Alterra WANTED you to DIE (Subnautica Theory)

You all know the story, the Aurora is shot down by the Quarantine Enforcement Platform. You manage to escape on Life Pod 5, landing on Subnautica's Planet 4546B. Yet every else somehow dies? Doesn't that sound a bit, well, unlikely? Well, what if I told you that this was no case of bad luck? Alterra meant for them to die. And you, Ryley Robinson, was supposed to die too. And your lifepod malfunctioning may just have saved your life.

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#subnautica #theory #alterra

[vincenttannahill]

I think its a titanic situation where nobody thought the aurora would actually go down so they cut funding on the life pods, this explains why each lifepod has different items in the storage containers, like lifepod 3 had a seaglide and lifepod 5 had food and water. alterra just cheaped out on the lifepods and put spare items like a seaglide and some food in each one.

[domacleod]

Nitpick on the beginning part, Aurora was not sent to the quarantine planet to build a spacegate. The spacegate was supposed to be constructed elsewhere. The crew was unaware of it, but Aurora had the secondary objective of rescuing survivors from the Degasi (or otherwise confirming the Degasi and its crew's fate). A large part of its cargo was specifically brought for this purpose. You don't need submarines, prawn suit drill arms or torpedoes to build something in space (which is where phasegates are built and where the remain, they're for space travel).

"Mission Details:
- Aurora is due to perform a slingshot maneuver around 4546B (category 3 ocean planet) approximately 13 months post-launch
- This will bring the ship within range of the Degasi's last known position
- Additional aquatic and all-terrain vehicles have been included in the Aurora's cargo package for this mission
- Degasi crew manifesto has been distributed to senior employees in a separate message "

[dreamiinotdream]

While it’s a cool theory, it’s likely another unfortunate case of negligence in favor of cutting costs. They doubted lifepods would ever be used, hence they are cheaply made and poorly stocked. The Aurora, despite the massive structural damage, had its hull mostly intact prior to its explosion, meaning it could withstand plantfall and not be obliterated by a super space laser. Yet some of the lifepods didn’t even survive plantfall despite the depths. Like the one in mushroom forest where the passenger likely died from the impact even if it goes pretty far down.

There was obviously no quality checks to ensure they’d even deploy properly, let alone actually float as so many people reported sinking to the sea floor before they’d even encountered any creatures. And the damage to their fabricators and radios left some people unable to do anything to help themselves and just wait for the end.

These things were also poorly stocked. The lifepods is supposed to support two people per pod but even one person could easily burn through the water and food inside. Theoretically, if these lifepods are supposed to be able to maintain life until rescue comes, why would you make it so that it is a necessity to leave to find resources? You’d want that sucker stocked so people will stay inside and be easier to identify.

Alterra is evil, that is true, but I don’t think they’d intentionally kill their own.

[Deerboidraws]

Two other points towards this therory
1: the fabricator on one of the lifepods (I can't remember which) was specifically said to have only produced useless trinkets regardless of what buttons were pressed
And
2: all three occupants who survived the dagasi crash were able to survive a good while before their demises

[shinx]

I feel like the warpers actually kill some of the people, because first time when you get a partially translated broadcast in the end it says "targets left 16" or something like that. Then later on it says 1, wich is the player.

[CrouTheBlackwing]

Honestly this theory makes me want the next Subnautica to start with Robin and Alan breaking Ryley out of prison.

[CheerfulMarian-um]

another thing we have to keep in mind is that Alterra is a transgov. A company that owns and governs over its own region of space, usually with permission from a larger governmental body. In their space Alterra is not just a powerful corporation, but a full government. The company makes policies, taxes citizens, engages in diplomacy, and enforces laws with its own private law enforcement. Even if they have to follow some regulations from some central human government, think about how much they can get away with with that kind of power.

[leme]

Lifepod 6 also did work. The voicelogs show that it even held for a while as one of the occupants went scavenging for materials to make a rad suit. It only blew up due to negligence of the other occupant of the pod, who waved a flare on a fuel line. Lifepod 7 also did, as the log says the pod was structurally sound, only the fabricator was cooked. Lifepod 3 my guess is it exploded when the seaglide they rigged with a powercell overloaded and blew up. The only lifepods we know for certain failed were Lifepod 2, which is stated that it sunk, albeit with both occupants safe and lifepod 13, which exploded on impact. Lifepod 19 also did its job and kept Keen alive. Lifepod 12 also sunk afterward, keeping the chief medical officer alive long enough to record a voicelog. Going with this data suggests that the lifepods were doing their thing, but Aurora blackbox data shows that lifepods 1 - 25 launched successfully, and only 8 managed to float so thats still a pitiful success rate for an emergency procedure.
Based on this data, I find farfetched thinking that Alterra purposefully rigged the lifepods to explode, as it does not explain how the 8 lifepods that worked. I find it way more likely that Alterra just got greedy and cut costs regarding safety. The final piece of evidence that supports my hypothesis is the ending SPOILER: Alterra bills you for every material you mined from the planet in order to survive and escape..

