there are self-destruct mechanisms in fiction...

Factual Questions
21

I was going to mention the military’s thermite grenade (ANM3? I’ve got the number somewhere) which my book mentions was used for (amongst other things) quick destruction of friendly equipment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands (ignite a kilo of TH3 on top of the engine and the vehicle isn’t going anywhere soon).

Used to have a copy of the US Army’s “Ground Flame Warfare” manual and under the section on flamethrowers, compressor equipment and fuel/fuel mixing systems it mentions that in the event this stuff is going to fall into enemy hands it should be destroyed and gives suggestions (puncture pressure tanks, cut lines, burn fuel or mix the fuel and thickeners with dirt). Never been in the military but this sounds like the sort of advice I’d expect - here’s how to destroy stuff to prevent it being used against you. Given that they’ve got plenty of guns, explosives and heavy equipment onhand that makes sense compared to dedicated “scuttling charges”. Maybe for really sensitive stuff like crypto equipment, as others have said.

22

Terry Pratchett has (of course) come up with a nastier take on this: In “Monstrous Regiment”, he describes a forward reconnaissance unit with a cipher pad printed on a very thin paper, supposedly to make it easy to swallow if capture is imminent. The nasty bit? The paper is poisoned, neatly removing the problem of the cipher pad as well as the cipher clerk falling into enemy hands… :eek:

minor7flat5, is there an online resource for the “repel boarders” drill? Sounds like an interesting read.

23

As was mentioned, many warships had various means of preventing enemies from capturing them. From what I understand, some ships would have valves you could open to let all the water in (the Bismark, IIRC, had such a setup), and Miracle at Midway by Gordon Prange had a number of mentions of crippled aircraft carriers being torpedoed by friendly destroyers after being abandoned (not quite the same thing, but probably much quicker if you have somewhere to be, like not in the spot where your carrier just got torched by enemy bombers).

Read in another book (The Mighty Eighth, by Gerald Astor) that there was at least one fighter pilot, in a shiny new P-47D, who had a hand grenade with him to be used on the plane in the event that he had to ditch it, to keep the Germans from getting a fairly intact new Thunderbolt. Basically, he ditched the plane, climbed out, pulled the pin on the grenade, tossed it in the cockpit, then proceeded to run like hell. The book also mentioned the importance placed on destroying or removing the Norden bombsight from a wrecked bomber to prevent it from falling into enemy hands (removing it, of course, if safe retrieval was an immediate situation, as opposed to an escape-and-evade scenario)

That said, for most military purposes, the vast majority of vehicles or bases that you’d ever want to self destruct can probably be jury-rigged to do just that in a pinch, particularly if they have stockpiles of ammunition, explosives, or fuel on hand.

Oh, and if you play Halo…

Cortana sets the auto-destruct sequence, and it is immediately disabled by Guilty Spark 343, who has hacked into the ship’s control system. The Master Chief is forced to jury-rig a self-destruct by destroying the coolant systems for the fusion reactor, then, as the checkpoint title suggested: “Light Fuse… Run Away”. Amusingly, the overheat time for the reactors was exactly the same as the count-down time for the self-destruct before it was disabled, giving the hero just enough time to make his hasty escape.

24

Also during WW2, self-destruct charges were fitted to the cavity magnetrons in the H2S bombing radars in British bombers. Unfortunately the self destruction was not that successful as a cavity magnetron is essentially a solid chunk of copper :smack:

25

I don’t have a copy handy but I seem to remember Asimov has a Trantorian spaceship equied with a self destruct mechanism in The Currents of Space (1952). The Captain of the ship threatens to destroy it and half the nearby city if the locals enter the ship.

26

It seems to be accepted that it was SOP even back to Napoleonic days for warships to have their code books, etc. bound with lead covers. The idea being of course that they could be easily sent to the bottom of the sea if in danger of being captured.

27

In the Hornblower books (and movies), you see officers dumping lead shot into the bags they carry dispatches in just for this purpose.

