Discussion Main / ExplosiveDecompression

I just saw Mission to Mars and I'd dispute the realism of Tim Robbins' character's death. To be fair it is much more realistic than most versions (the blue skin from anoxia and bloating from the release of inert gases in the body are pretty close) but three things stand out to me:

1. The eyes bulge disproportionately a la Total Recall. Soft tissues are more vulnerable to decompression than sturdier tissues but they would still bloat at a fairly proportionate rate to the rest of the body.

2. Skin cracks and ruptures in places. Human skin is actually surprisingly tough and (unless you already had a serious skin condition) shouldn't crack in space.

3. The most obvious one is ice forming on his skin even though he was in full sunlight.

Not sure what to call this one just yet. A sort of planet-bound version, maybe? In the 1986 sci-fi/horror film Terrorvision, a space-suited alien beams himself down to Earth in an attempt to deal with a problem he inadvertently created. But then a misunderstanding with a human leads to a scuffle, the alien gets a rip in his suit, some gases hiss out through the rip, and just after he manages to blurt out "Losing... pressure!" his head goes splat inside his helmet. No explosion all over the place or anything, if memory serves.

Hide / Show Replies

Aversions

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• On Cowboy Bebop, Spike survived a quick trip through vacuum while jumping from his fighter to another ship. He came up short, but adjusted his trajectory using the recoil from his handgun so he could reach something to push himself off of. The villain of the episode realistically dies from decompression without exploding after he plows his space-truck into an asteroid, shattering the cockpit canopy.
  • A mistake was made here, however, as Spike took a deep breath before exiting his ship, which realistically should have burst his lungs.
• Gundam and Zeta Gundam, where holes are blasted into colonies on multiple occasions; however, unless you were in the vicinity of the hole, no one worries about them that much. Or unless the hole is just that big, like when the Titan's colony laser blasted through two sides of a colony.
  • For a better aversion, Quess Paraya in Char's Counterattack jumps directly though space to Char's Sazabi without a space suit, taking the effort to ball herself up and tumble thorough vacuum, with Char reacting well enough to keep her from floating off into the infinite nothing. Camille Biden in Zeta Gundam subverts this by opening his helmet visor in vacuum while talking to Emma Sheen. After the helmet opens, the sound of his voice properly cuts out, and Emma closes his helmet visor within a second.
    • Zeta Gundam features another aversion in an early episode. The cockpit of Kamille's Gundam Mk. 2 has a small air leak. While it is regarded as serious, it's because Kamille has no space suit. Once he tears off a piece of his shirt to cover the hole, the leak stops.
    • Uso has to do the same thing as Quess in Victory Gundam to get out of his damaged mobile suit. For some reason, the talking ball toy Haro blows a soap bubble to protect him.
  • Also averted in Gundam Seed, when the Archangel has to take water from what is basically a spaceship graveyard in order to survive, they find they are taking it from the ruins of a destroyed colony. It is averted when dead woman is seen floating in place still clutching her baby, both very much intact and unblemeshed.
• Super Dimension Fortress Macross played with this. When Hikaru and Minmei are trapped in the titular ship's bulkhead, the former seals his ordinary flightsuit and helmet with duct tape, holds his breath, and leaps out of the ship in order to catch a perfectly preserved tuna that was pulled along when the ship folded to Pluto (which is ironic, since S. Ataria Island (Macross Island in the Robotech remake)) itself flash-froze during the fold.) He even tosses random tools and debris to change his momentum, and is no worse for wear when he returns to the ship.
  • Of course, he is holding his breath the whole time, limiting the trip to about a minute. Plus, he's not sure if he'll survive, and the plan was to try and get to another airlock, the fish only becoming a diversion.
    • In the Robotech remake, the tuna was changed to become the primary purpose for the excursion.
  • Macross also has another example in a later episode where Breetai is pulled out an airlock and manages to pull himself along the hull to another airlock and get back in with no long term effects. Of course it does help that he's from a race of giant super soldiers and is tough even by their standards.
    • That fact also helps one-quarter Zentradi Ranka Lee survive exposure to near vacuum in the sequel series Macross Frontier. Although one still has to wonder how only partially protected (and non-Zentradi) Alto managed to fare just as well in his rescue of her
• In Crest Of The Stars Jinto and the old baron he befriended are rescued by Lafiel by exposing their "cell" to open space and riding through vacuum along the rope she extended from the shuttle.
  • She then gets a hard time from the higher-ups for that, as knowingly depressurizing a structure is a criminal offence in the Abh Empire.
• Somewhat ignored in the last season of Sonic X. Chris and Dr. Eggman being human, wear space suits in space, but apparently Sonic and friends don't even need oxygen.
• Aversion subverted in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure. Although it isn't a fight in space, there's a fight in a total vacuum, and the issues of blood boiling and differences in pressure are used to their full extents.
• In Buso Renkin, not only can Victor and Kazuki survive quite easily on the surface of the moon while in thier 'Victor' state, despite wearing only regular clothes [or, in Victor's case, a lioncloth], they can also talk audibly to one another. On top of this, both can survive for quite some time simply drifting in the vacuum of space [though Kazuki, at least, is unconscious, and his near-indestructible Buso Renkin lance shows signs of damage, presumably from the vacuum].

