Fire sprinklers in the Matrix

NFPA Journal, Mar/Apr 2004 by Fleming, Russell P

THE THREE FILMS that comprise the Matrix trilogy are set in a bleak future, in which machines have taken control of what's left of the planet. What humans believe to be reality is an artificial construct managed by computers.

The Wachovsky brothers, makers of the films, have now designed a video game entitled "Enter the Matrix," based on the movies. If you can get past the irony that video games are themselves computer-generated artificial constructs, you'll appreciate that the fire protection systems depicted in video games can be even further removed from reality than those systems in television shows and movies. In other words, fire sprinklers have entered the Matrix, leaving behind all hope of an accurate portrayal.

Fire protection system

The fire sprinklers appear in the game's "Unexpected Arrival," the fourth level of "The Post Office" scenario. The female character Niobe must fight her way past inept post office security guards to reach a freight elevator, which takes her up a floor and opens at the end of a long, narrow warehouse. Wooden crates are stored three or four high in a single-row rack along the left side of the room, while more crates are randomly piled one or two high along the right wall. The narrow shape of the warehouse apparently allows protection by a single row of pendent sprinklers mounted along the bottom of a main that runs along the center of the ceiling and is fed from risers at both ends. The individual sprinkler deflectors are clearly visible.

Presumably because Niobe is an "unexpected arrival," her presence quickly leads to a problem, when an unattended forklift smashes into piping along the end wall, resulting in a fiery explosion. The fireball settles into a steady-state fire burning from the ruptured piping, but not before it has activated about a half-dozen sprinklers.

Problems develop

To the extent that the video game depicts multiple sprinklers responding to the tremendous heat of the initial fireball, all seems well within the Matrix. But there are more problems to come. First, the sprinklers that initially activate apparently lose either interest or their water supply, since the flow stops after a minute or so. Mysteriously, sprinklers in an adjacent area of the warehouse then begin to flow. Worse, a closer examination of the ruptured piping supporting the steady-state fire reveals that it is the riser serving the overhead sprinkler main.

Maybe it isn't water? But what substance is this that can be both the fire problem and its solution?

Movies and television programs have long used fire sprinklers as a plot device, often sacrificing the reality of how sprinklers work in favor of the needs of the script. Video games have now followed their lead in awareness of sprinkler systems, but the alternate reality they offer is tied even less to real-world sprinkler performance.

RUSSELL P. FLEMING, P.E.

RUSS FLEMING is the executive vice-president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association.