Questions regarding basic gear in fiction

[Elheru Aran]

Oh, yeah. Not disputing that. You would have a certain expectation that at some point you'd have to fix your own stuff. In an universe like Stargate, where the technology is all derived from the original Ancient tech, one could expect to see a certain standardization; Carter and Daniel certainly seem quite at home tinkering with all those crystals and such after the first few seasons. We never see any actual Goa'uld screwdrivers, though. But I suppose that's because they don't *use* screwdrivers... a rather interesting distinction from human tech. Ancient/Goa'uld stuff seems to be simply fitted together, panels locking into each other and so forth, while humans screw and unscrew stuff.

Star Trek on the other hand... well I don't know what the hell they use. Glowy sticks?

[Borgholio]

Star Trek on the other hand... well I don't know what the hell they use. Glowy sticks?

Actually yes. Most of their tools are either an electric razor-looking thing with a glowy stick on the end, or a tricorder. I can't recall ever seeing a screwdriver used on a starship before.

[Elheru Aran]

Star Trek on the other hand... well I don't know what the hell they use. Glowy sticks?

Actually yes. Most of their tools are either an electric razor-looking thing with a glowy stick on the end, or a tricorder. I can't recall ever seeing a screwdriver used on a starship before.

Right, so what the hell are the sticks doing? Manipulating electrons? Moving shit with miniature tractor beams? It doesn't make sense. It's like all their technology is just a magic-box powered by a gestalt belief that when you turn it on, it does stuff.

At least there are a few scenes where they open stuff up and take it apart, but usually it appears plug-and-play like Stargate crystals. Pull the old part out, stick the new part in, you're done. No screwing around. Guess it just holds itself together with who knows how much antimattery shit running through it.

[Borgholio]

At least there are a few scenes where they open stuff up and take it apart, but usually it appears plug-and-play like Stargate crystals. Pull the old part out, stick the new part in, you're done. No screwing around. Guess it just holds itself together with who knows how much antimattery shit running through it.

In ST:FC you see Picard pulling apart a phaser emitter to try and modify it for use against the Borg. He pulls it apart, pops a crystal into a slot, then points his glowy stick at it and expects it to do something. I wonder if we could make the argument that Star Trek tech has gotten to the point where they can no longer think primitive. Remember in SG-1 how Thor was discussing how they had become so advanced, they never would have thought about building or using anything like a machine gun to fight the replicators with?

Now that I think on it, that could explain a great deal. In Voyager's Year of Hell, it was a big deal that they were able to develop a physical door to seal compartments air-tight when forcefields failed. An airtight door. Big fucking whoop.

[Irbis]

A multitool (plus knife if that is not in the multitool), a light-source and perhaps a bit of paracord-like string would benefit many of your typical TV hero.

Multitool? Knife? Screwdrivers? Light source? Tweezers? Can opener? Why bother, instead of dragging all that stuff you can pick something really universal and actually older than most of this board's users

[Elheru Aran]

That Victorinox is actually what I was picturing. My dad has a couple of those. The only downside is it's a bit chunky, while multi-tools can be a little more trim depending on the design/brand. Plus those pliers are just kinda sad.

[Irbis]

That Victorinox is actually what I was picturing. My dad has a couple of those. The only downside is it's a bit chunky, while multi-tools can be a little more trim depending on the design/brand. Plus those pliers are just kinda sad.

Uh, that was just a joke.

And anyway, seriously now - military Victorinox, the type Germans or Swiss buy, with large blade, blockade and reinforced frame, is actually very ergonomic while still having a dozen tools. I have one and you can actually try to disassemble laptop, open military soviet can, fillet a chicken, repair bike or start stuck engine with it (I actually did):



And yes, I agree with OP, if your protagonist has problems that would be solved with such simple tool you should have really good reason why he isn't carrying one or invent better problem instead of being lazy.

[Khaat]

Some audiences would rather there be a problem (tension-building) solved through "Human Ingenuity(tm)!" than an ounce of prevention.

