History Main / ExplosiveDecompression

* The aforementioned [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident Byford Dolphin]] accident is perhaps the only real case of truly Explosive Decompression. [[{{Squick}} Be warned that the results are not for the faint of heart or those with an overly graphic imagination.]] Website/TheOtherWiki states: "Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which further resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section later being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door."

** On [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 British Airways Flight 5390]], the pilot's side windscreen blew out due to being fitted with the wrong size bolts, and ''took the pilot with it''. Incredibly, the plane landed safely with no loss of life (and yes, that includes the pilot).

[[caption-width-right:320:''"Take your helmet off in outer space..."'']]

** PlayedStraight in a NoodleIncident Dukat mentions to Sisko in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', which kept him from sleeping for a week.

* An unusual non-sci-fi example, an episode of ''Series/{{Castle}}'' deals with a victim of the week who dies from this. Much of the humour of the episode derives from Castle's belief that the victim must have been in space while Beckett's more down to earth about it. [[spoiler:It turns out to have been a vacuum-packing machine.]]

* If the airliner you're in decides to dismantle itself at 30,000 feet you can expect ruptured lungs to be one of the clues that an in-flight breakup occurred during your autopsy. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_781 BOAC Flight 781]] is one of the more notorious explosive decompressions to occur on a civilian airliner. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611 China Airlines Flight 611]] is what happens when improper, incomplete repairs on hull damage go unnoticed for 22 years. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 Aloha Airlines Flight 243]] did demonstrate that such an event is not necessarily completely fatal.
** And it should be pointed out that an explosive decompression event on an aircraft can also kill in other ways. Consider, for example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981 Turkish Airlines Flight 981,]] in which an improperly locked cargo door on a DC-10 opened by itself while the plane was in mid-air. The resulting pressure differential between the passenger cabin and the cargo bay immediately underneath caused the floor to buckle, severing numerous flight control systems. The plane almost immediately entered into an unrecoverable nosedive, with [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou predictable results]].

* Partial aversion in ''Literature/CiaphasCain: Death or Glory'', which is a little odd for the usually pretty soft-science ''[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer40000}} 40k]]'' setting. Cain and Jurgen end up in hard vacuum after a hull breach but don't pop, and Amberley Vail's footnotes point the popping body out as a myth. However, Cain holds his breath in vacuum and doesn't suffer lung injuries.
* ''Literature/{{Chindi}}'':
** A poor pilot's lungs explode instantly after his spaceship's hull suffers a major breach.
** But downplayed later when Literature/PriscillaHutchins is at risk of drowning when she throws up in her spacesuit while DramaticSpaceDrifting. Her spacesuit is just a personal forcefield, so her rescuer turns it off for a moment (causing the air to erupt out of her lungs, clearing her airways) then switches it back on again.
* In Godwin's science fiction short story ''Literature/TheColdEquations'', the young woman found stowed away inside of the EDS fearfully describes what she knows will happen to her if she's jettisoned through the airlock. Although it isn't a tremendously accurate picture of what would happen to someone stuck in the vacuum without a spacesuit, it certainly is a disturbing one.

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''VideoGame/Persona5'' during the spaceport level, when the Phantom Thieves travel back and forth through a vacuum between a number of different airlocks.
-->'''Futaba''': Welllll, apparently you’ll be okay for like thirty seconds if you keep your eyes and mouth shut. Which is weird, because honestly, I woulda thought we’d just explode out there.

->'''Futaba''': Welllll, apparently you’ll be okay for like thirty seconds if you keep your eyes and mouth shut. Which is weird, because honestly, I woulda thought we’d just explode out there.

