Design a Hazardrous Environment Station/Outpost/Base

[MKSheppard]

Okay, you are in charge of TriOptimum/OCP/Weyland-Yutani/Walmart/Halliburton, and you have been given a contract to either:

A.) Study incredibly dangerous alien species/study incredibly dangerous alien technology/study incredibly dangerous research.

B.) Alternatively, you could also be tasked with doing "ordinary" research; that is, nothing incredibly lethal, just your normal hazards involved in a research lab; the only proviso is that the facility has to be absolutely secure for various reasons (Rival corporations, governments, etc).

How would you design the system so that things can be carried out safely, and if something catastrophically goes wrong, humanity isn't in danger, and you will not have to rely on a Lone Hero (TM) to save the day.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The aliens would be in a separate building entirely than the people examining it. That's the first step.

[Vehrec]

Suspend the facility in the atmosphere of a Gas Giant, in event of a security breach or a specimen getting loose, that segment of the facility is cut loose and allowed to plummet down into the core of the planet where it will hopefully be crushed. If the tech or aliens being studied is super dangerous, a black hole will serve just as well as the core of a planet. This is the absolute failsafe.
Computers will be isolated, no computer in any section is directly connected to the main computer. Likewise, no work terminal has a direct connection to a section computer.
Physical containment varies, but all work is done by telesperiance. You watch through cameras as 100 meters or light-years away, robot arms tease your sample container open. In between you and the arms are at least several armored bulkheads, several of which have no openings in them at all. The connections are maintained only by means of certain electro magnets. Power failures in the central section that interrupt the power supply, and fail to bring axillary online withing 1.2 seconds cause the entire structure to seperate and engage failsafes(drop into the core!)

I think that's a good place to start. Throw a state of the Art security system, and one too dumb to be fooled on there, and you've got a winner.

[MKSheppard]

Multiple layers of self destructs which are activicated automatically upon a breach, no matter HOW minor.

Example:

Critter one breaks out of it's cage; and a SILENT destruct sequence begins.

The Scientists, etc do not know of the destruct. This is to prevent the Scientists, and other people from panicking and running around, etc.

The destruct runs on a 12 hour cycle; it can be reset for another 12 hours as needed until the escapee is dealt with.

Only three people can reset the destruct; and they're the head honcho, his deputy, and probably someone else.

Because lets be honest - the top three people in charge of the station in a sane and rational universe are NOT going to be leading the counter alien measures. If all three of them get killed, well, the situation is well beyond salvaging.

Addenum to this. We don't have just one primary method of scuttling the place; we have several.

Reactor Overload - Method 1
150 Megaton Fusion Charge - Method 2
3 x 50 Megaton Fusion Charges - Method 3
Conventional Explosives to crater the place - Method 4.

And they all run on independent widely separated power and control cabling runs.

Another idea is to have the place be on a space station orbiting a gas giant in an unstable orbit, which must be periodically "boosted" to. And the station has no fuel on board to do this. It's entirely dependent on regular supply runs to deliver the fuel for boost. And before any fuel is delivered; they have to exchange secret codes. As before, only the top three guys know the codes; and if they're all dead, the place is beyond salvage anyway...

[NetKnight]

A good rule of thumb for both is to put the facility in deep space (assuming a high enough technology level!). For the haz-mat study, load the facility with dead-man's-switch failsafes for everything from destroying the material, to steralizing the contents of a preticular section, to a full self-destruct. Make internal compartmentilization the rule of thumb. Keep human workers to a minimum, and use telepresence wherever possable. Establish a long quarintine for leaving personel, also in deep space, with the same safegaurds. Simple stuff like that. (Needless to say, there should be no transportation parked at the facility, to the point where, if the material is hazerdous enough, one should have point defence weapons floating around the station to kill suited indiviguals attempting to flee, etc.)

The quarintine and compartmentilization also aplys to the second senerio, and in addition, for both senerios, suplys should be either be so numorous that resuply is a non-issue, or else suply containers should make a one-way trip, from a ship parked a safe distance away. Also for both senerios, personel should be on long shifts, quite possably making only round trip to and from the facility durring their tour.

