User Blog:
Location, Location, Location: The Space Basement

Okay, so you've seen it in the Alien series. You know all about it from Event Horizon and Pandorum. It is a common fixture in space-based horror and so it is the subject of today's Location, Location, Location; the rusty, dangerous, often disproportionate basement' of ultra-advanced spaceships and stations.

You know the spot, right; it generally involves the heroes running through tightly packed corridors full of rusting corrugated metal or pig iron. Or else they're hopping from bridges made of grating that seem to hover, suspended from Asimov-only-knows-where. Why do ship designers build their ships and space stations so bottom-heavy? Wouldn't it be marvelously dangerous to let your ship develop so much rust, broken girders, and catwalks over vast chasms?

Well, I have no idea why you'd have those things, but they're the standard, so let’s talk about how to use the spaceship-basement to its fullest!

The Dangers of Rust: Let's get this out of the way. It is very unlikely that you will get tetanus in space. I know, I'm as bummed about it as you are, but tetanus needs dirt and animal droppings. Therefore, unless your terrifying spaceship basement has wild animals in it, you aren't going to get tetanus from cutting your hand on a sharp guardrail. (I mean, it might be cool if there are animals running wild in your spaceship basement...)

But before you get to disappointed, worry not. Tetanus is just a form of lockjaw, after all. What you CAN get from a wound on rusty girders in a station is my old favorite, necrotizing fasciitis. (Or, if you don't speak doctor, flesh eating disease!) Basically, any of a number of bacteria, deep in a wound like the type you can get running around in the basement of a station, can turn into this rapidly spread, tissue destroying bacterial infection. While every case is different because every person deals with infection differently, it would go a little something like this: the character gets cut badly, or punctured by a rusty pipe sticking out of a wall. The wound closes and while it's painful, the pain subsides. Then out of nowhere, it gets so intense the character might seem like a nut job because the site of infection looks okay. Rabidly, the site gets bright red and hot to the touch. Then, the skin, muscle and fat start to get eaten away. Something like 1 in 10 people who get this type of infection dies of it. Not good odds for our player characters.