Whoa how did I miss this detail?! (Spoilers beware)

[ajb1978]

Something just occurred to me on my third play-through of Episode 3.  So when you first encounter Fr. Thomas, he asks if you came from the crash site. Astrid says she crashed several days ago, but Fr. Thomas says something like "No, you just crashed yesterday" as he mistakenly believes she was on the airliner.

That's a gap of several days.  Mackenzie's plane was hit by the aurora and went down several days BEFORE the airliner did.  The event that brought down Mackenzie's plane apparently didn't affect everything, and a second hit took down the airliner several days after Will and Astrid crash-landed.  Did anyone else notice that discrepancy?  What do you think it means?  It appears that the first aurora did not in fact cripple the world, and that several repeated hits have been happening that each systematically cripple more and more of the infrastructure.

Edit: Fr. Thomas later states that the diabetic came in from the plane crash a day or "maybe two days ago" so I suppose it's possible he's simply confused....

Edited November 12, 2019 by ajb1978

[Hilayla]

I noticed it as well. I thought it odd that survivors had been straggling in for days, but the plane crashed yesterday. FT never seems quite lucid to me. I think he is confused and like many people suffering from mental conditions/trauma he is convinced others are wrong while he is perfectly sane.

[ThePancakeLady]

I noticed it immediately. I didn't question it (though I did have that brief "Father Tom has some rusty bolts in the bucket..." thought flash through my head...)

Okay, and I may get bashed for this, but here's my take (for better or worse):

Modern "Big Religion" is all about ".Thoughts & Prayers"
Natural disaster wipes out an island? "We send our thoughts and prayers.".
Personal tragedy? "We send out thoughts and prayers...".
Families separated, not knowing where their loved ones are? "We send our thoughts and prayers."

I could keep listing, but I'll stop.

Father Tom sends his thoughts and prayers. He does not notice the personal injuries or suffering of the people in the Community Hall. He never even looked at Dimitri to see his Medic Alert bracelet, saying he had Type 1 Diabetes. He did the minimum needed, giving him a bedroll and a blanket,  just like he did with everyone else. Gathering the townsfolk and the survivors in one place, to form a new "congregation" that he could pray over and preach to, but he never bothered to search the cars or houses, or look over more than the spiritual well-being of most, especially the "Outsiders" who straggled in. 

"Dimitri came in a day or 2 ago, but I didn't take enough notice of him to remember him that clearly, just another sheep for my flock, for me to feel sanctified, by praying for his everlasting soul. His body is your job, Astrid. You go face the physical dangers and treat the bodies, I'll treat the souls."

A clear divide shown between spiritual and secular (or "scientific" if you prefer that term.). Both in Father Tom and in Astrid. Both show great compassion, but both are worlds apart from each other in their world views and belief systems. And the separation of the people on the island from any outside views, by their long held traditions, and acceptance of whatever "The Church" tells them is right, without question.

TL;DR- Father Tom may be a bit forgetful, or he may be so firmly entrenched in his Faith, that he cannot see beyond it.

And please, this is just my take. Everyone will see it their own way. No one needs to agree with me, it's just how I see the story, the game, and yes, the world in general. And I may well be very far away from the meaning that Raph and Hinterland fintended to convey. But I think Hinterland is okay with us each seeing it our own way, as long as we share our thoughts on it without hatred and vitriol.

[yollarbenibekler]

-Putting on a Tin Foil Hat-

What if I tell you Astrid and Will are not in the same timeline anymore?

-Putting off the tin foil hat-

[Sceh]

@ThePancakeLady I completely agree, and well put. I had a similar thought while playing Ep. 3. "Okay, fine, you're the only one on his feet so you don't want to stray too far from the hall in case someone needs you or new people show up. I'll go search for survivors and medicine, whatever. But DANG you couldn't even be bothered to search the nearby houses for stuff to help these people? What have you been doing all this time? Standing there praying?" LOL. The fact that he makes you schlepp around his stupid crucifix so he can be there "in spirit" just made me angrier. I would have used that thing for tinder SO FAST if the game let me 🤣 He's the epitome off the well-meaning, soft hearted, but ultimately completely useless clergyman. And yeah, yeah, he was written that way to make the fetch-quests possible ... still I feel it's a statement by the writers. He didn't break his leg, he's not in a wheelchair. He could have been written like that to make more sense (imho) or at least to not seem like a complete waste of space. He's perfectly capable to go and do helpful stuff. He just decided to stand there and preach.