Comic Books

• Comics sometimes do things right - but for the wrong dramatic reasons. For example, Superman is often seen in space with nothing more than a breath mask - because he's apparently tough enough that the rapid pressure changes don't matter. (In fact, if he's high enough up, the extra solar energy he can absorb probably keeps him going.) This is fairly common among the high-power superheroes and -villains, like Lobo, Thor, and Starfire. It's to impress upon the reader how powerful the character is.
  • Or, in Lobo's case, just due to the Rule of Cool. Not only can he survive unaided in space, he can also speak audibly in it - something no one else in the DCU can do.
    Animal Man (Buddy Baker): Who the hell is Lobo? And why is there a huge biker dude standing in the vacuum of space smoking a cigar?
    • Pre-Crisis Superman used to do it often, however. Speak that is, not smoke.
      • Super-ventriloquism!
        • Batman Can Breathe in Space.
• In a Marvel example, there was one X-Men scene where Deathbird kicks Storm out an airlock of a Brood ship, and is rescued after 30 seconds. She makes a full recovery in the same issue.
  • Kitty Pryde managed a minute or so mucking about the outside of a space station during an evacuation attempt. She survived by hyperventilating before becoming intangible. To be fair she didn't think this would work either.
    • There's no reason why it shouldn't. When using her powers, she's effectively in a vacuum anyway. If she's not interacting with normal matter, including air, then there shouldn't be any pressure on her.
• In the Justice League Of America graphic novel "Welcome to the working week", Batman is observed going through "training" that involves willingly exposing himself to Vacuum so he can build up a resistance to it. He lastes 24 seconds before J'onn pulled him out. The symptoms he suffered were more in keeping with the realistic results of getting exposed to Vacuum (except he didn't lose consciousness because...well, he's BATMAN.)
  • 24 seconds is well within the stated realm of consciousness for a trained human; also, Batman has better aerobic-capacity than Richard Simmons.
    • The writers of that novel got it so very wrong.
• In the Dirty Pair mini-series Dangerous Acquaintances, the villainess Shasti survives 30 seconds or so in hard vacuum without a spacesuit, probably due to superhuman capabilities granted during her genetic construction. However, even she's left shivering, bleeding from her eyesockets and nose, and on the verge of death, and understandably none too pleased.

