet Workcamp with a T-600 unit on the far left in Terminator Salvation.

Skynet Work Camps are extermination camps run by Skynet in the post-Judgment Day future.

Humans were forced inside these camps for "orderly disposal". "Disposal units" ran 24 hours a day, bringing the human population to the brink of extinction.[1] Some prisoners are kept alive to load bodies. Prisoners were burned with laser barcodes, presumably to keep track of them. "Grays", humans collaborators, are in charge of the work camps and monitor the prisoners.[2][3]

History[]

The Sarah Connor Chronicles timeline[]

In 2015, John Connor and Kyle Reese were both imprisoned in Century Work Camp, a work camp located in Los Angeles before their escape in 2021.[4]

T2 Trilogy timeline[]

Kyle and his mother Mary Reese were captured by Luddite Patrol A-36 under the command of Sam Marshall and delivered to a camp to serve as slaves. Later, John Connor led an assault against the Luddite extermination camp three years later. Although most of the prisoners were rescued by Connor and other Tech-Com soldiers, Dennis Reese and his wife Mary were killed by a Terminator during the assault on the camp. T2: The Future War

Salvation timeline[]

In the Salvation timeline, by the year 2015, Skynet had mass-produced and deployed T-70 Terminators and had them guarding work camps.[5]

During 2018, Kyle Reese, Star and Virginia were captured along with other people and brought to a camp located in Skynet Central in San Francisco. Later, John Connor led the Tech-Com unit to rescue the prisoners and successfully destroyed the Skynet Central. Terminator Salvation

It seemed those in the camp were for further experimentation regarding Project Theta to convert human into a Hybrid.

Resistance timeline[]

Work Camps were Skynet's primary method for exterminating the human race. Work Camps were usually built and located behind the Annihilation Line. The prisoners were people that Skynet chose to be kept alive, usually if they had any value for it. Conditions inside the camps were unbearable as people were packed like animals into cages and were starved and worked to the bone, loading bodies into the grinders to be disposed of. Skynet also tortured and experimented on human prisoners, typically ones that were too weak to work. They would be executed at the same time via being dissected alive. To further maximize the casualties, Skynet would not begin extermination of prisoners until its Camps were at full capacity or if prisoners had outlived their usefulness to Skynet. Until the Resistance was formed and started liberating camps, it was because of these camps that the human race almost went extinct.

Erin described her time in a Work Camp to Jacob Rivers: At an unknown point, she and her husband Peter were captured by Skynet after Machines surrounded the hospital Erin worked at after she had finished performing surgery on a little girl. While the Machines killed the majority of people inside the hospital, they decided to keep Erin and Peter alive and captured them instead. Erin speculated it was because Skynet thought it would be valuable to have a doctor in one of its camps. She seemed to be right as Skynet forced her to attend and assist in the torture, experimentation, and dissection of many prisoners. Erin could not watch at first, but then she decided that she had no choice but to bear witness to the atrocities. Erin thought that the only reason Skynet kept Peter alive was so that it could force Erin to cooperate.

There was also a Terminator, most likely a T-650, that Erin and her cellmates called "Nurse Ratched". Its rubber face had a smile on it, untypical for T-650s. Erin thought it was Skynet's attempt to make the machine seem friendly. At the end of every week, it would come and take the weakest of Erin's cellmates for dissection. Sometime later, one of Erin's cellmates, Karen, was going to have a baby. Erin knew that was a one-way ticket to the grinder, so she tried to keep it a secret. Unfortunately, Skynet became aware of the situation once Karen went into labor. Skynet told Erin that Karen could give birth to her child, but Erin would then have to kill the baby. If Erin refused to cooperate, Skynet would execute the entire cage. Karen gave birth to a baby girl, but died in the process. Erin knew she and Peter had to escape from the camp, and they did. They snuck into the disposal room with the child and covered themselves with dead bodies. They were eventually dumped like garbage outside the camp by unsuspecting prisoners, and finally escaped the camp.

The civilians from Northridge Outpost including Jacob's father, Frank, were relocated to a Skynet Work Camp built inside and underground of an old football stadium after they had outlived their usefulness to Skynet when the Cyberdyne Systems Model 102 Infiltrators were completed.

Known camps[]

Behind the Scenes[]

  • The concept of the Skynet Work Camp resembles the Nazi extermination camps run by the SS, such as Auschwitz. Some inspiration was also taken from the Soviet gulags run by the Cheka, which were more focused on using political prisoners as slave labor, although killing by extermination or being worked to death was often done.
    • The idea of Grays seems to be inspired by the Kapos or sonderkommandos, prisoners who did the dirty work of the camps in return for not being killed upon arrival.

Appearances[]

Films
Novels
Games
Television series

Gallery[]

Terminator Salvation[]

Quotes[]

Sarah Connor: Reese. Why me? Why's it want me?
Kyle Reese: There was a nuclear war. A few years from now, all this, this whole place, everything, it's gone. Just gone. There were survivors. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it. It was the machines, Sarah.
Sarah Connor: I don't understand.
Kyle Reese: Defense network computers. New... powerful... hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.
Sarah Connor: Did you see this war?
Kyle Reese: No. I grew up after. In the ruins... starving... hiding from H-K's.
Sarah Connor: H-K's?
Kyle Reese: Hunter-Killers: patrol machines built in automated factories. Most of us were rounded up, put in camps for orderly disposal. (pulls up his right sleeve, exposing a barcode) This is burned in by laser scan. Some of us were kept alive... to work... loading bodies. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah, your unborn son.
The Terminator

Sarah Connor: (Looking at a barcode on the forearm of dead Resistance fighter) I've seen that before. Kyle Reese had one.
Cameron: Skynet work camp. Prisoner.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Gnothi Seauton"

Cameron: (After seeing a barcode in the police file of Derek Reese) That's a tattoo from a Skynet work camp. He's a resistance fighter.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Queen's Gambit"

References[]

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