History Main / DisintegrationChamber

* In the Creator/IsaacAsimov novel ''The Stars, Like Dust'', the protagonist's father was executed by being "blasted to bits in a disintegration chamber".
* Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's Literature/ProfessorChallenger short story "The Disintegration Machine" features an apparatus resembling an electric chair[[note]]As the narrator puts it "The nearest approach to that apparatus which I have ever seen was the electrocution chair at Sing Sing"[[/note]] which causes an object--or a person--sitting in it to simply vanish. Somewhat unusually for such devices, the "disintegration machine" in Doyle's story can re-integrate a person who has been disintegrated, bringing them back into existence without any harm.[[note]]Although in one case the machine's inventor deliberately brings someone back without his hair.[[/note]] The machine is nonetheless explicitly treated as a weapon, which could potentially disintegrate a battleship, or bring about "the whole Thames valley being swept clean, and not one man, woman, or child left of all these teeming millions", and is being marketed as such by its inventor to the world's great powers. (In such applications, the apparatus would probably wind up more resembling a DisintegratorRay than a "chamber".) At the end of the story Professor Challenger [[spoiler: disintegrates the machine's inventor--who is the only one who knows the secret of the device's construction--without bothering to re-integrate him.]]

* The "disintegration chamber" is mentioned in Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's Literature/VorkosiganSaga at least a couple of times, specifically in ''Brothers in Arms'': "the disintegration chamber usually reserved for convicted spies" and
-->"Wasn't there a mercenary fleet that did that once? They'd show up in orbit somewhere, and get paid to ''not'' make war. Worked, didn't it? You're just not a creative enough mercenary commander, Miles."
-->"Yeah, [=LaVarr=]'s fleet. It worked real good till the Tau Cetan Navy caught up with 'em, and then [=LaVarr=] was sent to the disintegration chamber."

* ''ComicBook/NemesisTheWarlock'': When Torquemada took back control over Termight following his absence, he promised to give aliens residing on Earth the option to return to their home planets by teleportation for plausible deniability, but actually lured them into "evaporation vats". Some of his own followers even continued to believe that these aliens were really ReleasedToElsewhere.

* An accidental version in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' when John gets trapped inside an [[{{Technobabble}} intrinsic field substractor chamber]], unaware that the chamber was about to be activated for an experiment and can't be opened until it's finished (one of the scientists stammers out that it's a safety feature). John's colleagues are ForcedToWatch helplessly as he is slowly disintegrated (although he reforms bit by bit over the next few months until he's the superhero/PhysicalGod Dr. Manhattan). An intentional version occurs later on, when BigBad [[spoiler:Ozymandias]] lures Dr. Manhattan into one. [[spoiler:This was a less-than-brilliant plan, as Dr. Manhattan himself points out seconds later, saying "The intrinsic field subtractor didn't kill John Osterman, what made you think it would kill ''me''?]]]

* In one of the three short stories ("Don't Make Me Laugh") in the ''Literature/GoosebumpsHauntedLibrary'' collection, two boys are kidnapped by aliens and threatened with being sent to a "disintegration room" if they can't make the aliens laugh.
* In one of the '' Literature/GiveYourselfGoosebumps'' "choose-your-own-adventure" spin-off books from the franchise, ''Literature/TickTockYoureDead'', the protagonist goes into the future, where [[AmbiguousGender they]] end up in a school where a teacher punishes students, [[SadistTeacher even for getting the wrong answer]], by putting them into a cupboard called the "frammilizer" that makes them disappear.

* In one of the '' Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' "choose-your-own-adventure" stories, ''Literature/TickTockYoureDead'', the protagonist goes into the future, where [[AmbiguousGender they]] end up in a school where a teacher punishes students, [[SadistTeacher even for getting the wrong answer]], by putting them into a cupboard called the "frammilizer" that makes them disappear.

* In one '' Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' "choose-your-own-adventure" story, titled "Tick Tock, You're Dead", the protagonist goes into the future, where [[AmbiguousGender they]] end up in a school where a teacher punishes students, [[SadistTeacher even for getting the wrong answer]], by putting them into a cupboard called the "frammilizer" that makes them disappear.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekS1E23ATasteOfArmageddon "A Taste of Armageddon"]] two warring planets have been fighting a war for 500 years; to avoid totally destroying their civilization, the way is fought entirely virtually, by computers; those whose deaths have been "registered" in the computers have 24 hours to report to the "disintegration machines".

A science fiction trope in which people are executed by being sent to a "disintegration chamber"--some kind of little room or machine in which they are zapped into nonexistence. (Exactly how such a process works is rarely if ever actually explained; this is something of a SpaceOpera trope, and is generally on the softer side of the MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness). A SisterTrope of DisintegratorRay; the distinguishing factors being that the "disintegration" is explicitly a form of execution (whether by a tyrannical regime or after some kind of due process) and does ''not'' happen out in the open air as a result of the victim being shot with some kind of hand-held RayGun. MurderByCremation can also resemble this in settings where it's used to formally execute people (and isn't just a matter of a private murderer disposing of a body), but a Disintegration Chamber is more likely to be depicted as a genuinely "clean" and scientific method of eliminating people, without the overtones of ColdBloodedTorture.

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Justice" has a disintegration chamber for capital punishment among the humanoid Edo. Wesley Crusher nearly met this fate for the crime of trampling a flower bed. Notably, there's no door to the room, so it's open to public view. Doctor Beverly Crusher, Wesley's mother, could have watched it happen.

* ''Film/OurManFlint''. On the Galaxy organization's IslandBase, there's a device called an electro-fragmentizer which will instantly destroy any object that enters it while it's activated. The Galaxy organization tries to get rid of Derek Flint by throwing him into it. The device ends up destroying Flint's multi-function lighter and several Galaxy agents.

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': In the RashomonStyle episode, whoever the Plokavians will find guilty of blowing up their ship will be executed by "dispersion" in a cage-like structure. [[spoiler:Stark confesses to destroying the ship because his spiritual powers give him a chance of surviving dispersion]

* Played with in the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E12ChosenRealm
"Chosen Realm"]]. Captain Archer tricks a group of religious fanatics who have seized ''Enterprise'' into thinking that the transporter was a "disintegration device" used for capital punishment. He then "sacrifices" himself by being "disintegrated", so that he can work unhindered to take his ship back.

* An accidental version in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' when John gets trapped inside an [[Technobabble intrinsic field substractor chamber]], unaware that the chamber was about to be activated for an experiment and can't be opened until it's finished (one of the scientists stammers out that it's a safety feature). John's colleagues are ForcedToWatch helplessly as he is slowly disintegrated (although he reforms bit by bit over the next few months until he's the superhero/PhysicalGod Dr. Manhattan). An intentional version occurs later on, when BigBad [[spoiler:Ozymandias]] lures Dr. Manhattan into one. [[spoiler:This was a less-than-brilliant plan, as Dr. Manhattan himself points out seconds later, saying "The intrinsic field subtractor didn't kill John Osterman, what made you think it would kill ''me''?]]]

* An accidental version in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' when John gets trapped inside an [[Technobabble intrinsic field substractor chamber]], unaware that the chamber was about to be activated for an experiment and can't be opened until it's finished (one of the scientists stammers out that it's a safety feature). John's colleagues are ForcedToWatch helplessly as he is slowly disintegrated (although he reforms bit by bit over the next few months until he's the superhero/PhysicalGod Dr. Manhattan).

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