Silent Running Mode: Difference between revisions

** Specifically, a ship without its wedge powered is invisible to ''gravitic'' sensors; it continues to emit everything else (heat, EM, etc) as normal, and still presents a perfect target for radar and laser systems. However, lots of commanders in the Honorverse don't bother with anything but the gravitics, since gravitics operate at FTL speeds as opposed to light-speed EM-based methods, and it's assumed that any ship attempting aggressive action will have to have its wedge running. Basically, Honor's entire plan hinged on the Peeps being [[Too Dumb to Live|terminally lazy]] and failing to check their EM sensors. In a later novel, she and Michelle Henke [[Lampshade Hanging|hung a giant pair of fuzzy dice]] on the tactic for the benefit of a gaggle of hero-worshiping midshipmen, dissecting all of the myriad ways the Peeps could have spotted Honor coming light minutes away and turned her entire fleet into space junk with a single salvo. Paraphrased below:

{{quote|'''Michelle Henke:''' Dame Honor's tactic may not have been the single most outrageous, gutsiest, all-or-nothing, do-or-die throw of the dice in the history of the Royal Manticoran Navy. If it wasn't, however, I cannot imagine the action that ''was.''}}

* [[World War Z]]. Attempted during a battle between two Chinese submarines. Underwater zombies mess it up.

* Given that [[Glen Cook]]'s ''Passage at Arms'' is basically a [[Recycled in Space|Sci-Fi retelling]] of ''[[Das Boot]]'', it's not surprising at all that it has this trope up the wazoo. Cook even invents a special spaceship type for this, a so-called "climber", that "climbs" into the higher levels of hyperspace inaccessible to other types of ships. In his typical [[Shown Their Work]] fashion he amply lampshades that the main problem for such ships is overheating.

** ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' has its own "Balance/Enemy Below" episode that reference both the original and the remake. It was also a bit silly.

** The ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "Face of the Enemy" specifies that a Romulan ship's systems have to be perfectly balanced and calibrated in order for its cloaking device to work; this was exploited when a Federation sympathiser created an engine imbalance to 'poke a hole' in the cloak and allow Enterprise to detect it.

* The only time anyone was able to destroy a minbari battleship in ''[[Babylon 5]]'', Captain Sherridan was hiding his light cruiser in an asteroid field. He then had the nuclear warheads on board modified into mines, while the battleship kept searching for them. The human ship then send out a distress call, which immediately gave away their position and had the minbari chase right after them.

* The pilot episode of ''[[Firefly]]'', where the characters had to do this against both the Alliance and the Reavers, the former to keep from getting boarded and searched, and the latter to keep from getting raped to death, their flesh eaten and their skins sewn to the Reavers' clothing. And if they're very, very lucky, it'll happen in that order.

* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' series of games there is a perk named silent running that takes the phrase much more literally.

* Included in the [[Silent Hunter Series]], and frequently necessary for survival.

** Ditto for ''[[Star Trek Bridge Commander]]''.

* [[Shattered Horizon]] allows players to switch off the non-essential systems of their suits to avoid giving off light, showing up on radar, or being affected by EMP grenades. However, doing so disables the suit's thrusters, HUD, and audio simulation, so if you're spotted you're pretty much a sitting duck until you can get it switched back on.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** Interestingly, diesel subs are in general much quieter than nuclear boats. That's because on the nuclear sub the reactor cooling must be on ''all the time'', lest it suffers a meltdown, and cooling pumps tend to be quite loud. Also, being a large and heavy contraptions, they are exceedingly difficult to completely isolate from the hull. Even with the newest reactor designs, where the cooling could be driven by the natural convection on the low power settings, the rush of coolant itself through the tubes creates a fairly loud hum, and the reactor is even ''more'' difficult to completely soundproof. Diesel subs, on the contrary, can turn off virtually ''all'' their systems in a silent mode, the batteries or fuel elements are intrinsically silent, and electric motors on the low power produce virtually no noise. So the loudest sounds on a diesel sub would probably be from the crew moving around.

* See [http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm this] article. It was and to a lesser degree still is possible to move a whole strike fleet very close to the target if it doesn't give away itself. By the same token, planes may be run into an ambush where the first sign of a missile ship they see is a radar suddenly locking them from below.

 

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