What if an EMP goes off?

Thanks for the comment. If it's a large-scale EMP from a high-altitude nuke there are going be much bigger problems at hand than predators. If the area of effect is small it would only affect a smaller number of preds so I guess the government could just round them up and give them new collars. Also I am not sure how an EMP would even affect the collars. Would they become inactive or short circuit with fatal results for the wearer?

An issue is going to be size and small preds. (Rats are preds, and shrews. DO mice count? They're certainly not strict about herbivorism.) You're gonna need a design that can range over orders of magnitude there, with the smaller being much more finicky to design than larger models.

A tampering shock sounds too severe to me, especially a lethal one. The prey government is going to consider themselves the Good Guys after all. (If they're that willing to kill preds then straight out slavery is the easier option.) I think it'd be better to have the collars communicate like cellphones, always in contact with a base tower, not only logging the pred's movements but being able to send data about power supply, shocks given, and of course tampering. People WILL find ways to fiddle the collars. You can't prevent that, but you CAN track everyone and pick out those showing anomalies.

In fact, surgical intervention sounds too complex, expensive and risky to me. People will tamper with it, you're never going to get 100% success. I think all you'd need is something like taser darts, two small, sharp prongs that shoot into the skin when activated, give a shock then withdraw. Combine with a sensor that detects the resistance of what's just been shocked and nobody's gonna be able to block it with fabric or most other materials. Can that be tampered with? Of course. But as with ankle monitors here, no government's gonna go for 100% perfect. A system of stop-and-frisk 'collar checks' should stop preds routinely going around with things stuffed under their collar and harsh punishments for tampering are sure to be the norm.

Otherwise an implanted, pacemaker-like device would be easier and even more foolproof.

First of all thanks for your great comment, it means a lot to me.

I assume only species that eat (used to eat) other mammals count as predators in Zootopia, but the line is always going to somewhat arbitrary. I agree scaling is the biggest problem if we look at this really realistically, but this applies to Zootopia in general, not just the collars. Imagine trying to design a smartphone or TV set for a shrew. It would be basically impossible for several reasons. Same is true even for the mammals themselves. The smallest ones couldn't be sentient even if their body was 100% brains. You have to ignore the scaling issues for the setting to work at all.

If the collars had to constantly send data to some base their power consumption would go through the roof. Now we are talking about battery life of days instead of months. Lack of coverage in remote areas, underground, etc. would also be a problem. I think there would be two main risks with no immediate punishment for tampering. First, a large number of preds cutting their collars at the same time and starting an uprising. Second, individual preds over time cutting their collars and throwing them away. They would get arrested and re-collared but if every collar costs several thousands this could get expensive to the state quickly. Nothing would stop them from just doing it again as soon as they are free again, or even while still in prison. Also there is a limit to how many people you can keep in prison at one time.

The fact that the whole collar system hasn't came down already despite being in effect for at least a couple of decades shows that the government must be very serious about it. I mean the collars are obviously unnecessary because preds going savage is simply not a thing. I don't know who even benefits from the system, except maybe those who make the collars. For preds it is just torture, and prey mammals don't need it because preds were not a threat to them in the first place. Still the system exists. Preds must want the collars off really hard. Many of them would devote their lives to toppling the system, but clearly they have failed. I agree nothing is ever foolproof but the TAME collar must be pretty damn close.

The idea of making the device complitely internal like a pacemaker passed through my mind, but I wanted to stay closer to the original concept. Also maybe it was a bit unclear but the design I outlined does not include any surgery, just some kind of conductive superglue. Not very realistic perhaps, but it was the least unrealistic solution I could think of.

What can I say? I have a fondness for overanalyzing things. (Hello and welcome to my TED talk: Bunnyburrow Population Dynamics and the Coming Bunny Apocalypse.)

Zootopia is interesting in that (as mentioned in The Art of Zootopia) the studio actively incorporated limits of design. For example, all clothing buttons are about the same size. Mice will have just one, head-sized button on their clothing while elephants have dozens. As such, I suspect they'd find a way. Somehow electronics, like brains, would work at all scales.

Alternatively, smaller, uncontrollable preds could simply be excluded. Collars are for those that can be integrated, those that can't must be excluded. Human societies have done this readily enough.

I can see collars working -and being treated- like cellphones but with enforcement. Batteries must be charged or replaced every day or week or whatever. It's not some big thing where you visit some imposing medical building, you just pop in a new battery when you head out to work.

Could this system be cheated? Oh definitely, but nearly all human ones can and we don't worry about that. This society doesn't need to be paranoid that a single free pred for five minutes will topple all they worked so hard for. I think you're treating them as being far more fragile than real world systems tend to be. You need to think more along how people handled slavery and modern oppression.

Preds could take out batteries in their own homes perhaps. An RFID system would track them entering any buildings and check if the collars were online. Hell, put 'em in pred apartments so they can't unlock their doors without a collar scan. Make it a part of everyday life, a hassle but one people NEED, or else.

