How would a group of survivors with a rebel criminal get along stranded on an alien planet?

Question

The rebel criminal committed something terrible that gave them their fate to be stranded on the planet. The other survivors believe that he is the one to blame since he's the only person from an anti-government group that has survived amongst them. The survivors are aware of the "anti-government" group's agenda of committing violent acts to take control of the corrupted government.

edit: Humanity's fate is on an intergalactic spaceship with a population of 6 million people. They journey for 100's of years looking for a habitable planet. Over time, the government has become corrupt committing terrible acts, creating abusive laws as well as promising many things but failed to deliver. The citizens were becoming impatient that resulted in the creation of a rebel group who's agenda is to defeat the corrupt and give back the citizens a better future. The nation was divided to two, resulting many battles and skirmishes to take control of certain parts of the ship.

The government devised a plan to distribute explosives around the ship for their resolve to abandon everyone below a certain level upon finding a habitable planet. Their reason is to have control as well as not bring any people with diseases on the surface. There's more to it but that is the idea for now.

To get to the point; a huge war began between the government and the rebels. The explosives were triggered and everyone wasn't prepared for it. The emergency pods were disabled from the government early on from their plan to leave the Lusitania in rubble after their success landing. A few survivors make it out, mostly people that were selected (authorities, politicians, their family members etc), and a rebel leader who made his last stand but was lucky enough to save himself.

So Humanity is on the verge of extinction. They are it. A group of 9-12 people which consists of authorities, politicians, and a few other high-class citizens.

What would the survivors do to the rebel? What are they thinking? What would the rebel do? He's the odd one out.

Would they all reason to get along for the survival of humanity?

And what if the rebel had 1 or 2 of his rebel allies within the group? Would the outcome be different than a rebel alone?

They are all in a state of shock. And they are very lucky to have survived the crash landing. They are on a mysterious planet like earth. They don't have any experience with nature.

Answer 1

I have a few options on how they could all survive, but unless they're innately ready to work together or have a need to, you're going to end up with old habits dying hard. Unless the rebel has skills that are necessary to the survival of the group, he's out. Even with 2 allies, you still end up with a group of 9 vs 3 and he's out. Your best option for either of those is for your rebel to split off from the group, and create his own faction. After that it's just a tribal game.

The best way to go if you're looking for them all to survive, would be by working together, and luckily there's a few different ways I can see to make it happen. It all depends on how you want to shift the perspective.

Option 1: In many situations, the answer isn't always clear what is right and wrong. When there lies such a grey area, you can often find a lot of leeway in the methodology to helping people. Here's the idea: Make sure the government officials are not truly evil, and that the rebel leader has "seen the light". Portray the story as everyone has their methods of helping people, and thinking of it in different ways can yield different results.

Option 2: Make the rebel leader incredibly charismatic, and have him pull a large number of people over to his side. Maybe even reconcile some of the government officials with him, and get them to see his side of the story. This could create interesting scenarios in which it's once again the rebels versus the government, just with a new group of people.

Option 3: Abolish all party ties. There is no government now, as there's little more than a village's worth of people. Force them to work together and ostracize any who decide they don't want to participate. Force them to choose between survival and political ideology. This would help to create a more survival-y feel.

I think this answers the question, but let me know if it's not what you're looking for.

Answer 2

They might well be fully loyal 'party members', but who are perhaps successful or ambitious? At any level, they may have people above them who want them out of the way to prevent their being usurped; just cast some suspicion over them and watch them disappear (see the USSR under Stalin for details).

Or they could just be a sort of person that the government doesn't like much - teachers and intellectuals often get a hard time under authoritarian governments, even if they have little interest in politics.