The Iron Lung Conspiracy

The first major time we see Shadowman, he's moving towards the back of the SM-13, moving to hide against the terminal wall, away from Simon, who is standing near the front console.

The second major instance of this, the Shadowman is standing near the front console, and Simon is moving to hide against the terminal wall.

Now, I'm just going off of memory here, because I'm neck-deep in another analysis right now, but could it be possible that they quite literally swapped places in these mirroring scenes?

I know that we got some insight on the Shadowman, how it's literally "Simon's shadow" and him seeing himself, how it was almost a cut-concept entirely, but the "Simon's shadow" part tipped me off that this thing could quite literally be copying him in some instances, if not all of them.

This also applies to the tape being pulled from the button when he's in the crawlspace: if I remember, there is a moment later that he does pull it off angrily.

Right now I will ask the blogger (forgot the url) that broke down the coordinates to see if we can check Simon's coordinates in these exact moments: my theory is that these moments happen when Simon is crossing over points he already passed or will futurely pass, allowing time-space to cross.

THAT THE RED-EYED GOD WAS JUST LIKE, "yo, Simon, check this shit out. Check out what I can mold you into. We could totally match! We could be twinning!!!" /j

This falls in line pretty heavily with this concept from earlier... maybe the Shadowman was just another "hello" from the across void.

If we do actually uncover the Shadowman being tied to Simon's path at the bottom of the ocean, and that it appears when his full journey converges, I'm going to lose my mind.

Because that means Markiplier is just doing THIS SHIT at us:

Repeating what I said here:

The SM-13's coordinates are visible onscreen at 00:13:01 when the proximity alert first goes off, placing it at 389.98, 220.63. Directly after at 00:13:32 and 00:13:50 the SM-13 is struck by the Eel, which throws it about 75 meters. The coordinates are visible onscreen again at 00:13:58 when the SM-13's tether is pulled taut: 461.36, 249.90.

The SM-13 is pulled up, then dropped again at 00:22:28. The coordinates aren't visible at the first sighting (00:25:31) as the SM-13 is still descending, but presumably it touched down within a few meters of it's last location. The coordinates at the second sighting (01:26:23) are 462.15, 241.27 (seen clearly at 01:30:02).

Which means there was only about 8 meters between where the SM-13 was first pulled up and where Simon saw his Shadow for the second time.

Additionally, I timed out the scenes:

First Sighting

Simon turns towards the stern of the ship and sees his Shadow at 00:25:31

Simon's Shadow sidesteps behind the portside partition wall at 00:25:37

Simon gets up from the pilot's chair at 00:25:42

Simon reaches for a weapon, making a small rustling sound at 00:25:44

Simon sees his Shadow for about six seconds— another five for Simon to get up, another two before the rustling sound

Second Sighting

Simon sees his Shadow sitting at the controls at 01:26:23

Simon's Shadow turns towards the stern and sees Simon at 01:26:24

Simon sidesteps behind the portside partition wall at 01:26:30

A faint creak from the pilot's chair is heard at 01:26:35

Small rustling sound is heard at 01:26:38

Simon is seen by his Shadow for about six seconds— another five for his Shadow to get up from the pilot's chair, another two-ish before the rustling sound

OP I have a suggestion for you (I would do if movie available on my country already lmao): what are the coordinates everytime Simon sees the Shadowman, including when he finds the pendant (and if possible, when he turns back on the energy after leaving the crawlspace, because before he heard steps and the tape was pulled). My theory is that Simon sees the Shadowman aka himself when he passes over places he has already been before or will be. I can be FULLY WRONG, but as of now that's the only thing I can think regarding the importance of the coordinates, that time-space is being warped

​heya!! happy to help out <3

mm not sure about this theory, but first let's see if we can spot these, the console isn't always in easy view but we can do some guesstimates, so here we go:

1. Shadowman sighting #1: This happens just as he's being submerged from the towship drop. They pull him up at 389, 220, but on the way down the console gives no numbers.

He then finds the Pendant and the message. the next time we see any coordinates, just as he goes forward after saying he wants to live in response to TGWTYCW, they are mostly obscured. we then cut to looking for the skeleton, so not much help.

2. Sighting post-crawl space: first glimpse of the console after Simon reboots the engine is a bust, i can make out a 5 and a 2 but that's it. That said we can assume it's the same number as when we get a proper view when he gets back in action, so the coordinates are 702, 652.