[Typhonis 1]

I'm surprised something like this https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jDauMk ... 3994.0.png

Hasn't shown up in Abrams Trek yet. I mean even in Fallout it is damn useful...built in map and location finder. Radio receiver, data storage and playback. Stores and monitors your medical data, build in radiation detector. Think what one of these could do for an away team? I mean add in tricorder and communication abilities and viola. Also given just about every Trek race, shown, has a humanoid template, they all can use it.

[Elheru Aran]

Probably because the handheld tricorder does pretty much the same thing. Useful concept, though. They have something very similar to that in The Martian, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are IRL versions for spacesuits in the works. A little more limited of course...

[Simon_Jester]

Right, so what the hell are the sticks doing? Manipulating electrons? Moving shit with miniature tractor beams? It doesn't make sense. It's like all their technology is just a magic-box powered by a gestalt belief that when you turn it on, it does stuff.

That, or they're multirole devices that can do things a normal screwdriver is not capable of (like manipulating fasteners of arbitrary shape, wiggling loose things that have rusted shut, removing fasteners in palces where there isn't enough clearance to get a tool in, popping open the seam of a weld without damaging the actual metal plates, et cetera).

There are a lot of applications for a tool that works by manipulating force fields. Picture a primitive version of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

In ST:FC you see Picard pulling apart a phaser emitter to try and modify it for use against the Borg. He pulls it apart, pops a crystal into a slot, then points his glowy stick at it and expects it to do something. I wonder if we could make the argument that Star Trek tech has gotten to the point where they can no longer think primitive. Remember in SG-1 how Thor was discussing how they had become so advanced, they never would have thought about building or using anything like a machine gun to fight the replicators with?

Now that I think on it, that could explain a great deal. In Voyager's Year of Hell, it was a big deal that they were able to develop a physical door to seal compartments air-tight when forcefields failed. An airtight door. Big fucking whoop.

To be fair, there are a LOT of respects in which a forcefield is preferable to a normal door... and only a few in which a normal door is preferable to a forcefield. The only case I can think of like that is "if the power fails." And if the power fails, and any backup power systems fail, and you've got hull breaches at the same time, there's a good chance you're screwed for other reasons than just "all our air is rushing out."

So yes, it's entirely possible given their proven ability to generate a wide variety of containment force fields that by the time the Intrepid-class is built, they simply don't bother building ships with airtight internal doors. The backup to the powered forcefield is likely to be another powered forcefield- on a battery backup. Just as in real life, if a soldier carries a "backup" weapon to their gun, it's probably going to be another gun, not a sword or a spear for "just in case guns don't work."

Probably because the handheld tricorder does pretty much the same thing.

Indeed. It's sort of like asking why in real life most people don't strap their smartphones to their wrists and get a hella advanced (if bulky) wristwatch. You could. Some do. But it turns out that having a device the size of a pack of cards strapped to your wrist is somewhat less useful than having it be handheld.

[Sea Skimmer]

To be fair, there are a LOT of respects in which a forcefield is preferable to a normal door

Such as? And how many of these would actually be better then having a simple 14.7psi proof pressure door reinforced by a force field that doesn't have sextruple redundant cable runs? How many of these advantages would not turn into an argument for a ship made completely out of force fields and people in space suits? Maybe that would make sense in some universes, but clearly not in Trek.

... and only a few in which a normal door is preferable to a forcefield. The only case I can think of like that is "if the power fails." And if the power fails, and any backup power systems fail, and you've got hull breaches at the same time, there's a good chance you're screwed for other reasons than just "all our air is rushing out."

A physical door has the capability to degrade gracefully and cannot be negated by damage to remote systems, such as that infamous "klingon pulls cable out of the wall' scene of comedy. A powered force field does not have graceful degrdation, at least not by the rules you find in almost all sci fi I can think of which uses force fields. Certainly doesn't in Trek. If power fails it collapses instantly with no functional warning. That alone makes the field inferior to an actual door. Also loss of power can easily be the result of damaged power cable runs, rather then an actual lack of any functional power what so ever on a ship. Funny enough I think you'll probably want your doors to work the most closest to the site of damage, which could also be most likely place to have damaged power systems.

