Dead Man's Switch (The Outer Limits)
| "Dead Man's Switch" | |
|---|---|
| The Outer Limits episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 13 |
| Directed by | Jeff Woolnough |
| Written by | B. Richardson |
| Production code | 57 |
| Original air date | April 4, 1997 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
|
Merrilyn Gann as Gwen Wellington |
|
Merrilyn Gann as Gwen Wellington
James LeGros as Ben Conklin
Kristin Lehman as Katya Rubinoff
Donnelly Rhodes as Gen. James Eiger
Yee Jee Tso as Hong
Ellis Williams as Donald
"Dead Man's Switch" is an episode of The Outer Limits (new series). It first aired on 4 April 1997, during the third season.
Ben Conklin, a Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, is given the assignment of spending one year in a bunker 11,000 feet beneath Alaska.
After arriving at the bunker, Ben is told by General James Eiger that the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a fleet of alien ships heading towards Earth. Fearing the worst, the world's chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons stockpiles were linked to create a single doomsday weapon. Five people, including Ben, are placed in five United Nations Strategic Air Command bunkers around the world (United States, Russia, China, South Africa, and Australia), with the mission of controlling the activation of a final revenge weapon should the aliens turn out to be hostile and attempt to take over. An alarm sounds randomly, and at least one of the bunker occupants must hit a fail-deadly dead man's switch to temporarily disarm it. The switch is designed so that the operator's handprint and retinal scan are required for it to work. If a thirty-second countdown passes and no-one activates the switch, the doomsday weapon will fire and leave the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within one week. General Eiger assures Ben that if the aliens try to disarm the system, they will set it off and that "if we don't make it out of this alive, then no one else will either." To prevent the bunker occupants from being fed false information, they are sealed off from the world and can communicate only with each other and General Eiger.
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