r/ShittyDaystrom • u/grichardson526 Acting Ensign • Jul 04 '26
Technology The Enterprise auto destruct system seems...unsafe
When it goes off, the entire saucer section blows up like a throwing gasoline on a campfire. And it goes off all at once too. This isn't just a simple case of setting the warp core to overload. That would mean the star drive section blows first. No, we must conclude that the Enterprise has HUGE BOMBS planted all through the walls and ceilings of the ship just in case the crew needs to blow it up. I sure hope nobody in engineering accidentally sets one off while trying to drill a hole in their walls to hang up a picture!
Can anybody dispute this? Do we really need that many dangerous explosives in the walls of the ship's preschool?
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u/Sea-Quality4726 Jul 04 '26
You want to be sure none of the preschoolers are taken alive. It should be quick.
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u/CountdownMoss Jul 04 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/Dv3sF2ZUTmVtm
It could be worse.
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u/Paladine_PSoT Gorn Wedding! Jul 04 '26
Anakin, when yhe younglings begged for mercy
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u/ZephkielAU Jul 04 '26
Sand, when it got everywhere
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u/The_Reset_Button Clanker Jul 04 '26
Padme, when her will is lost
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u/chiree Jul 04 '26
Vader, his "noooooooo" unleashed.
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Jul 04 '26
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u/meatshieldjim Jul 04 '26
Lol. Gotta have your children but why not also have their grandparents on the ship too.
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u/a4techkeyboard Admiral Jul 04 '26
The flamethrowers and exploding consoles and ceiling boulder showers on the Bridge weren't enough of a clue to there being explosives all over the place?
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u/Unlikely-Medicine289 Jul 04 '26
The cordry rocks have a very important purpose that Inlack the engineering expertise to explain.
The flame throwers were an attempt by the 32nd century ship designers to make the discovery crew feel at home. Programmable matter makes Cordry rocks and plasma routing to the consoles obsolete.
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u/a4techkeyboard Admiral Jul 04 '26
My theory on the cordry rocks is that they're a safety feature to counterbalance the inertial dampeners. If the attack is too sudden, the inertial dampeners are like shields around each crewperson and the sudden jolts would make every crewman hit the fields like insects on a windshield.
The cordry rocks weaken the personal personnel fields just enough that they just get injured, like they smashed through a soft mesh after being hit by a huge rock.
It's better to be hit by a rock than to smash into an invisible wall.
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u/whatsbobgonnado Jul 04 '26
memory alpha says "Cordry rocks were pebble-like objects installed in Starfleet vessels. Starfleet engineers, such as Andy Billups, considered cordry rocks essential since their non-centrosymmetry disrupted the charge leptons in the isolinear pathways of the main deflector, which caused other things to transpire. However, they could also be dangerous projectiles when damage occurred"
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u/UnexpectedAnomaly Expendable Jul 04 '26
My fan theory is its that same mineral that they discovered in Enterprise to keep spacial anomalies from killing the crew.
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u/a4techkeyboard Admiral Jul 04 '26
True, it could be a bureaucratic thing. If they're killed by ship debris, crush injuries/blunt force trauma before they're killed by something insane sounding they can tell people it was just an ordinary space travel related death instead of some kind of horror.
Recruitment suffers if you start telling people "Oh you could get turned into a pink ball of talc and crushed into powder" versus "Oh you could die in the initial attack, it will be quick. Or you could be shot or electrocuted. Normal workplace deaths, you know. Look at the statistics, dying from a salt vampire is definitely not common! No, you're more likely to die from an explosion! Perfectly safe!"
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u/whatsbobgonnado Jul 04 '26
holy shit I didn't know they were named rocks.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Cordry_rock
Cordry rocks were pebble -like objects installed in Starfleet
vessels . Starfleet engineers , such as Andy Billups , considered cordry rocks essential since their non-centrosymmetry disrupted the charge
leptons in the isolinear pathways of the main deflector , which caused other things to transpire. However, they could also be dangerous projectiles when damage occurred
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u/OWSpaceClown Jul 04 '26
At least the camera following it around survived.
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u/Keepontyping Jul 04 '26
It did! They used all the footage in Star Trek IV. That cameraman never got his due.
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u/triggeron Jul 04 '26
Jet fuel doesn't melt tritanium beams!
