Frank Herberts Dune vs the USA and UK

[Deepcrush]

As to the Sardukar,

1.) Harsh conditions from birth produce tougher people.
2.) Training built to match the conditions of when they were raised.
3.) Well equiped. They seem to have more access to more weapons and vehicles then any of the other houses.
4.) Numbers, the Sardukar seemed to have equaled the number of Harkonnen troops in the First Battle of Arakeen.

[Mikey]

And judging by the Emperor's conversation at that point, thos numbers were only a fraction of the total number of Sadaukar available to House Corrino.

[Deepcrush]

Indeed, i've heard of as many as fifty legions at one point. 250,000 super soldiers over a single planet. Add to that the levies the emperor had which made up most of his troops. The emperor had a single legion lead an 'army' of his. These armies could be between 100k and 500k strong. Though to be honest, the 100k is more likely as he a safe bet would be that he kept his levy to guard his worlds and used the Sardukar abroad. Still we would have 250k sardukar backed up by as many as 25 million levy troops. Not a bad size force for only one guy.

Still, an entire planet was sole owned to produce warriors. How many millions of people were there? How many of them were able to become sardukar?

[Mikey]

...and each one of those "levies" equal to "normal" House troops.

I don't think Salusa Secundus had any native poulation any longer - I had thought it was used as a training ground to which potential Sardaukar were sent.

[Deepcrush]

Many of the potentials were children. Trained by Sardukar captains. There has to be somewhere that those kids are coming from. Also, if the emperor wanted a constant refill for his armies then he would need a poplation to feed from. If he wasn't taking people from that world then there must have been a world that he was getting them from that no one knew about.

The more I think about it the more sense the 500k levy makes. As that would mean 100 troops per every Sarduakar. Sounds about right if every one of them is equal to a captain of the other houses.

[Mikey]

IIRC, Salusa Secundus only housed Sardaukar training facilities - no native cities or population centers. It's been a while, so I could be wrong.

[Deepcrush]

I don't really remember them going into much detail about it to begin with. It leaves us with a lot of questions.