As for the original topic of this post, I think there may actually have been more than one event that downed planes. Cause clearly you have been on Great Bear for something like 5 days, maybe a week, what with making it to Milton and the whole Prisoner scenario playing out and the journey through the tunnel and then recuperating at Molly's and then finally travelling to the hall. And it seems the plane could very well have crash landed when you were already in PV. Remember the scene when you first go to the basement and a BOOM goes off that shakes the ground and makes the hand slip from under the sheet? It idn't feel like the other earthquakes that you experience throughout the Episode. I didn't have that low rumbling quality. It distinctly felt/sounded like something exploded. And that also fits the timeline. I don't know about you guys but it took me a day and half from that point to reach the hall. I went to Molly's barn, slept and warmed up there for a while, walked over to the road, got distracted by the guard and prisoner bleeding all over the place, fought against a head wind to get to the Outhouses barn and spent yet another couple of hours searching the place and warming up before finally attempting the last stretch and getting to the hall. So FT may not be that far off with his ramblings.

Maybe we have a LOST style scenario where planes just can't fly over the island (don't quote me on this simile, I gave up on LOST after like 2 seasons). We know of three planes so far that went down, each on different days. Since most travel to and from the island seems to be by boat, maybe the planes all crashing is a recent development and nobody picked up on that yet. Maybe it's only during auroras. And maybe it's aliens. Who can tell? It's intruiging either way.

 

[KinoUnko]

Auroras must be pretty localized and probably limited to higher latitudes. the one that hit McKenzie took out all the electronics on the island. The airliner probably didn't take off from somewhere further south of the island until several hours before it crashed on the island. So presumeably much of the world isn't affected by the Auroras like the island.

[ajb1978]

I guess I didn't read quite so far into Thomas's behavior, regarding his supposed inaction.  I never really consciously considered it, but now that I am my thoughts are that it's a combination of him being simply overwhelmed, not having the knowledge of how to diagnose/treat patients, and so that the player has something to do.  As opposed to a statement about the ineffective nature of "thoughts & prayers".  I mean he's a small-town priest whose idea of medical care probably stops at neosporin and a band-aid.  He may not have even thought that a diabetes bracelet was a thing.  (I know I probably wouldn't have thought to check.)  My take on the narrative is he's been trying to get these people comfortable and warm, and provide them with food and counseling for their grief.  Also we don't know what would have happened had Astrid not shown up--he may very well have been considering venturing out into the town himself to look for more food (to his ultimate doom no doubt, seeing as how he's not in the best of shape, and isn't packing heat) when Astrid showed up.

The fact that we only ever see him standing around staring at the floor seems to me like a development decision, since while that level of polish on the mo-cap would certainly help the aesthetics, it would also not really contribute much to the story compared to how much extra effort goes into it.  Not to mention working out his pathing, getting him to move from person to person, how to handle collision with the player, etc.  Easier to mo-cap the dialogue then just have him go idle.  (I personally get a chuckle out of the very last time you talk to him, where he's just faces away from everyone and stares at the floor forever, like he just gives up on life.)

Interesting hypothesis about the geomagnetic storm only affecting Great Bear though....  A solar flare capable of shorting out electronics would also absolutely cause an aurora as those charged particles slam into the magnetosphere.  So I suppose it is entirely possible that for whatever reason, Great Bear is being impacted more seriously than elsewhere.  Or like the quakes are causing particular disruptions in the magnetosphere which channel more charged particles than elsewhere.  For that matter, maybe Will's hangar is totally okay, having suffered some flickering lights but no actual damage.  (It's also canon that the power grid on Great Bear is ass to begin with, so that certainly doesn't help.) That would certainly explain how two aircraft came crashing down several days apart.

If the full details aren't revealed in the game, I sure hope Hinterland releases some "behind the scenes" stuff after Episode 5, to paint a more thorough picture of things!

Edited November 12, 2019 by ajb1978

[ThePancakeLady]

But Father Tom does go to the church in town, or the Church Artifact quest would not be a thing and the reward would would not show up. So, he does leave the CH, but only to go to his church? Bypassing the houses and cars each time? He is a priest, he may feel that ransacking other people's property is against what he believes he stands for... it would be morally reprehensible for him to loot them, but he can offer forgiveness to someone else who does so, as long as it benefits the entire flock, not just one person.

Maybe the quakes have opened up a hole, where the Anunnaki Mother Ship has been hiding for centuries... and "sleeping giants" have been woken up? And they are trying to phone home?  
(Yes, I want Anunnaki, lol!)

