Building Codes in Liminality II

Belthazar · Post by **Belthazar** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:32 am

It seems to me that the shopping centre / office block which features prominently in the second Limianily (the case of Aihara Yuki) is very poorly built, and the architects seem determined to kill anyone who happened to be in the building during an emergecy.

1. The first thing that happened was the shutters went down - these shutters are inoperable once closed, thus trapping the slower people inside the building. Public buildings today (like shopping centres) will have fire doors instead - doors which are still capable of being opened at any time, but are quite heavy and swing closed by default. In the library at my university, there are huge horizontally-sliding firedoors on the stairwells which stay open all the time, unless the fire alarm goes off, in which case the catches are released, causing all the doors to close at onces (pulled shut by a weight on a wire)

2. The emercency doors which do exist don't open unless powered (which strikes me as a little odd - any door is openable, powered or not, unless the loss of power caused a deadman lock to be activated)

3. The exit signs don't appear to operate when powered (we see several of them switch on after the power goes out) and some of their batteries seem to be running flat already.

4. There appear to be no other emergency lighting systems. Come on, emergency lighting isn't something they only have on Star Trek. My university library has them, and it was built in the seventies. Hey, I even know a building built in the thirties which has them (although admittedly they are generator powered, rather than battery powered - but that brings up another point: why no backup power systems?)

5. Yuki and the Office Lady could only escape by getting into the ventilation ducts, and then down the lift shaft. Hello? Fire stairs? What kind of fire stairs aren't accessible during an emergency?

6. When Yuki and the lady exit the ventilation shaft, they encounter a stove which has been left on. The room is quite full of smoke, yet it hasn't activated a smoke detector, nor do Yuki and the lady expect it to have done so yet. Why do the individual shops not appear to posess smoke detectors?

7. The fire suppression system itself spews out carbon dioxide, thus killing everyone remaining in the building (as was demonstrated in the show) - an unpleasent asphyxiation by carbon dioxide poisoning, assuming of course that they haven't already been killed by the fire itself, given that the individual shops don't have smoke detectors, the shutters prevent people from escaping, there are no fire stairs, the emergency doors don't work without power, and there are no lights to tell what you are doing, anyway. It's a case of killing the people you are trying to save. Modern-day public buildings will have a built-in non-lethal fire suppresion system (i.e. water sprinklers), and if it is needed, the firemen will apply CO2 foam themselves.

8. Once they eventually get to the lobby, we see that the people who were trapped there still couldn't get out, until someone drove a truck through the windows (the rubbish all over the floor indicates the people had been there for some time)

Given the above, it's not surprising that Yuki believed the lady's lie about the elevator wells being surrounded by unbreakable acrylic (although acrylic is breakable, if one applies enough force). A building like this would not have passed building regulations thirty years ago, and there it is, only ten years from now. Have building regulations gotten slack?

I mean, sure, having Yuki and the lady trapped in the buildings makes for a good story, but this is just silly.

Mia · Post by **Mia** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:08 am

It's also one of those flaws that could happen in the near future when you rely on everything to be controlled by computers.How mankind never think ahead but only to advance technology and not think of the "what if..".

Ardo · Post by **Ardo** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:48 pm

You really picked up on a lot of things. I wondered about some of those, too. I also will go with Mia on this one. I think it was purposely done to show how the real world has so relied on computers, and to depict how The World was causing "severe" problems in the real world. The poorly built buildings only caused more of an urgency and panic because lives were at stake. I think that's what they were going for - a feeling of utter chaos being portrayed.

Belthazar · Post by **Belthazar** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:52 pm

That's me, I love to ramble

The idea of them relying so much on the computers occurred to me while I was writing the post, but I forgot to add it in. However, I've realised since then that this seems a little odd - by this point, we can't be much more than about ten or fifteen years since Pluto's Kiss, when all the computers went out on them. Surely that's in recent enough memory that nothing is done without backups to the computers? Although I suppose it does make a good point...

Kite12345 · Post by **Kite12345** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 8:41 pm

Yeah very good points, i wonder if some day i have taht situation too, i die in 10 mins. ^^

chrissii · Post by **chrissii** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:20 pm

good points had by all here. i definitely thought of at least a couple of the things you bring up in your post while i was watching that ep. however, my guess is in agreement with Mia's... they're showing what can happen in the future if humanity allows computers to control all aspects of security and such, and how devastating it could prove to be should a computer-related disaster - like Pluto's Kiss, and, as "Office Lady" (i forget her name

) called it, the second coming of Pluto's Kiss - ever occur (sp?).

DarkAngel · Post by **DarkAngel** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 5:50 pm

Um...I..yeah..um..bad codes..yeah,BAD BUILDNIGS!!!!I guess they did that to give it more dramatic tension.

Who knows......Anywhoo i thaught that the building where poorly built and I must agree with you on this subject.

Belthazar · Post by **Belthazar** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:26 pm

Dramatic tension, maybe, but I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to really enjoy this episode...

DarkAngel · Post by **DarkAngel** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 2:44 pm

Yeah,the building was totally poorly designed and the 2nd liminality wasnt so good either.Well thats my 2 cents.See ya around.
DA IS OUT!

Ichida · Post by **Ichida** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:36 pm

chrissii wrote:"Office Lady" (i forget her name )

The name was not given, but we all know that she is the player behind Helba.

DarkAngel · Post by **DarkAngel** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 11:54 am

Thatt now,is off topic but..yes I belive that is Helbas player.

///AKUJIKI-E1N54MK317 · Sun Mar 21, 2004 1:30 pm

*sigh* that argument was in another topic...

In any case, indeed there were lots of funny things going on in that building. I noticed it two, as with the elevator shaft they went down. If memory serves... was there no door out of that room? I mean, why did an elevator just HAPPEN to go into a room? Anyway, ill have to go look... also any idiot that attaches their computer controlled security system to the internet dirrectly is INSANE. Given, the network it would create would be large, and easier for a sentient AI computer to manage across a sort of neural network... or someone with a donut and coffee to watch as it blips on a non-sentient, normal old computer screen readout, the point is that obviously there were major flaws in the computer system as well. Especially cause it should have had a physical firewall to cut it off when that sort of thing happened.

Thats my two cents... but why the hell would anyone design a bulding like that?

Ichida · Post by **Ichida** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 2:19 pm

Maybe for dramatic reasons. *shrug* You never know what they'll do to add drama and tension.

Lady Fiorji Knight · Post by **Lady Fiorji Knight** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 8:04 pm

I was wondering that too...espeacially the part with the caron dioxide in the sprinklers.

(i agree with mia as well)

hey..i got another thing tho...how come they abandoned the stoves without turning them off?I mean really.They were locked in...so why leave the ovens on in the first place?I know im not explaining this well...but hopefully you get my point.=] (there was no reason they HAD to leave at that moment fires only started because the ovens WERE left on.they could have just turned them off..if you dont get what i mean ill try to explain things better if asked)

AuraTwilight · Post by **AuraTwilight** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 3:12 pm

When in doubt, a hacker did it.

Lady Fiorji Knight · Post by **Lady Fiorji Knight** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 8:17 pm

a hacker made the REAL buildings poorly built?lol.(just playing)

AuraTwilight · Post by **AuraTwilight** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 12:50 pm

Yes. Yes it did. >.>