『杭电1488』Flavius Josephus Reloaded

Problem Description

Flavius Josephus once was trapped in a cave together with his comrade soldiers surrounded by Romans. All of Josephus' fellow soldiers preferred not to surrender but to commit suicide. So they all formed a circle and agreed on a number k. Every k-th person in the circle would then commit suicide. However, Josephus had different priorities and didn't want to die just yet. According to the legend he managed to find the safe spot in the circle where he would be the last one to commit suicide. He surrendered to the Romans and became a citizen of Rome a few years later.

It is a lesser known fact that the souls of Josephus and his comrades were all born again in modern times. Obviously Josephus and his reborn fellow soldiers wanted to avoid a similar fiasco in the future. Thus they asked a consulting company to work out a better decision scheme. The company came up with the following scheme