Cold Equation / Live-Action TV

Cold Equations run in Live-Action TV series.

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• Played for Laughs in 30 Rock: Jack wants to prove that there's no way Kenneth is as selfless as he seems, so he fakes a setup where nine people, including himself and Kenneth, are trapped in an elevator, and tells them all that they have only enough air for eight and there is a gun in the emergency telephone panel. Kenneth immediately tries to shoot himself. When it turns out it isn't loaded, he pulls off his own belt and tries to choke himself, much to everyone's horror.
• The 100: A running theme of the series are these popping up. However, it turns out the characters don't often have access to all the data.
  • The Ark has only four months of life support left for its current population, so the option is quickly raised to "reduce" the population to buy time to repair it. This is rejected only because the person with the authority to make such a decision refuses to kill hundreds of innocent people without a legal reason. Eventually, however, it is decided that they will make it look like an accident and kill everyone in a certain part of the Ark, with the leader sacrificing himself as well. Before this can go through a member of the governing group who voted against it broadcast a video that explains what's going on. After that a bunch of people willingly sacrifice themselves and die. Less than a day later, however, communications with the group on Earth is established and it is revealed that, unbeknown to everyone on the Ark, the Earth is habitable and no one had to die.
  • All crimes on the Ark are punishable by death in order to save on life support. The only exception is if the convict is under 18.
  • In season 5, flashbacks to the bunker show that all crimes are now punishable by being forced into gladiator games, also to conserve on resources, and to provide food for the other survivors.
• The Ark (2023): How Harris dies during the oxygen crisis in the first episode - he deliberately trades helmets with another crew member whose supply had not been refilled.
• Arrow: A flashback shows that when the "Queen's Gambit" sunk, three survivors made it to a lifeboat: Oliver, his father, and an unnamed crewmember. Once they realized that there was no immediate rescue coming they inventoried their supplies and Oliver's father figured out that three people would run out of drinkable water long before they could reach any land. He then promptly pulls out a gun, shoots the crewmember dead and then kills himself. This way Oliver would have a chance of surviving long enough that he could reach land. Oliver survived but the experience messed him up really badly and he became obsessed with trying to make his father's sacrifice meaningful.
• In Avenue 5, Rav, who is Mission Control for Avenue 5's misadventures in space, asks the Other President for help rescuing the ship. The president's response: the crew would have to first eliminate "500 non-essential passengers." Perhaps a literal example, given that the Other President is an AI.
• Considering it's something of a Crapsack World setting, this comes up rather frequently in Babylon 5.
  • The reason why the "Battle of Coriana VI" is not the "Battle of Centauri Prime" is quite simply down to respective population sizes.
    Lyta Alexander: I've heard that some of the Vorlons would be within striking distance of Centauri Prime about the same time we reach Coriana 6. So... why are we here instead of there?
    Marcus Cole: 6 billion lives on Coriana. 3 billion lives on Centauri Prime. We have enough ships to make a stand at one of them, so which do you choose? It's numbers - cold, unsympathetic numbers.
  • The Minbari Grey Council learned of the reawakening of the Shadows long before all the other younger races. Instead of warning them, they prepared against the Shadows in secret (albeit with the assistance of the Vorlons, who were also only too well aware). After G’Kar made his expedition to Z’ha’Dum he also learned that the “Ancient Enemy” that devastated his homeworld a millennia ago had returned, and tried to warn the other races. The Grey Council (of which Delenn was a member at the time) chose not to verify his story, so ultimately he was ignored. With the help of the Shadows, the Centauri were later able to capture the Narn homeworld, resulting in the death and enslavement of millions of his people. Delenn confesses as much to G’Kar in “Ship of Tears”, but in her defence tells him that had the Minbari spoke in his support the other races may have still disbelieved him, and the Shadows would have completely exterminated his people in retaliation. He accepts this explanation, but with a very heavy heart.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003). In the webisode series The Face of the Enemy, Lt. Felix Gaeta and a mixed company of other humans and Cylons make an emergency jump in their Raptor and (due to a computer error) get stranded far from the Fleet. One of the Cylons murders the others (with the exception of Gaeta, her former lover) so they'll have the maximum chance of survival, even killing another Cylon of her same model.
