C4 is amazing stuff. I can quite easily imagine charges set around different vital areas of the ship to function similarly.
Self Destruct - (Why no accidental destructions)?
- Thread starter Omega-Trekker
- Start date
Trek 101. Because those explosives do not exist until the plot says they do. 
What do you think the transporter is for?
There are many ways to destroy a ship, actually.
* Fly into star.
* Fly into black hole.
* Fly into pretty much anything if it's going fast enough.
* Seperate. Fly star drive into saucer section.
* Accelerate out of control.
* Warp core breach.
* Rupture antimatter container.
* Violent collapse of warp field.
* Cause all consoles to explode at once.
* ?????
* Fly into star.
* Fly into black hole.
* Fly into pretty much anything if it's going fast enough.
* Seperate. Fly star drive into saucer section.
* Accelerate out of control.
* Warp core breach.
* Rupture antimatter container.
* Violent collapse of warp field.
* Cause all consoles to explode at once.
* ?????
V
Vale
Guest
Clearly the self-destruct charges do need something special to trigger them, as we've seen self-destruct being disabled by severe damage to the ship in Star Trek: Voyager.
One of the few things Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise did well was explaining that self-destruct couldn't just rely on the warp core or ship's antimatter store, as it might be necessary to destroy a ship without causing a massive destructive blast. We see in Generations that an uncontrolled warp core breach can be utterly devastating to any nearby ships; if the crew of the Enterprise-D were in escape pods rather than the saucer module one can only imagine as to how many might have been lost.
One of the few things Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise did well was explaining that self-destruct couldn't just rely on the warp core or ship's antimatter store, as it might be necessary to destroy a ship without causing a massive destructive blast. We see in Generations that an uncontrolled warp core breach can be utterly devastating to any nearby ships; if the crew of the Enterprise-D were in escape pods rather than the saucer module one can only imagine as to how many might have been lost.
In the old days, the fanatical Romulans would destroy themselves along with their ships rather than suffer living in defeat. They used atomic ordinance that doubled as mines.
Self-destruction seems out of place on Starfleet vessels.
To destroy the Enterprise, the system just had to destroy the ship's autoshields so that it could burn up.
Self-destruction seems out of place on Starfleet vessels.
To destroy the Enterprise, the system just had to destroy the ship's autoshields so that it could burn up.
Why? It's not like Starfleet vessels are not full of classified information, from technologies, to protocols, to defensive information. Why would self-destruction be out of place in such ships?
2 types of auto destruct
Code 000 destruct zero was scuttling charges
Code 000 destruct one was warp core
Also. Plenty of binary explosives that need to be combined to make explosive (think Die Hard 3)
Code 000 destruct zero was scuttling charges
Code 000 destruct one was warp core
Also. Plenty of binary explosives that need to be combined to make explosive (think Die Hard 3)
That's from Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, I believe and non-canonical.
I get it that Johnson was evidently trying to do a hand wave for TSFS to explain why the destruct in that film wasn't a white ball of light. However, it would be unbelievable for Kirk not to use the warp core destruct in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." So, what, the sequence was re-coded a little bit for the refit? A new feature of selecting damage was added for the refit?
Well a core breach in near orbit would be bad news for the planet..
Uh, yeah, indeed it would/could/should. That doesn't change the fact that the same code was used in "Let That Be..." when the ship was in deep space nowhere near a planet, and Kirk's motive was to ensure that the ship did not fall into alien hands.
A key feature of a "self-destruct system" would seem to be its ability to implement the destruction with a countdown. Blowing up a "disabled" ship ought to be trivial in all cases. Doing so without committing suicide would be much harder to do, requiring one to rig a timer to replace the broken one. And we know most of our heroes take a very dim view on suicide: Kirk flat out refuses even when the fate of the entire Milky Way is at stake, say.
Janeway would probably be the only one ouf of the lot to march down to Engineering and fire her phaser at the warp core when everything else fails. But she never gets the opportunity: that's the whole point of the evil scheme in "Basics", to hide the fact that self-destruct suddenly requires self-sacrifice, until it's way too late.
"Severe damage" as such either blows up starships or doesn't. If there are scuttling charges preinstalled, they aren't more sensitive than the rest of the ship's kaboomables. But possibly also no less sensitive. When a ship does blow up but does not disappear altogether, a Swiss-cheesing pattern curiously similar to the ST3:TSfS self-destruct is observed... Basically because the pattern in most of those cases is reached by applying a Dremel or its digital equivalent.
