Humor: If Aliens obeyed real physics...

[Ted C]

A scene from Aliens, except the laws of physics are in force, and some of the characters actually know something about them...

***

Ripley: Lieutenant, what exactly do those pulse rifles fire?

Gorman: 10mm explosive-tipped caseless... standard armor piercing round... Why?

R: Well, look where your team is standing. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.

G: So?

R: If they fire their weapons in there, won't they rupture the primary cooling system?

Burke: OH!... yeah... this facility is basically one huge nuclear fusion reactor, so if you damage it, we're talking thermonuclear explosion and adios, muchachos.

G: You don't know much about nuclear fusion, do you?

B: Huh?

G: Nuclear fusion is an inherently difficult process to start and sustain. It requires high pressure, high temperature, and a constant flow of fuel to keep it going, so any damage we might cause would in all likelihood kill the reaction, not send it running out of control. Unless your engineers did something abysmally stupid, like put atomic bombs under the fuel supply...

B: Oh...

Apone [over radio]: Is something wrong, sir?

G: Nothing sergeant. Proceed as planned.

[Edited to be more in sync with the original -- thanks for the clue Shinova.]

[Kuja]

G: Nuclear fusion is an inherently difficult process to start and sustain. It requires high pressure, high temperature, and a constant flow of fuel to keep it going, so any damage we might cause would in all likelihood kill the reaction, not send it running out of control. Unless your engineers did something abysmally stupid, like put atomic bombs under the fuel supply...

But what if they did?

(Sorry, couldn't resist playing Devil's Advocate)

[Shinova]

Heat exchangers sound like cooling systems.

[NecronLord]

Actually in that instance they did. Those were the cooling towers, as evidenced by when the dropship crashes into one of them, the scenes with the glowing pipes and long time delay before meltdown and the emergency venting.

In reality that's what would have happened. It was mentioned that the remote shutdown systems were damaged, thus the only remaining way to shut down the reactor would be manually. In with the aliens.

[lukexcom]

Unless your engineers did something abysmally stupid, like put atomic bombs under the fuel supply...

Which (it being the most likely case) was ironically the best thing they did.

I like how Gorman's inexperience was portrayed in the movie. He must have been one of those ROTC types that got chosen for duty of platoon leader while having minimal experience (this being his second combat drop).

[Stravo]

Sometimes I think Gorman is given the shaft by fans, its not like he wanted to be inexperienced or get his platoon killed. He was an inexperienced commander, how do commanders get experience, by putting them into combat situations. The military is not a sea of vets, in fact in peace time the vast majority of the officer corps will be green. Now how can you get a platoon commander combat experience without gauranteeing the death of the platoon?

Why you send him on a relatively unimportant mission where more likely than not the cause will involve a downed trasmitter or some such. And if it is xenomorph involvement it will most likely be a bug hunt.

So in a way, Gorman's appoinment makes sense.

[Mark S]

This is another one of these situations where the writers conveniently left out standard safety controls for story affect.

What would happen? Rupture the cooling system, system leaks, loses pressure and flow, equipment turns off automatically. If the automation system network is up, everything shuts down. If the automation system is down, the other equipment in the system does not get cooling and heats up until its own safety controls turn it off too. Everything turns off well before explosions, assuming things would actually explode.

[lukexcom]

I have this theory....

Weyland Yutani had some damned paranoid execs, and fearing hostile takeovers of terraforming stations by other corporations (to take the planet, or steal corporate secrets, etc.), they rigged those atmospheric processing plants with some higher-yield nukes.

The nukes were rigged to detonate if there was combat inside the plant (among other things), and could not have been stopped unless a code was sent (radio, or whatever) by an executive.

OR....

Wierzbowski or the Sarge (killed/captured by the xenos inside the plant) secretly carried a concealed mini-nuke along with them, and it got set up for a 36 hour detonation. And by some miracle this one-stage device managed to use the tritium or deuterium fuel in the fusion plant as it's second stage.

[Sea Skimmer]

Heat exchangers sound like cooling systems.

A heat exchanger is a part of a nuclear plants cooling system. Generally you have two cooling loops. One goes through the reactor and becomes heated, and also radioactive. So you have a heat exchanger, which transfers the heat to a second loop. However the radioactivity is not exchanged. You then run the second loop through the turbines and cooling towers before being able to safely dump it back into your water supply.