* Creator/DouglasAdams realised long after the event that ''Radio/TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' should have been a far shorter series and ended approximately ten minutes into the first episode when Ford and Arthur are thrown through an airlock on the Vogon ship and into deep space. Even if they had been rescued twenty-nine seconds later, all that would have been recovered would have been a couple of corpses.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The crew of the spacecraft Soyuz 11 were killed when the ship's cabin depressurized during reentry. A valve was jolted open during the jettison of the service module, causing the cabin's atmosphere to be gradually blown into space.[[note]]The Russians didn't have their crews wear pressurized space suits at this time. They'd stopped a while back and only started it again after the incident.[[/note]] Their fates were not known until the craft landed; [[ReentryScare the ground crew lost contact before the fatal incident, which happens normally]]. CPR was attempted by support crews on the dead cosmonauts to no avail. As noted above, the three cosmonauts--Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev--are the only deaths to occur during spaceflight that were a direct result of decompression; technically, they're the only three humans ever to die ''in'' space.[[note]]Both the ''Challenger'' and ''Columbia'' disasters occurred ''considerably below'' the Kármán line, the officially-defined limit of where the lower atmosphere ends and "outer space" begins. Soyuz 1 was a crash landing at the end of a mission, and Apollo 204/Apollo 1 wasn't even a spaceflight accident. As of 2020, no other human has died for any reason during a spaceflight.[[/note]] With relation to this trope, footage of the aftermath shows their bodies to be relatively intact after roughly half an hour exposed to a vacuum.

* Inverted with the Gems in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''. The Gems are a race of space-faring aliens whose physical "bodies" are just HardLight constructs around their true forms of their gems, which comes with several perks. One of them is that they are capable of surviving in open space with absolutely no negative side effects. This also means that the Homeworld Rubies were still floating around in space in "Adventures in Light Distortion", weeks or even months after they got launched into space in "Back to the Moon".

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "Familyland", when the factions ruling over the sections of an amusement park are fighting each other and Steve pulls off a spaceman's helmet in the space-themed area, causing the latter's head to explode. This is entirely due to RuleOfFunny, as Steve can survive without equipment just fine.

* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget''. After Gadget gets jettisoned out into space, all he needs to do to survive is equip his [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Gadget Space Helmet]]. Possibly justified in that we're never shown exactly how much of Gadget's body is still organic enough to be affected by a vacuum.

** An Itchy and Scratchy cartoon in "Deep Space Homer" has the cat and mouse duo go into space. Scratchy's head blows up like a balloon; it explodes when Itchy pricks it with a pin.
** They got it closer to right in "Treehouse of Horror VII" when Homer accidentally fires Bill Clinton and Bob Dole into space - they struggle for a bit, then expire.
** In "Treehouse of Horror X: Life's a Glitch, Then You Die", Homer and Bart accidentally board a shuttle of obnoxious celebrities [[HurlItIntoTheSun headed for the sun]], then jump out the airlock to get away from Rosie O'Donnell. They blow up and pop like balloons.

* Averted in ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', when Spike transfers between ships using only earplugs for protection and a couple gunshots to adjust his trajectory. However, this aversion includes the common mistake of holding a deep breath, which in reality would cause serious lung damage as the depressurized air expands beyond lung capacity.

** Tying into the above, this might be why a lot of aquariums don't house deep-sea animals, as their usual habitat would be difficult to mimic, let alone, maintain in captivity.

* One demented ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'' comic in the Bronze Age of Comics had a villain trap Hal Jordan, a Girl of the Storyline and some kid on a spaceship with Hal missing his Power Battery and no charge in his ring. The kid finds what he thought was an exit, but was actually the airlock and he's tossed out into space by the villain. Hal and the girl can only watch as the boy gruesomely inflates and pops like a balloon.

* Narrowly averted in ''Legends of Webcomic/ZitaTheSpacegirl''. [[spoiler:Zita]] is in a flimsy glass escape capsule, which inconveniently loses its method of propulsion and cracks up, leaving [[spoiler:her]] afloat in space. The character is rescued by a conveniently-arranged DeusExMachina but is shown holding [[spoiler:her]] breath beforehand. According to Creator/ArthurCClarke that's not the wisest thing to do in that situation.

--->'''Dr. Goodhead''': Where's Drax?//

--->'''Sanchez''': Launder it.

However the only mistake was on Clarke's part, since Dave Bowman can be ''absolute unmistakably'' seen just before blowing the hatch, either forcefully evacuating his lungs-- or his ''bowels.''