[GeorgeTyrrell-qmep]

imagine surviving 45426b as the only survivor and a altera sniper just picks you off the second you get back to civilization

[lslv]

I love how the thumbnail is the alterra symbol holding a gun

[stephenjones]

Small nitpick: those life pods have 2 seats. So they were actually stocked for *one and a half* days!

[domacleod]

1:09 Hard to agree. Some lifepods malfunctioned, yes, but you have to consider they were in the upper atmosphere and were hit by the shockwave of Alterra being blown up - most didn't fail at their task and only suffered from gross incompetence from the survivors or from attacks from sea life, neither of which could be accounted for without deliberately planning for failure.

Player's lifepod only had the luck of landing in the shallows where there weren't deadly predators. A few other crewmen had similar luck, but they failed at basic survival.
One lifepod was blown up by its occupants misusing it, another attracted attention to itself and got smashed by a reaper, one was thrown off course and had to be tampered with to properly land, but ended up too far below sea and with only 30 minutes of oxygen left.

Shoddy worksmanship on the lifepods sure, Alterra doesn't place much value on the employees' lives, the Aurora was much more valuable than the crew. If the Aurora was to be lost, the lives of the crew hardly mattered by comparison.

[samtheman]

Don't forget, CTO Yu and Second officer Keen both made it out of their lifepods to the Floating island, but then both died to a reaper in the Crash Zone after returning to the Aurora to look for survivors. Clearly their lifepods didn't blow up on them. Also remember Ozzy? their lifepod didn't float, it sunk to the edge of the Jellyshroom Caves, and a "grim looking snake thing" possibly a crabsnake swam up out of the cave and tried to "eat through the hull" thus creating the hole in the lifepod. If you are trying to break into a metal container, you pull the chunk of metal outward, not push it inward, thus why the holes have outward bent metal. nearly every lifepod is thought have landed upright, then sank, and lifepod 4 was possibly knocked over by a Reaper Leviathan. Below Zero shows us that Alterra doesn't value people that much, but those lifepods were designed to survive planetfall and not to explode. Even if those lifepods did have self destruct bombs hidden in them, I don't think those PDAs inside them would've survived a lethal explosion, but that's just a guess.

[legendoftheducks]

If you listen to lifepod 6th log you can hear one of the crew members saying to the other "That's not a distress flare! Stop waving it around like that, you'll catch the fuel line! *Explosion*
You can spot a gaping hole at the top of the lifepod and burnmarks on the intirior

[elross]

An other thing that makes you think Alterra doesn't want you back :
First time you pick up a diamond, the PDA informs you that everything you gather on that planet makes you indebt to Alterra.
This doesn't even make sense but then if you make it out of the planet, your are on a lifetime debt, and if you stay on the planet, no one will come for you.

[joshuacouture]

I will add that through the PDA’s it seemed like a decent amount of survivors were incompetent like the one lady who blew up her own pod and the doctor who wasn’t really a doctor

[CatLeMont]

There is at least one other lifepod which has evidence of floating other than 5 and 4 (being lifepod 17). I also dont belive that the lifepods were designed to blow up as it would be easier and cheaper for alterra to not add lifepods at all and just pay off the safty inspectors. But I do belive that the lifepods were designed cheaply and not to keep people safe for long periods of time as of there being not much food and water and the lack of a parachute. I also belive that alterra was hoping you would not survive as riley would probably pursue legal action after the events of subnautica.

[cathygrandstaff]

The holes in the lifepods definitely look like they were exploding outward. I suppose it’s also possible that by sheer dumb luck you picked the only lifepod that wasn’t sabotaged. Remember that whoever had sabotaged the lifepods likely would have wanted to escape with their own life and left one of the pods intact.

I also think out of universe it’s a case of the devs designing the lifepods to look destroyed before they came up with the narratives surrounding each lifepod, because we know from the floating one near the Aurora that it’s inhabitant survived the crash but was being menaced by the local Reaper and was planning to swim to the Aurora for safety. The log doesn’t really say whether he made it to the Aurora only to be killed by the drive explosion or whether the Reaper got a snack but one way or another that guy died. We also know the second officer and a number of others survived and made it to the floating island only to make the decision to return to the Aurora where they either died to one of the Reapers or the radiation.

Alterra doesn’t give you very many provisions, but as long as the fabricator is functioning correctly they probably assume you can figure out how to forage for food and water so the supplies in the lifepod are just for when you’re getting started. Even their rescue is “well e-mail you blueprints hopefully you can build those”, something that requires minimal resources from them.

[YourLocalGamer]

You know what? This genuinely makes sense because I just realized the fabricator on one of the lifepods couldn't have started making toys on impact, alterra DID sabotage them, the lore is insane

[aaronfarseth]

Alterra: Too expensive for a rescue mission! Also Alterra: funds Degasi rescue mission