The Soviets had the great idea of having only one loop, which went through the reactor before being dumped right back into a river. The result is that they now have a lake which will give you a lethal dose of radioactivity if you stand on the shore for an hour. They’ve also got some radioactive rivers and an area which is in general about ten times more contaminated then Chernobyl ever was.

[NecronLord]

This is another one of these situations where the writers conveniently left out standard safety controls for story affect.

What would happen? Rupture the cooling system, system leaks, loses pressure and flow, equipment turns off automatically. If the automation system network is up, everything shuts down. If the automation system is down, the other equipment in the system does not get cooling and heats up until its own safety controls turn it off too. Everything turns off well before explosions, assuming things would actually explode.

Bishop said that the crash destroyed the shutdown systems.

"Can't you shut it down?"

"No, the crash did too much damage."

[Mark S]

They couldn't shut it down through the system. The equipment itself would still have failsafes built in to shutdown on the event of a coolant leak.

[NecronLord]

Considereing a millitary transport with all kinds of munitions on it smashed into the station, I'd say it did well to even have the emergency venting.

[Mark S]

I'm talking about hardwired shut-off switches at the head end equipment. They would cut the flow of power to the equipment as soon as it was out of safe working limits and THAN the automation system would start venting. To damage these, the crash would have to damage the whole reactor beyond operation anyway and if it somehow managed to just affect a shut-off, well, the switch would fail open and the system would shut off. The reactor wouldn't just keep chugging along with no cooling. Not unless someone by-passed the safeties.

[NecronLord]

Perfectly possible to send up a modern fission reactor by slamming an aircraft into it and filling it with acid dripping aliens. Not that much harder to do with a fusion reactor.

[Mark S]

Explain that to me. How does crashing a plane into a reactor cause all of its safety controls to fail yet allow the rest of the reactor to remain intact to continue operating until catastrophic failure? How does crashing a plane into a reactor cause the reactor to blow up like a bomb? Especially a reactor the size of the one shown in the movie. Is there an examle of a modern nuclear reactor blowing up from a plane crashing into it? And the Alien's acid blood corroding the wiring and piping would just be one more thing that would shut the whole system down before total failure.
The other part of this is, the drop ship didn't even crash into the reactor. It crashed at the main entrance to the reactor facility where everyone was waiting. From there its destruction could easily have downed the network link to the colony (Making it impossible for the Marines to remote shut down as they said) but not caused damage to head end equipment within the facility.

[JodoForce]

so... were you going to write a story Ted?

[Sea Skimmer]

Explain that to me. How does crashing a plane into a reactor cause all of its safety controls to fail yet allow the rest of the reactor to remain intact to continue operating until catastrophic failure? How does crashing a plane into a reactor cause the reactor to blow up like a bomb? Especially a reactor the size of the one shown in the movie. Is there an examle of a modern nuclear reactor blowing up from a plane crashing into it? And the Alien's acid blood corroding the wiring and piping would just be one more thing that would shut the whole system down before total failure.
The other part of this is, the drop ship didn't even crash into the reactor. It crashed at the main entrance to the reactor facility where everyone was waiting. From there its destruction could easily have downed the network link to the colony (Making it impossible for the Marines to remote shut down as they said) but not caused damage to head end equipment within the facility.

Yes, clearly the massive explosion and resulting cooking off of considerable amounts of ordinance and fuel couldn't possibly have affected a larger area then exactly where the craft crashed. Nor could something called "shock".

Hell for all we know the colonists might have bypassed some safety systems in an effort to blow the reactor and wipe out the Aliens and themselves.

[Mark S]

So you’re telling me that the fuel and ordinance from the drop ship exploded in such a controlled manner as to tear through the station but not vapourize the marines AT THE CRASH SITE that were waiting for it? And that this magical explosion did all this damage but somehow left the station able to continue operating unsafely until it blew itself up? How can this thing continue to run with ruptured,or even vapourized, piping sytems and power cables? As for the shock wave, are you telling me that they didn’t design the station to withstand earthquakes?

Someone tampering with the system is a possibility. That and extremely negligent design.

[NecronLord]

Of course it's negligent design. This is Weland Yutani. So cheap they were bought out by Wal-Mart.

[Mark S]

Of course it's negligent design. This is Weland Yutani. So cheap they were bought out by Wal-Mart.

Damn that Wal-Mart! They've got their fingers in everything!

[consequences]

*Walmart Zombie mode* "Join us, join us"

[Ted C]

so... were you going to write a story Ted?

Not really, but this seemed a better forum than the others for re-writing part of the original script.