History Main / PerilousPowerSource

* ''Film/EventHorizon'' has 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.
** Even worse is when the unfortunate gorgon-gazing crew member suddenly gets sucked into the engine by an unseen force and soon after tossed back out in a catatonic state.

* ''Film/{{Star Trek II|The Wrath of Khan}}'' includes a scene wherein a critical piece of the ship's engines is sealed in a small room. Anyone entering the room will be subjected to lethal radiation [[spoiler: as demonstrated when Spock sacrifices himself to repair the warp drive.]]
** 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 protective suit). It's just that radioactive gasses are currently leaking into the sealed small room (which exists entirely for secondary containment in case of this very thing) due to a breached pipe.

* Nuclear reactors in general. Nuclear runaway is a very real thing and can quickly become very difficult or outright impossible to stop, most of the mass of a typical reactor is just ''radiation shielding'', and they require special multi-stage coolant systems to prevent irradiated water from venting its radiation into places you don't want it. [[note]]Ironically, nuclear is one of the ''safest'' power options, simply because we've gotten so good at containing and controlling it, and reactor designers habitually over-engineer to compensate for their poor reputation. By comparison, gas main breaks and coal dust explosions, serious concerns in their respective power plants, are not something to be trifled with.[[/note]]

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

* 2013's ''Film/{{Star Trek into Darkness}}'' makes reference to ''Film/{{Star Trek II|The Wrath of Khan}}'' only [[spoiler: this time Kirk is the one who exposes himself to lethal levels of radiation while Spock remains safe outside (and wholly ignorant of Kirk's intentions and actions until it's far too late to do anything about them).]]
-->'''Scotty:''' ''[gesturing to the warp core]'' Do you know what this is, Captain?

* During ''Manga/OutlawStar'' the ship's computer, Gilliam, helps the new crew activate the XGP's engines during start up.

%%See thread to discuss a new image.

[[quoteright:350: [[Film/EventHorizon https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/EvenHorizonEngine_3699.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Even astronauts can forget to stand behind the yellow line.]]

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* Done in ''Anime/LastExile'' when Dio wants to see the power source of the ''Silvana''

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* ''Film/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.

* 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]]. One crew member has taken to donning a pair of sunglasses and turning the filters down as low as is safely possible (apparently in the visible-light spectrum only, as he doesn't have a noticeable tan) and describes it as a very spiritual experience. It's uncomfortably noted by other crew members that this obviously-slightly-crazy person is actually their ship's psychiatrist.

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* 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.
* Arc welding without a safety helmet can cause severe eye damage, even if you aren't looking directly at the arc.
** Then again, 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.

** 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 checked with a dose meter). The reactor itself is beneath several meters of concrete and steel shielding. It's refueled 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 refueling process. \\
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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 ''ComicBook/{{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 eye blinks 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.]]

-> ''Man does not behold the face of the Gorgon and live.''

-> ''"Man does not behold the face of the Gorgon and live."''
--> '''Doctor Morbius''', ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet''

* Franky from ''Manga/OnePiece'' sees the anti-matter Warp Core on the ''USS Enterprise-D'' in ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12067255/1/These-are-the-Voyages These are the Voyage]]'', hence why he replaced it with a cola engine that runs with 120% efficiency.

* ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'', where the scientist even compares the source of the Krell core to {{Medusa}} ("One cannot behold the face of the gorgon and live!").

* ''Ice Station Zebra'' has a scene where submarine captain Rock Hudson shows Russian agent Ernest Borgnine the ship's nuclear reactor. "Where is reactor?" he asks. "Under you," our captain answers, and shows how Ernest is kneeling on a thick hatch with an equally dense glass viewport to show red hot reactor action.

* Batteries with lithium-based chemistries contain volatile compounds that [[MadeOfExplodium react violently with plain old air]] and require some pretty serious precautions in the design to prevent such a disaster. Such batteries are far and away the most popular option for powering cellphones. That's right, we're putting these little bombs ''in our pockets''.

* In one of the ''{{Literature/Nightside}}'' books, John Taylor finds out that the local power plant has kidnapped one of his supernatural friends and is siphoning off his [[ThePowerOfTheSun PowerOfTheSun]] abilities to generate its power. Naturally he does something drastic.

* In one of the ''{{Literature/Nightside}}'' books, John Taylor finds out that one of his friends is being used as a power source for the local power plant. Naturally he does something drastic.

* [[Literature/TheBible Moses]] meets with God (or as close to meeting God as a living man can get), but only gets to see God's back, since looking Him in the face [[HolyIsNotSafe would kill a mortal man]]. Moses comes back sunburned, and his face is glowing for a few days afterward such that he had to wear a veil.

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

* Sam Starfall from {{''Webcomic/Freefall''}} is an alien from a far less technologically advanced world, and he takes the hazards posed by a Polywell fusion reactor--a common "portable" power source in this setting--especially to heart, even though it rests in [[HyperCompetentSidekick Florence's capable hands]].

* Sam Starfall from {{Webcomic/Freefall}} is an alien from a far less technologically advanced world, and he takes the hazards posed by a Polywell fusion reactor--a common "portable" power source in this setting--especially to heart, even though it rests in [[HyperCompetentSidekick Florence's capable hands]].