Film

• Event Horizon: A longer exposure gives gorier results, but the victim survives.
• Star Trek: First Contact: Worf gets a rip in his suit leg, ties it off with a tourniquet made from a passing Borg's arm, and keeps on fighting.
• Titan AE not only has two characters survive temporary vacuum exposure during an emergency transfer from one spaceship to another, they also (a) use the rapid blast of air out of the cockpit of the first ship to get them moving and (b) use a fire extinguisher as an ad hoc rocket for even more thrust. Notably, immediately before entering the vaccuum, one character orders another to exhale.
  • Ironicly, the 'exhale' part was a change to the script after the animation had been done. If you watch, you can see them take a deep breath. This was a case of the writers catching their original error, but could not correct the animation.
  • In the novelization, it gets even more impressive. They shut their eyes and Korso sprays both their faces quickly with a protective layer of the foam from the fire extinguisher before they hit vac, and after they've been safely picked up by the Valkyrie, Akima treats them for decompression injuries. (As she paraphrases it in layman's terms for Cale, "Your skin froze.")
• The film Mission To Mars is a long way from scientific credibility for the most part, but averts this one for the most part. Woody takes off his helmet, exhales with a whoosh, dies peacefully of anoxia... and then freezes almost instantly. The writers missed out on that physics lesson.
• Parodied in Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear feared his eyeballs would be sucked from his sockets when Woody retracted his helmet.

Literature

• Averted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, although in both book and film, Dave holds his breath. This isn't wise, because it would damage your lungs.
  • Wait, I thought, at least in the film, Dave was emptying his lungs before the sudden decompression. It sure seemed that way.
  • Arthur C. Clarke also averts it in the novel Earthlight, in which a spaceship rescues another ship's crew despite a lack of spacesuits or docking gear, by getting close enough to transfer everyone quickly and then close the hatches. A few of the rescued crew panic and don't make it, but everyone else comes through fine. (Clarke erred on the side of optimism by having people remain alive and conscious in vacuum for several minutes. When he wrote Earthlight, it was not known just how quickly blood dumps oxygen into vacuum.)
    • Likewise in the novel 3001, Frank Poole is revived after being frozen and unconscious in a vacuum for 1000 years. Though that has many other problems besides decompression.
  • In one of Clarke's short stories, the narrator is one of several people trapped in a habitation module that comes loose from a space station. Again, a rescue is effected without suits or serious mishap from the brief exposure to vacuum... but those few seconds of exposure to raw sunlight in Earth's orbit gives the protagonist the worst sunburn he's ever had.
• In Elizabeth Bear's Dust, the main characters are capable of floating around in the vacuum for longer-than-normal periods of time due to the nanite colonies in their blood which provide them with oxygen and repair any physical damage. It's still not what you'd call fun, though.
• In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel Death or Glory, set in the Warhammer 40000 universe, Cain and his aide Jurgen are both trapped on a depressurized deck when their troop transport takes a torpedo strike. Despite the fact that they run out of breathable air pretty quickly, Cain and Jurgen manage to survive long enough to man a nearby escape capsule.
• In an Animorphs book an Andalite's ship is exploded and the characters watch in horror as he struggles desperately for a moment then dies, with no 'pop'.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of Stargate SG-1 had a thief being beamed out of the ship Odyssey. He ended up hitting the glass at the front of the ship, and he didn't explode, and actually survived long enough to fire a few futile shots from his gun at the ship (before bouncing off it).
  • An earlier episode had Teal'c and O'Neill venture briefly into the vacuum of space so they could be transported out of an out of control space fighter, without exploding, or any lingering effects, as they were only in the vacuum for a few seconds.
    • They were also wearing flight-suits I believe, which have anti-g-force adaptations, some of which would help negate decompression (at least, below the waist).
  • In Stargate Universe this is notably averted within the pilot. There's a leak in the ship and they need to fix it but fixing it requires somebody to heroically sacrifice themselves. When the senator ends up doing it his death is shown as relatively peaceful and the characters later remark that the body is still out there and they can't do much about it.
• The rebooted Battlestar Galactica ejected Tyrol and Cally into vacuum to a waiting Raptor (with slightly more in the way of bad aftereffects, remedied by medical attention). The cargo bay they were in was decompressing anyway.
  • And then ejected Cally into space for good, with much the same result.
• John Crichton from Farscape once jumped from a ship to another while holding his breath, using kickback from a pulse rifle to navigate. The effects on his eyes and extremities were more accurately portrayed than usual. And Ka D'Argo's species can survive for up to a quarter of an arn hour in hard vacuum.
• The issue of decompression is entirely ignored in Power Rangers In Space and Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, both of which showed characters - perfectly normal non-ranger characters - traveling unprotected in space and on the lunar surface, in one instance for several hours. Many consider there to be ample evidence that in the Power Rangers universe, space in general maintains a breathable atmosphere and comfortable temperatures.
  • There have been a number of episodes where the viewer saw the effect of a hard vacuum, though. In episodes from both season six and season eight, once an airlock of a ship in orbit was opened, everything inside was sucked outside, and characters fought to hold on. Most of the time in the Power Ranger Universe', Ranger-(and villain-)tech provides suitable (albeit artificial) pressure, atmosphere and gravity for unprotected humans to survive with no ill effect. During other occasions, the hard vacuum will only do what the plot requires it to do.
  • Mind you, all instances of humans walking around on the moon comes after years of villains with very powerful magic and technology using it as a base. That they gave it atmosphere and pressure is the most common assumption. Now, there's no excuse for the time a Ranger carried an unprotected human through space on his flying surfboard thing. Maybe the flying surfboard things provide protection too? Also, some of the people who were floating in space were left a bit too long to believe there'd be no ill effects.
• The Firefly episode "Bushwhacked" had Serenity bumping into an unexploded corpse, from an abandoned ship nearby. The body itself was undamaged, but Jayne does make a comment that the man's blood would "boil out his ears," though Jayne himself isn't the most educated person in the 'verse anyway.
• Frequently averted on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. On the other hand, characters on that show are apparently able to breathe in space. This makes sense for the 'bots, but not for anyone else. However, if you're wondering how they eat and breathe, and other science facts...
• The Star Trek series avoid it, though it could be due to their usually being non-bloody in general. If Redshirts are Thrown Out the Airlock due to the area they're in getting blasted, they'll thrash about initially, but stop after a little while.]]
• In one episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, Dr. Crusher and Geordi La Forge were trapped in the shuttle bay while it was on fire. They had to open the shuttle bay doors (letting all the air out) to put out the fire, then hope to hit the "close door" and "repressurize" switches before they lost consciousness. They hyperventilated beforehand to ensure that their blood would have enough oxygen to keep them conscious, but Dr. Crusher gave one very dangerous piece of advice: "The vacuum will make you want to exhale. Resist the urge." Had they really held their breaths, their lungs would have ruptured.

