The Empire built a moon-sized battle station with a workforce in the millions and did not, at any point, install a handrail. We have watched the films with a clipboard. Here is the report.

1. Unguarded walking-working surfaces

The headline violation. Catwalks spanning bottomless shafts with no railing, no toe board, no fall arrest, no net. Obi-Wan crosses one on the way to the tractor beam controls. Luke and Leia hit a severed bridge with a drop of indeterminate but clearly fatal depth.

OSHA requires fall protection at four feet in general industry. The Death Star clears four feet by roughly a mile.

2. The trash compactor

A confined space with no atmospheric monitoring, no entry permit, no attendant, no rescue plan, opposing crush walls on an automated cycle, and — as a bonus — a live organism in the water. Every single element of confined-space entry procedure is violated simultaneously. It is almost elegant.

3. No lockout/tagout anywhere

The tractor beam is disabled by one man walking up to a terminal and switching it off. No lock. No tag. No isolation procedure. An unauthorized party de-energized critical equipment in under a minute, which tells you everything about the state of the Empire’s energy control program.

4. Hazardous atmosphere, unmonitored

The detention block firefight produces smoke in an enclosed corridor with no visible ventilation response and no respiratory protection in the stormtrooper kit. Those helmets restrict vision, by the wearers’ own admission, and appear to filter nothing.

5. Reactor shaft: open, unbarriered, load-bearing for plot

Technically this one is the second Death Star, but the design was copied, which means the hazard was reviewed and reapproved. An open industrial chasm with a single unprotected gantry running across it. The Emperor’s throne room sits directly above it. The building’s most senior executive placed his desk above an unfenced drop, and it worked out exactly how you’d expect.

6. The thermal exhaust port

Not a safety violation so much as a catastrophic design review failure, but worth noting that the chain of command was informed of the vulnerability and chose to describe the concerns as unfounded.

The comparison that should end careers

The Ewoks have not discovered electricity. They live in trees on a forest moon. And they put rope railings on their walkways, because when you build a path above a drop, you put something along the edge of it.

The most technologically advanced military force in the galaxy was outperformed on fall protection by pre-industrial forest bears. We wrote a song about it, because what else is there to do.

Listen to “OSHA Approved” and read the lyrics →