Explosive Decompression - Television Tropes & Idioms

Attila the Hun: No shoot fire stick in space canoe! Cause exprosive decompression!
Zapp Brannigan: Spare me your space-age Techno Babble, Attila the Hun.
- Futurama

"Like any properly trained man in good health, he could survive in vacuum for at least a minute - if he had time to prepare for it. But there had been no time; he could only count on the normal fifteen seconds of consciousness before his brain was starved and anoxia overcame him."
-2001: A Space Odyssey

Outer space is not friendly. Woe betide anyone foolish enough to step into it unprotected (or unfortunate enough to get thrown out the airlock): they'll pop like a turkey with a grenade up its backside.

Well, that's the movie version. In fact, as unfriendly as the vacuum of space is, the body's made of stern enough stuff to stay in one piece. When you step outside, you've got about 15 seconds before you pass out from anoxia (which is, of course, less time than most people can go between breaths if pressed; vacuum is a very efficient de-oxygenator of blood), a couple of minutes at best until you die from the same, and all sorts of nasty decompression injuries and having exposed areas swelling up and ohmygod the water just boiled off my eyes in between, but you never quite go boom: remember, technically speaking, your blood is not in a vacuum: it's in you, so swelling and boiling blood only occurs toward your squishiest, outermost layer. Incidentally, holding your breath would be worse than useless; the difference in pressure would cause you to exhale anyways, except probably mess up your throat in the process. A classic piece of Hollywood Science; in fact this is so widespread that audiences are outraged when it doesn't happen (see The Coconut Effect and Reality Is Unrealistic). Discussed in detail here

This one can happen in real life if you get a really high pressure gradient - from above-normal pressure down to atmospheric pressure, say. If you're interested, google for the "Byford Dolphin".

The term "Explosive Decompression" is legitimate, but it refers to the speed at which the decompression occurs, not the result or cause.

See Space Is Cold for another way that space doesn't instantly kill you.

Examples:

Pretty much every time a low-budget sci-fi flick does vacuum exposure, it's Explosion Time. If the astronaut gets so much as a rip in his space suit, he'll be painting it with his internal fluids.
Probably the first-ever appearance of this was in the 1954 SF movie Riders to the Stars, in which this happens to one of the titular astronauts. He drifts for a moment right in front of the camera view, so that we can see that he's been turned into an Instant Mummy. (Ok, technically he was freeze-dried, but it's the same basic idea).
In the Space Quest series of games, Roger Wilco can die several times due to exposure to vacuum. His death animations in all cases are a splatter of gore issuing from his head or his chest along with the message that "Sudden Decompression Sucks".
Red Dwarf, "Confidence and Paranoia": Confidence, suffering from an ego the size of a small galaxy, declares "Oxygen is for losers!" and takes his helmet off outside of the ship. He then promptly explodes.
Implied (then averted) in an episode of Knight Rider: The evil KARR starts to drain the air out of his cabin with a hostage inside, saying "Have you ever seen someone explode in a vacuum?"
The James Bond film Licence To Kill features a "Byford Dolphin" style decompression involving a henchman, a decompression chamber and an axe. This one gets frequently trimmed by the local Media Watchdog.
The 1981 movie Outland features two professional assassins that are sent on Mars to kill off the main character O'Niel, who has discovered an illegal drug operation. Both die due to Explosive Decompression: one paints a duct red when O'Niel depressurizes it (after an amusing "ballooning up" shot), the other dies when he is led into shooting the glass windows in the room he's in. We're then treated to a scene in which his body explosively shatters as the air rushing out blows him into space.
Done ludicrously poorly in the movie Total Recall, where being exposed to the surface of Mars gives characters eyes the size of tangerines. Note that Mars has an atmosphere, albeit not one humans could breathe and survive.
- Even more ludicrous: after returning to "normal" pressure, those tangerine eyes go back to normal, with no ill effects - they aren't even bloodshot.
  - Though these both might make sense following the theory of it all being a delusion of the main character.
  - Which could also account for the film's idiotic level of violence. ......What?
  - Well, he was a dude played by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
In a scene near the end of Alien Resurrection, the air pressure inside the ship is apparently powerful enough to push a xenomorph through a hole about the size of a quarter.
Used when The Simpsons' Itchy and Scratchy go into space.
- Also when Homer and Bart accidentally board a shuttle of famous people headed for the sun, then jump out the airlock to get away from Rosie O'Donnel. They blow up and pop like balloons.
In an episode of The Magic School Bus, while on Pluto, Arnold convincess his cousin Janet to leave her sack of souvenirs from space and come home by taking his helmet briefly, and his head instantly freezes. Rather than put the helmet right back on him, the rest of the class runs his body (with his head naked to space) back to the schoolbus and takes him back to Earth. He's fine, but catches a cold.
Happens in Blakes Seven- To Brian Blessed!
- In that episode of "Blake's 7", it is established in prior dialogue that the explosive effect is due to being teleported beyond the maximum range of the teleport device, rather than exposure to vacuum.

