Could Anyone Still Be Alive INSIDE The Aurora? (Subnautica Lore Theory)

After being struck by the quarantine enforcement platform, the Aurora began plummeting toward the surface, and anyone unable to reach an escape pod was killed. This is the first thing we learn upon leaving the lifepod, but is it really the case? Could anyone have survived INSIDE the Aurora?!? It’s more likely than you might think...

[Mrforevermore]

"Hmmm....interesting looks like some people might of survi-"
*SHIP F**KING EXPLODES*
"Never mind"

[admiralfluffy]

Headcannon: Lifepod 4 Guy wasn’t killed by Reapers. He made it onto the ship, to be killed by the explosion instead.

[tewa]

157 passengers
100 life pod berths
Looks like the White Star Line went back in business at some point.

[FireStripeFox]

There would have been more potential survivors because lifepods 26 - 50 were too damaged from the QEP shot to launch

[brianbommarito]

You forgot something important. Anyone who was lucky enough to survive past the Radiation poisoning (they had a suit) and the Cave Crawlers (fended them off successfully, if multiple persons had knives and they kept in groups to slash up the critters before they could slash them) and the Kharaa bacterium (delayed reaction to symptoms because of minuscule differences in their immunity systems, which can only hold it off for a little longer) would all have been killed anyways when the front of the Aurora exploded because of the ship’s Nuclear Reactor becoming unstable due to the leak in the Drive Core. Ryley himself can be killed if he wanders into the Radiation zone by the ship, right before the explosion. How much worse it would be for anyone trapped inside the ship. I imagine they would be instantly vaporized.

[nelsondelgado]

By my probably flawed calculations, the Aurora is approx. 1280m long, a third as wide and 400m tall, -100m for the bridge. As the ship is an ellipsoid it has about 107.2 million m3 in volume spread across what looks like six decks. Let’s say that the accessible area for a crew member is a quarter and the rest is for the phasegate and other cargo, leaving 26.8 million m3 for crew.
With only a crew of 148, this means that this is a skeleton crew or the ship is so advanced there doesn’t need to be that many people onboard. Since the ship only has quarters for 150 as per the ship’s PDA entry, the latter is likely the case.
On a ship this large and only 157 people onboard, each person has more than 181, 000 m3 to themselves. To say that they were tripping over each other is egregious. They might not even have seen another person until reaching the life-pods.
I have to say, it is rather strange that a ship this big only has 148 crew. Modern naval ships nowhere near the size of the Aurora have up to 400 crew. And it’s not like this is a simple cargo ship, this is a top of the line capital ship, supposedly on a self-contained, three year mission.
At least looking at it this way, Ryley’s title of Non-Essential Systems Maintenance Chief means he is the person in charge of Non-essential systems maintenance and not a redundant crew member since Alterra Cleary hates redundancy.
Speaking of redundancy, with only 50 life-pods onboard and 2 people per pod, only 100 people could safely escape the Aurora in case of an, this much is obvious. However, as you pointed out in the video, there are going to be pods that leave at non-capacity, and pods that could experience a malfunction, massive gun or not. That means that even a minimum of 75 pods isn’t enough since at the time of the game, there were 9 extra passengers onboard. Really a ship this large needs at least 25% more life-pods than max capacity spread out over the ship so that they are more accessible and less likely to experience a collective catastrophe. But, you have to admire the ship’s ventilation systems.
From where I’m sitting, this game was rigged from the start.

[BobbySchwaterberg-omqz]

What if some people didnt survive because abandon ship was playing on the speakers and they liked the music

[pariah]

The fact the Aurora only has 157 passengers is far more surprising to me

[KilIimanjar]

Every story in Subnautica is literally "and then everybody died. The End."

[titan_redeemer]

I think that it would have been cool if an expansion was added to subnautica that
gave the players much more of the aurora to explore, maybe even giving the destroyed bridge section its own interior or life pod launch bays or more lore surrounding the players character in his quarters or in various pdas where we finally get to hear him speak, even if it’s only a recording.

Honestly the aurora is such a key piece of the story of subnautica that feels almost forgotten. There is so much in the ship we’ve never seen before. Not only the cut off back half, but also the front most section that got blown to bits when the aurora explodes.

[nerfjanetreal]

Aurora crashed at crazy speeds and 150 people for a 1km long ship makes it hard for people to even see each other when running through the ship

[Compig]

Since khaara is present in the water, the Aurora was compromised the instant it made contact with the surface. There is a slight chance that the khaara is also airborne, which would have rendered the ship compromised in the event of a single minute hull breach

[Xelaria]

The condition inside the Aurora could have looked much better then it had when we explored it. Because we could only do so after it detonates

[AlterraCorporation]

It is hard to believe that no one on the ship would have survived, at least until the explosion, because there is a lot less food and water than there should be on board

[Crackedcoconut-bz]

The only thing I hate, is we see this massive ship go inside and only see a quarter of it. It would be so cool to be able to go the thruster area. Or control area where they drove the aurora.

[sawyermccall]

I think it’s very likely most of this is true especially since it says the cave crawlers have human tissues in their digestive track so there had to have been some survivors

[Tuxedo_Birb]

So while we only find 9 life pods, we know that lifepods 1-25 all launched so presumably there’s some people who met a very bad fate in the void

[PanosPatsialidis]

When you get on the Aurora for the first time after it exploded the pda says "research shows their are parts of human tissues scattered around" something similar along those lines.

[sjeason]

I mean even if anyone lived long enough to see it they were all on a timer anyway. I imagine that the drive core exploding as we witness from outside would’ve killed anyone left alive in there.

[Ghost-qujk]

The funny thing is the pawnsuts still survived after the explosion there might have been a chance to tank the explosion and never touch the water and bacteria.