VOY Manual · Chapter 2 · A Technical Introduction
2.30 Escape Pods
Describes Voyager's thirty-six lifeboat escape pods, their use in extreme emergency, and how they appear on the ship's exterior.
Thirty-six lifeboat pods are available for use in extreme emergency. These pods would be ejected from the ship and cluster together, awaiting rescue. We’ll probably never see these in full use because of the enormous production cost that would be entailed, but in a crisis, we might hear an order for all personnel to report to escape pods. The escape pod ejection hatches are visible on the ship’s exterior as rows of small, light colored square shapes.