Trope-a-Day: Continuous Decompression

Continuous Decompression: Averted in exactly the hard-SFnal ways one might expect it to be. Specifically, among other things:

(a) Explosive decompression be explosive, yo. Specifically, the air doesn’t hang around producing wind and blowing things around; it leaves. But also:

(b) Most decompression is not explosive. Mostly, the air just leaks out the hole until the hole is plugged, and does not in fact lead to immediate inability to breathe (although the pressure is continuously dropping) or air currents big enough to such everything through a hole smaller than it is. It just sets off alarms and makes unpleasant shrieking sounds while people get patch kits and close spacetight doors.

Especially if it’s, say, a bullet hole in the window of a cylinder habitat, which even if left untended with all the doors open would lead to complete depressurization in, y’know, a few days.  At the fastest.