• Blake's 7:
  • The episode "Orbit" was inspired by the Trope Namer. Avon and Vila are on a shuttle desperately trying to achieve escape velocity. They throw out everything they can but are short seventy kilos. It turns out that the shuttle is being weighed down by a piece of super-dense matter. Once Avon finds it all he has to do is push it out the airlock - if he can, because it's so damn heavy. Trouble is, he can't get Vila to help him because he's scared Vila into hiding.
    Avon: Not enough, not nearly enough! DAMMIT! What weighs 70 kilos?!
    Orac: Vila weighs 73 kilos, Avon.
    Avon: (pulling out a handgun) Vila...
  • Also happens in "Stardrive". With Federation cruisers closing in on them, the Stardrive's inventor says she needs 50 minutes to connect it up. Eventually it comes down to a few seconds they don't have, so Avon ends up sacrificing her to save their ship by setting the controls to launch when she makes the final connection.
  • However Avon shoots down the idea in "Warlord" (thought the person suggesting the idea has already betrayed them, so Avon is hardly inclined to sacrifice his friends to save him).
    Zukan: If two of them volunteer to die, the oxygen they have left will last the rest of them.
    Avon: If just one of them dies, for any reason at all, so do you, Zukan!
  • In "The Harvest Of Kairos", a Federation transporter with a valuable cargo is too heavy to reach orbit from a Death World, so Servalan orders the captain to leave some of his laborers behind. There's a moment of Black Comedy when a guard is taunting the laborers as he locks them out, only to find the transporter taking off without him as well.
• In one episode of Bones, twins had been abducted by The Gravedigger, who buries his victims and demands ransom or they will die in exactly 24 hours (due to suffocation). Except in this case since the Gravedigger didn't expect to abduct two people so they only have 12 hours of air. One was seriously injured and killed himself so the other might be able to hang on a bit longer.
• Breaking Bad: An unconventional example in "Full Measure": Walt and Jesse are on the ropes with Gus Fring, with it becoming increasingly obvious that he's grooming Gale Boetticher to replace Walt in the Meth lab, and planning to dispose of Walt once he's no longer needed. Meanwhile, Jesse is wanted dead for killing two of Gus' street dealer in revenge for their murder of an eleven year-old. The only way Walt and Jesse can live is for them to kill Gale in return, so that Gus would still have use for them.
• Basically every action taken in Chernobyl will result in exposing people to extreme amounts of radiation, which will likely give them cancer at best or kill them from radiation poisoning at worst. But if they didn't do it, the massive amount of radioactivity from Reactor #4 would poison all of Europe. For specific examples:
  • The three divers are sent into Chernobyl's basement to drain the water tanks and prevent a steam explosion, but it's so radioactive that they would probably die in a week. Legasov even tells Gorbachev that he's asking permission "to kill three men". It's not depicted in the show, but in real life, all three lived.
  • The miners have to dig a tunnel under Chernobyl to install a heat exchanger to prevent radioactive lava from burning through the concrete and contaminating the groundwater (there was about a 40% chance of that, so better safe than really sorry). It's also too hot to wear their protective equipment, and they can't use fans because it would expose them to even more radiation. Many of the miners died from radiation exposure, and the heat exchanger was never needed. The surviving miners are proud of their work anyway, because again, better safe than extremely sorry.
  • While two out of three roofs could be (and were) cleared off by robots, the most dangerous ("Masha") was so intensely radioactive that it fried a robot meant for moon landings (and so hardened against radiation), so they have to use "Bio-Robots" to clean off the roof, working in shifts of 90 seconds each because any more would be too unsafe.
• In the 1970's British sitcom Come Back Mrs. Noah, a rescue ship manages to make it up to the space station, but due to damage sustained it has to leave someone behind. The decision is made on everyone's 'worth' to society, so it's obvious the Butt-Monkey (who's only job is to change the lightbulbs) is going to be left behind. Then it turns out the damage is worse than they thought, so only the pilot and co-pilot can return.
• An episode of CSI: Miami reveals this as the motive for the murder of the week. The crew of a private Space Plane kill one of the passengers (the non-famous one) in order to conserve oxygen, after a micrometeor punctured the oxygen line, then they try to make it look like an accident. Both crew members, plus the movie star, are arrested for murder: one of them pulled the trigger, the other one gave the order, and the movie star opened the airlock to dispose of the body. They try to use this trope as their defense (i.e. it was either one or all four), only for Horatio to tell them that it wasn't their decision to make.