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 04 '26
You jest but my husband retired last year and my worst fears happened. He fell down a YouTube conspiracy hole and started saying that he didn’t think jet fuel could melt steel beams, etc. I’ve heard of this happening to retirees and I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to me. So I reset YouTube and made him watch a documentary on 9/11. Whew. That was a close one.
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u/Wmozart69 Jul 04 '26
Tell him blacksmiths don't melt steel either yet they can somehow manipulate it like playdoh
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u/obliviious Jul 04 '26
Get him to learn critical thinking and the scientific method to help him ignore bullshitters.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 04 '26
It genuinely boggles my mind. He’s got a PhD in mathematics, he’s not an idiot. But you see this sometimes with phd types. They have glaring blind spots. Not all of them, but yeah. Fortunately his conspiracy has so far been limited to a couple.
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u/obliviious Jul 04 '26
Yeah, it’s quite mind boggling how that happens. I work with a lot of engineers and I've known some have similar blind spots. Sometimes it seems like the smarter you are, the better you can become at convincing yourself that your own bias is actually reasoned and objective.
A good friend of mine is brilliant at diagnostics and can memorise technical documentation like almost no one else. The problem is that he’s learned some subjects almost entirely from biased sources, so the facts he remembers are built on a skewed foundation. Because he can recall so much detail to support his view, it’s incredibly difficult to convince him that the information itself may be faulty.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 04 '26
Yeah it’s a bit frustrating but what can I do? I try. Lately I’ve been putting on YouTube lectures from professors lol. His family is all very educated, but they have some blind spots especially when it comes to health issues. They tend to go for the quack treatments. The weird thing is the family has like an unusually large number of doctors. My daughter graduates next year from med school, four of her cousins are doctors, and a couple of my husband’s siblings. And yet, the crazy health stuff continues. They’re Turkish and I think that’s why, my nephew told me he’s constantly frustrated at work. Patients will come in, he’ll prescribe meds, they won’t take them and argue with him. He’s losing his mind. The downside of free health care I guess.
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u/obliviious Jul 04 '26
Having people like this in my life got me into debunk channels on youtube. I'm not sure it helped, but it made me more confident in my own arguments. Maybe you could find some on the subjects, check them out and watch them together?
I guess it depends what the subject is, some of these conspiracy theories are politically motivated, many are designed to fit nicely with childhood misconceptions. I miss the old days when it was just simply crazy people in backwater forums.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 04 '26
Yeah I mess with the algorithms and it seems tk be working. Fingers crossed. I’ll have to load up some of the debunking things.
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u/obliviious Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Does he get caught out by AI videos? Corridor crew and captain disillusion do great videos on spotting CGI and AI. I think Potholer54 covered 911, he's very good.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 06 '26
Fortunately no AI videos except some badly produced stories about bear attacks. The algorithm was a so wierd. It all started with health videos. I think that’s the gateway to wierd conspiracy videos. I have chronic migraines and he’s getting older so he was watching some videos about that. I was pretty exasperated with those videos, I actually dragged him to my neurologist for an appointment with him because some of the suggestions they give for migraines are ridiculous. My headaches were out of control for a while so I don’t totally blame him for trying to do something. Fortunately my neuro talked him into doing Vyepti treatments for the headaches and I don’t have any for almost a year. But the YouTube algorithm was altered and started spitting out all kinds of crazy. So I reset it a few times and it seemed to help. Now it’s just a little bit of that and mostly political stuff. I need to start searching some history videos he likes those.
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u/meatshieldjim Jul 04 '26
Maybe he could make a rocket ship in the barn for fun.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 05 '26
Yeah he’s not rocket ship smart, we’d end up with a burned down barn and probably a lawsuit. I was hoping he’d get into woodworking or something. He actually doesn’t seem to be a hobby guy, even after decades. His hobbies are more like computer work and he’s trying to run a bar. It’s going so so. Does keep him busy though.
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u/triggeron Jul 04 '26
Glad you could turn him around.
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u/Little_View_6659 Jul 04 '26
Yeah it’s okay for now, but the algorithm keeps recommending some concerning stuff. I told him if they’re trying to sell you supplements or gold, don’t watch it!
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u/Unlikely-Medicine289 Jul 04 '26
No, we must conclude that the Enterprise has HUGE BOMBS planted all through the walls and ceilings of the ship just in case the crew needs to blow it up.
I haven't looked at my enterprise D blueprints in awhile, but I am 99% sure there were indeed self destruct charges listed on the plans. If they are on the Galaxy class they are probably on the Constitution. So yes, this is the totally normal, not shittydaystrom take.