Subversions and Exceptions:

Averted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, although in both book and film, Dave holds his breath. This isn't wise, because it would damage your lungs.
- Arthur C. Clarke also averts it in the novel Earthlight, in which one spaceship rescues the crew of another (crippled) spaceship despite a lack of spacesuits or docking gear, by getting close enough to transfer everyone quickly. A few of them panic and don't make it, but everyone else comes through fine.
- And in one of Clarke's short stories, the narrator is one of several people trapped in a habitation module that comes loose from a space station. Again, a rescue is effected without suits or serious mishap from the brief exposure to vacuum... but those few seconds of exposure to raw sunlight in Earth's orbit gives the protagonist the worst sunburn he's ever had.
Event Horizon: A longer exposure gives gorier results, but the victim survives.
Star Trek: First Contact: Worf gets a rip in his suit leg, ties it off with a tourniquet made from a passing Borg's arm, and keeps on fighting.
Titan AE not only has two characters survive temporary vacuum exposure during an emergency transfer from one spaceship to another, they also (a) use the rapid blast of air out of the cockpit of the first ship to get them moving and (b) use a fire extinguisher as an ad hoc rocket for even more thrust. Notably, immediately before entering the vaccuum, one character orders another to exhale.
- This troper was so happy to see this aversion that the bad science in the rest of the movie was instantly forgiven.
On Cowboy Bebop, Spike used his fighter's escape pod as an improvised missile, and made a quick transfer to VT's space truck. He plugged his ears, exhaled, and made a quick dive for her door. He came up short, but adjusted his trajectory using the recoil from his handgun so he could reach something to push himself off of. The villain of the episode, another space trucker named Decker, realistically dies from decompression without exploding after he plows his truck into an asteroid, shattering the cockpit canopy.
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, of all things, correctly recognized that no exploding would occur... however, it did believe that taking a breath right before before you were chucked out the airlock would help.
Star Trek The Next Generation made this same mistake in the episode "Disaster". Geordi advises Dr Crusher that they should hold their breath and resist the temptation to exhale before decompressing the cargo bay.
Schlock Mercenary incorporated both the bad "hold your breath" advice and a footnote pointing out its badness in http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20010527.html, presumably trying to actively counter sci-fi's misinformation on the subject.
A 1960s Doctor Who episode reportedly received a number of complaints due to the fact that the people who were flushed out of the airlock floated in space rather than exploding.
- When the new series episode The Impossible Planet aired in 2006, there was a lot of debate about the lack of explosive decompression on one message board this editor visits. And then again, when the episode 42 aired in 2007...
An episode of Stargate SG-1 had a thief being beamed out of the ship Odyssey. He ended up hitting the glass at the front of the ship, and he didn't explode, but he was still quite dead.
- An earlier episode had Teal'c and O'Neill venture briefly into the vacuum of space so they could be transported out of an out of control space fighter, without exploding, or any lingering effects, as they were only in the vacuum for a few seconds.
The rebooted Battlestar Galactica ejected Tyrol and Cally into vacuum to a waiting Raptor (with slightly more in the way of bad aftereffects, remedied by medical attention). The cargo bay they were in was decompressing anyway.
- And then ejected Cally into space for good, with much the same result.
The film Mission To Mars is a long way from scientific credibility for the most part, but subverts this one for the most part. Woody takes off his helmet, exhales with a whoosh, dies peacefully of anoxia... and then freezes almost instantly. The writers missed out on that physics lesson.
Subverted in the webcomic Narbonic (here) where psychotic intern Mell throws Dave out of a space capsule, but lets him back in, after Mad Scientist Helen tells her the facts and she is disappointed that "it wasn't going to be all that cool-looking".
One of the levels in the video game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a derelict starship with one particular hallway that is open to space thanks to many broken windows. The heroine of the game wears a self-contained armor suit that would have no problems here anyways, but the titular Metroids that can attack the player in this hallway are clearly not affected by Explosive Decompression, as they'll hang out both inside and outside of the ship and float/phaseshift into the hallway when they notice you're there. As the creatures live from energy siphoned off of other beings and have no respiratory system to speak of, they don't have to deal with anoxia either.
- In addition, very early in the game, Samus ejects herself into space to reach another part of the ship. After riding along the underside of the ship and pulling herself into an airlock, the view switches to first-person again...to reveal that her visor is covered with ice crystals. Whoops.
- However, the fact that the Metroids can survive in space when their main weakness is cold makes ~~less~~ perfect sense. The explanation at the top of the page may be in effect, or the mutated Phazon Metroids in question might not have the weakness.
