The 12 Survivors of Subnautica - Full Story Explained!

In the late 22nd century, the Alterra Long-Range Capital Ship "Aurora" is sent to the Ariadne Arm to construct a phasegate. Unknown to most of the crew, the journey also sought to investigate the disappearance of the Mongolian vessel "Degasi". When passing by the oceanic planet 4546B, the Aurora is struck on its starboard side by a massive energy pulse originating from the planet's surface. Lifepods 1-25 were launched, but due to the damage, lifepods 26-50 were inoperable. While attention is usually focused on the events leading up to the crash, as well as the insane story of Ryley Robinson, little thought is given to the 12 other survivors who, for a time, found themselves locked in a battle for survival on an alien world. This report aims to investigate lifepod locations and PDA data in order to paint a picture of the survivor's individual situations, movements, and to draw an informed conclusion regarding how each person met their demise.

[xavierburval]

I just realized, Keen and Yu were probably the closest out of anyone to survival. If they had just chosen to stay on the island and wait for other survivors, they would have eventually met up with Ryley after a few days or weeks depending on how fast the player progresses, and from there they would have greatly increased chances of survival. Although the Degasi logs mention that the island wasn’t sustainable for a permanent stay, the two probably could have survived long enough for Ryley to show up, and the three of them likely could have all escaped. Yu’s decision to go to the Aurora was pretty much the only reason they didn’t survive.

[sjeason]

The worst part about this is considering how the timing has to work out, it’s likely we only miss some of these survivors by hours or minutes. Especially lifepod 3, it’s so close to where we start and they’re probably still alive when we wake up.

[vadandrumist]

Seeing all these together makes me want to see a multiplayer session with proximity voice chat (severely limited underwater without a craft equipped with functional radios when crafted), possibly on the hard mode mod with permadeath and random start. Imagine starting with 12 people only for several of them to immediately die due to poor spawns, and the rest over time to whatever bad luck takes them.

[SylerCarroll]

Remember that Ryley didn’t survive because he’s the main character, he’s the main character because he survived

[lukedovzik]

24:10 It's crazy that the Aurora had 157 passengers but only 50 life pods each only equipped for 2 people for a total capacity of 100 it's like Titanic all over again

[Isaac_]

I have a theory as to why you can never see the other survivors. Ryley was knocked unconscious in his lifepod, and he must have been unconscious for a long time. During that time, all the other survivors perished. Honestly i think this game handles how lonely and hopeless things are at the start of the game.

[WomanSlayer]

Lifepod 3 definitely didn’t make it, the blast hole on the lifepod and the seaglide fragment next to it tells you everything you need to know. The seaglide overloaded and exploded and killed the crew because they rigged a power cell to it instead of a battery.

[The_Zoophile_Hater]

Bro the captain was a W, he sacrificed himself to give the survivors a chance to live.

[telemachbreuer]

what I find astonishing, is that almost all of the at first surviving crew members died of failing flotation devices and the rest did on their incompetence

[Mrqwerty]

After the disaster, Alterra's Board of Directors created The Aurora Commission, to analyze the emergency response and immediate aftermath of the crash, as well as events preceding it. They're findings included: that there were not enough lifepods to accommodate all 157 crew and passengers aboard, only fitting enough for 100; that of the 50 lifepods onboard, only 22 jettisoned before splashdown; that the entire starboard set of 12 lifepods landed in the inhospitable ocean void of planet 4546b, with their occupants lost at sea; that of the 10 lifepods to survive the initial crash, only 2 had correctly functioning flotation devices, with the remaining 8 having either failed to deploy or malfunctioned; and that the sheer hostility of the planet caused the deaths of 12 of the 13 survivors of the initial crash. After this incident, Alterra did not alter its regulations for minimum lifepod requirements nor its standards for flotation devices.

[DetectiveWraith]

So, basically, the Aurora was not equipped to deal with giant space lasers?

[Helluva-Hurricane]

The beginning part where the captain is saying he needs to stay always makes me really sad. You can almost tell in his voice that he’s trying to not think about the fact that he’ll probably die, especially when he says “Negative”. He hesitates a little

[ΒασίληςΒλάχος-τκ]

Honestly the ones how managed to board life pods were the unfortunate minority, because they died slow and painful deaths from sea monsters, disease and drowning, or God forbid, landing in the void, wich is what we have to assume happened to all the other starboard life pods. Everyone on the Aurora probably died imidiatly. Also, something is seriously wrong with the floatation systems, just 2 out of 25 if them worked

[alchemysaga]

#12 Accepted the fact that cheating his way through medical school is going to kill him rather quickly.

Shock is a hell of a drug.

[argentin]

Riley essentially survived because:

1_ He had a lot of luck by landing on the shallow part
2_ He was an introvert and thus didn't send any message through the radio (Warpers detected other survivors due to them attaching the coordinates on the transmissions they sent)

[thebigcheeseslice]

all of the survivors: fucked, dead, somehow survived. stubborn

ryley: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON

[deadlydiamond]

I always thought the crewmembers of Lifepod 3 died as a result of their Seaglide going haywire during a test as a result of the guy tampering with it in order to increase the speed, mainly because there is a siginificant sized hole in the side of the Lifepod, and the fact that there is a damaged Seaglide near it; so I thought it went out of control, and rammed the two crewmembers into the Lifepod, resulting in an explosion

[Space_Plays]

i feel so bad for keen…i knew the other lifepod people were probably dead but i got so excited when i heard he made it to land, and so sad and angry when i realised he was probably dead. i would’ve loved to have an extra survivor with me in my base, it gets so lonely in there!

[nathanieljohnson]

I feel really bad for the two who drowned in particular.
Idk why that bothers me more then getting eaten by bonesharks but I guess its the steady hopelessness of swimming for hours only for it to not matter as your strength slowly fails.

[voidwaypr]

With Lifepod 7 I think how he died was that he was trying anything and everything with the fabricator trying to have it make something useful, and then it created some kind of explosive that destroyed the pod. The hole goes outwards, so it was something from the inside that had to have destroyed it