I do wanna point out this is beyond the range of the COI map, so they didn't even account for him going there during this expedition. This is not entirely new territory since we do spot the SM-8 later on in this out-of-bounds area, and maybe the SM-13 itself has gone down this range before, but not Simon.

3. Shadowman sighting #2: Happens almost immediately after the Pinhole God's vision thing. The shadowman is at the console, when we get back to it, he's gone and the coordinates are 463, 241.

Simon's expedition: Now for the places that he has been, before the Eye God spat him back out.

He starts his trip at 094, 179. The COI map is a square that goes from coordinates 0 to 550. When he reaches the first POI and loses the first O2 light, he's at 140, 160 and he finds the weird tendril anemone at 380, 226.

Edited this one for a bit of clarity, and because this is a perfect snapshot of his trip prior to the stranding.

We can somewhat see here that Simon has explored most of the map's left side. Since we know the map goes up to 550, then we can ballpark that line cutoff at around 250, probably less. It fits with the previous coordinates, since they never go past the 220s in the X axis. He landed not too far from his cutoff point, slightly east and further north, but not at the exact same location.

From these images (brightened and contrast reduced to see the full sphere beyond the terminator) and area calculations we can tell the ocean only covers 3.6% of the surface and the 'moon' has an atmosphere, one that's a similar color to our nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. In order to accommodate the ~100C surface temperature required for the blood ocean it would need both significant temperature and significant gravity to maintain such a warm atmosphere without a sun.

The remainder of the surface seems to be solid but very reflective, perhaps a metal of some kind which would add significant mass required for gravity and atmosphere and reflect heat back into itself. Another possible factor could be an extreme rate of rotation which would increase temperature and lessen perceived gravity at the equator but contribute to shedding of atmosphere much faster (but as they've likely only been around since the quiet rapture we may not have to worry about the atmosphere shedding any significant amount). @dessathealien I could easily see your white hole being located at the center of this Eye-like ocean and the way it parallels the being seen in the void is uncanny.

@negative-pressure-ventilator confirmed the map in the film uses meters for scale, and is 600x600m for the initial scan. The extended map for the cave system goes out to x:1100 and up to Y:950, the blood ocean has a diameter of at least 1km but likely much more.

Assuming that the temperature of the Blood Ocean is similar to the average human body temp (37°C/98°F), the minimum atmospheric pressure of AT-5 would be about about 7.1 kiloPascals or 0.07% the density of Earth's atmosphere. Any lower and the ocean would boil at 37°C. If Deadlymelodic's design for AT-5 is canon (and god I hope it is the eye imagery is fucking perfect) and the atmosphere is that visible from space, then I'd lean towards the atmosphere being a bit denser, maybe 30-50% the density of Earth's atmosphere.

Without the gravitational acceleration to work with or any reference for scale, it's difficult to say exactly what the size and density of AT-5 is. If we were to say that the Blood Ocean has a diameter of 1 km and that AT-5 has the same gravitational constant of Earth, then some very very rough math gives us a mass of like... 4.08x10^11?? The circumference would be like 17km though which is INSANE, so I think it's safe to say that the Blood Ocean is a whole lot bigger than 1km.

My king-in-yellow-in-the-black-box theory has weakened. But it's still a cool idea, so I'm leaving the posts up for people to run with. For sillies.

I am going to assume that since this was released before Iron Lung came out on streaming, it was transcribed by ear. Which is incredible dedication! We wouldn't have had these dialogue lines at all while waiting for Markiplier and YouTube to stop throwing hands, if not for whoever made this.

If I'm absent from this blog for more than a couple days at a time, assume it is because I am busy doing bullshit science for the fic I'm working on, which you can find here:

Simon rocking the shit out of that eel!!! Also, for people drawing/writing tree!Simon stuff, it does seem like it has networked to the side of a trench wall and webbed through it.

Yeah, no, that's definitely just a tree. I was going for something a little more fleshy, like maybe a basket starfish/vine shape, but that is, indeed and confirmed, a whole ass tree, trunk and everything.

Full VFX breakdown under the cut.

"on the note of x-ray vs sonar cameras for navigation- i'm curious if previous ships such as the sm-8 might've had sonar, especially since the radiation was such a risk and they wouldn't want to hurt their scientists that were planned to be brought back."

My working theory for the x-ray vs sonar issue is just material availability. Sonar is useless in space, so why would the few stations and ships left after the Quiet Rapture have that kind of tech on hand? X-ray emitters may have just been more readily available, so that's what they used on the hemorovers. Again, working theory, not proven, just working with the info I've got to come up with the simplest answer.