Of course in reality for good warship design you should simply minimize doors in the first place. This is pretty much utterly never the case in fiction, but there is no reason why conventional warship design concepts involving unpericed bulkhead runs and a damage control deck for lateral movement cannot apply to space ships (though perhaps with multiple damage control decks). Indeed spacecraft have even less reason to allow unlimited fore-aft movement then surface warships, since zero gee would make moving even heavy items around long bulkheads very easy anyway.

So yes, it's entirely possible given their proven ability to generate a wide variety of containment force fields that by the time the Intrepid-class is built, they simply don't bother building ships with airtight internal doors. The backup to the powered forcefield is likely to be another powered forcefield- on a battery backup.

Yup, so your now a battery away from fail, instead of having a system which works indefinitely even when the ship is laid up. That's stupid. Its nearly akin to saying a ship on water doesn't need bulkheads at all because it can just rely completely on powered pumping to avoid sinking. Or that enough fire sprinklers mean we don't need to worry about people lighting things on fire.

Just as in real life, if a soldier carries a "backup" weapon to their gun, it's probably going to be another gun, not a sword or a spear for "just in case guns don't work."

I'm not sure how this statement is even relevant. In real life soldiers do not typically carry backup weapons, real life is not like video games where everyone gets a pistol, and also gets magazines which magically restack themselves so the next one you load is always full. They carry weapons which are as reliable as possible in the first place, and as much ammo as possible for them, which a backup weapon would detract from. Adapting an inherently less reliable protective concept and then insisting you can engineer more complexity to make it more reliable is just engineering failure 101.

Indeed. It's sort of like asking why in real life most people don't strap their smartphones to their wrists and get a hella advanced (if bulky) wristwatch. You could. Some do. But it turns out that having a device the size of a pack of cards strapped to your wrist is somewhat less useful than having it be handheld.

A lot of military interest exists in wrist devices internationally. The point is such a thing requires less overall motion from the user to employ, when their hands are normally holding a weapon, and would like to stay on or near the weapon as much as possible, compared to grabbing something from a pocket and then putting it back. Many drawbacks certainly exist to this approach, but the issue is more complex then just handheld vs wrist.

[Sea Skimmer]

I think gear can break down into a couple basic classes. 1) gear absolutely required to conduct a mission. That could be as simple as a sword. 2) gear which enables to user to overcome combat/enemy difficultly, force multiplier being another term for this, sensors, grenades, and ilk fall here. 3) gear intended to improve survival and comfort which is where things like a raincoat would fall.

Most fiction only covers 1) and then uses the lack of 2 and 3 for cheap plot points. However in certain even many settings it can actually make sense to be rather lean on that sort of gear. The problems come up when the gear is lacking out of ignorance or shear indifference rather then being calculated in some manner.

[Elheru Aran]

A wrist device could work in a military context, or other contexts where dexterity is limited (having to press buttons while holding something in the same hand, doing it through spacesuit gloves, etc). It's a matter of specific application versus general purpose, which can actually cover a lot of this particular subject... a screwdriver is a pretty specific tool.

[Borgholio]

Just as in real life, if a soldier carries a "backup" weapon to their gun, it's probably going to be another gun, not a sword or a spear for "just in case guns don't work."

Bayonet?

[Elheru Aran]

Just as in real life, if a soldier carries a "backup" weapon to their gun, it's probably going to be another gun, not a sword or a spear for "just in case guns don't work."

Bayonet?

These days nobody gets more than a couple hours of how to use the bayonet in its intended purpose at boot camp. It's far more likely to get used as an utility tool than anything else, and I wouldn't be surprised if much of the soldiers and Marines issued theirs just never wear them on the field, going instead with a lighter EDC knife.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, there are a LOT of respects in which a forcefield is preferable to a normal door

Such as? And how many of these would actually be better then having a simple 14.7psi proof pressure door reinforced by a force field that doesn't have sextruple redundant cable runs?

Force fields honestly seem to withstand most kinds of pressure and attacks better than purely material barriers in Star Trek. Now, using a force field and a door would be better than a force field alone, but that's sort of like saying a belt and suspenders is preferable to having a belt or suspenders.

