Vacuum Procedures

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RAMON: Alright, ladies. Welcome to your first day aboard an actual starship! You are now the residents of a city coasting through space at trans-relativistic speeds! A city with heavy firepower, I might add.

(Laughter)

R: While you are aboard such an engineering marvel, you may run into many threats! Alien scumbags, asteroids, gamma ray bursts, randomly wandering black holes, and the most dangerous of all, condescending uppity naval personnel!

(Laughter)

R: But the most dangerous of your foes will be around you all the time. Space itself is going to be your enemy! Let's face it, we're surrounded by a lot of nothing. The scientific term for such a non-substance is called a vacuum. Step anywhere outside this vessel without regulation spacewalking gear, and you're dead. You will die painfully.

(Silence)

R: Yeah, that shut you all up nice and quick, didn't it? Let's not fool ourselves. The sixty centimeter hullplates of this very ship are the only things separating you from a quick, quiet, yet incredibly painful death. Maybe at this point you wish you were assigned to the Army instead. Alright. Let's get this seminar on the road. How many of you lunks have watched science fiction movies growing up?

Alright, that's good. How many of you, like me, are patrons of the fine arts and have watched movies made in the 20th to 21st Century?

You impress me, Marines! Maybe you aren't a bunch of knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnons after all! Alright, let's narrow the field a little bit. Washburne! What is your favorite movie in such a genre?

WASHBURNE: Aliens, Sergeant!

R: Well what a fucking coincidence! That's my favorite movie too! You and I must have a lot of things in common! We should date, Washburne!

W: Ah... that's fine, Sergeant.

R: Then sit down already, you're drawing attention to yourself! Now, as Private Washburne stated, the movie Aliens is a good example. We are naturally talking about the 1986 movie and not one of the many crappy remakes that we have seen dozens of times since then. I like Aliens because it has some real 'Oorah' moments with the Colonial Marines! At the end of the movie, the character of Ellen Ripley opens an airlock door that jettisons the Alien Queen into outer space. This simply sucks it out in a continuous blast of air that lasts long enough for some drama to erupt! A similar thing happens in a later movie, Aliens: Resurrection, but I won't tell you. Because that movie sucks.

And speaking of sucking, let's get to it. Long story short, there will be no situation aboard this starship where you will experience anything that Miss Ripley did. Contrary to many Hollywood movies that presented things like decompression in really innacurate ways. According to movie logic, and they still mess this up today, whenever any hole of any size is punched into a spaceship, winds generated are so violent that they can pick people up and hurl them through the hole. This is fucked up on many levels. When we hear about decompressions on an aircraft, that's different. Suction is formed when low pressure on the outside of the hull pulls the interior of the craft. The difference between one atmosphere and the vacuum of space isn't that much. You wouldn't be blown out. Rest assured with that. Nope. You may get conked in the head with other floating debris, but that's a different story. Countermeasures exist in every section of this ship. At the minute of pressure drop, compartments will seal, causing bulkheads to drop down and separate the breached chamber from the rest of the ship. Like fire, once the oxygen runs out, the wind does as well. Unlike fire, this happens very quickly.

Second myth of the day: any hole in the hull will cause explosive decompression which will blow you out into space. This myth is false. A hole can be repaired without significant danger. Let's say a micrometeorite the size of a golf ball punches through your hull. This causes a breach. Since this isn't a major breach, the bulkheads will not close and a repair team will be summoned. Hell, you could fix it yourself. Every compartment has a self-sealing solution that will react with the rushing air to form a seal on the breach, fixing it instantly. Larger breaches may be fixed by adhesive plating. This may fix a hole ranging from the size of, say, a baseball to maybe even the size of shall we say, half of your average Human. Then again, by the time you get to fixing this, the wind will have died down considerably. Of course, you could just use duct tape.

(Laughter)

R: Oh, you think I'm joking, but that roll will save your life one day. So, just to recap - any hole smaller than you are can be repaired, or you can reach a mask in time. Any hole that is large enough to cause any serious damage will almost certainly kill you instantly before you can do anything about it. This is why most bodies recovered from space have shown signs of heavy trauma and shrapnel damage instead of asphyxiation. Believe me, your cause of death will not be hypoxia.

In the unlikely event that you do end up in the vacuum of space, out of sheer stupidity on your part I would assume, there are a couple of things to remember. Yes, Rosch.

ROSCH: Hold your breath?

R: Congratulations, dumbass. You just died of the Bends. Learn from Mr. Rosch as he suffers in agony in his last few minutes. Upon decompression, let the air flow from your lungs. Your organs will thank you. OK, you are now literally breathless in space. You have a good eleven to eighteen seconds to find some gear. Now, provided that you may end up in space, and you're suited up, use your weapons as mini-rockets to drive yourself back towards the breach. If you're lucky that is.

W: And if we aren't lucky, Sergeant?

R: Then you have ninety seconds to live. Hope you have someone there to grab you. Upon exposure to vacuum, you will feel a boiling sensation in your mouth as your saliva sublimates. Your eyes will feel as if someone is squeezing them hard and your skin will puff out slightly. Your ears may pop as well. So if you have protection, use it. Best case scenario is that you get revived with no lasting effects.

HARVARD: Only 90 seconds?

R: Right. It takes roughly 11 seconds for de-oxygenated blood to get to your brain. You'll be unconscious the rest of the time. Well, I can see from you all that you've taken this information in. I think you've got the message.

W: Sergeant, one more question.

R: What is it, Washburne?

W: Do you have first-hand experience in this?

R: Actually, yes I do. You're looking at a man who's gone through three vacuum exposures and lived to tell the tale. Once I was ejected from the vessel I was in thanks to flying debris, but by following instructions and using my pistol as a pop-rocket, I was able to get back to the hull and don some gear before passing out. I survived by remembering basic procedure. I recommend you do the same thing to maximize your life expectancy. Otherwise, it's like Hudson said: "Game over, man!"

Understood? Dismissed, ladies!

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