John Crichton from Farscape once jumped from a ship to another while holding his breath. Oh, and he almost swam too.
- And Ka D'Argo's species can survive for up to half an hour in hard vacuum.
Subverted (or something) in Elizabeth Bear's Dust, in which the main characters are capable of floating around in the vacuum for longer-than-normal periods of time due to the nanite colonies in their blood which provide them with oxygen and repair any physical damage. It's still not what you'd call fun, though.
Totally ignored in Power Rangers In Space and Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, both of which showed characters - perfectly normal non-ranger characters - traveling unprotected in space and on the lunar surface, in one instance for several hours. Many consider there to be ample evidence that in the Power Rangers universe, space in general maintains a breathable atmosphere and comfortable temperatures.
- There have been a number of episodes where the viewer saw the effect of a hard vacuum, though. In episodes from both season six and season eight, once an airlock of a ship in orbit was opened, everything inside was sucked outside, and characters fought to hold on. Most of the time in the Power Ranger Universe', Ranger-(and villain-)tech provides suitable (albeit artificial) pressure, atmosphere and gravity for unprotected humans to survive with no ill effect. During other occasions, the hard vacuum will only do what the plot requires it to do.
Perhaps the most amazingly egregious abuse occured in Blakes7: in at least two episodes, the teleport was used to dispose of someone by ejecting him into space. In both instances, the victim exploded. Not burst like a balloon, but literally exploded, in a flash of pyrotechnics. With smoke. As if they'd been holding a pipe bomb.
- This is established as being due to teleporting a person beyond maximum range, not exposure to vacuum.
A couple of Real Life counterexamples from The Other Wiki:
- On one Shuttle mission, an astronaut drove a piece of metal through his glove and into his hand without noticing. His blood freeze-dried around the object and puncture, sealing the hole. He didn't even notice the damage until he was back inside.
- A high-altitude balloonist lost the pressure in one of his gloves for a long period. It eventually swelled up to twice its normal size and became completely useless, but recovered completely after a few hours when back on the ground.
Comics sometimes do things right - but for the wrong reasons. For example, Superman is often seen in space with nothing more than a breath mask - because he's apparently tough enough that the cold and rapid pressure changes don't matter. (In fact, if he's high enough up, the extra solar energy he can absorb probably keeps him going.) This is fairly common among the high-power superheroes and -villains, like Lobo, Thor, and Starfire. It's not necessarily done because the writer understands that exposure to vacuum doesn't mean instant death, though - more likely to impress upon the reader how powerful the character is.
- Or, in Lobo's case, just due to the Rule Of Cool. Not only can he survive unaided in space, he can also speak audibly in it - something no one else in the DCU can do.
  Animal Man (Buddy Baker): Who the hell is Lobo? And why is there a huge biker dude standing in the vacuum of space smoking a cigar?
  - Pre-Crisis Superman used to do it often, however. Speak that is.. not smoke.
In a Marvel example, there was one X-Men scene where Deathbird kicks Storm out an airlock of a Brood ship, and is rescued after 30 seconds. She makes a full recovery in the same issue.
- Kitty Pryde managed a minute or so mucking about the outside of a space station during an evacuation attempt. She survived by hyperventilating before becoming intangible. To be fair she didn't think this would work either.
Gundam and Zeta Gundam, where holes are blasted into colonies on multiple occasions; however, unless you were in the vicinity of the hole, no one worries about them that much.
- For a better aversion, Quess Paraya in Char's Counterattack jumps directly though space to Char's Sazabi without a space suit, taking the effort to ball herself up and tumble thorough vacuum, with Char reacting well enough to keep her from floating off into the infinite nothing. Camille Biden in Zeta Gundam subverts this by opening his helmet visor in vacuum while talking to Emma Sheen. After the helmet opens, the sound of his voice properly cuts out, and Emma closes his helmet visor within a second.
In the Ciaphas Cain novel Death or Glory, set in the Warhammer 40000 universe, Cain and his aide Jurgen are both trapped on a depressurized deck when their troop transport takes a torpedo strike. Despite the fact that they run out of breathable air pretty quickly, Cain and Jurgen manage to survive long enough to man a nearby escape capsule.
Many video games outright ignore the dangers of being out in space without protective equipment. The blog for Smash Bros Brawl lampshades this here.
In the 90s Flash Gordon cartoon, Flash and Dale are in an airlock that is decompressed. They actually hang on until the rush of air is over, then make it to another airlock to get back inside.
Transformers: the Reign of Starscream #2 shows Starscream capturing a human and then putting him in his cockpit for the return trip to Cybertron. Since Cybertronians don't breathe and don't need pilots, they don't pressurize their altmodes' operators' spaces. The poor human pops when Starscream leaves the atmosphere.
Parodied in Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear feared his eyeballs would be sucked from his sockets when Woody retracted his helmet.