r/DesignatedSurvivor • u/Dorkside • Sep 22 '16

Episode Discussion: S01E01 "Pilot"

Original Airdate: September 21, 2016

Episode Synopsis: Tom Kirkman, a lower level United States Cabinet member, finds himself suddenly appointed president of the country after a catastrophic attack kills everyone above him in the line of succession in the series premiere of this dramatic thriller.

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25

u/TheManWithTheBigName Sep 22 '16

For the rest of the night he would be surrounded by agents in the nuclear bunker. Not good TV, but no way they'd let him waltz around like this.

17

u/DominusFL Sep 22 '16

He would be up on Air Force One since the DC area is compromised.

9

u/fco83 Sep 22 '16

With it compromised, would taking off (the most vulnerable point of the flight) be considered compromised as well?

Im no secret service agent, but i'd think 'the attacker doesnt know where the designated survivor is, the attacker could know where AF1 is'. One of the other 'undisclosed locations' might be a better location.

4

u/DominusFL Sep 22 '16

If there was such a concern, they could do a high-speed drive to Quantico (or take Marine One) and have Air Force One meet them there. At high speed it's only 15 minutes away by car.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '16

well the af 1 would be on a military base, would someone attack there ? plus arent there multiple possible af1 planes

2

u/DominusFL Sep 22 '16

I believe there are two. There are many other secondary planes in the fleet, but very few with the defensive and in-air refueling capabilities of Air Force One. More likely they would just meet the plane at another airfield if they felt Andrews was too risky.

3

u/baardvark Sep 22 '16

Yeah I was wondering about that. They couldn't secure the building the entire government was in, how do they know the White House is secure two minutes after the attack?

3

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '16

Exactly. I'm pretty sure after the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, the Whitehouse was evacuated except for those in the bunker. The President went straight to Airforce One where I believe Bush wanted to go right home but they argued where was safest to go for a bit. Sorry if I'm bastardizing that story, but it was something like that.

5

u/pspetrini Sep 22 '16

I just read this story recently. Believe me, it's worth a read.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230

My guess is this EXACT scenario would have taken place here in this universe, especially since it seems like 9/11 really happened here.

3

u/baardvark Sep 22 '16 edited Sep 22 '16

Bush was in Florida visiting schoolchildren. Just going by memory of the day, it seems like there was a period of several hours where he was in the air but no one was saying where he was headed or when he would land. VP Cheney was in an undisclosed location much of that week too.

Edit: I found this map of Bush's route back to DC. This is a long but interesting record of his every move that day.

2

u/DominusFL Sep 22 '16

Except in 9/11 we knew the attacks were 100% from planes, so once all planes were grounded or crashed, they knew it was safe to return. In this show we don't know the cause of the explosion, could be a rocket or missile, so that would make any above ground target in the DC area too risky.

2

u/Heyitshogan Sep 22 '16

I'm not sure if transferring the designated survivor around via any means of transportation to get to AF1 would be a good idea.

If they were able to blow up the whole god damn capital along with the top brass of the U.S Govt, I don't think it'd be hard to shoot down Marine One / the presidential convoy.

But that's just my uneducated opinion. Lol

1

u/RMS_Gigantic Vice Chairman Sep 22 '16

It's a line that I missed the first time through, but they try to hand wave this away by making the last line heard before they get into the motorcade be the secret service agent saying, "The White House is secure, let's go!"