How many of these advantages would not turn into an argument for a ship made completely out of force fields and people in space suits? Maybe that would make sense in some universes, but clearly not in Trek.

I wouldn't be surprised if naval architecture in Star Trek's "verse" ultimately trended in that direction for insanely advanced races, at the 'evolve into energy beings' end of the scale.

In the interim, though, I suspect the answer is "we don't have enough power to generate a ship that is literally made out of force fields."

... and only a few in which a normal door is preferable to a forcefield. The only case I can think of like that is "if the power fails." And if the power fails, and any backup power systems fail, and you've got hull breaches at the same time, there's a good chance you're screwed for other reasons than just "all our air is rushing out."

A physical door has the capability to degrade gracefully and cannot be negated by damage to remote systems, such as that infamous "klingon pulls cable out of the wall' scene of comedy. A powered force field does not have graceful degrdation, at least not by the rules you find in almost all sci fi I can think of which uses force fields. Certainly doesn't in Trek. If power fails it collapses instantly with no functional warning. That alone makes the field inferior to an actual door. Also loss of power can easily be the result of damaged power cable runs, rather then an actual lack of any functional power what so ever on a ship. Funny enough I think you'll probably want your doors to work the most closest to the site of damage, which could also be most likely place to have damaged power systems.

I honestly think the problem here is that Trek naval architecture works on Hollywood drama rules, so no system is particularly safe or sensibly designed.

It's not like there aren't other kinds of force fields in Trek that fail gracefully with warning of failure (it's "shields down to forty percent" not "shields are fine until they suddenly vanish into the ether without warning"), after all. But internal security/environmental force fields normally do not behave that way... and bluntly, if the Enterprise relied on physical containers for those same internal security and environmental roles, I doubt they'd behave that way either.

Instead of force fields going 'pfft' when a Klingon headbutts the wall or whatever, you'd see 'security doors' that open when you kick the panel or shoot the lock (a la Star Wars). You'd see all kinds of unobtainium metal doors that turn out to be totally vulnerable to the random acid or energy field of the week.

So I still think that all else being equal in terms of how securely designed the equipment is, there is a lot to be said for force fields as a means of securing and containing things aboard ship given how flexible and adaptable force fields in Star Trek appear to be. For instance, you can use force fields as a very efficient and discriminate means of containing a fire (Up the Long Ladder, season one of TNG). You can secure a dangerous creature immediately, restraining it without having to shoot it. You can rapidly slap new force field bubbles over holes in the wall, or reinforce a weakened part of a structure.

Honestly I'd still favor a mix of more doors and liberal use of force fields... but I'd damn sure make use of that force field technology.

Of course in reality for good warship design you should simply minimize doors in the first place. This is pretty much utterly never the case in fiction, but there is no reason why conventional warship design concepts involving unpericed bulkhead runs and a damage control deck for lateral movement cannot apply to space ships (though perhaps with multiple damage control decks). Indeed spacecraft have even less reason to allow unlimited fore-aft movement then surface warships, since zero gee would make moving even heavy items around long bulkheads very easy anyway.

Now this I largely agree with.

So yes, it's entirely possible given their proven ability to generate a wide variety of containment force fields that by the time the Intrepid-class is built, they simply don't bother building ships with airtight internal doors. The backup to the powered forcefield is likely to be another powered forcefield- on a battery backup.

Yup, so your now a battery away from fail, instead of having a system which works indefinitely even when the ship is laid up. That's stupid. Its nearly akin to saying a ship on water doesn't need bulkheads at all because it can just rely completely on powered pumping to avoid sinking. Or that enough fire sprinklers mean we don't need to worry about people lighting things on fire.

I would think it depends heavily on the batteries. If the batteries are good enough, then for most practical purposes the force field may be a good enough emergency damage control measure in its own right- sure, it won't last for a week, but if your damage control team hasn't managed to weld a patch over the hole in the hull by then you have bigger problems.