And we aren't sure the geomagnetic disaster is caused by a CME (or more than one). Nukes are capable of causing nuclear electromagnetic pulses. What if the geomagnetic disaster is caused by EMPs, rather than CMEs? Or a combination of both? (We are talking science fiction here, and the game is science fiction, without the "usual" robots and far future setting...). Jeremiah seems to have some military back ground, and there are all of the radio towers, that would have been used by the military for communications. Another possibility... the Forest talkers came upon an arsenal, and set fire to it, without realizing there were nukes in there as well? (Speculation can lead to crazy thoughts...)

 

Lol! Yeah, Episodes 4 & 5 will give us more info, I hope. I can't imagine they won't.

[MarrowStone]

I noticed the discrepancy in timelines as well.

My three theories are:

The aurora is localized only to Great Bear, but it's slowly gaining in range. The plane pretty much unknowingly entered the Northern Bermuda triangle. 

A less likely theory is that Molly lied that you've been unconscious for as long as you were. She's a pretty unreliable character, didn't even wait around in the barn after you stumbled through the blizzard to save her. 

4 minutes ago, ThePancakeLady said:

the Forest talkers came upon an arsenal,

Okay, hear me out, but maybe Astrid's case has something to do with the Forest Talkers, She more than likely stole it from her research lab, we know there's a "Quarantine" happening up North, but who says it has to be medical? Maybe some electromagnetic anomaly is being contained or harnessed there? That explains why the passenger plane crashed later. Why does Jeremiah have military buddies with code-words? It all feels pretty S.T.A.L.K.E.R. esq. with factions and quarantine zones.

I never thought that Father Thomas would be an unreliable character, their hands would be pretty full with all of the crash survivors and needing to prepare food, water, and enough firewood to keep the place warm. Putting all the bodies in the basement and knowing they're down there would really do a number on your psyche however...

[ajb1978]

1 hour ago, ThePancakeLady said:

Nukes are capable of causing nuclear electromagnetic pulses.

Yes and I've touched on this point elsewhere....sometime...  Don't remember where or when but I remember talking about it!  And Ep 3 has addressed some of my concerns.  To recap, an EMP capable of frying sensitive electronics: Easy.  An EMP capable of frying analog devices like generators and old-school diesel engines: Would also kill biological life due to the sheer magnitude of broad-spectrum radiation required.  This seemed to be a major problem until the party lines in Ep 3...which are an old-school analog device that are still quite functional. Soooo if we assume that there are simply no old-school diesel engines on Great Bear, and all the generators people have contain some sort of microprocessor (maybe for smart power management..it's plausible!) that have been overloaded, then suddenly this becomes quite feasible.  Everything is over-computerized, and all those microchips have been fried.  But all tech prior to say 1920 still works.

Although this still doesn't explain why a party line telephone would work mid-day, but a freakin' battery powered flashlight does not.

[ThePancakeLady]

7 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

Although this still doesn't explain why a party line telephone would work mid-day, but a freakin' battery powered flashlight does not.

Copper is a super efficient conductor, and phones require very little voltage. It's plausible. Molly says the party line was from 60 or 70 years ago, and we don't know what the current year is. We don't know what type of batteries the flashlights have, or what type of motors the cars and generators have.  Or how old the batteries in the cars and flashlights are. 

It's a game, a science fiction (emphasis on fiction...) game. It needs to be plausible only. We accept teleportation and phasers in Star Trek without getting worked up over "realism", we accept light sabers in Star Wars, ect. We accept it because it is science fiction, in a highly technical, futuristic world. This is also science fiction. In a less futuristic setting. It's fiction. It isn't meant to be 100% realistic. It only needs to be plausible enough for us to accept it as a possibility, based on just enough science for our our brains to say "Okay, not likely, but it could happen, even if it is 1 in a million chance.". 1=/=0.

I get what you are saying ajb, but I don't get the need or demand for things in a fictional game to be based on non-fiction.

[ThePancakeLady]

9 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

It all feels pretty S.T.A.L.K.E.R. esq. with factions and quarantine zones.

Raph is a huge fan of all things The Thing and all things STALKER... just saying. Just look as his Twitter page, and his timeline. 

[ajb1978]

3 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

we accept light sabers in Star Wars, ect.