Radio

• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, of all things, correctly recognized that no exploding would occur, advising victims to hyperventilate and then exhale right before exposure.
  • It even got the survival time about right - about 30 seconds, which is indeed survivable according to the site linked to at the top of this page (although you would only be conscious for about the first ten seconds).
  • However, Ford's helpful advice that "They say that you can survive for about 30 seconds if you hold your breath..." - more or less a direct quote - is fine for the first half only.

Real Life

• A couple of Real Life counterexamples from The Other Wiki:
  • On one Shuttle mission, an astronaut drove a piece of metal through his glove and into his hand without noticing. His blood freeze-dried around the object and puncture, sealing the hole. He didn't even notice the damage until he was back inside.
  • A high-altitude balloonist lost the pressure in one of his gloves for a long period. It eventually swelled up to twice its normal size and became completely useless, but recovered completely after a few hours when back on the ground.
    • This was from the ambient pressure in his suit, pushing the blood and other fluids from his body into his hand.
    • This is also right before he jumped from said altitude... He didn't tell anyone about it because he didn't want the mission cancelled. He jumped several times from "space" after this. He, for some reason, survived.
  • During preparation for re-entry on Russian spacecraft Soyuz 11, a malfuntioning valve caused the crew capsule to depressurise at an altitude of 168km. The valve was located beneath the crew seats, and impossible to locate and block before the air was lost, and all three crew died of asphyxia. Flight recorder data from the one cosmonaut outfitted with biomedical sensors showed death occurred within 40 seconds of pressure loss, which is more rapidly than some theories predict.
• A pretty good description of what would happen if you were exposed to sudden vacuum, including one real-life case that happened in an Earthbound vacuum chamber, can be found on this page.

