History Main / ExactTimeToFailure

[[caption-width-right:350:[-"Reactor Explosion Timer destroyed.\\
Reactor Explosion Uncertainty Emergency Preemption Protocol Initiated: This facility will self destruct in two minutes."-]]]

** As a small note, expiration date is not the same as "best by" date. Expiration date means that food and medication becomes ''unsafe'' to consume or ineffective past a certain date. Best by only means that the food[[note]]best by is rarely used on medication[[/note]] will begin to lose flavor or texture (in most cases it will ''eventually'' become unsafe to eat even if the seal is unbroken).

** Also, Yeerks have to feed on kadrona rays every three days, or they die. It's suggested though, that it might not necessarily be exactly 72 hours, but just somewhere around that time limit. When Jake is infested, and the yeerk in his head is starving, the yeerk becomes delerious for the last few hours of his life, and Jake is along for the ride, so it's hard to judge exactly how much time has passed.

* Subverted in ''ShowdownAtCenterpoint'', the third book of Roger [=McBride=] Allen's Literature/TheCorellianTrilogy, set in the ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse''. Han and a couple Allies of the Week are falling towards a planet's surface on a ship (which is battle-damaged, and even at its best made the ''Millennium Falcon'' look cutting-edge and [[RagnarokProofing ultra-strong]]) with a none-too-reliable altimeter. When they reach three hundred meters, Han wonders how accurate it is. When they hit neg ten, he decides "not all that accurate." They finally hit the ground at about negative fifty meters.

* In NevilShute's novel ''No Highway'', Theodore Honey has determined, almost down to the hour, how long the Reindeer airliner will last before the tailplane experiences metal fatigue and breaks, dooming the aircraft.

* In the ''Series/MacGyver'' episode "Nightmares", an interrogator gives [=MacGyver=] a slow-acting poison, and tells him that if he doesn't get the antidote within six hours, his death will be inevitable. There is a prominently-displayed countdown timer. [=MacGyver=] gets the antidote with two and a half minutes to spare, and makes a full recovery. It's never explained how they were able to state the time limit so exactly -- the interrogator says that the poison was calibrated specially for [=MacGyver=], but that just changes the question to how they got the medical information about [=MacGyver=] they'd need for the calibration.

* ''The Subspace Emissary'' story mode in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'' has a boss fight with [[Franchise/{{Metroid}} Meta-Ridley]] while a bunch of characters are escaping a self-destructing ROB factory on [[VideoGame/FZero Captain Falcon]]'s Blue Falcon. The fight itself gives you two minutes to defeat Ridley before the factory explodes while you're still inside (and subsequently lose the battle).

** ''Mass Effect 2'' does this with the ''Arrival'' DLC. Shepard has just over an hour to [[spoiler:stop a [[EldritchAbomination Reaper]] invasion that will wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' uses this in both games. In the first, it's "Exact Time to Death by Neurotoxin". VideoGame/{{Portal 2}} plays with it like you wouldn't believe. The first timer is the same as above. When that fails, it switches to a timer for the reactor meltdown. Then the meltdown timer is blown up, so the facility activates a SelfDestructMechanism to ''[[BetterToDieThanBeKilled remove the uncertainty of not having a timer]]''.

* The oxygen timer in ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'' and ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'', Isaac will die when it hits zero, even if logically you could stagger on for a few seconds.
** Justifiably, as the last ten seconds or so, he's already choking for air. Presumably, the timer isn't indicating how long his oxygen supply will last, but rather how long he has until he's unable to continue due to asphyxiation.
* ''Manga/{{Golgo13}}: Top Secret Episode'' features "Exact Time to Nuclear Missile Launch" in its final battle. Noteworthy in that you actually lose ''not'' at zero, but when the timer hits 0:13.

--> '''Narrator''': "It's not too long now. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven...give or take a few seconds."

* In ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' attacking a [[BeePeople Hiver]] system witch contains a gate[[labelnote:*]] ie. All of them.[[/labelnote]] you have until the end of the combat round[[labelnote:note]] 4 minutes, although it can be changed at game setup[[/labelnote]] to destroy the gate before [[CurbStompBattle the entire Hiver navy arrives in the system]]. If a Hiver fleet is attacking your system you have two combat rounds since they need one turn to set up the gate and another to send in the fleet. Although the extra turn is not really as much of an advantage since the Hivers can only travel STL without a gate in your system they tend to send massive 'Nesting Fleets' in one big group.

* Subverted in ''ShowdownAtCenterpoint'', the third book of Roger [=McBride=] Allen's TheCorellianTrilogy, set in the ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse''. Han and a couple Allies of the Week are falling towards a planet's surface on a ship (which is battle-damaged, and even at its best made the ''Millennium Falcon'' look cutting-edge and [[RagnarokProofing ultra-strong]]) with a none-too-reliable altimeter. When they reach three hundred meters, Han wonders how accurate it is. When they hit neg ten, he decides "not all that accurate." They finally hit the ground at about negative fifty meters.

* ''The Subspace Emissary'' story mode in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'' has a boss fight with [[Franchise/{{Metroid}} Meta-Ridley]] while a bunch of characters are escaping a self-destructing ROB factory on [[VideoGame/{{F-Zero}} Captain Falcon]]'s Blue Falcon. The fight itself gives you two minutes to defeat Ridley before the factory explodes while you're still inside (and subsequently lose the battle).