I see where you're coming from on the whole "It's fiction, deal with it" and I do agree, but I feel I have to make a point here since you invoked Star Wars   Star Wars is not science fiction, it's fantasy.  It takes place in space, but it's got more in common with Lord of the Rings than anything else.  Laser swords, space wizard, the light and the dark...that's not science.  It's fiction yes...but not the scientific kind.  Now compare that to something like Star Trek where they at least make an effort to explain how things work.  Sure Trek glosses over some of the details, but at least they bothered to list a "Heisenberg Compensator" as a transporter component, acknowledging the very obvious problem of being unable to simultaneously identify a particle's vector and position in classical physics.  And even Star Trek pales in comparison to some of the other stuff out there.  The Martian, sure there are some glaring inaccuracies in there (the wind on Mars is not powerful enough to drive a stake through someone's skin, let alone a suit) but they got so much right.  And Interstellar...well besides what happens beyond the event horizon of the black hole (which we don't know jack about anyway) it pretty much gets a perfect score.

So yeah.  TLD might qualify as science fiction, and it can have a pass on scientific inaccuracy for the sake of telling a compelling story.  I just wish it those inaccuracies were consistent!  Personal gripe.

[RegentRelic]

It could be that the airline wasn't in the area at the time.

[ThePancakeLady]

1 hour ago, ajb1978 said:

It takes place in space, but it's got more in common with Lord of the Rings than anything else.  Laser swords, space wizard, the light and the dark...that's not science.  It's fiction yes...but not the scientific kind. 

But it is the science kind. 

Things first seen as "fantasy" in the original Star Wars franchise from the 70's, are becoming (or have become) reality. 

https://www.gadgetreview.com/9-pieces-of-star-wars-tech-now-a-reality

The light and the dark? 

Good and evil, represented as Light and Dark have existed in human culture since before Chirstianity became a thing, and then took the Light and Dark analogy to a new level.
Light and Dark. Good and Evil. Been around for just about forever.

Star Wars? Science fiction, at its best.

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:02 AM, ajb1978 said:

Did anyone else notice that discrepancy?  What do you think it means?  It appears that the first aurora did not in fact cripple the world, and that several repeated hits have been happening that each systematically cripple more and more of the infrastructure.

I noticed that, yes, but also only on the second pass. 

15 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

The aurora is localized only to Great Bear, but it's slowly gaining in range. The plane pretty much unknowingly entered the Northern Bermuda triangle.

Something like that. My current working theory reads pretty similar.

I guess we can assume that the disaster indeed isn't global. Maybe Great Bear is sitting on some kind of volcanic anomaly that is messing with the planets magnetic field. Maybe that is a man-made disaster although I believe it was stated before the disaster is natural. Maybe what Astrid is doing has something to do with that, in that she is part of an effort to contain or reverse the effect, and maybe the quarantine situation is due to Preserverance Mills being the epicenter of the disaster. IF the disaster is man made .... maybe the Forest Talkers have something to do with it. I mean they have some very pronounced presence in Wintermute, and I don't think it isn't for some reason. Although no idea what kind of technology could exist that isn't far beyond out capabilities that would be capable of causing a geological disaster like this.

In general the entire EMP-esque thing is weird. Are all of the working radios vacuum tube based? Same goes for the hamradio. It kinda does look like it could still be based on tubes... but ..... that still doesn't explain the flashlight. Maybe we really have to detach from the entire "real world science" for The Long Dark to make sense. I'm personally a big fan of "Hard" SciFi, and a lot of SciFi has shifted towards this genre more or less. But maybe TLD really is more "Star Wars" than "The Expanse" in terms of how scientifically plausible it needs to be. A modern example how fantastic SciFi can be is 2014's Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (there also is a Netflix Movie loosely based on the book, but while the movies has its moments and some stunning visuals, it's neither true to the book nor does it justice. I seriously encourage everyone that has just a remote interest in SciFi, Mystery or Cosmic Horror to read that book.)

Edited November 13, 2019 by jeffpeng

[Guest jeffpeng]

Actually now that I think of it ..... the Juan de Fuca plate presses into Vancouver Island at the Nootka Island fault. And wasn't Great Bear Island supposed to be an "imaginary" part of Vancouver Island for all intends and purposes?

[ajb1978]

32 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

And wasn't Great Bear Island supposed to be an "imaginary" part of Vancouver Island for all intends and purposes?

I seem to recall something about how Great Bear was inspired by some real locations on Vancouver Island, but is intended to be its own separate entity.  So like in the game universe there's Vancouver Island, and somewhere nearby is Great Bear Island.

I'd get a kick out of it if they did a little self-referential gag in Ep 4 or 5...like you find a video game by Winterland Studio, called "The Extended Night".