• Dad's Army. Captain Mainwaring is presented with this scenario to test his decision-making skills: You are in a balloon over enemy territory that is slowly running out of air; who do you throw out? Mainwaring claims he would normally throw himself out but he realises he is too important for that. He decides on Godfrey, who doesn't look very happy. Wilson then suggests they wait till the balloon reaches the ground then Godfrey can step out.
• Game of Thrones: Stannis' arc in Season 5, leads to an almost classic example. He burns Shireen in a Human Sacrifice involving Blood Magic which in the series is shown to be real, powerful and effective. His other alternative is for his entire army to die in the bitter cold since their supplies and horses were set on fire, and Shireen would die anyway, alongside everyone else. Effective or not, though, his forces start deserting in disgust, and the understrength remainder is defeated soon afterwards.
• In the early days of the fungal outbreak in The Last of Us (2023), the US military decided to evacuate civilians in outlying towns to the urban quarantine zones. However, they only had enough room and resources for a limited number of people. If the quarantine zones were full, the military would simply execute the evacuees rather than risk them becoming infected and overwhelming their defenses, as the fungus can only infect living hosts.
• In Legend of the Seeker, Cara and Kahlan both realize that the tomb that they're trapped in doesn't have enough air for both of them. They both give reasons that they should die and the other live - Kahlan that Cara could revive her, and Cara that she's less important to Richard, to whom she's sworn. They even briefly fight to prevent the other from committing suicide - and in doing so, use up the last of their air. Seconds later, Richard and Co bust in.
• In Lost's fourth-season finale, as the group of main characters attempts to finally leave the island, Frank notices that the helicopter is running low on fuel, and says they'll have to jettison someone to stay in the air. It initially looks like Hurley will have to jump (judging by his reaction when Frank says this), but Sawyer performs a selfless act by jumping out of the aircraft himself and allowing everyone to escape.
• Metal Hurlant Chronicles: In "Three on a Match", three men flee their destroyed spaceship in an escape pod, but the pod gets hit with debris and suffers an air leak. A rescue ship is coming for them, and to save air, two of the men turn on the third and throw him out the air lock. They allow him to put on a spacesuit, but after they throw him out, they mock him and say they will enjoy watching him slowly suffocate. When they realize they are still losing air, the two remaining men fight to the death. One kills the other, but he ironically runs out of air and dies mere moments before the rescue ship arrives. The ship brings their corpses in, then the man they threw out drifts into range and is rescued. When asked how he is still alive, he explains that an oxygen tank was in the debris. The other two men's selfishness ironically saved his life.
• The lifeboat version is mocked in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The sailors in the lifeboat compete with each other, each of them voluntering to sacrifice himself to provide food for the others.
• On My Name Is Earl, one of the people on Earl's list happens to be an eccentric old woman (played by Betty White) that the citizens of Camden accused of being a witch. She gleefully traps them in her basement, but she's running out of room, and says she'll have to start killing them. But she's "nice" enough to let them choose who that is. Cue lots of arguing.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "The Joining", a group of scientists are trapped on Venus with limited life support. When there are only two of them left, one kills himself to prolong the other's life.
• Played for Laughs in Red Dwarf. Due to the ship exploding, the crew are stuck in a Starbug shuttle, with limited supplies, and neither enough fuel nor oxygen to get to the nearest planet.
  Rimmer: (to Kryten) Well, you and I don't use oxygen, do we? So, if we kill [Lister and The Cat] and dump their bodies out the airlock, will that save us enough fuel to get to safety?
  Kryten: The point is moot, sir, as we only have enough battery power [to run your holographic emitter] for two minutes.
• Downplayed in Space: 1999. The moon is being pulled into a black sun (now called a black hole), but a single Eagle is prepped on the slim chance that six men and women might escape and survive. When the Ace Pilot finds out, he insists that he must be included as he'll have the best chance of getting them away. Commander Koening says however that the Master Computer has already compiled a list of those most likely to survive in space...which includes the Ace Pilot. However it's implied that Koening was originally on the list but he chose Going Down with the Ship.
• An episode of Space: Above and Beyond involved a vast ship with a bunch of survival modules, one of which had to be sacrificed for power. The guy has trouble pushing the button, because his younger sister is in the one module that isn't full.
