Challenge #02980-H057: We Tried to Warn You
When you are in any building, especially if you intend to stay there, find the location of the emergency exits. -- Anon Guest
A quick way out is more important than any general way in. Ask anyone who's been trapped in a house fire, if you can. Safety regulations insist on clear and ready access to quick escape in case of disaster. In most areas of known space, this is an automatic and well-enforced law[1]. But it isn't just fire. Space is a place where anything at all could render a little bubble of life into sudden and certain death.
In many ports of call, sleep nooks are also survival pods, made to snap shut with the unaware occupant kept safe and alive until rescue. Others seal off the entire habitat for the same purpose. Still more, far older ones, have publicly available lifepods and escape diagrams etched into the walls. It is against the law to block lifepod tracks.
Those of a paranoid state of mind always check up on this. Those who have become blase to stellar life and travel are the ones most often caught out even in the mildest of crises. When every ship and every station operates under different protocols, it never pays to disregard the complimentary safety pamphlet. And then there's the people who opine that safety is an imposition on their personal rights.
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