[MarrowStone]

@jeffpeng, It's based off of places in Vancouver but further North. 

I wouldn't be surpised if the forest talkers caused it, or simply are embracing it as the driving force for their cause. They seem to be a pretty radical and violent group. 

[BESt]

My theory when the story mode appeared in 2017 was that aurora was a man-made disaster, caused to cripple furthermore the infrastructure of the Great Bear island and make it man free. The disaster could be caused by a weapon, created by mainlanders as a secret project known only by military. This weapon was found by the Forrest talkers or other radical group, and activated. The proof that supported my argument was that the project was called Wintermute. If you remember, it is high suggested that Jeremiah had been a military. Probably he had found out about the secret project and he quitted, choosing to live a solitary life. But it is just a theory that waits to be proved/disproved.

[Guest jeffpeng]

Yeah I know it's not a real place, and that it is not supposed to be 1:1 of some location that actually exists. But .... it is clearly inspired by Vancouver Island, and that particular part is apparently subject to some tectonic activity. Now I'm not sure everyone is aware how the earths magnetic field actually works, but to avoid a lecture: it is directly tied to the inner, molten workings of our planet and mostly driven that. If earth was a geological "dead" planet like Mars we wouldn't have a magnetic field.

Interesting thing to look up on the Internet about that is that it is theorized that the early collision of Earth and a another planetary body did not only form the moon, but also is the root cause of why Earth is so volcanically active despite its age, and that this actually is one of the many reasons why Earth can host life in the first place. Search for "rare earth theory" for more on that. Here's also a good video about that from every armchair physicist's favorite PBS Space Time: 

We have no direct observational data of how magnetic field reversals do progress, how fast they occur and how long they last, but we do know they DID happen, actually rather frequently in the last few million years. Evidence points to those events spanning thousands or even tens of thousands of years and actually progressing rather slowly over the course of years or even decade, contrary to the popular belief that the field would just "flip" like a switch. That's still a blip in geological timescales, but actually pretty "slow" for a human life, and even pretty significant for human civilization as a whole. In this period before a flip the global magnetic field would be significantly weakened, but in areas more local to the actual effect taking place it would be much more pronounced.

Now what could actually be happening, and that indeed is my working theory, is that under Great Bear lies a tectonic fault line that is slowly breaking and in that process is causing a localised shift of field polarity - which then in fact as @MarrowStonesugggested - slowly grows in effect. Everything actually fits with that: the apparent quake damage on Great Bear, it's supposed, remote location at the pacific coast of Vancouver Island, which would actually put it right next to Nootka Island (while, yes Nootka != Great Bear), the periodic appearing and disappearing of the effect. I do think this actually has not much to do with the Sun but really is depicting the effects of a weakening magnetic field due to a polarity reversion in early progress.

If that holds true Great Bear indeed could be a sort-of Bermuda Triangle of the north which would explain while planes keep falling out of the sky.

Edited November 14, 2019 by jeffpeng

[MarrowStone]

Unstructured mess of idea dumping inbound:

Im a fan of "Hard Scifi" too, but I think the story falls more into science fantasy now. But it's done very well, they use a sort of magical realism that suspends your belief but also keeps you wondering. When there's an unrealistic thing, it's left mysterious and magical instead of trying to explain it: 

150 year demon bear or coincedental story? 

Old tech taking the "precursor technology" role now that it's the only stuff that works in a post-digital age. Magical phone-lines, Radios, Elevators, Flashlights, Buffer Memories. Might as well be Halo rings. 

Methuselah/Molly: Enigmatic guiding character or figmant of imagination? 

Speaking of Methuselah, it was a bug that he was able to teleport down the rope, he was supposed to leave the gas station before you got there. But he doesnt need that bug to question his tangibility. 

Do magnetic anomalies cause colder winters though? I know they can possibly irritate animals and nukes at high enough altitudes can fry power grids in a huge area without killing anyone, but I dont know if EMPs and the like affect temperatures. I know global warming can disrupt the usual paths of cold northern air and create more precipitation with more evaporation. 

Also. I get that the plane's black box and communications are fried, but after the plane failed to return wouldnt someone on the mainland come looking?

Maybe Methuselah is right and all this is just Nature's doing. And it doesn't need an explanation because there's nothing anybody left behind can do about it except try to not fade into the dark. 

[ThePancakeLady]

I love this thread. So many different takes and ideas on what might be happening in Wintermute, and what it might mean.