• In Squid Game, Sang-woo takes a calculated approach to the games, being willing to do whatever necessary to increase his chances of winning, including cold-blooded murder. For example, during the fifth game, the player in front of him is hesitating before the last pair of glass panels- the right one will support his weight, but the wrong one will break under him, causing him to fall to his death. Since the clock is ticking and everyone who's left- Sang-woo, the player in front of him, Gi-hun and Sae-byeok- will fall to their deaths if they don't cross to the other end in time, Sang-woo pushes the other player forward, causing him to fall through the glass and die, but allowing him, Gi-hun and Sae-byeok to reach the end in time although Sae-byeok is mortally wounded when the glass is destroyed.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In "Shuttlepod One", Trip Tucker and Malcolm Reed are stranded on a shuttle, and Tucker decides to throw himself out the airlock to give his companion more time, only to be ordered back at phaser-point by Reed.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • In "The Galileo Seven", when the shuttlecraft Galileo crash lands on a planet, it loses so much fuel that it can't even reach stable orbit unless they lighten their load by 500 lbs. It's immediately pointed out that 500 lbs. is the weight of three men. Two of the crew die while on the planet, and they eventually take off and achieve orbit. Unfortunately, they had to use the boosters to do so, so they're guaranteed to burn up on re-entry.
  • "The Conscience of the King" had this, not in a space ship but on a planet. Kodos "the Executioner", former governor of the Earth colony of Tarsus IV, was responsible for the massacre of over 4000 people, including members of Kirk's family. Governor Kodos had ordered the executions of more than half Tarsus IV's population after the food supply was all but destroyed by a fungus. This would have allowed the rest of the population to survive until relief came. It so happened that the vital resupply ships that could have saved the whole colony arrived much sooner than Kodos had anticipated, rendering all the executions unnecessary. A large part of his infamy came from the fact that he didn't choose randomly or pragmatically, but based on some eugenics formula he had developed.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • In "Deadlock", a Negative Space Wedgie creates two Voyager's occupying the same space. One is damaged in the process, so the captain of that Voyager decides to destroy her own ship so the other can survive. But hostile aliens board the other Voyager, so that Captain Janeway ends up destroying her ship instead.
  • "One" has the ship traversing a deadly nebula with most of the crew in stasis for their safety. Near the end of the trip, the ship's systems start breaking down, and there isn't enough energy to keep the engines running. Seven of Nine has to choose which systems to divert power from, and hallucinations of the crew mock her for thinking that she could take a few of the stasis pods offline to get the engines running, calling it heartless Borg efficiency. She does so, then takes life support offline to keep the stasis pods running. Luckily for everyone, the ship exits the nebula in time to for the crew to awaken and save her.
  • In "Year of Hell", the EMH has to close a hatch on two crewman who wouldn't make it before the hull breaches.
  • In "Latent Image", the EMH elects to save Harry Kim over the life of a Red Shirt. While as a doctor with Artificial Intelligence, he's programmed to make such decisions, the advancement of his personality over the past few years cause him to malfunction as he's caught in a Logic Bomb between his ethics and his pragmatism.
• Subverted in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Tangent". Instead of killing himself, Teal'c places himself in a kel'no'reem trance to reduce his oxygen consumption for O'Neill's benefit.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • Combined with What Measure Is a Non-Human? in "The Lonely". A spaceship is sent to pick up a prisoner in exile on a distant asteroid who's been acquitted. Due to fuel restrictions, they can only take 15 pounds of baggage, which is more than the Robot Girl who's been his only companion on the asteroid weighs.
  • The episode "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" involves a spaceship crashing onto what the astronauts think is a distant desert planet. One Jerkass member of the crew, determined to survive, kills the rest of the crew one by one so he can steal their water canteens. Shortly after killing the captain, the crew member finds out they were on Earth All Along, not far from a freeway leading to Reno, Nevada.
• A strange, comedy example from the episode "Real Time" of Workaholics—the guys are still drunk in the morning, and need to stay drunk rather than get hungover before they arrive at work. Adam runs back to get beers for them, but drinks them all himself (along with a few pulls of whiskey). He meets up with the others, tells them all the beers are gone, and we get this exchange.
  Ders What are you talking about? I just saw you drink one right now.
  Adam: Yeah, the last one, Ders. Think, speak.
  Blake: Okay, well, I know we had more than one beer in the house.
  Adam: - No, we had four. But there's three of us. And 1 1/2 beers each? That's not enough to get us kablamo-ed. But for one person? that might be enough to take us to the level.

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