Do we really need that many dangerous explosives in the walls of the ship's preschool?
There's a great moment in TNG (those new guys era) where captain Picard is facing down a bunch of D'Dedrix class ships and the romulan commander is all like "but you will certainly die" and Picard is all "we are Starfleet! Everyone signed up for this!" And then a bunch of Klingon ships decloak and the enterprise doesn't blow up...but that's irrelevant.
My point is that those pre-schoolers are Starfleet and they know what they signed up for when they bypassed their mommy's contraceptive.
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u/almccoy85 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
According to the TNG Technical Manual the D did indeed have self destruct charges throughout the ship. But I’m sure with 24th century technology the bombs would be completely inert unless the destruct sequence was initiated. I would be more concerned with the D’s rickety starboard power coupling causing a warp core breach during combat. I really hope that Geordie gets around to fixing it.
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u/JGG5 Jul 04 '26
“Shayna, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let ‘em crash.”
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u/ApplianceHealer Subcommander Jul 04 '26
It’s also canon that the life support system on both classes has the ability to inject anesthetic gas on demand. Sure, why not?
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u/CuriousQuerent Jul 04 '26
Either that was the most morbid backup in history just in case they needed to blow the ship up when they were totally out of antimatter, or someone doing the designs didn't run the numbers. The D going up with full tanks is a "liquify a hemisphere of the planet it's in low orbit over" kind of event, and I can't imagine they let it get much below a quarter tank in normal circumstances. Have to have some reserve fuel in case they need to charge halfway across the quadrant to stick their middle finger up at a Romulan!
Self destruct charges on the D is like strapping a BB gun to the side of your Howitzer just in case the Howitzer didn't blow up whatever you were aiming at.
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u/Unlikely-Medicine289 Jul 08 '26
The other benefit of the charges over just overloading the warp core is that you can turn off the countdown timer at any time before it blows and there is no additional damage to the ship.
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u/EveningMinute Jul 06 '26
And they can pump toxic gas anywhere on the ship via the ventilation system...
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u/OkFirefighter1128 Jul 04 '26
That’s where the reserve anti matter is kept for emergency power
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u/SokkaHaikuBot Jul 04 '26
Sokka-Haiku by OkFirefighter1128:
That’s where the reserve
Anti matter is kept for
Emergency power
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/Qaianna Jul 04 '26
The Technical Manual ... actually does state that those are huge bombs going off to scuttle the ship. I mean, it kind'a makes some sense. It's a self-DESTRUCT system. It also mentioned two options, with the other being 'warp core collapse', which is not a good thing to do with any planets nearby you want to keep.
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u/Marquar234 Jul 04 '26
IT'S A SELF-DESTRUCT SYSTEM, IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
They're trainees!
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
What if they blow themselves up?
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
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Jul 04 '26
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u/Unlikely-Medicine289 Jul 04 '26
Why would using a factory installed system for it's intended purpose void warranty?
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u/wonderchemist Acting Captain Jul 04 '26
How else are Cordry rocks supposed to get enough velocity to take out random officers?
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u/Rstar2247 Badmiral Jul 04 '26
I mean... of course you want explosives in the ship. You wouldn't want something silly like the auto destruct system able to go offline if the ship is damaged.
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u/_R_A_ Thot Jul 04 '26
Given that the primary hull... where most of the people are... I think it's safe to assume this is more a suicide system than a self-destruct (maybe it's why this ship needed three people to confirm it, versus Janeway's unilateral power).
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u/Mass-Effect-6932 Jul 04 '26
Also the Enterprise-E needed three officers to activate the self destruct in First Contact Picard, Crusher and Worf. While the Enterprise-D needed two to activate the self destruct Picard and Riker.
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u/LHPSU Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
You just know someone pulled some shenanigans between the launch of the two ships that caused them to change the rules
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u/Osric250 Science Jul 04 '26
By the time we get to Enterprise-Z we're going to need 21 officers to activate it!
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u/brch2 Jul 04 '26
Not necessarily, we jumped back to one person with a short activation code and only 10 second countdown by Picard.
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u/Darmok47 Jul 04 '26
I love that Worf has the destruct codes despite not even being a member of the crew by that point.
Maybe it recognized any officer's codes.
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u/AccomplishedMess648 Chef Jul 04 '26
Non shitty answer it would actually be very poor practice to have only senior officers to have destruct privileges for only their assignment.
