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No OSHA Compliance: Difference between revisions
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** One steel manufacturing plant also gets its due. In turn-of-the-century Chicago there are very few non-hazardous industrial jobs, since there are few if any capitalist motives to keep low-level employees safe and healthy; as soon as one worker gets sick or injured there are hundreds if not thousands of desperate immigrants lined up at the factory gates to take his place.
* Most of the illustrations of machines and architecture in the works of Dr. Seuss are full of tall, rickety buildings as well as staircases and walkways with no guardrails.
* If students at regular boarding schools faced similar dangers to what's considered normal in Hogwarts in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series, parents would be in a perpetual state of hysteria. Though it has to be said that since even most major injuries can be fixed with a swish of a wand or a gulp of potion, people's notion of danger in the magical world is very different from the [[Muggle]] world.▼
* While it's not the site of a fight scene, the titular school of the ''[[Wayside School]]'' series of books exemplifies this trope. The setting is a 30-classroom school "accidentally" built thirty stories high, and missing a nineteenth story. The school can start to sway as a result of high winds (as per the second novel in the series, ''Wayside School is Falling Down''). The main characters, a class of students on the thirtieth floor, are led onto the rooftop by their teacher. A fire drill is also taking place, and the students believe that no one will be able to rescue them. However, it's only a herd of cows that have somehow managed to get onto every floor of the building. Poor planning, at that.
** You can also fall out of the window if you're too close to it and fall asleep. Luckily, the school is so tall that there's plenty of time for Louis the yard teacher to run up and catch you.
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* The third book of ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' features a narrow, wobbling bridge without handrails.
* [[Robert Reed|The Great Ship]] series has very little in the way of OSHA compliance - ships and trains will accelerate at a hundred Earth gravities, turning the passengers into what amounts to a bag of blood and bone dust, until the passenger's [[Healing Factor]] kicks in.
* In ''[[Foundation]]'', it is mentioned that "some fool tampered with" a large nuclear plant, and, depending on the edition, either leveled or contaminated half a city. An earlier story featured a badly repaired station doing the same to half a planet.
* The issue is averted in Swedish diselpunk novel ''[[Iskriget]]'' in which Johnny, a protagonist who usually works in a civilian airship, comments negatively on the cramped crew spaces inside a Russian military ice-cruiser.
▲* If students at regular boarding schools faced similar dangers to what's considered normal in Hogwarts in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series, parents would be in a perpetual state of hysteria. Though it has to be said that since even most major injuries can be fixed with a swish of a wand or a gulp of potion, people's notion of danger in the magical world is very different from the [[Muggle]] world.
== Live-Action TV ==
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** Computers [[Explosive Instrumentation|explode]] whenever the ship is hit by weapons fire or an inverse tachyon something or other, even though these computers are just terminals that wouldn't require more power than is needed for basic processing power, a network interface, and display.
*** There is a real life technical explanation for this. An electrical engineer on a major Trek message board explains the real world reason for "Exploding Consoles of Doom" [http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=131768 here]. Of course, the engineer seems to be assuming that the consoles are full-blown mainframe computer systems complete with DC power feeds. In reality, they are little more than touchscreen panels for operating systems that reside elsewhere in the ship. Generally-speaking, one does not worry that a PC or an iPad sitting in a charger will explode and send a user hurtling across the room should a bolt of lightning strike their poorly-grounded house.
** In one episode of the series ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' Worf is paralyzed when a barrel of some substance, which is stored high above the floor without proper bracing, falls on him. Not only is the design faulty, in allowing such a container to fall (if you must place such an object in such a dangerous place, at least have it held by straps that are strong enough to withstand anything other than the entire room being destroyed, or at least major damage, rather than the minor shake the room was subjected to), but the fact that there was no inquiry into safety measures and procedures after a major injury to a crew member only heightened the unreality of running a Star Fleet in such a manner. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, just that it wasn't seen in the episode, since that would have been boring. Considering that Worf is Klingon, he would be able to take much more punishment than a human. That barrel would probably have killed a member of any other species, with the possible exception of a
*** The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series, which has many Trek references, repeatedly shows what would really happen if "inertial compensators" failed even momentarily on a ship travelling a good portion of light speed; everyone in the ship gets turned into "strawberry jam". Minor structural damage.
