Deadly Escape Mechanism

"Those ejector seats have killed more agents than they've saved. Actually, that seems like an issue."

—The Handler, I Expect You To Die 3

Ejection seats, escape pods, and other means of emergency egress can be fickle things. No one wants to have to use them, of course. So it should come as no surprise that, just as they are intended as a last resort, they may be all too often last on the priority list for designers and maintenance crews.

Maybe there was a limited budget and this was an area where corners were cut. Maybe planning for an emergency was simply considered bad luck. Maybe the system was even sabotaged by an unusually inventive killer. Whatever the reason, when someone ultimately needs to rely on these systems to get out of a vehicle or building in an emergency, they find their means of escape to be just as hazardous, if not more so, than whatever danger they were escaping. On an airplane, an ejection seat may rocket its passenger into danger, rather than out of it, or someone's parachute may fail to open. Aboard a ship, lifejackets may prove to be less than buoyant and drag would-be survivors to the bottom, or a lifeboat may begin sinking just as quickly as the ship that launched it... or both may be sucked straight into the ship's still churning propellers. On land, fire exits may be blocked, emergency stairs may collapse under the weight of victims, or emergency air sources may prove faulty. In any case, something meant to serve as a means of rescue ends up leading to the victim's death instead.

Subtrope of Failsafe Failure. Compare Out of the Frying Pan and Morton's Fork, for the dilemmas anyone caught in such a situation is facing, and Armored Coffins for vehicles that don't have an ejection system in the first place. May involve a Hope Spot. In cases where enemies are deliberately targeting the escaping crew, see Sink the Lifeboats.

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Examples:

Fan Works

• A Darker Path: When preparing to assassinate Skidmark, Taylor reconnects an ejection seat in Squealer's tank that was supposed to be used as just a regular seat, and rigs a remote trigger for it. It ejects him onto the road in front of the tank, whereupon he's smeared over 200 yards of asphalt.

Film — Live Action

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) has a scene where a fighter pilot ejects out of his jet... and into the jaws of Rodan.
• In Iron Man, a pair of US fighter jets are called in to investigate Tony Stark's attack on the terrorists who captured him and are using Stark Industries weapons on innocent people. One of the jets runs into Iron Man, damaging it enough that the pilot uses his ejection seat, which does not properly deploy the parachute. Iron Man catches the falling pilot and deploys his chute, telling Col. Rhodes "Technically, he hit me...".
• Tomorrow Never Dies: When Bond steals an Aero L-39 Albatros from the illegal arms bazaar, he knocks out the co-pilot. Later, during the dogfight, the co-pilot re-awakes and tries to strangle Bond with a headphone cable. Struggling to keep the jet stable, Bond activates the ejector seat switch for the rear seat and sends the unfortunate co-pilot out of the plane, right into the fuselage of the enemy plane, causing it to explode.
• In Top Gun, Goose meets his end when he hits his head on the canopy while ejecting from an out-of-control Tomcat. As noted below, this was Truth in Television - earlier F-14 models had a design flaw in which the canopy tended to hover over the plane, causing the RIO to sometimes hit the canopy on their way out.

Literature

• In Debt of Honor, veteran sonarman Jones derisively refers to submarine escape trunks^note airlock-like chambers that allow crewmembers to escape a submarine while underwater as "the mom's hatch" — something young sailors could show their parents to alleviate their fears, but which would be all but useless in a real emergency.
• Jedi Academy Trilogy: Moruth Doole, when cornered, uses an escape hatch to flee into some spice mines but is eaten by giant spiders in under two minutes.
• X-Wing Series:
  • In Wraith Squadron, one member of the doomed Talon Squadron is killed attempting to eject from her stricken X-Wing. Her ejection seat slams her into her fighter's canopy before ultimately rocketing her into a canyon wall.
  • A nonfatal example appears in Starfighters of Adumar as part of Tomer Darpen's backstory. While a pilot trainee, Darpen became notorious for an incident in which he brought a Y-Wing in to a bumpy landing on a low-gravity moon, only for his ejection seat to launch him into orbit after he managed to bring the craft to a halt.