Simple counter-esponage procidures should be used for senerio two as well, such as giving unique information to different people, to detect leaks. Again, simple stuff like that.

The beauty of deep space as a base is 1: a lot of space for somthing nasty to cross to get out, and 2: no way for nosey neighbors to hide.

[MKSheppard]

(Needless to say, there should be no transportation parked at the facility, to the point where, if the material is hazerdous enough, one should have point defence weapons floating around the station to kill suited indiviguals attempting to flee, etc.)

Or as Klavo Says:

We have to defend against two things:

1.) Our possible outside hazard that the scientists are studying.

and

2.) The scientists themselves, who will of course panic -- and they are some pretty darn smart people

[NetKnight]

If the material is hazerdous enough, it'd be a good idea to have an external self destruct failsafe, ie. a warship is ready to nuke the place from a distance if it dosn't recieve a update signal every 6 hours.

[Patrick Degan]

I think the last time this scenario was proposed, I suggested a simple vivisection lab: the critters you bring there are already dead so you don't have to worry about security. If you're worried about infectious agents, have the actual autopsy work carried out by remote drones operated from a separate control room in which the scientists can monitor everything. Nothing gets out of the sealed chamber except for data and if the isolation chamber's integrity is somehow compromised or is about to be, a white-phophorus or fuel-air charge can carry out a quick sterilisation even if you lose some machinery in the process. It can be replaced. If you can have this facility off-Earth, do so: either a bunker on the far side of the moon or an L5 station and again, the samples are kept in one segment of the facility and the scientists and engineers running things are in a totally separate segment of the facility.

Really, why make this more complicated than it has to be?

[Hawkwings]

Have my station orbit a star or a black hole of something. But I don't want my research station to be such a deathtrap that everybody would be scared to work there.

So...

Have all samples brought to the examination station, and have a separate station for the researchers. Everything done by remote and robots. If something happens and the Flood get released or whatever, sterilize the sample room with radiation, or heat, or chemicals, or as a last resort, drop the station into the black hole and launch a replacement.

If by some miracle the sample infects the research staff, drop the station into the black hole immediately. No sense in letting the brainy people Macguyver a way to escape.

There's also a perimeter station located a reasonable distance away that is tasked with killing both stations if they do not send the proper counterresponse to daily challenges. Naturally the self-destruct mechanisms on both stations are inaccessible by the researchers, and operate through some means that they cannot control or influence. And they go off if the perimeter station hasn't OKed it in, say, four hours.

Supply runs shall come every week, and while they're there, they renew the challenge code for the perimeter station, which also features self-destruct.

Naturally, massive redundancy and alternate comm methods for all stations if the main comm array fails shorts out or something.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Build Research falcalty near something like a quantum singularity or gas giant or sun....

makes jettoning any outbreaks much nicer and more satisfying. Not to mention the occasional guy from accounting can be sent to the airlocks with a THIS IS SPARTA!!!

[Nephtys]

If I'm studying a remarkably pointy alien species or evil germ that causes intestines to catch fire, simple solution:

One scientist need to enter a 12 digit PIN every 24 hours into a computer or else the station automatically cuts out it's station keeping jets and falls into the local gas giant. Should this fail, the nuclear device will activate.

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh and I will be obeying ALL the evil overlord rules here. Including hiring children to see through any holes in my planning.

[Ezekyle Abaddon]

A smart AI would be good but might be under threat from hostile conditions so you could Implement a Bolo idea with the Restartus Protocols, which was the AI of the first Sentient Bolo but with so many safegards that if the Bolos primary personality was malfunctioning Restartus would kick in and replace it.

