History Main / PerilousPowerSource

** Then again, in both of these cases, it is not what you see that is dangerous - it is what you can't see, the UV radiation. A better example is gazing into a DVD burner's laser - this time, it is the actual visible light that ends up burning its ones and zeros into your retina.

* Anyone who has ever built a pinhole camera to observe a solar eclipse. The actual danger of viewing an eclipse with the naked eye is that most of the ultraviolet radiation is produced by the corona, still visible outside the silhouette of the moon. Your pupils expand in response to the darker setting, allowing more UV rays to [[BrownNote fry]] [[EyeScream your delicate retinas]].
** Staring at the sun is a bad idea, at any time. Most of the time people instinctively know not to do this (as any ancestors who made a habit of it went blind) but during an eclipse the sun is different, so our gaze tends to be drawn to it. While the sun is ''totally'' covered by the moon, it's fine to look at it.
*** Please note that this safe time is only a few minutes at most and can be as little as a few seconds.

* Similarly, Moses only gets to see God's back, since looking Him in the face would kill a mortal man. Moses comes back sunburned.

* In AlanDeanFoster's novelisation of the animated ''[[WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries Star Trek]]'' episode "One Of Our Planets Is Missing", one of the Enterprise's nacelles is constructed internally of antimatter components; restarting the warp engines requires walking down a narrow pathway suspended magnetically down the center. Not exactly the same thing but, true to the idea that the power source of the ship is made of some VERY dangerous stuff.

* In the climactic scene of ''Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk'', Indiana and temporary love interest Marion are tied to a stake in the middle of things as the Nazis are about to open the Ark of the Covenant. Indy tells Marion not to look at whatever power or entity comes out - sound advice, as it turns out, as nasty, Nightmare Fuelish things happen to the Nazis, including one guy getting his ''face melted off''.

* In ''Film/{{Sunshine}}'', the ''Icarus'' ships have a special Sun-gazing room where the crew can sit and do exactly that. We (and the crew) are told that the filters are set at maximum or near-maximum capacity, and the sunlight is already blinding white. To release the filters would [[ChekhovsGun undoubtedly be fatal to whoever stood there]].

[[quoteright:350: [[Film/EventHorizon http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/EvenHorizonEngine_3699.jpg]]]]

Related to TakeOurWordForIt, a PerilousPowerSource can be used to compensate for lack of budget or SpecialEffectsFailure.

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* This trope comes from ClassicalMythology: Perseus needed a mirror to look safely at Medusa, one of the original Gorgons, without her turning him to stone with her gaze.

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* Xtonic radiation prevents [[Series/DoctorWho the Doctor]] from looking at the planet's landscape in "Midnight" for more than a few seconds.

** In "The End of the World", the guests have come to watch the destruction of Earth when the sun goes nova. Shield failure due to sabotage proves that even before the actual explosion, the sun is giving off tremendous energy enough to kill an unprotected onlooker.

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* In AlanDeanFoster's adaptation of the animated ''[[WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries Star Trek]]'' episode "One Of Our Planets Is Missing", one of the Enterprise's nacelles is constructed internally of antimatter components; restarting the warp engines requires walking down a narrow pathway suspended magnetically down the center. Not exactly the same thing but, true to the idea that the power source of the ship is made of some VERY dangerous stuff.

* ''ForbiddenPlanet'', where the scientist even compares the source of the Krell core to {{Medusa}} ("One cannot behold the face of the gorgon and live!"). [[hottip:*:GorgonGazing [[RenamedTropes is even an alternate title for the trope]]
* The [[WaltDisney Disney]] version of ''[[TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]]'', from 1954 - when Nemo offers a big riveted visor and chestplate to Messr. Arronax, before hiding his own face in his arm and opening that big lead door to the atomic reactor. To be fair, ''ForbiddenPlanet'''s writers probably didn't rip off this movie - [[TheFifties '50s]] magazines were no doubt full of scenes of scientists in goggles peering at atomic piles...

** The novelization makes this apparent design flaw ''slightly'' more understandable: ordinarily the room ''wouldn't'' be lethally radioactive (and of course ordinarily the engineers would have time to put on a proper radioactivity production suit). It's just that radioactive gasses are currently leaking into the sealed small room due to a breached pipe.

[[quoteright:350: [[EventHorizon http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/EvenHorizonEngine_3699.jpg]]]]

* ''EventHorizon'' might be an example of this, in having an expository scene in the spike filled, ominous Engine Room Of Doom - that is [[spoiler:utilizing a motive energy that opens the very doors of Hell itself]]. That pretty much trumps any 92 suns worth of whatever, Doctor Morbius.

\\Now the cooling ponds are a different matter. Radiation levels are slightly elevated in there, and you can look through 5m of boronated water at spent fuel elements that glow purple in the dark, and would give you a lethal dose in less than a second were you to go anywhere near them

** Actually, the bit you look on from the (now closed) visitors' gallery is the charge hall, and is perfectly safe, and the radiation is barely above background (as I know from walking around on it while wearing a dose meter). The reactor itself is beneath several metres of concrete and steel shielding. It's refuelled by attaching a shielded hoist to the top of the pressure vessel, so even then the radiation barely rises, visitors probably weren't allowed to look more for the commercial safety of British Energy's refuelling process. \\Now the cooling ponds are a different matter. Radiation levels are slightly elevated in there, and you can look through 5m of boronated water at spent fuel elements that glow purple in the dark, and would give you a lethal dose in less than a second were you to go anywhere near them

* One member of the ''{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}'', Element Lad, was left the only one conscious when they were all cast into a different universe, and seems to have this reaction to the energies of the forming universe, terrified of looking out the windows of their spaceship. After he sends the others back but is left alone in the new universe without the ship, [[spoiler:he spent billions, if not trillions of years simply floating through space- his powers allowed him to survive by transmuting his body and the air that came with him. He watched ''stars come into being and die'' several times before he realized that was what was happening. Eventually, growing lonely, he drifted down to a planet and started to use his powers to help life come into being... and by the time his teammates came along, the entire galaxy was essentially embroiled in an ongoing conflict between the Progeny, the species he was currently using as his instrument to shape the evolution of the local races, and the "variant" species which he'd decided didn't fit into that shape.]] When his teammates finally met up with him, his way of thinking was [[BlueAndOrangeMorality completely unrecognizable]]. [[spoiler:According to Brainiac 5, he's not necessarily mad or sane or good or evil anymore- he's simply living in an incomprehensibly larger time scale, from which the eyeblinks that are mortal lifespans simply don't matter, and the galaxy is his petri dish because he doesn't need to care about the feelings of the beings living there- regardless of what the germs in the petri dish think of him while they're alive, regardless of anything, they'll be dead before he blinks one way or the other.]]

* Rhysling, the blind singer of Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''TheGreenHillsOfEarth'', loses his sight this way - he peers past the baffles of a rocket's reactor and is then blinded by Cherenkov radiation. Ouch.

* In the short story ''{{Concrete Jungle}}'' by Charles Stross, the main character must find a "basilisk", someone who has the power to kill simply by opening their eyes towards them.

* The short story ''{{BLIT}}'' by David Langford revolves around mysterious images that can kill anyone who looks upon them.