Live-Action TV

• Father Brown: In "The Crackpot of the Empire", Sir Mortimer dies when he forces his way into the narrow lift that is the only way out of the factory. The killer has sabotaged the lift so that it plunges to the bottom of the shaft, taking Mortimer to his doom. The killer had bargained on Mortimer's Fatal Flaw ensuring that he would be the first one into the escape route and shut everyone else out.
• Red Dwarf: In "Skipper", Rimmer comes across an Alternate Universe where the radiation leak that wipes out most of the ship's crew at the start of the show hasn't quite happened yet. When it does, he comes across Captain Hollister, trying to escape on board an escape pod. Unfortunately, it manages to jam before it can leave, leaving Hollister to be blasted in the face by several tons of radiation.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: As BattleMech interiors tend to be extremely hot places, most 'Mech pilots dress for comfort rather than survival post-ejection, making them rather ill-equipped to handle all but the most temperate of environments outside their cockpits. And that's before considering the utter hellscape that is the average 31st-century battlefield. Or the fact that ejecting from a toppling 'Mech has the propensity to send the pilot rocketing straight into the nearest solid object. Or the design "quirks" of certain 'Mechs which make a successful ejection from them nigh impossible. The VND-1R Vindicator medium 'Mech is a classic example of the latter; the Medium Laser installed in the 'Mech's head was notoriously bulky and would intrude upon space used by the pilot and the 'Mech's ejection system, occasionally causing the laser to explode (alongside the 'Mech's head) when the ejector was engaged.
• Paranoia: If a vehicle in Alpha Complex comes equipped with an ejector seat, it's pretty much guaranteed to malfunction in some humorous and very likely fatal way.

Urban Legends

• One grisly but likely apocryphal tale tells of an early prototype of either an ejection seat or explosive emergency canopy release. The handle to operate the system was reportedly so hard to move — and consequently required such a tight grip — that the force of ejection would supposedly rip the hapless pilot's hand off.

Video Games

• A downplayed example occurs near the beginning of Halo: Combat Evolved. The escape pod the Master Chief is on has a malfunction and is unable to land safely. When it crash-lands, the impact kills nearly everyone aboard; everyone except the Master Chief himself.
• I Expect You To Die:
  • One of the missions in the first game involves destroying a Zoraxis submarine; the handler strongly advises that the Agent not use one of the escape pods. By the time you take control, the Agent is already in an escape pod that is (a) in a state of disrepair and (b) booby-trapped with a grenade for if you try to turn the engine on.
  • The page quote comes from a mission in the third game, which takes place in a car equipped with various spy gadgets - including an ejection chair. If you trigger it without taking down the sunroof first, the handler warns the Agent that the Agency has a history of them causing problems. If you trigger it with the sunroof down, you get a death screen in which the coroner's report reveals you were ejected off the bridge (and seemingly struck your head upon landing).
• World of Assassination Trilogy:
  • The default (and canon) method of assassinating the target in the final training mission of Hitman (2016) is to arm the ejection seat of the fighter jet he's scheduled to fly out in, then pretend to coach him through a "practice" ejection. NPC dialogue in the original iteration of the level even suggests that despite the mission being a simulation, the target may have been killed for real.
  • The first level of Hitman 3 takes place atop an immense skyscraper that reaches into the clouds above Dubai. One method of assassination is to slash the parachutes the targets will use to escape the building in an emergency, then trigger an evacuation.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: In the "Death Race" spin-off, after Boomstick blows up the race track below the wheels of the Spy Hunter and James Bond's Aston Martin, the Spy Hunter fires a missile at Bond whilst they're both falling. Bond uses an ejection seat to escape his car before it gets blown up, but that just means that he sends himself flying into the rotary blades of a helicopter flying overhead.
• When Disco Bear accidentally sprays burning gasoline at Handy's helicopter in the Happy Tree Friends episode "Who's to Flame?" and the helicopter starts nose-diving, Handy activates its Ejector Seat, which sends him straight into the helicopter blades.