[Starglider]

In software engineering, security precautions that overly inconvenience the user are often worse than useless, because users will bypass them in order to actually get stuff done, often creating new risks in the process. The notion of doing everything with remote manipulators under total scrutiny with total isolation etc etc isn't compatible with actually getting science done, day-in, day-out for years. Work will proceed at a snails pace compared to a facility that is prepared to suffer the odd breech / accident / loss of personnel and concentrate on active response and perimeter containment (inherently more robust than internal passive containment measures anyway).

[Nyrath]

The legendary Gharlane of Eddore opined some precautions:

Since you're dealing with an unknown technology, and artifacts/lifeforms potentially engineered for purposes you're not aware of, you'd have to be REAL danged careful how you handled them. A special-purpose handling lab with a gigaton-nuke auto-destruct and remote-control handling gear would seem to be a minimal safe procedure, and you'd also have to dope out some way of picking up the pieces with no risk, and preferably no physical contact with your own ships and artifacts. Remote-control handling ships that scoop up parts, deliver them to the analysis lab, and then dive into the nearest sun, might be a good approach.

[Norseman]

It depends on what exactly it is I'm studying. If it's biological however I wouldn't bother with a truly exotic location, instead I'd build it on something like Pluto.

Why you ask?

The cold!

Each lab is housed in its own dome, separate from the rest of the camp, possibly a hundred miles apart. They'll have no independent power supply aside from emergency batteries; instead distant reactors supplies the power. If you're really paranoid they may supply power by way of laser beams, so that there's no physical connection whatsoever between the labs and the reactors.

Transport between the various domes is handled by unmanned vehicles; all of which are sterilized regularly, so no germ, or egg, or whatever can make it. Once more the cold is your friend, sensitive items can be placed in special protected containers, everything else is exposed to near absolute zero; which by the way is far more hostile than mere vacuum.

In case of emergency the scientists in the labs will retreat to multiple shelters that line the outer wall of the domes. When activated a shelter cannot be re-opened without the correct password, or a proper welding machine and a couple of days work. All of the shelters have both cryogenics pods, and a proper med bay. If there's a chance someone has been infected they'll immediately be placed in cryogenic suspension.

Life support etc is shut down, the atmosphere is evacuated, and everything that's outside of the shelters will freeze to a temperature roughly twenty degrees centigrade over absolute zero. Not even the Aliens can survive that, in fact no living being can, not even the ridiculously hardy Antarctic bacteria.

The rescue parties can open each shelter one by one, remove the people, stuff them into protective containers and take them to a quarantine centre (if necessary). They are then free to examine the frozen over remains of the lab, which will help them figure out whatever it was that went wrong.

In this way you combine the ability to examine things close up, and avoid ridiculous security procedures, with absolute security.

[Cykeisme]

What if the specimen has universal cross-species telepathic mind control like Niven's Slavers?
Is there any way to get around that?

[Starglider]

What if the specimen has universal cross-species telepathic mind control like Niven's Slavers?
Is there any way to get around that?

Install a friendly and helpful Appeture Science GLaDOS AI to run all your experiments.

[Teleros]

What if the specimen has universal cross-species telepathic mind control like Niven's Slavers?
Is there any way to get around that?

With enough time I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to analyse the means in which this telepathy works, and then build something to block it somehow. Course you need to get this done before you start experimenting etc, but in principle I don't see why it couldn't work.

[JGregory32]

My turn.

For my research station we have a four pods on long, (a couple of km) arms with a larger central pod in the middle spacestation. The four arm pods have umbilicals for air, water, and power but are not connected in any other way to the central pod/space station. The central pod houses the research/security/and maintenance staff while the outer pods hold the research labs where experiments are done using remote drones. In the event of catastrophic failure the umbilicals can be cut and the pod safely blasted from the main space station.
Also the heirarchy of the station shall be quite clear so we don't get any space opera style conflicts of authority between security and researchers that allow dangerous experiments to run wild.
The station itself is resupplied by remote drone using varried courses that launches a supply container towards a designated pickup area. This is to prevent others from plotting the course of the drone and figuring the stations location.
Changing station personal is easy, put them in a ship with no windows, in fact no windows on the station at all. (can't get a star fix if you can't see any stars)
for external security equip the station with several large point defense systems that also double as a last resort failsafe system. Finally don't tell anyone where the bloody thing is!

