Self Destruct - (Why no accidental destructions)?

[Farscape One]

There are other scenarios where self-destruct is necessary.

The Exeter in "THE OMEGA GLORY" or the Lantree in "Unnatural Selection", for example. Both ships lost their entire crews to a disease, but the disease was still within those ships. To prevent any possible spread of it, both would need to be destroyed. We never know if this was done for the Exeter, but we did see the Lantree destroyed by the Enterprise-D.

The situation in "DEADLOCK", when the Vidiians took over one Voyager and was harvesting the crew. Because the duplicate ship was in danger of the same fate, Janeway ordered self-destruct. It also had the benefit of stopping the antimatter drain. That example is pretty extreme and rare, but that was the only viable solution in that case.

Or what if all guidance systems were down, or the ship was being pulled by something, and you were on a collision course to a starbase or a planet with a large population? Your crew does everything to alter course or even wreck the engines, but you are still a speeding bullet to those people. Last course of action: self-destruct. Put your crew in escape pods, and blow up the ship. You just saved untold numbers of other people getting killed when your ship rams into said base or planet.

 

[Dumbbell]

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.

Self-destructing was not the solution to this information leak. The Duras sisters demonstrated how to get information without capturing a Federation starship to do it.

If you do not know what your enemy knows, then you are not doing it right. You should be the source of your enemies information.

 

[fireproof78]

Self-destructing was not the solution to this information leak. The Duras sisters demonstrated how to get information without capturing a Federation starship to do it.

If you do not know what your enemy knows, then you are not doing it right. You should be the source of your enemies information.

I didn't say it was. I was using an example that even with not pinnacle tech information was still highly valuable, and if necessary, should be destroyed.

 

[Dumbbell]

I think I see you point, and I agree that secret information should be protected. I suggest, however, that we do not need to self-destruct a starship to protect its secrets. Rather, we need to protect its secrets.

 

[fireproof78]

I think I see you point, and I agree that secret information should be protected. I suggest, however, that we do not need to self-destruct a starship to protect its secrets. Rather, we need to protect its secrets.

Ideally, a self-destruct would be a last ditch effort, however I do not think it goes against the ethos of the Federation. You want to safeguard secrets, as well as reduce the enemy's ability to either wage war against you or your allies. Even a ship can serve as resources to the enemy.

 

[Kirby]

I like to think that the self destruct is the automatic release of all of the rocks they have stored up in the ceiling and walls. During battles some of the rocks get released, but not all of them.

 

[Timo]

At the end of the day, Starfleet has self-destruct systems on its starships, but does not use them to deny the ship from the enemy in the usual case. Rather, scutting is done to kill the enemy.

An exception is made by Janeway, who feels she has tech that should not fall in the wrong hands. But that's due to the nature of the hands, not the tech: back in Alpha, there would be no motivation for her to scuttle. Not unless she tried to take the enemy with her.

Picard doesn't scuttle when abandoning (i.e. Stargazer). And he sure doesn't scuttle when abandoning is not an option (i.e. when the countdown timer is broken).

Kirk... Never really abandoned. But he didn't try scuttling in "This Side of Paradise". Although arguably he was under the influence of the hippiefying spores when (not) making that decision.

Sisko only tried abandon/scuttle in heated taking-them-with-me situations. Or was knocked out cold during (imagined) abandoning. Kira was satisfied with a partial scuttle when the Dominion came.

Archer didn't abandon. The jury's out on Freeman. And abandoning-but-not-scuttling of Discovery is not something we could lay on any particular person, not with the utterly confused chain of command aboard that one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

Indeed. Scuttling charges can be designed to be quite safe and only will go off at the appropriate time.

Quite true. All hand phasers are bombs too, remember?

Enterprise was damaged by Reliant and the BoP both. Partial detonation only due to bad circuits. Partial detonation is a thing. A long time ago, small sticks of dynamite were used to—get this—dislodge stuck bits of ammonium nitrate: (the Oppau Explosion).

******************************

Now…do we know Enterprise went down?

Go read an article by James Oberg from THE SPACE REVIEW entitled-

“Sputnik’s blastoff: the terrifying view from the launch site,”

—then read up on 1972’s Great Daylight Fireball and how it skipped back into space…where it was to do a resonant return in the 90’s.

Maybe a Genesis regenerated Khan found new life there after his remaining soldier makes like Jor-El and puts him in a shuttle that got away off screen?

Happy Halloween!