** Federation starships explode if someone sneezes in their general direction. It was stated in one first-season episode of ''Next Generation'' that the ship could be destroyed by one man in the engine room with a hand weapon (and it almost happened!). The exposed warp core is because of [[Rule of Cool]] in set design. Avoided on some ships (e.g. ''Defiant''-class), which are actually MEANT for shooting stuff as their main purpose rather than one of the things they can do, where they have a force field surrounding their warp core.
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** Geordi and Data often perform experiments involving hazardous materials ''in Engineering''. Not only that, the only separation between them and the material is a container (which always breaks) and a force field (that just barely holds).
** ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' had many scenes set on the multilevel Promenade. The second floor safety railings went from two bars to one. Neither setting stopped people from falling over and dying (though Jake and Nog got scolded a lot for hanging over them). The elevator to the control center/bridge had no safety cage!
** [[Holodeck Malfunction]]s. Statistically, these Virtual Injury\Death Traps have to be at ''least'' as dangerous as the Borg, Klingons or Romulans. Despite 'Safety Protocols', these suffer from frequent [[Failsafe Failure]], or better yet, are often disabled by the Senior Officers, leading to the either the main characters being A) trapped B) injured or killed C) nearly injured or killed D) The Near Destruction of the Enterprise. However, despite clear evidence that even entering one of these things about as safe as playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets,
*** It's rather remarkable that if holodecks existed today they would probably be classified as "thrill rides" due to the potentially exciting nature of the content available. Thrill rides require an operator to watch the ride and stop it in an emergency - even mundane kid's rides! Holodecks have no such thing - the ''computer'' doesn't even stop the simulation when ''it'' renders a bullet which could kill a user and then fires that bullet at a user!
*** There's also the matter of characters purposefully turning off the safety protocols in the holodeck. The first time we see this (TNG's ''Descent'') the computer says that to disable the safety protocols requires the authorization of at least two senior officers and warns about the danger. By [[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]] Seven of Nine was able to disable the safety protocol by herself with a vocal command, no authorization needed, no warning from the computer. In addition you would think the system would notify someone that the safety protocols have been disabled given how dangerous the holodeck can be, yet in another Voyager episode B'elanna Torres was able to engage in various [[Death Seeker]] activities with the safeties off and the crew was none the wiser. They only found out by actively searching through the holodeck records after B'elanna had seriously injured herself.
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* The bridge of the [[Organic Technology|biomech]] spaceship ''[[Lexx]]'' is a platform jutting out above a 100-story chasm. Many, many guest stars fall to their deaths here. No, there isn't so much as a guardrail. Justified because the Cluster, where it was built, has little to no concern for human life. You have to pay for tardiness with your own organs, for Christ's sake.
* In the original ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'', after much trial and error the Cylon fighters realize they can do more damage to the capital ship by [[Ramming Always Works|crashing into it]] than by shooting. They succeed in setting fire to the flight deck, causing much panic before someone remembers that they're in space and can just pump in [[Fridge Logic|some vacuum from outside]]. The problem? This will kill the civilians unless bulkheads can be closed to contain the fire. Where is the switch for the bulkheads? On the outside surface of the ship. Who is the technical crew assigned to performing a dangerous EVA to throw the switch? The two senior combat pilots. One comments on the urgency of their task, to which the other responds, "I know, that's why I disconnected our safety tethers, they'll only slow us down."
* Lampshaded in ''[[Farscape]]'', after the (admittedly scavenged) Zelbion defence shield explodes, Crichton shouts "Haven't you people ever heard of ''FUSES?!''"
* The ''[[Ice Road Truckers]]'' spinoff ''IRT: Deadliest Roads'' demonstrates real life examples of this on the high-altitude roads of India and Bolivia. One-lane roads with no guardrails, 1000+ foot dropoffs, and tight spots where it's nearly impossible to get through without the dirt crumbling beneath at least one tire, are distressingly common. And that's to say nothing of the near-suicidal local drivers that our heroes encounter.
* ''[[Six Feet Under]]'' The 1st season dough mixer accident seems far-fetched; there simply should have been more safety precautions on a piece of industrial equipment like that.
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