History Main / ColdEquation

* In the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheMightyDucks'', the Ducks' ship is traveling through dimensional limbo. Unfortunately, the ship will fall apart unless some weight is jettisoned, and everything onboard is bolted down. Team leader Canard decides to jettison ''himself''. Wildwing tries to stop him, but only manages to save the mask of Drake Dukane.

[[folder: Fanworks]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* The lifeboat version is mocked in an episode of ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus''.

* ''Series/DadsArmy''. Captain Mainwaring is presented with this scenario to test his decision-making skills: You are in a balloon over enemy territory that is slowly running out of air; who do you throw out? Mainwaring claims he would normally throw himself out but he realises he is too important for that. He decides on Godfrey, who doesn't look very happy.
** Wilson then suggests they wait till the balloon reaches the ground then Godfrey [[ComicallyMissingThePoint can step out]].

* ''Film/{{Apollo 13}}'', as in the RealLife incident (below) runs up against the Equation a few times, where three men have to survive for four days in a lunar module designed to sustain two people for two days. Thankfully, with rationing and a few clever solutions, there turns out to be enough resources to pull it off without sacrificing anyone.

* A couple from ''VideoGame/TheLastofUs''. The first happens in the prologue where Joel decides against his brother Tommy’s wishes to leave a family even though they have the room because he doesn’t want to put his daughter Sarah at risk. [[spoiler:The second, ironically, results in Sarah's death when the military official who rescues them is ordered to kill all survivors.]] Later on it happens with Henry leaves Joel to die to save the Sam and Ellie. [[spoiler:And finally, the ending has Joel turn on the Fireflies after they reveal they'll need to sacrifice Ellie to produce a vaccine.]]

* A couple from ''VideoGame/TheLastofUs''. The first happens in the prologue where Joel decides against his brother Tommy’s wishes to leave a family even though they have the room because he doesn’t want to put his daughter Sarah at risk. Later on it happens with Henry leaves Joel to die to save the kids Sam and Ellie.

** Another Archer example had the team trapped underwater with four of them trapped in a room quickly filling with water and only three sets of scuba gear to swim out and to the surface. The dying submarine captain tells them that weakest swimmer would have to drown, hopefully temporarily, while the other three took the scuba suits and tried to get themselves to safety and resuscitate the volunteer. [[HeroicSacrifice Archer immediately decides that he'll volunteer to temporarily die after Lana reveals that she's pregnant.]]

* Averted in a season 5 episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}''. When Gillette realizes they won't make it to the runway because there was only enough fuel for 2 people to be on the flight, Archer angrily attempts to convince resident ButtMonkey Cyril to jump out until the latter begins dumping the shipment of guns aboard the plane.
** Another Archer example had the team trapped under water with four of them and three sets of scuba gear. They were told that the weakest swimmer would have to temporarily drown while the other three took the scuba suits and tried to get them to safety and resuscitate them. Archer decided to let the other three have the suits [[spoiler: when he learned Lana was pregnant.]]

-->'''Lambert:''' "I say that we abandon this ship. We get the shuttle and just get the hell out of here; we take our chances and hope that somebody picks us up!"
-->'''Ripley:''' "Lambert, the shuttle won't take four."
-->'''Lambert:''' "Well why don't we [[LotteryOfDoom draw straws]] then--"
-->'''Parker:''' "I'm not drawing any straws. I'm for killing that goddamned thing right now."

* In a mass casualty incident where there are minimal resources available for rescue, this becomes an aspect of triage. Standard triage tags for injured people have four colours: green for minor injuries that can be safely ignored by first responders, yellow for a non life-threatening injury (such as a broken arm) that can have treatment delayed until resources are available, red for someone who needs immediate attention (such as as someone going into shock or having trouble breathing), and black. A black tag on someone who isn't dead yet means they're not to be given any medical treatment except pain medication until everyone else is dealt with because their injuries are almost certainly fatal with the resources available and efforts spent on them would end up unavailable to people who have a higher probability of living.

