[ SPOILERS ] Something doesn't add up

[Zarakaï]

After finishing the game and doing some research, there is just one last thing that doesn't add up in the story : when and how did the Death Stranding really begin ?

Heavy spoilers ahead. So :

1 ) Sam was a BB, Cliff's son, and died when Bridget and John shot Cliff holding Sam. Bridget felt a lot of remorse and Amelie, her soul trapped on the Beach, found the dead Sam and repatriated him, resurrected him. According to the wiki and other sources, this act against nature ( especially for an Extinction Entity supposed to kill things, not resurrect them ) started the Death Stranding.

2 ) BUT ! If Sam was a BB, it means that when he died, the DS already started and several voidouts already occured. BBs were developped to detect BTs and be used to build the chiral network AFTER the Death Stranding started.

It's simply impossible that Sam's resurrection by Amelie started the DS. Sam's existence as a BB in the first place is due to the DS.

Unless the voidouts happening before Sam's resurrection had nothing to do with the DS... but that would be weird. Sure it was an accident ( a doctor touched the ghost umbilical cord of a baby born from a stillmother ), Again according to the wiki : "In the near future, mysterious explosions have rocked the planet, setting off a series of supernatural events known as the Death Stranding."

[Kain]

1 - There was a voidout, that for Emily warned her that her nature was being made manifest and proved that something big was already in motion despite her actions, YET, the first voidout only happened when a doctor helped a baby from a BRAINDED mother to be born and connected both to the world of the dead and the living.

2 - Which, not only warned Emily as I already told, but gave her idea that, those kind of babies could bridge two words and thus the BB project began, with Sam being the first prototype.

[Chunkarock]

There's an email in the game explaining the first voidout. IIRC a braindead woman in Manhattan gave birth to a baby, and when the doctor touched it, a voidout was triggered.

[Kain]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Chunkarock:

There's an email in the game explaining the first voidout. IIRC a braindead woman in Manhattan gave birth to a baby, and when the doctor touched it, a voidout was triggered.

No, when the doctor touched it SAW someone else in the room, when he touched that someone.... boom.

[Syn]

Big Bada Boom!

[SlusheeWolf2 (jRPG Wolf)]

I highly doubt Sam was the catalyst of the Death Stranding as well. Stuff was already happening way before he was born, and the EE was still unaware of her ultimate purpose, as in the flashbacks with Cliff, Bridget's "ka" was still young. It was only after her "ka"'s death did she realize the true extent of what she needed to do, as she told Sam before her Beach blew up.

The original Death Stranding was the previous work from one of the past EE's, who are also known as the Big Five... and show up when a voidout occurs and other Death Stranding-related occurrences throughout the game. The fandom wiki shows supporting evidence of that, as well as the Geologist logs in the game menus.

I kinda glazed over that chapter of the game because "blah blah earth's history, blah blah"... I just wanted to get to the tar belt to rescue Ameile xD

[Vuud]

According tot he wiki research into BBs started before the Death Stranding to prove the theoretical existence of BTs and the beach. And this research into BBs interacting with BTs might have led to the Death Stranding itself. So BBs did not come after the DS.

[MurderMoose]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Zarakaï:

1 ) Sam was a BB, Cliff's son, and died when Bridget and John shot Cliff holding Sam. Bridget felt a lot of remorse and Amelie, her soul trapped on the Beach, found the dead Sam and repatriated him, resurrected him. According to the wiki and other sources, this act against nature ( especially for an Extinction Entity supposed to kill things, not resurrect them ) started the Death Stranding.

This is mostly correct. Technically, Bridget was the one to pull the trigger, her hand was over John's, and the Death Stranding had already started, but it kicked into high gear with Sam becoming the first Repatriate.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Zarakaï:

2 ) BUT ! If Sam was a BB, it means that when he died, the DS already started and several voidouts already occured. BBs were developped to detect BTs and be used to build the chiral network AFTER the Death Stranding started.

It's simply impossible that Sam's resurrection by Amelie started the DS. Sam's existence as a BB in the first place is due to the DS.

This is mostly correct. The first Voidout in Manhattan had happened when a doctor touched a BT strand during a cesarean delivery to a braindead mother. To quote the game...

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από From the Report on the Voidout in Manhattan #2:

Following a number of tests and experiments, the conclusion was reached that this incident was an annihilation event brought about by the doctor's contact with whatever—or whomever—he had seen upon touching the umbilical cord. Though it eventually became apparent that the doctor had been referring to BTs, at the time no one could explain the underlying cause of the incident.

Some later theorized that if the same conditions—brain-dead mother, fetus, umbilical cord—could be recreated, then BTs could be detected and the mystery of the Death Stranding would be solved. Indeed, this was the theoretical basis upon which the government's own experiments and investigations would be conducted. They called the fetuses they used “Bridge Babies," and the experiments became known as the “BB Experiments."

Soon after the government's program got underway, the tragedy of Manhattan occurred.

Furthermore, when John first sees Cliff and BB,, Cliff mentions that "they don't want a repeat of last year" which suggests that there had only been one voidout by then, and they were still learning about what triggers them and how the Death Stranding even worked.

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Zarakaï:

Unless the voidouts happening before Sam's resurrection had nothing to do with the DS... but that would be weird. Sure it was an accident ( a doctor touched the ghost umbilical cord of a baby born from a stillmother ), Again according to the wiki : "In the near future, mysterious explosions have rocked the planet, setting off a series of supernatural events known as the Death Stranding."

So what happened after Sam's death was Bridget severed his connection to the World of the Dead, which caused the Death Stranding to get significantly worse. After all, the natural order of things was now wrong, and the Extinction Entity just cut someone off from death. From there, the BB experiments continued in secret, serving as the foundation of both Bridge Babies and KNOT Cities.

Since Sam was unable to be a bridge to the world of the dead, Bridget raised him as her own, and in an effort to understand the visions of extinction she saw, shared those visions with Sam and others in the form of DOOMS. Those who coped poorly were the cause of the mysterious explosions, since they would kill themselves and the voidout would be triggered by their death, causing the whole thing to snowball to where we pick the game up approximately 20-30 years later. We don't know exactly how old Sam is or how long ago the Death Stranding started, but we do know a generation of people grew up in that time.