The Back up Prime

[RandyT0001]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

First, why take the massive risk of putting a sleeping facility completely under water? The advantages in shielding and stealth are pointless when you are all but guaranteed to have some degree of leaking and therefore some degree of destruction?

Plot requirements.

Second, having taken that risk, how bad was the risk mitigation that the computers were at the low point collecting water? And why were there not any automatic systems registering the leak and activating the staff under emergency protocols?

Literary license.

This kind of failure, in engineering design and construction, paints the designers as incompetent. I personally prefer to use enemy action or bad luck (errant missile, earthquake, that sort of thing) to take out necessary facilities.

Errant missile, earthquake? How cliché.

Ok, ok. How about this.
The base was built under a partially completed dam. The dam serves at the outlet for the vehicles. The computer room is on the same level as the rest of the underground base. An asteroid...........no, that's been used already. An agent of Krell infiltrated the base, set her own cyro tube to wake her a month after the bombs fell and she killed the other members of the base only to find out that the commander must key in a code to open the exits. She suffocated.

Ok. Too far fetched.

Lightning struck the radio tower, overloading out the commo equipment and the command computer. 95% of the personnel died also but not the commander. Once the fusion power plant runs out of fuel, about 150 to 200 years after the war the emergency protocols circulate fresh air and wake the remaining personnel.