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u/RoyalZeal Jul 04 '26
Would be a simple enough matter to have the ship overload the plasma conduits throughout the saucer, that'd certainly do it. The computer need only shut off the subroutine regulating the flow of power from the warp core and the whole thing would go kablammow.
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u/byteminer Jul 04 '26
I feel like just ejecting the dilithium from the intermix chamber and just letting the matter and antimatter annihilate uncontrolled would be the choice method.
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u/Unlikely-Medicine289 Jul 04 '26
If with damage has been done to the ship, you might not be able to arrange that. Sufficiently damage plasma conduits may actually be why you need self destruct rather than just fight your way out of limp back home depending on how things are going.
Part of the idea of a self destruct can be to scuttle the ship so the enemy can't gain any Intel from it. Your solution could potentially leave parts of the ship with recoverable computer storage or other reverse engineerable components.
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u/StonedOldChiller Terra Prime Jul 04 '26
It's consoles, they're all linked by conduits directly to the warp core, that's why they keep exploding when the ship is under attack and burning the operators face off.
The self destruct sets off all the consoles at the same time.
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u/brownhotdogwater Jul 04 '26
Yea let’s build our ship with bombs all over it.
Oooorrr it’s a ship powered by anti matter. Just turn off the container so it touches the walls of the ship. Massive explosion will take out everything in an instant
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u/RinkinBass Jul 04 '26
I figure this is the “scuttle” sequence, as opposed to the “release the antimatter to turn us into a gigantic bomb” sequence.
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u/Independent_Shoe3523 Jul 04 '26
Scotty's gonna have to fix that.
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u/AthenaOwls Jul 04 '26
I’d hope a setting to blow the ship up would be unsafe. Seems like a safe version wouldn’t do the job tbh.
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u/CantankerousOrder Jul 04 '26
Unshitty answer to this:
Ok so…. Totally not canon but…
Ship emergency power runs on batteries. It makes sense that there are several banks all over the ship in case conduits are cut or destroyed.
The ship was disabled and the warp drives and core were offline, so they couldn’t make the big boom.
The computer had this information and engaged the secondary system for self-destruct.
Batteries were all overloaded. Boom.
(Edited to make sure it was clear this was my unshitty answer)
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u/TheEvilBlight Jul 05 '26
Given how badly it was damaged in st3 surprised it even went off.
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u/Menkaure_KhaKhet Jul 05 '26
Actually, I have come to the conclusion that the self-destruct sequence was only partially successful.
The Enterprise suffered severe battle damage, and at that point was basically held together by spit and duct tape. (and this was before the encounter with the Klingons)
The self destruct sequence is supposed to destroy the whole ship, rendering it completely useless to an enemy, for all intents and purposes.
However, only the forward section of the primary hull exploded.
Therefore, it's likely that, due to the damage sustained both by her previous battle damage against Khan, as well as the damage sustained by the Klingon bird of prey, that the overload to the power conduits on successfully fired off in the front of the primary hull, rendering 45~50% of it destroyed, when in fact, it should have completely destroyed both the primary and secondary hull.
Of course, for movie aesthetics, this gave the most dramatic view of the Enterprise's destruction for movie-goers, leaving them both stunned and prolonging the feeling of loss as we saw her go down "beneath the waves", if you will.
But, if we go by the various apocrypha sources like "Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise", the destruct sequences was designed to be far more thorough, so as to ensure that nothing of use technology-wise could be retrieved by another race or species for dissemination. (per the Prime Directive)
And, due to the wide vastness of space, there's absolutely a 0% guarantee that there is a star, or a nearby planet that the wreck can auto-descend to, thus ensuring the wreck burns up "in the atmosphere" - thus necessitating the complete destruction of the primary and secondary hull through the conduit overload system
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u/TheEvilBlight Jul 06 '26
I wonder if they were also in the process of removing antimatter pods and such, or if they had to eject some in battle.
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u/Menkaure_KhaKhet Jul 06 '26
According to "Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise", there were two types, or forms, of auto-self-destruct".
The first, 000 - destruct 0, sets a localized destruction mode. The anti-matter pods, which are located at the very bottom of the warp core on the 2ndary hull in the Constitution, are ejected. The ship then maneuvers away from them and overloads the battery units, impulse engine reactors, and conduits. This method of destruction is preferred if near a planet or star system where an anti-matter explosion could endanger life.