Also, there were a variety of methods one might use to disable cannons, either to prevent their use by the enemy either after being captured or re-taken (depending on whose guns you’re messing with). Depending on how much time you had, this could range from semi-permanent to “This oughta hold them till we can get out of range”. Packing the gun with debris, hamming spikes into the touchhole, destroying the gun carriage, etc.

28

Destroying devices, code books, and the like (which definitely occurred and still do, no doubt) is vastly different from equipping your entire craft with something that will completely destroy it. that strikes me as a potential disaster waiting to happen, and therefore unlikely. scuttling a ship is one thing. Blowing it up is another.
I don’t recall the event MarcusF refers to in the Currents of Space, but it’s been a long time since I read it. None of the internet sites I checked confirm or deny – I’ll have to check my copy at home tonight.

RCoM, by the way, predated Star Trek, and The Corbomite Maneuver was a bluffThe days of self-destruct on Federation ships and warp-core overloads were far in the real-world future.

29

It’s a very long time since I read it - probably 30+ years :smiley: so please don’t be surprised if I’ve got it wrong.

As I remember it, the main character is being chased by the evil bad guys and is sheltered aboard a visiting Trantorian ship. (This is at a period during the formation of the Galactic Empire when Trantor is an aggressively expanding power.) When the bad guys try to enter the ship a ship’s officer - I assumed it was the Captain - threatens to blow the ship up if they take one more step. The message is that everyone knows ALL Trantorian ships are equiped to self destruct and that the bad guys KNOW a Trantorian officer will do it - sacrificing himself, the crew, the ship and everybody in the area - rather than submit to a foriegn power.

If you find a copy I will be interested to hear if I have got this anywhere near right :dubious: As i say it 's a long time since I read it but it must have made an impression on my young mind!

30

A few years ago when a US reconnaissance plane collided with a Chinese fighter and was forced to land in China, I seem to remember an expert on CNN saying that they had special containers on the plane that they would have thrown any sensitive paperwork into and then thrown in a grenade. Don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what this guy said.

31

The movie Alien represented one of the most implausible fictional self-destruct situations to me. The Nostromo was a commercial freighter owned and operated by a private corporation - what possible reason would there have been to install a self-destruct system on board?

32

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the China spyplane incident yet where the lack of an effective self-destruct lead to the Chinese gaining access to several intact pieces of military hardware and data.

33

Psst… Look up two posts.
:smiley:

34

alien is a mass of non-sequitors and implausibilities, and this one has bothered me, too. But I can think of one good reason to have something like this. The Nostromo was. IIRC, an incredibly large ore hauler (and refiner, if I’m not mistaken). If you got something really massive out of control near an inhabited planet it might be desirable to have the means to make it into vapor, rather than having it turn its gravitational potential energy into a bomb.
That said, packing a nuke seems like overkill. And it would freak ME out knowing I was working on such a platform.

35

I didn’t hear anything about a magic grenade box, but I do remember hearing that the crew destroyed equipment and were said to have thrown code books and manuals into the ocean before landing.

36

As I recall, there was some fuss about the fact that Chinese soldier had severely beaten the Americans for blocking the doors of the plane, while they were busy trying to destroy secret equipment.

37

I skimmed through Currents of Space twice last night (It HAS been a long time since I read it – I’ll bet the majority of Dopers were born after I read it. I gotta read through my older stuff again), but couldn;t find the scene MarcusF describes. I could easily have missed it, though. It gives me another excuse to read the book again.

38

Maybe because the company knew about the alien and was intentionally using the Nostromo and its “deemed expendable” crew to bring it back for studying and possible exploitation?

Of course the SD button would have to have been kept a secret from the crew in that case, and obviously it wasn’t, so so much for trying to close that plothole.

39

I once read the Saudis have their oil wells laden with explosives in case somebody gets the bright idea that they can take over the country and steal their oil.

40

Maybe whoever built the Nostromo was afraid that the ship would be taken over by crazed xenomorphs bent on painfully eating the entire crew. Did you think of that?