 

[Dumbbell]

Ideally, a self-destruct would be a last ditch effort, however I do not think it goes against the ethos of the Federation. You want to safeguard secrets, as well as reduce the enemy's ability to either wage war against you or your allies. Even a ship can serve as resources to the enemy.

I wonder about that, though, because we are talking about a Federation that entered a treaty to not use and develop its cloaking technology. This reflects a willingness to give away rather than to covet technological secrets. However, there is no treaty preventing its starships from being equipped with all kinds of self-destruct mechanisms. Even so, Federation ethos prioritizes the preservation of its people and even the lives of its enemies over the safeguarding of its secrets. Still, it prioritizes its collective justice, individual freedom, and right to determine way of life even over the lives of those who would enjoy such things.

 

[fireproof78]

I wonder about that, though, because we are talking about a Federation that entered a treaty to not use and develop its cloaking technology. This reflects a willingness to give away rather than to covet technological secrets. However, there is no treaty preventing its starships from being equipped with all kinds of self-destruct mechanisms. Even so, Federation ethos prioritizes the preservation of its people and even the lives of its enemies over the safeguarding of its secrets. Still, it prioritizes its collective justice, individual freedom, and right to determine way of life even over the lives of those who would enjoy such things.

But Starfleet is working in the real world of danger and possibility of their weapons and secrets used against them. So, a balance must be struck between the ideal and real, tactical dangers.

 

[Brobdingnag]

I find it funny that the bridge should be the most secure place on the ship, after all, it's its brain and once you lose your brain the rest doesn't matter however it turns out it's the least secure place on the ship with consoles exploding in your face and all... Why do they need so many plasma conduits running behind these consoles? It doesn't make any sense. It would be like having the fuel line of your car behind your dashboard and under the seat. Anyone who would build a car that stupid wouldn't sell any.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Yes, that's what one would think, but watch the short video, that was no antimatter warp core breach, it was in fact multiple conventional explosions.

IIRC, both are possible.

It all depends on the captain's final order. The final command in the sequence is "Code zero, zero, zero...destruct [zero or one]."

"Destruct Zero" is the one we saw, where the ship is taken out by multiple conventional explosions.

"Destruct ONE", on the other hand, would involve an instantaneous warp core breach. We never saw that version.

 

[Vale]

IIRC, both are possible.

It all depends on the captain's final order. The final command in the sequence is "Code zero, zero, zero...destruct [zero or one]."

"Destruct Zero" is the one we saw, where the ship is taken out by multiple conventional explosions.

"Destruct ONE", on the other hand, would involve an instantaneous warp core breach. We never saw that version.

This is from Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, which to put it nicely is of "dubious canonicity"; though the self destruct material is one of the few things in MSCttE that is actually sensible. The TNG Technical Manual states that an intentional warp core and antimatter containment breach is the preferred method of self-destruct, and the ordinance packages are included as a backup (and as a primary for the saucer in the event it is separated).

 

[publiusr]

I find it funny that the bridge should be the most secure place on the ship, after all, it's its brain and once you lose your brain the rest doesn't matter however it turns out it's the least secure place on the ship with consoles exploding in your face and all... Why do they need so many plasma conduits running behind these consoles? It doesn't make any sense. It would be like having the fuel line of your car behind your dashboard and under the seat. Anyone who would build a car that stupid wouldn't sell any.

Fuel tanks used to be right behind some truck seats. If the bridge is a lifeboat you need power…and that can cause problems. This is why shields are all important. You need a lot of energy density for starships. We already generate heat/energy beyond any material that can contain it…save for the microsecond a Dewar has to contain a fission reaction to pump the fusion “secondary.”

The safest design is an asteroid ship… each room it’s own cave right?

Didn’t help with Balance of Terror. There, one of the atomic scuttling charges of the Rom BoP itself was weaponized.

Apollo 13 shows—-you go to space…be prepared to take the hit.

So, for the longest time…it was about shields. Defiant brought armor and a slab frame back.

 

[Maurice]

The Exeter in "THE OMEGA GLORY" or the Lantree in "Unnatural Selection", for example. Both ships lost their entire crews to a disease, but the disease was still within those ships. To prevent any possible spread of it, both would need to be destroyed. We never know if this was done for the Exeter, but we did see the Lantree destroyed by the Enterprise-D.

Blowing up the ship would just means the first place visitors would go is the planet, picking up the plague. The stupid thing in that episode is that the Exeter is not broadcasting any kind of plague warning continuously.