Tabletop Games

• A Warhammer 40000 background book, The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, advises Imperial Guardsmen blown into space to "hold your breath; turn on your emergency light; recite the Litany of the Vacuum; kick your legs and swing your arms in a swimming motion towards the breach to propel yourself back into the ship; wait for rescue teams to locate you and bring you safely back onboard." This is on par with the less-than-helpful propaganda and outright lies the rest of the book contains.
  • "Addendum to previous editions: Men carrying the rank of major or above are now ordered to shoot dead any man who disobeys a direct order and tries to rescue comrades trapped in depressurized compartments. Chances of surviving such a disaster are exactly 0.00045%. Attempting a rescue operation will only exacerbate the problem. May the Emperor have mercy."
• Deadlands: Lost Colony, being a Space Western, has rules governing "Explosive Decompression." Any human trapped in a vaccum doesn't explode violently, or even necessarily die instantly, but it probably will kill an unprepared (or less-than-Tonka tough) character in under a minute. Player Characters are much more likely to survive, naturally.

Video Games

• One of the levels in the video game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a derelict starship with one particular hallway that is open to space thanks to many broken windows. The heroine of the game wears a self-contained armor suit that would have no problems here anyways, but the titular Metroids that can attack the player in this hallway are clearly not affected by Explosive Decompression, as they'll hang out both inside and outside of the ship and float/phaseshift into the hallway when they notice you're there. As the creatures live from energy siphoned off of other beings and have no respiratory system to speak of, they don't have to deal with anoxia either.
  • In addition, very early in the game, Samus ejects herself into space to reach another part of the ship. After riding along the underside of the ship and pulling herself into an airlock, the view switches to first-person again...to reveal that her visor is covered with ice crystals. Whoops. Possibly justified, though, considering that she departed from a waste disposal tank full of... well, we hope it was just water..., and the crystals appear on the outside of her visor.
  • Also, in the first Metroid Prime, the intro level is the outside of a damaged space station. Since you're still outside, you have low-gravity astronaut jumping, and when you enter the airlock, debris floats in the air. However, when you pressurize the airlock to open the door inside, all the debris suddenly falls to the floor and you jump normally. It would seem that air pressure equals gravity here...
• Many video games outright ignore the dangers of being out in space without protective equipment. The blog for Super Smash Bros Brawl lampshades this here.
  • And then done again in one of Fox's Easter Egg dialogues for that stage.
• In The Force Unleashed there is a scene where Vader betrays Starkiller and throws him out into space. Rather than exploding, Starkiller drifts along and is soon picked up by a droid and brought onto a medical ship. While the amount of time he actually spent in the vacuum is unclear, it did take extensive medical treatment to save his life.
• In Run Like Hell, the main character vents a large alien Brute into space through a hole in the side of the ship. Not only does it not explosively decompress, it actually comes back later and tries to kill you.
• Non-space example: in Ever17, Takeshi needs to get through a door, with his side at 6 atm while the other side is at 1 atm. Upon hearing it'll take 12 hours for his side to properly decompress (he's in a rush to save his girlfriend from drowning.), Takeshi simply burst open the door. While he doesn't explode, he is shot out like a cannon from the differing pressure.
• Mass Effect 2 averts this a bit too hard, as not only is there not explosive decompression, but your human party members can apparently walk around just fine in a vacuum so long as they have a breather mask on - never mind that their eyes and ears are fully exposed (and thus would be subject to all sorts of horrible decompression-related injuries) they're just fine. this is at its worst with Jack, who wears nothing but a belt-bra from the waist up.
  • Sadly this seems to be the result of their Cast of Snowflakes approach. In ME1 not even your Krogan walked around without full body armor/environment suit and helmet. In ME2 all your companions have unique textures rather than the generic armors they wore in ME1, which unfortunately results in some stupidity.
  • It's also nicely averted by the opening scene: Shepard's loss of suit integrity results in a fairly quick and clean death by asphyxiation, with most of the damage that needs fixing coming from the weeks spent floating in space as a corpse.
• Put very succinctly several times in the Space Quest Series: "Sudden Decompression Sucks."
• There is an arena in the original Unreal Tournament that uses this trope: A rather powerful weapon is sitting in a chamber in the arena. If you see someone else in the chamber, you can push a button on the side of it, causing the door to seal shut and the chamber to depressurize, eventually causing the poor sucker inside to explode.