* In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Wild Cards", SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker sets bombs over Las Vegas, giving the League 23 minutes to find and disarm them. ("Oh come on, what did you expect from me, a round number?")

* Aside from the end-of-game self-destruct runs, the ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' series has done this more than once. One example: in ''VideoGame/MetroidFusion'', the space station's computers predict that the overloading core will melt down in six minutes. Since it's a TimedMission, you have ''precisely'' six minutes before it does just that.

* ''The Subspace Emissary'' story mode in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'' has a boss fight with [[{{Metroid}} Meta-Ridley]] while a bunch of characters are escaping a self-destructing ROB factory on [[VideoGame/{{F-Zero}} Captain Falcon]]'s Blue Falcon. The fight itself gives you two minutes to defeat Ridley before the factory explodes while you're still inside (and subsequently lose the battle).

* In ''SaintSeiya'', some manner of contrived HeroicSacrifice (or enemy deathtrap) will kill Saori Kido, reincarnation of the Goddess Athena, WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve. And it's always ''exactly'' twelve hours. To the ''second''.

* In ''Film/FlashGordon'' the countdown is stopped mere seconds before ''the Moon crashes into the Earth''!

* Planet Namek during the Frieza Saga of ''DragonBallZ''; the planet was about to be destroyed, with "five minutes" mentioned at least once, for ''ten episodes''. Indeed, one episode had "two minutes" mentioned at the beginning, and "one minute" mentioned at the end. Later material reveals that Frieza [[AssPull pulled the number out of his ass.]] He had meant to instantly destroy the planet, but choked at the last moment and held back. He made up the "time remaining" [[IMeantToDoThat to make it seem like he did that on purpose]].

* In Dan Brown's ''AngelsAndDemons'' (predecessor to ''TheDaVinciCode''), the plot revolves around the search for a bit of antimatter contained in a magnetic bottle powered by a battery that will last exactly 24 hours, complete with a countdown timer displaying the time left to the second.
** Made slightly better in the film, where the countdown is replaced by a fairly realistic charge bar, not unlike one found on a cell phone.

* For any petrol or fuel vehicle, you can reasonably estimate how much you can travel before you absolutely run out of fuel.

** When the Doomsday Machine is activated, they mention that they have enough time to flee to a deep mine shaft, and make the necessary modifications to make it inhabitable, rather than saying something like "If we don't get underground in 72 hours, we're doomed!" Fitting, since a full nuclear winter wouldn't cover the entire earth in lethal radiation for a while after detonation.

* Happens a few times in ''Film/StarTrekGenerations''

** After the Enterprise-D is damaged by the Klingon attack, Geordie tells the bridge that "We're five minutes from a warp core breach."

* ''StarFox64'': Fortuna has a countdown till the bomb in the base goes off. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MWsxWDPhPY With correct timing]] you can have Fox go in to defuse the bomb a few seconds after ROB says that the bomb is exploding.

* Averted in the opening of ''MadWorld''. The BigBad unleashes a deadly virus across the city. He warns the citizens that everyone will be dead in 24 hours and that anyone can get an antidote as long as they kill someone. Seems like a pretty straight example of the trope so far, but then a member of the crowd collapses bleeding. The BigBad then suggests they hurry up as the virus' incubation time varries from person to person.
* ''{{Starcraft}}'' has a few missions in the brood war campaign where a character manages to estimate the exact amount of time until an important event will happen. These estimates are used as setups for timed missions.

* ''{{X-COM}} Interceptor'' averts the trope rather spectacularly: any mission in which time is a factor (defending a base, attacking an enemy ship about to go into hyperspace, or [[spoiler: trying to get back to normal space after firing a Nova Bomb at a star]], for example), you're given periodic updates as to how close you are to running out of time ("Enemy hyperdrive at 75% charge"), but the time can vary based on a number of factors, most obviously how long it took you to respond to the particular emergency.

* In a biological variant, Comicbook/{{Aquaman}} (and all other Atlanteans in {{the DCU}}) originally could survive exactly one hour out of water; after that point they fell down dead. This has been quietly done away with in recent years.

* In the last level of ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', Cortana is able to tell you just how long you have before the reactor you threw explosives in blows up, despite noting that it must have been more damaged than she thought it had been.

* Used, though played with a bit, in ''[[TimeCrisis Crisis Zone]]''. After beating the final boss, you manage to stop the nuclear reactor from going critical with seconds to spare. Despite this, the control room still explodes soon after. It's not clear if it's just the control room blowing up due to all the bullets and grenades being tossed around, or the reactor still causing some damage due to how close it was to exploding.
** Games in the ''TimeCrisis'' series always have an Exact Time To Failure in every segment. If you fail to kill all the targets and move on from your current spot within 40 seconds, you'll lose a life (presumably from being flanked). If it wasn't your last life, the timer is reset to 40 and you can continue. The intent is obviously to force the player not to abuse the hiding mechanics and be more aggressive.
** The original ''TimeCrisis'' is far less forgiving - instead of being reset to 40 seconds after every segment, time is instead added to the timer after each segment. The problem is that the timer keeps counting down even while the character is running to the next segment in cutscenes. Not only that, but running out of time is an instant GameOver instead of a life lost.

** Subverted in the true ending, when you discover that [[spoiler:it seemed like you'd spent more than your ninety minutes remaining after going through Door 9. It turns out that, as the Gigantic had sunk nine years before, the entire Nonary Game had taken place in the identical facility Building Q which is in the middle of a desert in Arizona. Played straight with being trapped in the incinerator though.]]