fail-safe (adj.)
also failsafe, fail safe "safe against failure," 1945, originally in reference to aircraft construction, from fail (v.) + safe (adj.). The novel about a nuclear attack caused by mechanical error is from 1962.
KIRK:
Why would a Starfleet Admiral
ask a 300 year old frozen man for help?
KHAN:
Because I am better.
KIRK:
At what?
KHAN:
Everything.
Alexander Marcus needed to respond
to an uncivilised threat in a civilised time,
and for that he needed a warrior's mind,
my mind, to design weapons and warships.
SPOCK:
You are suggesting the Admiral violated
every regulation he vowed to uphold
simply because he wanted to exploit
your intellect.
KHAN:
He wanted to exploit my savagery.
Intellect alone is useless in a fight, Mister Spock.
You, you can't even break a rule.
How would you be expected to break bone?
Marcus used me to design weapons,
to help him realise his vision of a militarised Starfleet.
He sent you to use those weapons.
To fire my torpedoes on an unsuspecting planet.
And then he purposely
crippled your ship in enemy space,
leading to one inevitable outcome.
The Klingons would come searching
for whomever was responsible,
and you would have
no chance of escape.
Marcus would finally have
the war he talked about.
The war he always wanted.
KIRK:
No. No. I watched you open fire
in a room full of
unarmed Starfleet officers.
You killed them in cold blood!
KHAN:
Marcus took my crew from me.
KIRK:
You are a murderer!
KHAN:
He used my friends to control me.
I tried to smuggle them to safety by concealing them in the very weapons I had designed, but I was discovered.
I had no choice but to escape alone.
And when I did, I had every reason to suspect that Marcus had killed every single one
of the people I hold most dear.
So I responded in kind.
My crew is my family, Kirk.
Is there anything you would
not do for your family?
Prof. Groeteschele:
Excuse me. Every minute we wait works against us.
Now, Mr. Secretary, now is when
we must send in a first strike.
Gen. Stark:
We don't go in for sneak attacks.
We had that done to us at Pearl Harbor.
Prof. Groeteschele:
And the Japanese were right to do it.
From their point of view, we were their mortal enemy. As long as we
existed, we were a deadly threat to them.
Their only mistake was that they
failed to finish us at the start,
and they paid for that mistake
at Hiroshima.
Gen. Stark:
You're talking about a different kind of war.
Prof. Groeteschele:
Exactly. This time, we can finish what we start. And if we act now, right now, our casualties will be minimal.
Brigadier General Warren A. Black: You know what you're saying?
Prof. Groeteschele:
Do you believe that Communism
is not our mortal enemy?
Brigadier General Warren A. Black: You're justifying murder.
Prof. Groeteschele:
Yes, to keep from being murdered.
Brigadier General Warren A. Black:
In the name of what?
To preserve what?
Even if we do survive,
what are we?
Better than what we say they are?
What gives us the right to live, then? What makes us worth surviving, Groeteschele?
That we are ruthless enough
to strike first?
Prof. Groeteschele:
Yes! Those who can survive are
the only ones worth surviving.
Brigadier General Warren A. Black:
Fighting for your life isn't
the same as murder.
Prof. Groeteschele:
Where do you draw the line
once you know What The Enemy is?
How long would the Nazis
have kept it up, General,
if every Jew they came after
had met them with
a gun in his hand?
But I learned from them,
General Black. Oh, I learned.
Brigadier General Warren A. Black:
You learned too well, Professor.
You learned so well that now
there's no difference between
you and what you want to kill.
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