Webcomics

• Schlock Mercenary incorporated both the bad "hold your breath" advice and a footnote pointing out its badness in http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20010527.html, presumably trying to actively counter sci-fi's misinformation on the subject.
  • The author justifies the statement "hold your breath" because the speaker was an alien who knew nothing about human biology.
• Subverted in the webcomic Narbonic (here) where psychotic intern Mell throws Dave out of a space capsule, but lets him back in, after Mad Scientist Helen tells her the facts and she is disappointed that "it wasn't going to be all that cool-looking
• Averted in a recent xkcd ( http://xkcd.com/669/ ).

Western Animation

• In Justice League, The Flash is ejected into space by a villain, and suffers asphyxiation and frostbite, but is saved by Green Lantern.
• In the 90s Flash Gordon cartoon, Flash and Dale are in an airlock that is decompressed. They actually hang on until the rush of air is over, then make it to another airlock to get back inside.
• In Venture Bros, Brock Sampson is sucked into space due to Dr. Venture's incompetence. He suffers asphyxiation and freezing; but due to his namesake strength and stamina, he is able to climb back into the space-station. He "coughed up some blood, and a chunk of something about the size of a kiwi fruit," but "it didn't look important so he didn't worry about it."
• Jedi Master Plo Koon manages to briefly survive in vacuum in an episode of Star Wars The Clone Wars, thanks to his thick Kel Dor hide. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to show even the tiniest sign of discomfort, and even manages to fight as effectively as ever.
  • It wasn't a complete vaccum, simply low-pressure; the Clones were also able to survive for a short time in their body-armor.
  • Plus he is wearing a mask of his native atmosphere that he uses to cover all of his orifices (wait, all of his [1]?), since his species can literally not breathe the same oxygen atmosphere that the rest of us do. Its basically like he's wearing scuba gear. And the Force is with him. Although it is stated that if he stays out there for too long, he will die.
  • In the SW comic The Short, Happy Life Of Roons Sewell, the titular Roons Sewell dies after the front of his Y-wing explodes, sending shrapnel into his chest and ejecting him in space. During the eulogy we see him floating out there. There are spatters on the inside of his helmet and he's very obviously dead, but also mostly intact.
  • On the flip side, Jabba the Hutt: The Dynasty Trap has aliens spaced by Jabba popping like water balloons. Must be that Bizarre Alien Biology striking again.
  • A curious justification is found in the Skakoan Species- They explode when their pressure suits are breached, because their homeworld has a much denser atmosphere than most worlds. However, Skakoans have never exploded due to vacuum exposure in the EU- Instead, they've exploded inside an insufficiently dense atmosphere (like, say, any world most species would consider habitable).
    • The exploding is more due to the fact that their atmosphere is primarily composed of methane.
• Phineas And Ferb got this mostly right - in "Out to Launch", at least two characters were exposed to space for a brief second without their helmets - and then simply plonked them on and got better. Though it's probably not that simple, at the time I thought it was ridiculous because they would be dead or paralyzed.

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d Hide / Show Replies