Timo Saloniemi
Remember that both Riker and Worf were willing to ram their respective ships into a Borg cube, when all else failed. Janeway did the same with the Krenim in "Year of Hell".
Offering an explanation of orbit self destruct vs in space..
Maybe the computer when initiating self destruct takes into account where it is. In ST 3 they were in orbit so it decided to use the scuttling charges instead of a\m containment breach.
A possibility.
Though it doesn't make sense how "self destruct is offline" crap. It's a literal effort for the ship Not to explode.
Maybe the computer when initiating self destruct takes into account where it is. In ST 3 they were in orbit so it decided to use the scuttling charges instead of a\m containment breach.
A possibility.
Though it doesn't make sense how "self destruct is offline" crap. It's a literal effort for the ship Not to explode.
Even when ramming, our heroes do try to survive - Chakotay in "Caretaker", say. Or Kirk in "DDM". It's pretty seldom that they'd be completely cornered there, unable to bail out. (Heck, even Riker could have had his team beam out to Earth prior to actually engaging in "BoBW", but it never came to that.)
Scuttling is an effective way to bluff, unlike ramming. And our heroes do bluff a lot with it. They don't appear obligated to scuttle as a thing, though - Picard readily abandoned his ship without trying to destroy it in the backstory of "The Battle". Scuttling is a tactic employed to directly damage the enemy, or to otherwise thwart his plans ("Corbomite"!). And when used to that effect, timers and self-survival tend to be vastly preferred.
Timo Saloniemi
Scuttling is an effective way to bluff, unlike ramming. And our heroes do bluff a lot with it. They don't appear obligated to scuttle as a thing, though - Picard readily abandoned his ship without trying to destroy it in the backstory of "The Battle". Scuttling is a tactic employed to directly damage the enemy, or to otherwise thwart his plans ("Corbomite"!). And when used to that effect, timers and self-survival tend to be vastly preferred.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, canon Trek has obviously written self-destruction right into the Federation’s starship design philosophy. So, I can’t argue that. However, it still seems out of place to me for a number of reasons that make sense to me:
The primary reason is that I cannot believe that it would ever be necessary to self-destruct a Federation starship.
You may say that the captain must prevent classified information, technological information, and defensive information falling into enemy hands.
So, why destroy the entire starship? Just destroy the information. Furthermore, you don’t need a starship for that information, you just need its captain or the right person. Should the captured captain self-destruct too? That would be a Klingon thing to do in the form of fighting until he were killed, if possible. A Federation captain would just endure his refusal to give up information easily. That way, the enemy can learn something about the Federation that it can respect.
You may say that the captain must prevent the physical ship itself falling into enemy hands because they might examine it and reverse-engineer its technology for their own benefit, or they might discover its weaknesses and try to use them against the Fleet, or they might try to make use of the ship itself, which would be the most practical thing to do with it.
I’m not suggesting that a captain should just give up and easily surrender to the enemy or make it easy for them to take his ship. Why destroy the ship, though? By the time the enemy could unlock access and gain control, defend it all the while trying to bring it to their starbase, learn something new by examining it, develop their own prototype of the learned technology, conduct a production run, make the useful technology their own—all its secrets would be old news by then and they would probably already have something better on the go. Federation starships, which are not warships, should not represent the latest and greatest assets. They may be the latest and greatest production assets but not the best you could produce. A ship may be the most advanced in the Fleet, but that does not make it the pinnacle of your technological prowess. That would be reserved for prototypes and drawing boards that we never know about until it is already old. Besides, there are better ways to learn enemy secrets than capturing a starship with built in obsolescence. You just need to ask the right people and reward them accordingly.
You do not know what the enemy knows so it is your job to protect information at all costs. Regardless of whether it seems mundane or not, the pinnacle or not, that information is to be guarded. Not only because the enemy can utilize it to build their own ships but also determine security access points. Recall that in Generations that breaking in to Engineering and being able to see the ship's shield frequency was the key to victory. This is despite the fact that the Galaxy glass was not the latest and greatest, and the Duras sisters had been belligerents against the Federation for years, but the Klingons had been allies for years as well. So, there is clearly tactical information that still is relevant, regardless of developmental age.
I agree.
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