Risa

Building everything to be able to re-route to everything is WHY all the consoles are constantly exploding.

one of my favorite jokes about this is on TNG. i think it's the episode where the bridge gets cut off from the rest of the ship, and Troi is in charge of running the ship. O'Brian makes a comment to Ro about how you can't 'just reroute power from things'.

it's a funny little nod from the writers.

I don't know about you people, but personally, I always write programs at work by removing boards from my computer and plugging them in a different order.

How do you know the buttons don't trigger relais or the like which then actually unhook the wires?

you can't just "re-route power" by pressing buttons on a screen and not, you know, actually unhooking any wires!

High-voltage switches might be a bit complicated. One I've seen requires you to tighten a spring and then have it released extremely fast to prevent sparking. Still, there should be a way to do it safely, without having to go near or touch the wiring.

If bracing for impact is good enough for the Enterprise, it's good enough for my Hyundai.

That's what the inertial dampeners are for!

... if they were working

The reason is because the engines produce this material as a waste product. So instead of venting it into space it's processed and funneled back through the ship to power everything from lights to equipment.

Very efficient and very VERY dangerous. Many Vulcans retired from the VSA because Humans pulled shit like this.

Gotta have a way to effortlessly kill redshirts. Whoops! Another plasma conduit blew out. Poor Gary.

"In a battle or emergency, where the survival of the vessel (or other protected asset) is dependent upon the continued operation of the equipment, it is sometimes wiser to risk equipment damage than have the equipment shut down when it is needed. For example, the electrical drives to elevate and traverse the guns of a combat warship may have "battleshort" fuses, which are simply copper bars of the correct size to fit the fuse holders, as failure to return fire in a combat situation is a greater threat to the ship and crew than damaging or overheating the electrical motors."

Huh. Learn something all the time.

That would be so cool a sci-fi adaption of forklift-driver Klaus (warning, a bit gory but hilarious):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck

Back at the attacking ship, obviously!

It's probably grounded to the hull somewhere, put in a couple electric gizmos and feed the power back into your batteries. Now the enemy is charging your ship while they blow it up because you didn't turn on your sheild.

In the 24th Century they discovered that liquid napalm was a highly efficient electrical conductor ... so they used it to wire their ships.

Fuses don't dissipate electricity. They pass electricity and then blow when exceeded. Blowing is either flipping off (like your breaker) or breaking (like replaceable fuses). The point of a fuse is to be the weakest link so if a surge occurs it doesn't damage equipment or wiring.

In the case you described, they were looking for a load (where energy is used or dissipated to do work) to absorb that much energy at once. There might be a fuse that could withstand that kind of load; there was wiring that could afterall. But if the shield system could absorb the full power of an overloaded warp core, it might not have needed one if there was no downside to overcharging it.

Hum... I have a 75MJ varistor on each phase of the main wiring of my house. Those are not fuses (because fuses don't have a total energy specification) but I can certainly get a few more for the Enterprise it they want.

Do we have fuses that can safely dissipate like 350Megajoules?

A 350 Megajoule fuse oughta do it