I do like your theory about the earlier rovers potentially using sonar instead of x-ray imaging; it would fit pretty nicely with the material scarcity theory. Give the less hazardous navigation method to the rovers that have people of value aboard and leave the "radiation gun" to the ones with more disposable pilots.

Though something has been bothering me about Simon supposedly getting radiation poisoning. I haven't gone over this in a post yet, still need to gather more data, but just based on my initial findings I don't think Simon was exposed to as much radiation as people seem to think. The SM-13 definitely was, that's likely why it was heating up over time, but to my understanding the heat created by radiation exposure is not the material "becoming radioactive." Inducing radioactivity in stable materials is really fucking difficult. I'll spare you my half-assed science rant on that, but what it boils down to is: I don't think the pilots of the hemorovers equipped with x-ray navigation were at a high risk for acute radiation exposure. Some, yes. Enough to cause issues further down the road, maybe. Simon may be a special case considering that the SM-13 is an abomination held together by sheer audacity and Jack's welding skills. Again, still need to gather more data on this.

"on the x-ray subject- does this imply the blood eel is just unnaturally dense? the lettering on the sm-8 being visible could potentially be lead paint (im actually unsure if that would actually work but it's something that would make logical sense to someone if they're just told it's x-rays. the inconsistency of the "skeleton" potentially being alive and being bones vs the blood eel being visibly fleshy is harder. unless we also consider the eel might just be made out of bone."

Good question! X-rays lose strength the more distance they have to travel; that's part of why the x-ray camera on the SM-13 is so goddamn strong. A chest x-ray only requires about .1 millisieverts of radiation because the emitter's less than a meter away. The higher the radiation level, the further it will travel, and the easier it will pass through objects. We can use the picture that Simon took in the tow ship as an example.

Jack's right in front of the camera, so the x-rays pass straight through him and show only his skeleton. Realistically speaking he probably should've barely shown up on the picture— x-rays that strong would easily pass through bone— but I'll excuse that for now. Ava and presumably David are further away; the x-rays don't penetrate as deeply, and they show up as almost solid in the picture.

Timestamp 01:05:01 - Terminal readout of the SM-8's status

David, directed to the Convict: "This actually is bigger than us, man. Because if that's a skeleton down there, that means this ocean supported life. Things could be alive down there right now! Food! Air! We need this! Not just the COI, all of us! We need this! It's the first shred of real hope we've had in twenty f..."

Inferences:

Twenty four. Twenty four years since the Quiet Rapture, or at least since what remains of humanity had a shred of hope.

If we're assuming the movie places the Quiet Rapture in the same year as the game (357 EIC, 2349 AD), that puts the current year at 381 EIC, or 2373 AD.

Speculation:

Twenty four years since the Quiet Rapture... sounds right. Given the the SM-8's manual was requisitioned on April 1st, 366 EIC (timestamp 00:04:56), that puts the SM-13's second(?) voyage as happening about fifteen years after the SM-8.

Nine years to discover the moons, build at least eight hemorovers, send out at least eight voyages, probably more. Then, after the SM-8's destruction, fifteen years, five more hemorovers, six-ish more voyages (assuming that the SM-13 had one voyage before Simon's).

FUCK the manual was originally the SM-6's not the SM-8's fuck my timeline is off fuck

Corrections:

The SM-8's SM-6's manual was requisitioned on April 1st, 366 EIC. The SM-8's voyage occurs at an unknown point sometime between 366 and 381 EIC.

Nine years to discover the moons, build at least six hemorovers, and send out at least six voyages. Then another fifteen years to build at least seven more hemorovers (eight if you count the SM-14) and send out at least eight voyages (assuming that the SM-13 had one voyage before Simon's).

That timeline tracks better. This means the COI was a bit more consistent with the assembly of the hemorovers and with the voyages. There definitely was a slow-down, but if we assume they were getting more than one voyage out of each hemorover and just building new ones as the old ones broke down/were destroyed, it isn't that notable.

TIMESTAMP 01:06:51!!! IT'S THE FUCKING DATE! IT'S 005-386!! IT'S THE FIFTH DAY OF 386 EIC!!! JANUARY 5TH 2378 CE!!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!

editing this post to correct the math, summarizing below:

362 EIC (2354 CE) - Quiet Rapture occurs

366 EIC (2358 CE) - The SM-6's original manual was printed/requisitioned