Failure of the settlement

A complete failure of the colony would mean the death of all settlers. Possible causes can be human failure, technical failure and acts of nature beyond control. It could take decades or centuries before a subsequent colonization attempt is started. This article wants to collect situations, incidents, precautions and mitigations.

Destruction of life support

Temperature

If heating systems fail, the temperature in on-surface buildings may drop rapidly and destroy equipment and plants. Humans may freeze to death.

Precaution: Underground parts of the settlement draw benefit from the high heat capacity of the surrounding rock, which keeps the temperature for a long time. The interior of the settlement rooms can be optimized to store large amounts of warmth. Big water tanks have a high heat capacity.

Contamination of air or food

... with radioactive, chemical or bacteriological substances

• Risk: Intoxication, injury
• Precaution: If dangerous substances are not produced, they can not pose a threat. If such substances are unavoidable, they should be produced, used and stored in a separated part of the colony, where no other vital system can be affected in case of an incident.

Destruction or contamination of greenhouses

• Severity: Vital.
• Risk: Starvation and suffocation of the settlers.
• Mitigation: Redundancy. Separation of zones.

Disconnection or destruction of energy network

• Severity: Vital.
• Risk: If the energy network is poorly designed, the energy supply for the colony can break down completely by a defect in any of the single points of failure.
• Mitigation: Decentralization of the network. Make sure that any remaining part of the network continues to function locally. This concept involves a structural redundancy of all vital parts and sub-parts.

Disconnection or destruction of telecommunication network

• Severity: Non-vital.
• Risk: Supervision of remote parts of the colony may gets lost.
• Mitigation: Redundancy.

Explosion, causing drop in air pressure

• Severity: Vital.
• Risk: Suffocation of the settlers. Dissolution of the greenhouse plants.
• Mitigation: Several zones of living space, separated by bulkheads.

Destruction of transportation means

... that are needed to reach peripheral sites of the colony

• Severity: Non-vital.
• Risk: Growing of the colony is interrupted.
• Mitigation: Keep all vital stuff in a Recycling loop.

Biological

The human metabolism need a great variety of substances. The full complexity of all interactions is not fully understood. If there is a shortage or an excess of some rather unknown substances, the health might be seriously affected. In worst case the ability to work and maintain the vital parts of the colony falls below a required minimum. Such substances may possibly produced by some sort of germs that are omnipresent on Earth, but are not in the Martian colony.

The immune system may get out of balance, since the ensemble of germs around and inside of the settlers will be different or narrowed. If, unlike in the ISS, the bacteriological profile is not updated frequently, some vital germs might become extinct.

Mitigation: A garden with soil is a living ground for many microbes and germs.