History Main / ExplosiveDecompression

* Space doesn't do this under most circumstances, unlike what movies would have you believe.

** Poor human? At least the human doesn't have to clean a bunch of blood and guts out of his insides.
*** At least Starscream's still ALIVE.

** [[{{Badass}} He's Batman.]]
*** [[Webcomic/{{Shortpacked}} And he can]] [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace breathe in space.]]

* 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 sucked into space.(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.) 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. They, as noted above, are the only deaths to occur during spaceflight that were a direct result of decompression.

* ''{{Metalocalypse}}'' - in the second episode, producer Dick "Magic Ears" Knubbler is leaving a submarine recording session in a bathysphere that's rising way too fast - the camera lingers an agonizingly long time on him screaming until his eyeballs pop. During the end credits, we see he's been fitted with a pair of robotic eyes and he's feeling great.

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' mission "Clones in Space" is infamous for including an Explosive Decompression Table. This being ''Paranoia'', you die, but you can roll dice to randomly vary the exact manner in which you do so (exploding, charring, freezing, all of the above...)

* Averted in DoctorWho episode 'The Impossible Planet'; Scootie is launched into space (by Satan, sort of) when the section of the base she's in gets shattered, and her body is still completely intact; though a) this is a kid's show, so there was never going to be anything too gruesome, and b) her corpse is getting sucked into a Black Hole (hence the episode title, as said planet mantains a steady orbit around said Black Hole), so will likely result in 'Implosive Compression' before long.

* ''OneThousandWaysToDie'' reenacted a (probable) RealLife example where someone accidentally opened a decompression chamber with a scuba diver inside. The chamber went from several atmospheres to one in a split second, and the unfortunate occupant [[LudicrousGibs exploded all over the walls.]]
** Likely the Byford Dolphin incident.

** Averted somewhat more realistically in the ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'' book ''Federation''. When the shuttle bay explosively decompresses with the whole ''Enterprise''-D command crew inside, everyone has to be treated for injuries sustained due to vacuum exposure after Data rescues them by shoving everyone into a shuttle. Wesley's worst off: having not gone through Starfleet Academy at this point and therefore not knowing you're supposed to exhale, he briefly tries to hold his breath and suffers lung damage.
* 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.

* The Nazis did explosive decompression experiments.

* There is a myth that has been circling the US military for several years about a Sabot round fired from an Abrams tank into an M-113 with a sheep inside creating an explosive decompression that sucked the sheep through the exit hole but left the vehicle mostly intact. It is most likely a fabrication produced by the Army's Rumor Mill, as a Sabot round uses shrapnel from the armor it displaces to destroy its target, and the targets are anything but intact afterwards.

* This is one of the scientific experiments the Nazis carried out in the death camps, with a view to working out survival techniques for submariners at great depths, or for aircraft crews in planes that were going ever higher and higher and subjected to diminishing air pressure. Unlucky and dispensible test subjects were placed in atmospheric chambers and subjected either to massively increased atmospheric pressure, or to the sort of atmospheric pressure to be found in deep space. Quite often they were used to test prototype high-altitude flightsuits and survival systems, and most of the conclusions drawn above were in fact scientifically proven by a regime that viewed some people as expendable lab-rats. While nobody wants to admit it, this Nazi research was in fact vital to post-war America and Britain, who reaped the benefits of Nazi science for their own military use whilst keeping their hands clean and staying morally spotless.

* Averted in ''Film/{{Gravity}}''. [[spoiler:Ryan is startled to see a NotQuiteDead Kowalski outside the Soyuz hatch, which he opens even though she's not wearing her helmet, sucking out all the air but leaving her unharmed once he closes the hatch and raises the oxygen levels. Turns out its AllJustADream anyway.]]

* LarryNiven's works tend to invert the trope, making vacuum relatively easy to deal with, usually by not having the pressure drop from 'normal' to hard vacuum in a fraction of a second unless the hole is pretty damn huge. In one short story, a ship's atmosphere escapes, when the crew are suited but not helmeted. They survive easily, because they have stashed the helmets within arm's reach; the only harm they suffer is annoyance, since they can't eat real food until they can get air and take the helmets off.

* The Film/JamesBond film ''Film/LicenceToKill'' features a "Byford Dolphin" style decompression involving a henchman, a decompression chamber and an axe. This one gets frequently trimmed by the local MediaWatchdog.
** Averted in another Film/JamesBond film, ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'', which had Bond expel the villain out an airlock. He seemed to freeze quickly, but didn't explode. Considering how thoroughly the laws of physics were violated in the movie, it was surprising that they didn't go with that trope as well, though the {{Squick}} potential might have been a factor.
** ''{{Kick-Ass}}'' has a scene so similar it could be a ShoutOut.

* Averted in ''Supernova'' when Karl Larson sends the corpse of a man he just murdered out of a casualty chute. The body gets accelerated by a puff of gas but simply flies off into space without so much as even expanding.

* Averted in ''InspectorGadget''. After Gadget gets jettisoned out into space, all he needs to do to survive is equip his [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Gadget Space Helmet]].

* Inverted in [[VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight FTL:Faster then Light]]. Being exposed to space doesn't even hurt crew members unless there's not enough oxygen, and they don't die in any sort of bodily explosion.

* Ironically averted in ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2''. A Hackers RIG, in place of a proper helmet and armor, outfits you with a gas mask. And thick jacket. This may be a coincidence as the designers don't seem to mind unlikely feats of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yug-mNYCVLE&feature=BFp&list=WL28C8748A4A5C6DEB&index=2 Post]][[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouFailBiologyForever mortem]] antics, either.

* In Godwin's science fiction short story ''The Cold Equations'', 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 space suit, it certainly is a disturbing one.

** To be fair, at least the first time this happened, it was explicitly explained that this was a side-effect of teleporting beyond the safe range.

* Partially averted in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. When Dave Bowman has to reenter his ship through the airlock he realizes that he has left behind his spacesuit's helmet. After blowing himself out of his pod into the open airlock he has several seconds of workable consciousness until he can throw a valve to pressurize the airlock again. He apparently suffers no ill effects even though it appears that he attempted to hold his breath.