* Lawrence Oates went out into a blizzard after supplies for the ill-fated [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition Scott Antarctic Expedition]] ran low, in an ultimately futile attempt to save his companions.

* ''ComicBook/StarWarsDoctorAphra''. In "Remastered", [[RoboticPsychopath Triple Zero]] puts Dr Aphra in this position just to KickTheDog. He hires one too many mercenaries for her mission so her spacecraft is too heavy to take off, then lets her choose [[EmergencyCargoDump who gets to stay behind and get killed]] by the Imperial stormtroopers he's tipped off about their presence. That's not the last person she ends up sacrificing on that mission either, and it turns out Triple Zero was hoping for that to happen as well.

* In the ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'' comic album ''Explorers on the Moon'', when Thompson and Thomson turn up as stowaways on the Moon-Rocket, Calculus worries that, since oxygen supplies were assessed for only four people, there might not be enough for six, and decides to shorten the trip from fourteen to ten days. It gets worse when Colonel Jorgen is revealed to have smuggled himself on board, with the help of TheMole. He intends to maroon Tintin and his companions on the surface of the Moon, pointing out that they don't have enough oxygen to bring prisoners back to Earth. Later when the villains are overpowered, Tintin [[HonorBeforeReason refuses to leave them behind]] despite having exactly the same problem. After Jorgen is killed in a GunStruggle, Wolff decides to atone for his actions [[RedemptionEqualsDeath by stepping out the airlock]]. Even so Tintin and his companions almost don't make it back to Earth.

** ''Discworld/{{Snuff}}'' all but invoked the trope name with the concept of the "dreadful algebra" of survival. When faced with lean times, a goblin mother will eat her child. Their religion involves the construction of pots to store certain bodily excretions, and the most precious of these is the jar in which a goblin mother will place the soul of her devoured child, to be reborn when food is more plentiful.
** ''Discworld/{{The Last Hero}}'' references this when the crew aboard a makeshift spaceship note that there isn't as much oxygen as there should be. Food shows up missing, and they briefly theorize that they have picked up an alien intruder, in a shout-out to {{Film/Alien}}. Turns out it's the Librarian, who stowed away before takeoff. Luckily, Discworld's moon has breathable air, so they are able to land there and refill.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', among the families of the North, in the continent of Westeros, it is common during winters--which can span decades--for old men to announce they are "going hunting" and leave their homes so so as to leave a little more food for the young.

See also EmergencyCargoDump (the non-lethal version), NoPartyLikeADonnerParty, CutTheSafetyRope, TrialByFriendlyFire and RestrictedRescueOperation. See SomeoneHasToDie for the voluntary variant of this trope.

** In "[[{{Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E8YearOfHell}} Year of Hell", the EMH has to close a hatch on two crewman who wouldn’t make it before the hull breaches. In "Jetral", the EMH elects to save Harry Kim over the life of a RedShirt. While as a doctor with ArtificialIntelligence he's programmed to make such decisions, the advancement of his personality over the past few years cause him to malfunction as he's caught in a LogicBomb between his ethics and his pragmatism.