Webcomics

• In Freefall, Sam wants to play with the ejection seat. Helix explains why this is a bad idea:
  Helix: Two words. Roof pizza.

Real Life

• Goose's fate in Top Gun was by no means a Hollywood invention. Early F-14 Tomcat models were prone to having the ejected canopy linger over the aircraft under certain conditions, meaning that the RIO, who would always eject first, would be in danger of striking it. Until the issue was corrected in later versions, crews were instructed to blow the canopy separately before ejecting, allowing additional time for it to separate from the aircraft.
• Early ejection seats in general were designed specifically to facilitate escape from an aircraft at high speeds and altitudes. Trying to eject at low altitude — during takeoff or landing for example, when most accidents occur — would extend a pilot's life only a few seconds longer than attempting to bail out manually. Only the advent of "Zero Zero" ejection seats, designed to launch pilots high enough for their parachutes to deploy even if the plane is inches from the ground at zero airspeed, would make them a viable means of escape in all situations.
• Because of its unusually large tail, the F-104 Starfighter was initially produced with an ejection seat that fired downward, making ejection at low altitude especially hazardous.
• Prior to the invention of ejection seats, simply bailing out using a parachute was a dubious prospect at low altitudes, as the parachute canopy may not have had time to fully deploy before impact. Additionally, crews had to be wary of hitting parts of the aircraft behind the cockpit — the tail surfaces in particular — when bailing out. Many pilots would attempt to roll their planes upside down specifically so gravity would help them drop clear of the tail.
• The Soviet sub K-278 Komsomolets (NATO Reporting Name Mike) was equipped with an Escape Pod in the sail, one that could in theory allow the entire crew to evacuate in an emergency. When the capsule was used during the boat's sinking, only one crewman was able to exit the capsule when it reached the surface before it too lost buoyancy and sank.
• In early submarines, there was a device called the Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus. Basically it was a rubber lung with a mouthpiece and goggles. Crewmen on a sunk or sinking sub could use it to escape and reach the surface, but it was only tested to a depth of 100 feet. Trying to get out of the sub and to the surface beyond that depth was something only desperate men would attempt. Even at 100 feet or less getting to the surface was no guarantee, and an unconscious crewman could not use it at all.
• During the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the failure of a number of safety devices contributed to the death toll:
  • A number of employees attempted to use the exterior fire escape, only for it to tear away from the building and collapse under their weight. Around 20 victims fell to their deaths.
  • The fire exit doors were locked due to upper management wanting to keep workers working and union organizers outside.
  • When the firefighters tried to put out a life net to catch those jumping from the windows, three women jumped at once, ripping the net and killing them.
• While not strictly an emergency system, the descent module of early versions of the Soyuz — the part of the spacecraft meant to return cosmonauts safely to the ground — suffered a pair of deadly accidents due to design flaws:
  • Soyuz 1 was a rushed mission of an equally rushed and untested spacecraft in which numerous parts of the ship failed, which culminated in the descent module impacting the ground at terminal velocity after its parachutes failed to deploy. Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was said to have spent his last moments cursing the spacecraft designers.
  • On Soyuz 11, a valve on the descent module intended to vent the cabin once it reached the lower atmosphere instead opened the instant the module detached from the rest of the spacecraft, exposing the three cosmonauts aboard to the vacuum of space. All three suffocated within moments.
• When the General Slocum caught fire, many passengers attempted to use the ship's life preservers and life vests to jump overboard to safety. However, not only were these devices made with poor quality cork, the manufacturer actually placed iron bars inside the cork in an effort to evade specifications as to the amount of cork in each vest; many who donned them immediately sank under the weight and drowned. Additionally, many survivors reported that life preservers simply fell apart after years of being exposed to the elements aboard the ship.
• Records indicate that Genghis Khan provided a unique kind of armor to his front-line troops (who were often people from areas he conquered) — it was defended in the front, but had no protections in the back. As such, any attempt to retreat would meet with immediate death, because turning around and running would expose the body to enemies. The result was an army that never retreated; the soldiers had a better chance of living by standing and fighting rather than trying to flee.

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