This Island Is Doomed

Subnautica's floating island is one of the games most unique locations, but this island is doomed whether you know it or not.
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▼ Time Stamps ▼
0:00 – The Floating Island & Floaters
0:53 – Somethings Not Right
1:37 – THE SCIENCE!
3:18 – How Long?
4:06 – Island Lifecycle
5:30 – The Plant Problem
8:21 – Swim for the Aurora & Patreon Thanks!

Thanks for watching 'This Island Is Doomed!'

Editted by TCRD

[Mathijsvand]

More than happy to help out with this, man! Working on this was an absolute joy and seeing it come to fruition has actually been one of the greatest joys of the year! Thank you so much for allowing me to help out with this 😀!

[SheHasAnOnly-fish]

You missed the fact a giant spaceship crashed a couple km away and would have caused a underwater shockwave large enough to weaken the brittle floating rock with a hole in it.

[Domeda_Official]

tropical paradise my ass. i can't take two steps without a crab attacking me

[Noah]

Something about the floating Islands:
When you first enter the biome the PDA states "Erosion patterns on the landmasses suspended here suggest they once floated on the surface."

[AltOfWafflzAndSyrup]

This makes me think this rapid disintegration is in fact a result of the Aurora crashing into the crater, or perhaps its explosion. Either way, it makes me believe the shockwaves from the impact/explosion disturbed the islands, meaning the decline of the island is massively sped up.

[ReddwarfIV]

Something else to consider is that Subnautica has a strange relationship with time. The night/day cycle is about 15 minutes long, which could be attributed to super fast planetary rotation except the player needs food and water about once per day/night cycle, implying it's meant to represent around 24 hours in-universe. Also, 4546B would fly apart if it spun once per hour, let alone every quarter hour.
So it's possible that the rocks are falling every minute and a half, not every second.

[cybercitleta]

If we consider the pda description, floater is about 4 or 5 different bacteria species, which makes them basically invincible, as when an old bacteria dies, new recycles its remainings. Turns out, floater is a whole ecosystem, like thermal gardens

[sovietsupporter]

You miss the fact that the degasi survivors lived on the island at 2 separate periods of time, both long before the player

[copperlocke]

Now I wonder if the weirdly round hole in the middle of the island was where an ancient floater once clung, but the rocks grew thin and it collapsed, leaving the central hole.

[OVscientia]

To play devil's advocate, I'm not super sure that measuring the rate of decay of the island using a linear (direct) relationship is the most accurate thing to do, and the reason stems from some differential equations and also offering an alternative natural consideration to explain it.
First, I want to take a look at the ancient floaters smaller cousin, the common floater. We can find them all over the safe shallows and grassy plateaus feeding off of smaller rocks, still being able to suspend them. However, we do NOT see and parts of the rock breaking off as a result of the feeding. This is very important as it suggests that floaters do a lot less structural damage to rocks than the floating island suggests.
My proposal to explain the current decay riley finds on the floating island is this: The ancient floaters have RECENTLY (relative to their own lifespan, so like within 100 years) caused the island to rise up from the depths. What do you think changed that made the island suddenly light enough to be so buoyant as to be able to be lifted to the surface? My answer is that very same decay that riley is seeing and you are measuring! Think about the process of the floaters originally starting to lift the island off the ocean floor. It's going to leave behind large chunks of rock that will in turn make the island even lighter, and this process will continue the entire journey the island takes to the surface, losing more and more rock. Even after reaching the surface, the rocks will continue to fall off and I believe that's what riley is seeing. I think the island is still settling from it's journey to the surface it just takes a LONG time.

[supremefankai]

Well, I'm glad the floating island isn't going to collapse during gameplay because I like my summer home on it. Mind you, it would be cool if there was a timed event like the Aurora explosion that drastically changes the geography of the landmass. It wouldn't just effect the island but the grand reef below, a fascinating scenario.

[MCat-]

This is like a podcast but actually good and for Subnatica

[sirsquadie]

You also might be missing the GIANT SPACESHIP, THAT EXPLODED in the equation?
The radiation and impact could play major roles in destabilising the closed ecosystem.

[quaggity_giggity]

4:00 this is false, because when below zero first got the beginning cutscene before all the voice acting and it was just the animation of robin leaving the space station, you could see the Aurora, Mountain Island, and the floating island on the planet. but all 3 were removed in the final version for some reason as the whole planet got a new model for the cutscene.

[cathygrandstaff]

One thing I’d thought regarding the falling rocks is there might be a natural cycle in which juvenile floaters attach themselves to small rocks beneath the floating islands and float them up to the surface where they then become stuck against the larger mass of rock. Then if they don’t happen to survive to become the big boi floaters they would die off causing the smaller rocks to fall back to the sea floor. It’s also possible these small rocks serve as a way to carry larval floaters from the surface to the sea floor where they can attach themselves to fresh rocks.

I was thinking about this with Below Zero’s lily pad islands since they seem to have a similar dynamic with the floaters.

[SheHasAnOnly-fish]

In reality, the underside of the island would have been reinforced by coral or aquatic plants over milinia being the only place in that area to have exposed rock and sun the surroundings being much deeper

[KaratFengMinecraft]

There is a massive flaw in the design of these floaters: nutrients in the ground, produced by plants and wildlife, rarely penetrate deeper than a foot or two, and certainly not through rock. Unless the floaters have some sort of drill-like tongue to reach the surface and consume the nutrients, they wouldn't be able to sustain themselves. But even if they could consume the nutrients, the island wouldn't be sustainable. A creature constantly depleting nutrients from the ground would disrupt any natural cycle, rendering the island sterile within just a few months, leaving behind only a desolated rock.

[masterofwriters]

6:30 The floaters must have gotten the helium from some source, and must be able to gather helium as they grow due to their lift capacity increasing. Thus unless the mechanism used to gather helium is weakening, they would be able to replenish helium supplies.

[kirbyx]

Finding the Floating Island for the first time was super cool. Its a pretty nice place! Especialy because it has the melon seeds there. Extra points for it haha!

[queekheadtaker]

Before the khadra bacteria I wonder how many of these islands were there, maybe hundreds but now only a handfull of the big ones remain, makes you wonder what the planet looked like before the outbreak