* In the second season of ''Anime/{{Vandread}}'', TheStoic Meia has to take care of Ezra's baby daughter when a space battle breaks out and in the confusion, they accidentally launch in an escape pod. When oxygen begins to run out, Meia has no choice but to [[HeroicSacrifice throw herself out of the airlock]] ([[GoOutWithASmile with a smile, no less]]) to make sure Karu lasts until the pod is picked up by ''[[CoolStarship Nirvana]]''. It turns out, the pod has just been picked up, and Meia didn't notice until she walked out.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''
** The episode "The Galileo Seven". When the shuttlecraft Galileo crash lands on a planet, it loses so much fuel that it can't even reach stable orbit unless they lighten their load by 500 lbs. It's immediately pointed out that 500 lbs. is the weight of three men. Two of the crew die while on the planet, and they eventually take off and achieve orbit. Unfortunately they had to use the boosters to do so, so they're guaranteed to burn up on re-entry.
** Another ''Star Trek: TOS'' episode "The Conscience of the King" had this, not in a space ship but on a planet. Kodos "the Executioner", former governor of the Earth colony of Tarsus IV, was responsible for the massacre of over 4000 people, including members of Kirk's family. Governor Kodos had ordered the executions of more than half Tarsus IV's population after the food supply was all but destroyed by a fungus. This would have allowed the rest of the population to survive until relief came. It so happened that the vital resupply ships that could have saved the whole colony arrived much sooner than Kodos had anticipated, rendering all the executions unnecessary. A large part of his infamy came from the fact that he didn't choose randomly or pragmatically, but based on some eugenics formula he had developed.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
** In "Deadlock" a NegativeSpaceWedgie creates two ''Voyager'''s occupying the same space. One is damaged in the process, so the captain of that ''Voyager'' decides to destroy her own ship so the other can survive. But hostile aliens board the other ''Voyager'', so that Captain Janeway ends up destroying her ship instead.
** "One" had the ship traversing a deadly nebula with most of the crew in stasis for their safety. Near the end of the trip, the ship's systems start breaking down, and there isn't enough energy to keep the engines running. Seven of Nine has to choose which systems to divert power from, and [[GoMadFromTheIsolation hallucinations of the crew]] mock her for thinking that she could take a few of the stasis pods offline to get the engines running, calling it heartless Borg efficiency. She does so, then [[HeroicSacrifice takes life support offline]] to keep the stasis pods running. Luckily for everyone, the ship exits the nebula in time to for the crew to awaken and save her.
** In "Year of Hell", the EMH has to close a hatch on two crewman who wouldn’t make it before the hull breaches. In "Jetral", the EMH elects to save Harry Kim over the life of a RedShirt. While as a doctor with ArtificialIntelligence he's programmed to make such decisions, the advancement of his personality over the past few years cause him to malfunction as he's caught in a LogicBomb between his ethics and his pragmatism.
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''
** The episode "Orbit" was inspired by the TropeNamer. [[AntiHero Avon]] and [[ButtMonkey Vila]] are on a shuttle desperately trying to achieve escape velocity. They throw out everything they can but are short seventy kilos. It turns out that the shuttle is being weighed down by a piece of super-dense matter. Once Avon finds it all he has to do is push it out the airlock - if he can, because it's so damn heavy. Trouble is, he can't get Vila to help him because he's scared Vila into hiding.

** Also happens in "Stardrive". With Federation cruisers closing in on them, the Stardrive's inventor says [[ScottyTime she needs 50 minutes to connect it up]]. Eventually it comes down to a few seconds they don't have, so Avon ends up sacrificing her to save their ship by setting the controls to launch when she makes the final connection.
** However Avon shoots down the idea in "Warlord" (thought the person suggesting the idea has already betrayed them, so Avon is hardly inclined to sacrifice his friends to save him).

** In "The Harvest Of Kairos", a Federation transporter with a valuable cargo is too heavy to reach orbit from a DeathWorld, so Servalan orders the captain to leave [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness some of his laborers behind]]. There's a moment of BlackComedy when a guard is [[KickTheDog taunting the laborers]] as he locks them out, [[LaserGuidedKarma only to find the transporter taking off without him as well.]]

* ''Literature/TheLangoliers'': Eventually, the characters figure out how to get out of being trapped in the past - fly through the time rift backwards. However, they have two problems. First, the titular Langoliers (who eat the past) [[ItCanThink are actively trying to stop the plane]], and second, they must be asleep to survive going through. The solution to the first problem involves throwing a passenger out as a distraction to the Langoliers, and the second, by lowering the cabin pressure to knock them all unconscious, for which someone must be awake to restore it so they'll wake up on the other side. The first victim chosen is Craig Toomy, who's been having a violent breakdown throughout the novel, and the second is [[spoiler: the main character, to atone for accidentally killing children.]]