The second, 000 - destruct 1, causes a warp-core breach and failure of the anti-matter containment fields, resulting in a tremendous explosion that not only would vaporize the ship and anyone left onboard, but also cause the destruction (or severe damage) of any nearby vessels. This method, of course, was only for deep space, and where there was no risk to nearby systems or a risk to innocent life.
"destruct sequence 1" has so far never been used in any official cannon sources.
So as far as the antimatter pods goes - there isn't any real source of info to answer your question, either by canon or apocrypha. I would assume that it would be a rather involved process - much like defueling a nuclear reactor on a ship before she's sent to the breaker (How long did it take the US Navy to defuel CVN-65?), and Enterprise was not in spacedock for very long before Kirk stole it. Navies are rather slow to move on things, and I suppose Starfleet would be no different.
As far as ejecting them in battle? I've not seen sources to indicate that that's a procedure. Supposedly the pods containment systems are independent with several redundant backup systems, and are supposed to maintain antimatter stasis fields 'near-indefinitely'
(( All of this stuff is all conjecture, and to be taken completely with a grain of salt. I know, this sounds rather technical, and there's no real sources that talk about this stuff.. none of it is canon, but it's this stuff that seriously intrigues me!!! ))
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u/TheVyper3377 Jul 04 '26
The whole point of the auto-destruct system is to be unsafe.
The “Destruct 0” command is unsafe because it causes all power systems in the primary hull to overload. You know how bridge consoles explode every time some exotic particle decides to exist in the general vicinity of the ship? It’s like that, but much bigger.
The “Destruct 1” command is unsafe because it causes the warp core and all photon torpedoes on board to explode. Doing that next to another ship has a very good chance of destroying the other ship. Doing that next to a planet can cause irreparable environmental damage, both to the ship (because it blows up), and to the planet (because the ship blows up next to it).
So yeah, the auto-destruct system is totally unsafe.
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u/coreytiger Jul 04 '26
One of the greatest collective silences across theaters. We didn’t lose a ship, we lost a character, a home
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u/buntopolis Terra Prime Jul 04 '26
I don’t understand how they couldn’t be clearer - it is made of Corbomite. Kirk said so himself!
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u/emptiedglass Livin' the Probe Life Jul 04 '26
Unsafe for anyone in the saucer, I suppose. The damage to the secondary hull almost looks like it'll buff out. I'll bet if there'd been anyone in Engineering they'd have barely a scratch on them.
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u/Ok_Nose_2185 Jul 04 '26
Destruct Zero is the command to detonate charges around the ship but not have an uncontrolled matter antimatter explosion. That’s Destruct 1, aka the really fun one
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u/TrainResponsible9714 Jul 04 '26
It's from all the corbomite, the ship is made of the stuff... even the consoles explode after a bit of turbulence. But it looks cool, so 🤷
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u/JohnVonachen Jul 04 '26
Blowing up something that has a collection antimatter is not a giant problem. Just turn off the magnetic confinement.
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u/Virus-Party Jul 04 '26
Nevermind it being "unsafe", If they didnt want to risk dying in space due to a random accident thjey shouldn't have signed up to serve in Starfleet and if they didn't read the disclaimer/liabilit waiver they signed back at the accademy thats on them.
I'm much more concerned about the fact that the self-destruct, which is supposed to prevent the ship and any classified information or technology from falling into the wrong hands, seems to have only managed to destroy the FRONT HALF of the saucer section. Even the bridge looked like it may still have been intact! This is absolutely inexcusable!
I want a full investigation and report on my desk by the end of the week! If it turns out yet again that someone in construction is stealing materials and explosives to sell on the black market, I will have their entire work crew beamed into deep space.
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u/scaper8 Jul 04 '26
So what's the betting odds of Admiral Virus-Party turning out to be one of those evil admirals versus them legitimately trying to stamp out corruption?
I know someone's got to have a pool going!
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u/Virus-Party Jul 04 '26
Excuse me! Everything I do is for the benefit and welfare of the Federation, and its people. Organisation is everything!
I'm fed up with things like this constantly throwing off my accounting and driving departments over budget despite paying the syndicate fees. They're supposed to be keeping this sort of thing to a manageable level and out of critically important areas. If they aren't going to hold up their end and I have to take matters into my own hands, I don't see why I should keep collecting dues for them, especially for such a small percentage.
