4.0 Emergency Procedures

Section III: Emergency Procedures

The Enterprise is a finely honed system and is capable of dealing with most “routine” emergencies in an orderly manner. In many cases, automatic computer intervention will take care of problems so that the crew may not even be aware of them except by automatic notification on the bridge. Nevertheless, the voyages of the Enterprise will occasionally require extraordinary measures. (A lot of these are so catastrophic that we will probably never show them in full, but this stuff may be useful in suggesting the kind of preparations our crew may make in emergency situations.)

Auto-Destruct

As a last-ditch effort to prevent the Enterprise from falling into hostile hands, the computer can be programmed to destroy the ship. This procedure is performed at the master situation monitor (the “pool table”) in Main Engineering, and requires the verbal authorization of both the Captain and First Officer.

Emergency Evacuation from ship

The ship is equipped with hundreds of lifeboat pods which can be ejected in an extreme emergency. Lifeboats are probably a lot safer if ejected at sublight. After ejection, lifeboat pods are designed to dock together into clusters to increase chances of survival. Additionally, the ship is equipped with six emergency evacuation transporters capable of one-way-only transport off the ship.

Emergency Evacuation to ship

During times of disaster on a planet or on another ship, the Enterprise is well-equipped to serve as a rescue vessel. Evacuation to the ship can be accomplished by Transporter. (In addition to the six personnel Transporters, the eight cargo Transporters can be used in a pinch.) The ship's shuttlecraft can also be used for emergency evacuation, but their total capacity is far less than Transporter usage. During such an evacuation, the ship's Shuttlebays (Main Shuttlebay, Deck 4, Shuttlebays 2 and 3, Deck 13) can be pressed into service as medical triage facilities and refugee accomodations, as can the Cargo Deck (Deck 4). Total capacity of the Enterprise in an emergency evacuation is probably about 10,000-15,000 people.

Fire

In case of fire on board the Enterprise, sensors immediately detect the change in temperature and air ionization. A forcefield is activated, containing the fire, sealing it off from further oxygen supply. This extinguishes most fires very quickly and with a minimum of damage. Handheld and other extinguishers can also be made available. As a last-ditch effort in the case of a major disaster, one or more sections of the ship can be vented into the vacuum of space, cutting off the fire's oxygen supply. This will probably be hazardous to the health of any crewmembers unlucky enough to be in the area.

Atmospheric supply failure

The Enterprise environmental support systems are highly sophisticated, multiply redundant, and very rarely subject to any significant problem. Even in the event of total loss of power to all air supply subsystems, there is sufficient air volume in the ship's interior to sustain the crew for many hours. Minimum power to ventilator fans could easily extend this for days, even without any new oxygen supply. In the event of a sufficiently severe systems failure, non-essential areas of the ship would be evacuated, and an emergency supply of air would be fed to selected areas only. Crew members working outside of these areas would probably have to don environmental suits. A catastrophic loss of pressure in the ship (as might happen if the hull were breached) would likely be limited to a very small section of the ship because isolator doors would automatically seal off the damaged area. In most cases, a forcefield in the hull would temporarily stop the leak until the crew can actually repair the hole.