Couldn't this cause an uprising through mass de-collaring? Sure, but your system probably has the same weakness. SOMEONE'S gonna figure out how to short the magic conductor glue or EMP the collar electronics or SOMETHING and then it's the same issue, do that to a bunch of preds at once, and boom, uprising. No system is perfect. If you must you can use data to prevent too many preds gathering in one place without warning then shocks. You can add a backup battery that can deliver a lethal blast if the main battery is out of commission for too long, stuff like that. But i don't think you'd need to because...

...you can punish uprisings. The ZPD have guns. They shoot to kill if people try anything. Screw trial and justice, KILL. Prey can have guns, for self defense of course, work the system so that nearly any pred shootings aren't illegal. (Not like the justice system doesn't do that here and now.) Make it clear that any attempt at an uprising will be CRUSHED. What will you do, pred? Fight? And what? If you don't die and you liberate' your block, then what? There's nowhere to go, no victory to be had, no POINT. Obey or die.

You can tell which collars shut off. You have their names, the names of their families. You willing to die? Ok, you willing to have your mother, your sister, your kids sentenced to life in prison? (Or killed because why not?) ANYONE even remotely related to any resistance will be punished severely. It works for North Korea.

And of course, to prevent these sort of things, even if they're not actually happening, you need constant monitoring of preds. Collars record voice, emails are monitored. Movements. Random raids and stop-and-frisks on the street. Keep the oppression a constant, daily presence that grinds out even the thought of fighting back. The original had Wilde Times still standing. No, that gets bulldozed. No pred-only spots, no run down buildings where they can gather. No Happytown where they congregate. They're integrted and separated and anything they colonize is destroyed before people get any ideas. All preds must be made to know they're alone in a prey space all the time.

But with all this law breaking, surely the prison system would get bloated and expensive? I dunno, did the cotton plantations? In the US at least slavery is legal when it involves felons. If preds break their collars, they pay for them. Hell, if they get a parking fine they can't pay then the late fees get 'em into debtor's prison. There they work at whatever for free until the cost is paid off. Build an entire system around it, whole industries supported by pred labor. Make having more incarcerated a GOOD thing. There's allegations that this is the case in some countries here and now.

THAT will keep a collar system in place. THAT'S how it can stay for decades and not collapse. Because a LOT of people benefit, from the rich and powerful to small business owners. That's how you feed and grow hate. Prey will WANT to believe that preds are naturally savage, that God intended them to be controlled. They'll fear what could happen if the collars broke down, not just societal but economic collapse. Make the oppression vital to the running of things and nothing less than a war will stop it.

You like overanalyzing? That makes two of us!

I must say I kind of like (if one can talk about liking in this case) where you are going with this. Active more than passive enforcement and more emphasis on mental barriers in addition to physical ones. You just can't have the Wild Times storyline happening with collars transmitting sound and location and all that, but if you are only going for realism your scenario is likely better.

What you write also reminds me of one idea I had about making sense of the collar system, what I call the designated scapegoat theory. The government could benefit from having a group they can always blame that nobody will defend. If somebody tries to argue preds are not evil, people are just going to point out the collars and say: "Of course thay are evil. We wouldn't have the collars if they were not, now would we?" This way the oppression justifies the collars, the collars justify themselves, and the collars justify the oppression, completing the circle of prejudice.

Now when the powers that be screw up they can shift the blame on preds and anyone contesting that would instantly be marked out as suspicious by the public opinion. My main point here is that if preds are hated as much as it appears there must be SOME benefit to still having them around and not just killing them all. There are many ways to carry out genocide, including non-obvious ones, so it's not like they couldn't have done it.

With all the surveillance we can say goodbye to this not being really expensive, but maybe it never was because of the secondary costs like loss of work. Also generally using slave labour is not any cheaper than free labour with really miserable working conditions. Though using prisoners for forced labour is an expection to this because you would have to keep them alive anyway.

Zootopian government would have the advantage of prey mostly not being a threat to them so they can concentrate most of the effort to watching preds. The designated scapegoat system would make sure EVERYTHING is about prey vs. preds. Only the government is preventing preds from taking over so you must be either with us or with them. A prey mammal wanting to fight the government would likely try to work together with preds so the secret police would still get to them by watching preds and their contacts.

I can imagine big computers collecting collar location data and shock statistics and evaluating which preds are the most dangerous to the state. Then lots of secret service workers listening to collar audio. The Stasi employed 0.5% of the population, a comparable amount of mammals could keep the preds under very effective watch.

In this scenario collars would be surveillance devices first and shock collars second. Being able to spy on preds all the time would be more useful for keeping them down than the ability to shock them. Also at this point you might as well go full 1984 and just have cameras in all pred apartments. Maybe shocks and the risk of preds going savage would be the official purpose of collars while in truth they are mostly for surveillance.

Again in this scenario there is no Happy Town, no Wild Times, no Honey Badger's bunker, Koslov's mafia or Nick managing to escape from the ZPD. The original plot is definitely not possible but just as a setting this is pretty realistic.