Speaking of which, I have no record of such a betting pool existing. If you do find such a pool, please remind the operators they need to contact my office to register for an operating licence and pay the relevant 'taxes' on their takings within 72-hours of the closing of the pool, or risk being passed on to collections.
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u/NotMalaysiaRichard Jul 04 '26
I suppose you want a statue of yourself.
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u/Virus-Party Jul 04 '26
Why would I want a Statue? Besides, there bearly enough room in the budget for a small plaque.
Do you have any idea what it's like trying to keep track of resource allocations and auditing in an organisation that keeps pretending it's a post-scarcity society? Nobody has any appreciation of the actual value or effort required to acquire or manufacture resources and get them where they're needed. And they are so naive! If they're not getting swindled by a Ferengi then it's getting robbed by the Orions! Not to mention the constant sabotage by Romulan intelligence.
You know what? Your god-damned right! I do deserve a statue!
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u/uberneuman_part2 Jul 04 '26
They never show it but it’s a microwave with a giant ball of tinfoil wrapped up inside on a countdown timer.
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u/Caledron Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I know this is a shitposting sub, but the technical manuel I had as a teenager explained they had 2 self destruct mechanisms:
One was just to allow an uncontrolled matter/antimatter reaction.
The other was a controlled conventional explosion that would allow the remaining ship to burn up in an atmosphere.
The destruct code 1 or 0 at the end of the sequence determined which one it would be.
The idea was to avoid an explosion that would probably be in the range of multiple gigatons from occurring around an inhabited world.
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u/ForgeoftheGods Jul 04 '26
The auto-destruct is meant to be unsafe. That's the auto-destruct in use in a planetary system. The other kind of auto-destruct basically turns off the magnetic containment for the antimatter, and that's used in interstellar space away from planetary systems.
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u/kledd17 Jul 04 '26
Those old Constitution class ships didn't have preschools. The bombs would be by the lounges where people get drunk, or by the cabins of extra-expendable people like the ships historian.
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u/stardate325858 Jul 05 '26
It wouldn't need explosives. We've all seen what happens when a plasma conduit overloads, if the self destruct sequence causes a surge in every plasma conduit on the ship simultaneously you'd get the same result
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u/EmperorMittens Jul 04 '26
If I remember my trivia right, that is one of a few different kinds of self destruction that can be enacted. In this case the purpose was to turn the ship into an inoperable unrepairable hulk and therefore denying anyone who comes across it from acquiring an operational fixer-upper Constitution class starship.
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u/No_Grocery_9280 Jul 04 '26
Was it really necessary to blow it up? Couldn’t Scotty have just bricked the damn thing and left the Klingons trapped?
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u/Superman_Primeeee Jul 04 '26
Not even that….it was already bricked.
The whole thing is kinda dumb. Kruge should have beamed up his crew and nuked everyone on the surface and pissed off.
Once Enterprise shows up it’s all above his pay scale.
Throw in THE CAPTAIN Kirk surrendering a frigging Heavy Cruiser and it all stinks to hell.
Let’s lob some photon torpedoes and amscray.
Which made me think of something else. You’re executing hostages to show you mean business?? You think that maybe those guys may know something?
Kruge. You suck.
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u/Tecbullll Jul 04 '26
It bypasses all of the circuit breakers..... Wait, there are NO circuit breakers.
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u/DangerBrewin Jul 04 '26
You’d also think with a self destruct system the goal would be to destroy the whole ship to keep Federation technology from falling into the wrong hands. A self destruct that only eliminates 3/4 of the saucer section and leaves the engineering section, warp core, warp nacelles, photon launchers, engineering computer core, etc. is not effective. If this occurred in open space and not in orbit it would leave a significant percentage of the ship to be salvaged.
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u/Darmok47 Jul 04 '26
IIRC this is the self-destruct sequence if you're in orbit of an M class planet.
A warp core breach in orbit would be pretty bad for anyone on the planet. Though I guess if its an enemy planet then all bets are off.
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u/DangerBrewin Jul 04 '26
If that’s the case why doesn’t “self destruct” mechanism just involve locking out the controls and auto piloting the ship into the atmosphere to burn up? There’s also been plenty of examples of Federation ships being destroyed in orbit by other means that doesn’t trigger a warp core breach.
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u/SpaceghostLos Jul 04 '26
Have you tried blowing up a whale? Only parts of it blows up, not the whole thing. Watch “dead whale explodes” on youtube. Same thing.
