Space travel is inherently dangerous, and For All Mankind does not pull any punches over how dangerous it is.
Season 1
"Home Again"- The sudden explosion that destroys Apollo 23, killing Gene Kranz and 11 pad workers. It's especially horrific as it occurs while Gene is casually discussing lunch.
"Bent Bird"
- When the crews of Apollos 24 and 25 are attempting to repair a fault in 24's engines, the engines ignite prematurely. Astronaut Harrison Liu, who is tethered to 24, barely has time to react before he is flung into the engine plume and is instantly incinerated.
"A City Upon a Hill"
- Ellen wakes up after being knocked unconscious by 24's engine igniting. She tries to pull Liu's tether in with no resistance whatsoever and finds nothing on the end of it except the torn and charred end of the tether.
Season 2
"And Here's to You"- The result of all the buildup up of guns being sent to the Moon: a bullet ignites the oxygen in a cosmonaut's suit and burns him to death over his entire body, with no one able to see what's going on until it's far too late to help.
"Triage"
- Several cosmonauts attack Jamestown and shoot out the window of Jamestown's command center, which causes a decompression that ejects a crewmember onto the lunar surface.
"The Grey"
- Right as Apollo and Soyuz shake hands, we see empty homes and buildings across the US while air raid sirens go off, reinforcing just how close the world is to nuclear war.
- Doubles as a Tear Jerker, but it's horrifying to watch as Tracy and Gordo die, with their blood seeping through the gaps in their duct tape spacesuits and their faces going bright red thanks to the heat from the sun.
Season 3
"Polaris"- The inaugural visit of the Polaris hotel is met with disaster when debris from a North Korean rocket hits a rotational thruster and causes it to spin faster. The guests start feeling the effects of heavier gravity, but dismiss it until it becomes too significant to ignore. Two technicians try to repair the thruster, but get hit by a support wire and are thrown off. If Danny hadn't fixed it himself, the hotel would have spun itself apart.
"Happy Valley"
- When Sojourner attempts to rescue the cosmonauts aboard Mars-94, one of the astronauts outside of the Sojourner is trapped when Mars-94 crashes against the ship and slowly rolls over the point to which her line is tethered. It then proceeds to slowly roll over her, crushing her like a rolling pin.
- Shortly after that, we get a delightful POV of the second astronaut outside the Sojourner who realizes too late that the snapped tether cable is whipping right toward him. It all builds up to the cable snapping right into his face and cracking his helmet, all from a first-person point of view.
"Seven Minutes of Terror"
- The "Seven Minutes of Terror" certainly lives up to its name.note Both Sojurner-1 and Popeye (landing craft for the Phoenix) attempt to land in the middle of a dust storm in an attempt to beat the other to the surface. Both craft are buffeted by winds and the dust causes critical navigation instruments to malfunction, effectively resulting in both spacecraft flying blind. To make matters worse, as Popeye nears the surface, Ed sees what look like mountains peeking out of the clouds of dust in front of them. This causes him to abort the landing attempt despite Danny's protests. As Popeye ascends back to orbit, the camera descends below the dust to show they were mere meters above rough terrain. Had they continued, it's likely Popeye would have crashed.
- Ed's poker game with Danny is pretty unsettling. Both men have volatile tempers, both are clearly pining after Karen, and unbeknownst to Ed, Danny is the man she cheated on him with ten years ago. As Danny asks increasingly pointed questions about the affair and their breakup, it looks like Ed is on the brink of figuring out the truth, and that the two will come to blows right on the eve of their Mars landing. The dim lighting in the room doesn't help.
"Bring It Down"
- Danny's downward spiral now results in disaster when he ignores orders to stabilize the water drill, and this triggers a marsquake and landslide.
"The Sands of Ares"
- In the aftermath of the landslide, both Helios astronaut Nick Corrado and cosmonaut Isabel Castillo have their helmets shattered by the debris and die from exposure. We see their shattered visors and frozen faces, not stuck in an expression of horror or sorrow, but instead a dull stoicism. It's not quite Total Recall but it's not pleasant either.
"Stranger in a Strange Land"
- Given how tiny the North Korean Mars lander is, it boggles the mind how they could possibly fit enough supplies for the flight there, plus for the stay there and for the flight back for two people. Given that they found space for a gun it seems plausible the intended outcome was a different one.
- During their rough landing, the cosmonauts can be seen reading from what appears to be printed instructions as they try to slow their descent down onto the planet. Judging from what we know about North Korea (and Soviet Russia's own early history with space travel), it isn't hard to imagine that the Colonel and his fellow cosmonaut were not properly trained on how to operate their lander due to their government's paranoia over maintaining secrecy, and were instead forced to work with instructions that were probably only given to them just as they were about to launch.
Season 4
"Glasnost"- Tom Parker's death. Getting impaled from behind during a spacewalk is not a pleasant way to go, if his agonized screams are anything to go by.
"Have a Nice Sol"
- The Ending. Imagine waking up, you turn on your TV to see that every network is only showing placeholder reruns or is not broadcasting at all. You go outside and the streets are eerily empty and quiet save to the occasional sound of a police siren. You go to a bakery to get your breakfast and when you ask the baker what's happening, he is telling you to go home immediately. You go to the newspaper vendor to see it be shutdown by police and get drawn into an altercation between the police and a crowd of people who seem convinced that the country's head of state has been overthrown. Things deteriorate into a riot and you intervene to prevent the vendor from getting beaten by an overzealous cop only to get arrested for your troubles and are likely now going to face a justice system controlled by the hardline communists who did the overthrowing. Welcome to the life of Margo Madison, who ran away from the FBI only to run headlong into the KGB.
"Brazil"
- Miles gets a beating from the CIA and KGB agents who were embedded in the Happy Valley base.
- After meeting with Margo and agreeing to escape to Brazil together, Sergei returns to his motel room with a bag of McDonald's for dinner. He sits down, makes sure his burger is perfect, and gets ready to take a bite...then he is shot in the head by a KGB agent, who then stages the scene to look like a suicide.