Hoping this thread keeps going, and more people add their thoughts to it, giving us all new things to consider.
And hopefully it will keep going, when Ep 4 ships, and we have more to add to it.

(Plus... it gives Raph and the other devs some insight into how some folks are seeing their game and the messages they are trying to share in the story.)

Wonderful thread topic @ajb1978.  

[BESt]

44 minutes ago, MarrowStone said:

Unstructured mess of idea dumping inbound:

Im a fan of "Hard Scifi" too, but I think the story falls more into science fantasy now. But it's done very well, they use a sort of magical realism that suspends your belief but also keeps you wondering. When there's an unrealistic thing, it's left mysterious and magical instead of trying to explain it: 

150 year demon bear or coincedental story? 

Old tech taking the "precursor technology" role now that it's the only stuff that works in a post-digital age. Magical phone-lines, Radios, Elevators, Flashlights, Buffer Memories. Might as well be Halo rings. 

Methuselah/Molly: Enigmatic guiding character or figmant of imagination? 

Speaking of Methuselah, it was a bug that he was able to teleport down the rope, he was supposed to leave the gas station before you got there. But he doesnt need that bug to question his tangibility. 

Do magnetic anomalies cause colder winters though? I know they can possibly irritate animals and nukes at high enough altitudes can fry power grids in a huge area without killing anyone, but I dont know if EMPs and the like affect temperatures. I know global warming can disrupt the usual paths of cold northern air and create more precipitation with more evaporation. 

Also. I get that the plane's black box and communications are fried, but after the plane failed to return wouldnt someone on the mainland come looking?

Maybe Methuselah is right and all this is just Nature's doing. And it doesn't need an explanation because there's nothing anybody left behind can do about it except try to not fade into the dark. 

I don't think that the event has anything to do with the weather. I don't recall story saying anything about the weather getting colder, but I might be wrong. And Raphael van Lierop suggested that they might in the future make a TLD 2, with changing seasons. This implies that the disaster isn't causing a permanent winter.

[Guest jeffpeng]

1 hour ago, MarrowStone said:

but I dont know if EMPs and the like affect temperatures

I can assure you that they would most certainly not, because that's one of the few thing I actually did study. I think we can so far rule out an EMP event. Whatever this is: it's ongoing, and too huge in scale to be entirely man made. Maybe man-triggered, which already is a strecht, but the forces at work here are too pronounced to be made by any conceivable device that we could power with anything even remotely realistic.

1 hour ago, MarrowStone said:

Also. I get that the plane's black box and communications are fried, but after the plane failed to return wouldnt someone on the mainland come looking?

We lost Malaysia 370 and it still is very much up to debate what happened to that plane, and chances are it will never be fully recovered. Considering that eletromagnetic turbulences are strong enough to fry the onboard computer tracking would have been lost long before the plane went down. Now if we assume the crash took place just a few days ago it's conceivable nobody even knows where it went down, especially if the plane remained airborne for several minutes or even like an hour, and the pilot altered course manually to attempt a crash landing on land. It is very much possible the plane was en route from the pacific and inbound at YVR, and that Great Bear was the single patch of land the pilot could find in the short remaining time. The world is a very big place to search for such a small thing as a passenger aircraft.

Also it has been repeatedly stated that the western hemisphere is in steep economic decline. In such a time resources for such a rescue effort would be rather limited I imagine.

1 hour ago, ThePancakeLady said:

Wonderful thread topic @ajb1978.  

Agreed

I think one part of a great mystery is that it doesn't necessarily need to make perfect sense. I know many people had the gripes with the conclusion of "Lost", and its no coincidence "Fringe" was left on similar vague terms.

In my opinion a mystery does not need to have a "scientifically valid solution" to make sense. If you think about it: Mysticism is something we sorta deprived outselves of in our age and time. Just over a hundred years ago, before Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and all the other great scientific minds of the early 20th century broke most of the mysteries of our own world (and uncovered even more mysteries too small for the human mind to even conceive without a Feynman Diagram) we had much less to go on when it came to explain Heaven and Earth, and it was mostly accepted that some things just happen without a perfectly valid explanation.

So I kinda am not surprised that such mysteries that do not conform to realism attract our attention and spur our imagination. It's something we certainly miss these days. It kinda still works for the occult in fiction, but when it comes down to things that are not related to the supernatural many things boil down to what we can explain on some physical level. I think a show ( I didn't read the books) that does walk the line between hard SciFi and the supernatural pretty well is actually "The Expanse". 

Edited November 14, 2019 by jeffpeng