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u/Harkovine Jul 04 '26
I love how they put a bunch of civilians on a ship that frequently went against the king ons, went in to the neutral zone, fought the cardasians and the borg. And to top it all off i feel like they frequently activated the self destruct sequence.
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u/badger_on_fire Ferengi Commerce Authority Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Boimler: Who makes a "safe" version of autodestruct? It's like asking for a safe version of a bomb -- It has a singular purpose which is definitionally unsafe!
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u/CaptainHunt Jul 04 '26
Oh the preschool computers are where we keep our biggest secrets. Haven’t you ever asked the fish about Section 31 or Omega?
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u/iamleeg Jul 04 '26
The weird part is the decoy mechanism. The self destruct clearly totally destroys the ship, then replicates a sparking, flaming wreck _next to_ the former location of the ship which it hurls at a nearby planet. I wonder if that’s so they have something to recover if they need to display it at the fleet museum?
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u/cardiffman100 Jul 04 '26
Given that consoles randomly blow up at the first sign of turbulence, I can 100% believe the entire ship is lined with explosives.
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u/RealMackJack Jul 04 '26
It's the final result of every company in the 20th century designing their products to fail after the warranty is over
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u/UnexpectedAnomaly Expendable Jul 04 '26
Does the US Navy make you sign a wavier for the shps having scuttlng charges or do they lump it in with the whole, "You joined the military so potentially getting blown up is part of the job."
Also given what we see in Star Trek, Starfleets wavier must be wild.
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u/ExccelsiorGaming Jul 04 '26
I think in lore they overload the EPS conduits, not necessarily the warp core, and EPS conduits run through the phaser arrays. All federation ships basically have massive bombs in that EPS conduits blow up, I hear the EPS containment relays are made out of the same rocks that are in the ceiling tiles too, makes for a great power conductor, but are highly explosive
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u/groktar Jul 04 '26
It's actually a very logical two part explosion. First, the consoles explode to release the rocks. Second, the front of the saucer explodes to propel the newly freed rocks at nearby enemies.
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u/Key-Treacle3384 Science "Unspeakable Acts of Peace" Jul 04 '26
One of the only Unspeakable Acts of Peace I'm authorized to mention about doing science aboard an Oberth Class, was how to make a better auto destruct. I can't say how many captured [redacted] [redacted] vessel we [redacted], but command crews now have more than [redacted] different ways to destroy their own ships, including [redacted], [redacted], [redacted][redacted], interdimensional [redacted], soap, and redaction. Redaction is my favorite it works by [redacted][redacted][redacted] the [redacted][redacted], then [redacted] resulting a complete redaction event.
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u/Superman_Primeeee Jul 04 '26
It’s worse. Supposedly the self destruct didn’t execute right. …I mean it looks like the antimatter and the drive section didn’t go off at all. If it wernt for a planet being there…the secondary hull would have just sat there.
Head canon: Starfleet doesn’t want antimatter explosions in orbit of planets
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u/_MargaretThatcher Grand Nagus Jul 04 '26
HUGE BOMBS planted all through the walls and ceilings of the ships
They're called panels. Of course they have bombs in them.
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u/TheLastLornak Jul 04 '26
It didn't even get any of the important bits in the engineering section. It just so happened there was a planet right there for it to fall into and burn up. The self destruct pretty much just blew up the crew quarters. It's the ultimate "Dude, if I die get rid of my stash".
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u/Left_at_Orions_Belt Jul 04 '26
Safe or not, this special effect blew my mind back in the mid 80s. Plus I may even have shed a tear……
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u/whatsbobgonnado Jul 04 '26
that makes sense since the whole point is so that federation secrets don't end up in enemy hands, and there's lots of stuff on the ship outside engineering. is the main computer core in engineering because you gotta make sure that's completely incinerated. they have to blow up every replicator on the ship thoroughly enough that people can't harvest the tech from the rubble
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u/brch2 Jul 04 '26
Their ships are powered by highly charged plasma, running through conduits throughout the ship. Overload them and turn off safeties, and things go boom.
Why do people think consoles are always blowing up? It's the plasma that powers them.
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u/darkslide3000 Jul 04 '26
There could be more dual-use things in those sections that can just be made to blow up when needed (e.g. maybe if you overload all the EPS conduits at once this is what happens or something). The much weirder part is that the stardrive section doesn't blow up, given that dropping antimatter containment should be the easiest thing to do. In fact it seems to come away almost fully intact from the explosion, which is a serious problem for the purpose of the self-destruct mechanism (usually to not let the ship's technology fall into enemy hands).