Indeed. It's sort of like asking why in real life most people don't strap their smartphones to their wrists and get a hella advanced (if bulky) wristwatch. You could. Some do. But it turns out that having a device the size of a pack of cards strapped to your wrist is somewhat less useful than having it be handheld.

A lot of military interest exists in wrist devices internationally. The point is such a thing requires less overall motion from the user to employ, when their hands are normally holding a weapon, and would like to stay on or near the weapon as much as possible, compared to grabbing something from a pocket and then putting it back. Many drawbacks certainly exist to this approach, but the issue is more complex then just handheld vs wrist.

Granted, this is true for the military.

On the other hand, my point stands- smartphones don't seem to be in the process of universally evolving into smartbracelets, even though that is clearly something we could do if we wanted.

[Zwinmar]

Just as in real life, if a soldier carries a "backup" weapon to their gun, it's probably going to be another gun, not a sword or a spear for "just in case guns don't work."

Bayonet?

These days nobody gets more than a couple hours of how to use the bayonet in its intended purpose at boot camp. It's far more likely to get used as an utility tool than anything else, and I wouldn't be surprised if much of the soldiers and Marines issued theirs just never wear them on the field, going instead with a lighter EDC knife.

Partially correct, at least for my unit. We had to carry our bayonets, however, they were stuffed in the butt pack and we carried our choice of knife as a utility knife. Mainly because it was issued from the armory with the rifle and you had to hand it back in with it. It was counted as part of the rifle so, yeah, don't lose it.

[Zixinus]

There have been bayonet charges as recent as Afganistan 2004. However, it is true that they have far less significance than they once did and you can see it when you compare old and relatively new bayonets. Old bayonets were long, dagger-like spikes while newer ones are more like large utility knifes that have a point. Trying to make them multi-purpose helps justifying them, which is why they add saws and wire-cutters and other stuff.

However a knife is still useful in close quarters, even in a gunfight. So soldiers and such that expect such fighting would still carry one if given a choice.

[Elheru Aran]

That Afghanistan charge was Highlanders, IIRC, who are a crazy lot anyway

But yes, the general trend lately with bayonets has been towards more of a 'survival knife' than 'pointy gun add-on'. Knife companies spend a lot of money marketing their stuff towards the military though, which would indicate that a lot of soldiers prefer to pick up a personal carry weapon versus the bayonet. It's an interesting choice.

[biostem]

In one of the Star Trek games, I think Elite Force, they had these "transporter buffers" that held things like their helmets, so they could easily don them, while avoiding the extra bulk. I'd love to see a similar device, which contained simple, though useful items, like a knife, poncho, maybe even some basic rations. In ST, however, the trend seems to be that a ship is always in orbit, and backup is only a transport away, so they seem to rather be reactive instead of proactive...

One thing I watched recently, which I thought was interesting, is in an episode of Z Nation, a woman was injured, and one character from the main group rummaged through said woman's bag - the rest of his group seemed upset, until he pulled out a maxi-pad, opened it up, and used it as a compress for her wound... that kind of preparedness and outside-the-box thinking is, what I think, a lot of shows/movies could use more of...

[Starglider]

The obvious advantage of force fields are that they can turn on almost instantly, fast enough to prevent significant loss of atmosphere and possibly even fast enough to stop shockwaves from explosions, whereas even a powered door takes some time to close. The equipment for a forcefield may also be lighter than a blast door of comparable strength (not clear from the on-screen evidence).

Anyway in Trek we do see some dedicated blast doors (e.g. in engineering), and it seems very likely that the normal powered doors on all the compartments are airtight. In TNG we saw the bridge decompress without affecting the rest of the ship, and we saw crew quarters frozen to deep sub-zero temperatures without any freezing in the corridor outside. Going by the novels, all the rooms on Galaxy class ships are capable of maintaining independent (alien) atmospheric conditions, which implies they are sealed. We never see runs of corridor or jefferies tube longer than 100 feet or so, usually less than that (due to the limitations of the sets, but still), so the comparmentalisation probably isn't that bad. The main role of forcefields seems to be for additional protection to further localise the effects of a breech, rather than to prevent the whole ship decompressing.