[NetKnight]

The station itself is resupplied by remote drone using varried courses that launches a supply container towards a designated pickup area. This is to prevent others from plotting the course of the drone and figuring the stations location.
Changing station personal is easy, put them in a ship with no windows, in fact no windows on the station at all. (can't get a star fix if you can't see any stars)
for external security equip the station with several large point defense systems that also double as a last resort failsafe system. Finally don't tell anyone where the bloody thing is!

Unless we're postulating FTL travel, hiding the base in open space is pretty much impossable. This is space, after all: any heat radiator in the system is quite detectable. If there are a large number of unregestered ships/stations out there, this could cause inconvience for the rival organization, but any ships would give themselves away via engine flares and motion, and I don't think a whole lot of stations are going to be built with the kind a secercy that would preclude them being discounted as well.

Actually, the inability of hiding in deep space is why I advocate building there. Knowlege of the existance of the facility is irrelevent unless this leads to a knowlege of its contents, and besides, any rival organization worth its salt would be able to discover the existance of the facility from industrial espionage back home. However, being unable to hide in space (combined with basic personel and internal security procidures) means that the rivals will know only about the existance of the facility: they can't do anything else, as any ship of theirs would be just as visable to the facility as the facility is to them.

Now if we take the sugestion of putting the thing on Pluto, then your secrecy procidures, modified for planetary operations a la The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, could be quite valuable.

[Zixinus]

Have the Security AI and the General Purpose/Research AI separate, and have the Security AI a closed system as much as possible. Also, have key personel a heart-trigger, so if they die, the alarm goes off, and the Security AI takes action and the General AI is shut to "backup" mode.

Make the Security AI five-fold as well, meaning that there are five copies of the same AI running at the same time. If one of them makes a decision that disagrees with the other copies, then it is ignored. This way, corruption of the security AI is made much harder.

[Big Orange]

Pick a remote, generic moonlet that has a dense iron density and build the hazardous R&D complex deep within it's crust, at the bottom of a mile deep elevator shaft connected to the surface compound that accomodates the research staff and support personnel (security, maintenance, administration etc). The R&D complex is fully sealed off - the one and only entry point is the elevator shaft, which can totally sealed off by many layers of blast doors, automatic weapon drones of various kinds and elevator car self-destruction. The surface compound on the moonlet is also heavily fortified by essetially being a bunker blockhouse with no windows, guarded by more weapon drones and is 100% wired up with electronic surveillance systems of all descriptions that is linked directly to the moonlet's main defence grid; a deep curtain of weapon satellites minded by manned military space station (the first and most formidable security checkpoint to the entire moonlet complex in having a full wing of space fighters, a small garrison of elite soldiers [who can be sent to the moonlet in emergencies] and being nuclear armed). The AI systems are heavily compartimalized and can be easily shut down to manual if anything goes wrong.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I just thought of another extreme...

let's build it on resort island world. Place so gaia world like that even Jason, Pinhead, and the Xenomorphs would kick back and enjoy a few Margaritas.

[Big Orange]

I just thought of another extreme...

let's build it on resort island world. Place so gaia world like that even Jason, Pinhead, and the Xenomorphs would kick back and enjoy a few Margaritas.

Maybe the Pred would kick back and gulp down those Martinis (in the movies the Predator creatures displayed humour and enjoyment), but I doubt the Flood, 'Xenomorphs' or T-Virus zombies would care much for a holiday restort and rip right through the fleshy holiday makers like a hot knife through better.

And revision on my R&D complex: the mile deep elevator accepts mutiple elvator cars for either shipping personnel or dangerous experiments. The shaft is the only entry point into the sealed in R&D complex proper, but it is wide open for the elevator cars with two seperate security portholes for personel and experiments (the shaft wide open for a clear line of fire for armed drones or security troops and has stepladders for escape or maintenance).