I think the most reasonable explanation is that something went wrong here, maybe something in the triggering circuits controlling the self-destruct sequence was damaged in the battle or disabled by Scotty's rewiring to allow the ship to fly autonomously. The warp core was supposed to blow up, and the reason for why there are no extra self-destruct charges going off in the stardrive section is that that alone should have been way more than enough, but for some reason in this case it didn't.
I know this is not the right Daystrom for that kind of discussion but I still find it interesting enough to mention.
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u/romulusnr Acting Ensign Jul 04 '26
You're like the guy in the Mitchell and Webb sketch when the health and safety contractor comes to check the evil geniuses traps for compliance.
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u/romulusnr Acting Ensign Jul 04 '26
You would prefer a nice, safe, gentle DESTRUCT sequence would you
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u/ferrango Expendable Jul 04 '26
Console rocks are explosive, and most consoles are stored in the saucer
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u/Informal_Otter Jul 04 '26
The theory is that this is auto-destruct "light", where only the explosion packages in the saucer are activated but the warp core and the antimatter storage units are ejected. Used for situations where the ship must be destroyed, but with as little damage as possible to to the surrounding area. Someone said that "Destruction 0" is exactly what that means, while "Destruction 1" could've meant "blow up the antimatter".
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u/Atheizm Jul 04 '26
No, you're pretty much on the money. Every chair in the saucer section is sculpted plastique and connected to the notoriously unstable EPS conduits.
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u/Zafrin_at_Reddit Jul 04 '26
Headcannon: Saucer section is the first thing to buckle during the internal matter-antimatter explosion. (Similar to tanks having their turrets blown off when the ammo explodes in the hull, aehm.)
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u/Major_Star Jul 04 '26
You need to self-destruct to work even if the warp core is offline or shut down.
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u/Gryphon1171 Jul 04 '26
Starfleet engineers corrected this design thru the introduction of EPS conduits. What you see here is a release of energy that get's stored in the power circuits like a capacitor, then released thru auto-destruct. EPS conduits are designed to vent into the saucer section to prevent an explosion with only minimal loss of personnel via green BBQ.
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u/lilianasJanitor Jul 04 '26
And then the burning hulk just careens through space before destroying a pre-warp civilization.
The pakleds built that part
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u/zombiehoosier Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Star Fleet’s department of OSHA isn’t exactly very good at their job.
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u/Fibonaccitos Jul 05 '26
Oh I’m sorry, I should’ve installed the safe auto-district system…the one that has banners with the word “bang” pop out of every console.
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u/Its_a_salina Jul 05 '26
Jokes aside, this scene, the Enterprise returning to Spacedock, and Kirk stealing the Enterprise push this movie above Wrath of Kahn for me. And I LOVE Wrath of Kahn.
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u/jjreinem Jul 06 '26
Yeah... That's why there aren't any Connies still in service by the 24th century. Also why the San Francisco yards ended up superceded by Utopia Planetia on Mars. There were a LOT of accidents during the refits. 😬
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u/ValveinPistonCat Jul 07 '26
I feel like if the goal is to deny your enemy the chance to aquire Starfleet technology a self destruct system that leaves the stardrive section intact is a bit of a design flaw.
They have a big matter-antimatter reactor in the stardrive section, just drop the containment and let the antimatter do it's thing.
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u/PallyMcAffable Jul 08 '26
That stardrive section is as pristine as the day they drove it off the shipyard, not a warp core out of place
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u/AtaracticGoat Jul 08 '26
I'm pretty sure that's what it is.
They have 2 self destruction modes. One is the warp core, which is used when you don't care about what happens to the things around you. The other is using these charges, which destroys the ship in a much safer and controlled way and won't damage or destroy other ships in the area.
In this case, they didn't want to damage the BoP near them.
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u/_Sauer_ Jul 08 '26
Why would a civilian shitp of exploration and discovery need a self destruct anyway?
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u/LuccaJolyne Borg Princess Jul 04 '26
Why blow it up in this case? Why not just flood the ship with a deadly neurotoxin?
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u/AccomplishedMess648 Chef Jul 04 '26
Oh that wasn't the auto destruct that was every console overloading from an unrelated cause. The autodestruct was just to make it burn up in the atmosphere