 

[Brobdingnag]

...The stupid thing in that episode is that the Exeter is not broadcasting any kind of plague warning continuously.

More accurately it's one of the stupid things. This episode is lousy with them.

 

[Timo]

There's no time for anybody to turn on the beacon, apparently - since there was no time for anybody to send out a distress call, either.

So it stands out a bit that the CMO would have time to dictate a message, no matter how brief. And while on the bridge, too; one would think he would succumb to the disease the fastest, being the first to examine the patients and all, and if the thing spreads so fast there's no time for SOS and the like, then him reaching the bridge is weird.

Of course, we can spin that: perhaps the CMO was able to fight a delaying action against the disease when others could not, but had neither the time nor the skill to do anything else on the side. Perhaps he was McCoying it on the bridge when the landing party beamed back, and everybody else thus died before him.

Apart from that, it's one of the better eps, concept-wise and execution-wise: bold early ideas done with late panache, and with a worthy villain. Worthy of all the spinning we can muster, that is.

But yeah, blowing up the ship and applying some warning buoys instead would appear prudent. Unless Starfleet wanted a starship that can never be taken over by the enemy, in which case they'd just need to re-crew her with people who first need to visit Omega IV... "Immunized" apparently additionally means "no longer a carrier even if re-contaminated", so this crew could then continue a normal Starfleet career. Just refrain from inviting foreign dignitaries aboard!

But Starfleet is working in the real world of danger and possibility of their weapons and secrets used against them. So, a balance must be struck between the ideal and real, tactical dangers.

We never did learn of any weapon or secret worth protecting, now did we? Starfleet at best has parity tech; its many enemies already know it all, have it all. And while everybody suffers from a shortage of ships, the only ones who operate ships of others are the Romulans - and even they probably do it only in order to obfuscate, like back in ENT when they did it with holograms. It just doesn't appear worth the while to steal ships abandoned by your competitors.

In short, anybody who has the means to reach a deserted Starfleet vessel would by definition be disinterested in her, like Groucho Marx and clubs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brobdingnag]

One thing that's really stupid in the episode is the idea that people who would be culled by countless diseases would live for centuries. Most people don't die of infectious diseases. The main causes of death have nothing to do with microbes or viruses. There are heart diseases, cancers, accidents, chronic respiratory diseases, and vascular diseases (e.g. brain aneurysms)... none of these are caused by microbes or viruses. So the idea that if we were immune against all infectious diseases it would make us very long-lived is just stupid.

 

[Farscape One]

I think McCoy himself in the episode said the whole thing was poppycock and he could do more for you if you 'eat right and exercise regularly'.

Remember, Captain Tracey isn't a doctor, so he was making assumptions based on some observations he saw. Erroneous ones, but since he wasn't a scientist, I can buy this part of the episode.

 

[Timo]

Exactly. The disease / bioweapon had no demonstrable connection with the longevity, and McCoy was not blinded by preconceptions and could admit to that.

The locals simply were quite long-lived. And were capable of surviving a deadly bioweapon thanks to... Something in the air?

Now that part is the intriguing one. Supposedly, the planet is contaminated by a substance that, when hitting people, starts to turn them to dust. But if you spend a certain minimum time on that planet, the substance does not achieve that. Whazzup with that?

Does the planet's biosphere contain several warring agents, which can't defeat each other in open air, but the healing one triumphs over the killing one once inside a victim? Hardly a surefire way to "clean" landing parties before they return to their ships: even if there is an internal war in which good triumphs, won't their clothes and hair and whatnot carry the deadly agents to the ship where everybody else dies? After all, everybody else does die when the minimum exposure is not achieved.

Or do these folks get so impregnated by the healing agent that they bring that one, too, up to their ship when suitably exposed?

Or does the lethal agent simply lose potency after having worked inside the victim for long enough, and every fight on the surface of the planet ends in survival of the victim because the planet's magnetic or magical field, rather than any competing physical contaminant, gives protection during the struggle? But again, people beaming up would probably carry potent contaminants with them, in addition to the impotent ones inside them.

McCoy says he believes there is a "virus" on the planet that causes the "infection" (a funny word for the method of death), but never admits to having isolated either the virus or the immunizing factors he speculates are to be found in the food, the water and the soil. He never produces any of the "serum" he was working on. So it's all at the level of speculation (including the above, but not limited to it), and the heroes survive simply because McCoy is right in is gamble that nature runs its course and protects them.

Timo Saloniemi