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| - When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and all of the sprinklers on that floor -- or even in the entire building - will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. Of course, if the sprinklers really were linked, annoying heroes, villains and mischievous children could set 'em all off whenever they wanted. Telepathic Sprinklers is a subtrope of Did Not Do the Research and Reality Is Unrealistic.
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| abstract
| - When someone needs to create chaos in a building or just get everyone to leave, they trip the sprinkler system. Just apply a lighter flame, or perhaps a bullet, to one fire sprinkler, and all of the sprinklers on that floor -- or even in the entire building - will suddenly kick off. Everyone gets drenched, and there's a mass exodus from the building. The only problem with this is that sprinklers do not work that way. Practically all sprinkler systems are of the "wet pipe" type, where the pipe to all of the sprinklers is full of water under pressure, and the only thing stopping it coming out is a heat-sensitive valve in the sprinkler head. Heat it up enough, and the valve pops -- out comes the water. But only from that single sprinkler head. There's no communication between the sprinklers. One of them going off will not trip any of the others. You might have thought that maybe it was some sort of water-pressure shock system, but no; ordinary fire sprinklers are entirely independent. And smoke detectors and fire alarm pull stations are almost never set to trip sprinkler systems. Sprinklers will set off the alarm, but not vice versa. This is perfectly sensible, of course. If all of the sprinklers went off at once then it might reduce the spread of the fire a little more than if only sprinklers in hot areas tripped, but at the price of water-damaging a lot more of the building than was actually necessary. And all sprinklers going off at once would considerably reduce the water pressure available to each one, reducing the fire suppression in the area that's actually burning. Of course, if the sprinklers really were linked, annoying heroes, villains and mischievous children could set 'em all off whenever they wanted. There are "deluge" systems, in which the sprinklers have no valves of their own and a "deluge valve" lets water into the pipes that serve them all. These are used only for places that contain major fire risks, not regular warehouses or factories. This trope is so prevalent in the media that people now expect sprinklers to go off all at once. Businesses are reluctant to install sprinkler systems because they think even the smallest fire will cause enormous water damage. This trope may also have been responsible for a lot of real-life criminals drenching their -- and only their -- jail cell. Also, while sprinklers in media spray little bits of clear water, a real sprinkler system - which typically sits for years without use and which is designed to put out or stop the spread of fires as fast as possible - dumps between twenty and one hundred gallons (80-400 liters) of filthy, stagnant water per sprinkler per minute. Not exactly the best way to spend your day. Compare that to a simple shower, which puts out about one-and-a-half to two gallons (six to eight liters) per minute. Telepathic Sprinklers is a subtrope of Did Not Do the Research and Reality Is Unrealistic. Examples of Telepathic Sprinklers include:
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