(Slight Spoilers) Analysis of the Pulse

[ArcticK9]

This post is for people who have finished the game (or at least gotten through half of it), but honestly, if you haven't finished the game, you probably shouldn't be on the discussion page in the first place.

I don't know about everyone else, but my favorite part of the game was by far traversing the Pulse testing area. I call it "the Pulse" for obvious reasons, but that's just the name I gave it. I also thought of similar names like "the Heartbeat". Anyway, the game does a fantastic job at making the Pulse feel immensely powerful; destroying crates, disturbing giant machinery, tearing the boy apart and shaking your controller. But I was thinking: how powerful is the Pulse exactly?

To start, we can say it uses a shockwave, since it has the force of an explosive, but occurs far too constantly (every 5.6 seconds) for it to be using actual explosives. So, since a shockwave follows the speed of sound, all I had to do was measure the time between the flash of light in the distance and the impact of the wave (0.6 seconds) to determine how far away the source was.

343 m/s * 0.6 seconds = 205.8 meters away (over 4 american football fields away)

It's pretty far away, and yet it still does immense damage.

Now for the hard part. We have to figure out how powerful it is.

Since it's a shockwave, I am using the decibel scale to determine its power. The decibel scale, for those who don't know, measures how loud something is. I will be referring to the convenient site http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt for information. This website measures everything from underwater nuclear submarine microphones listening to shrimp chewing on food at 100 meters distance (-80 decibels) to a supervolcano eruption with the force of 14,000 megaton nuclear bombs (320 decibels). Using this chart, I had to compare the examples to the effects of the Pulse in the game. Some important facts about the decibel scale are that once a sound wave reaches 172 decibels, fog is created, explaining the fog in the area that masks the source of the Pulse, and once it reaches 195 decibels, it is no longer a sound wave, but a shockwave. After much research, I concluded with the equivalent of a 3.6 Reichter scale earthquake caused by over 251 tons of TNT. The Pulse has the force of 226 decibels. This is equivalent to a train explosion in 2004, with reports that it "shook the entire area". At this force, the human body is torn apart, and many objects are destroyed. This force is pulsing from its source once every 5.6 seconds. It is likely this was created for some war-like purpose, seeing as there is one section of the area in which crash-test dummies are being tested against it.

205.8 meters away, 226 decibels, every 5.6 seconds.

Good god.

[BAT]

What was the origin of the pulse supposed to be?

[Shadowspaz]

That was definitely one of the most intriguing parts of this "facility" to me. I kind of think all these experiments culminated in the final product somehow, but I can only come up with vague connections between most of the stuff, and I'm pretty clueless on things like the Pulse or the reversed water.

It's all very enchanting, in a very, very eerie way. I love it.

[Toblo1]

Huh, I've never really thought of the war-angle for the pulse before. I assumed it was some sort unrelated expirament or the result of a weird alternate energy source for the facility as a whole.

Also, the lift section at the end of that segment still makes me scratch my head. Two pulse waves destroy the lift, leaving me with two questions:

(1): The boy is somehow not mulch despite only having only a grate of metal between him and the pulse.

and

(2): Why did those two pulsewaves go off in the first place? Did the lift go down into another room with whatever was creating the pulse or did somone or somthing set those two pulses off deliberately to sabotage the lift?

[Shadowspaz]

Another inconsistency- you hear the bass thump of the pulse several rooms before you reach it, with it slowly building in intensity as you get closer, but it completely goes away a room or two after leaving.

[gredgeory]

Whoa that's awesome you actually did the math on this. My original idea was that the pulse was used for some purpose in mining (the area under the bridge is all sand, so I thought it was part of the ocean floor that had been drained of water), and that's why there's still machinery running in the area around it and the mining operation next door.

Maybe it was used as a weapon though- could explain why a lot of the surface is destroyed.

[ArcticK9]

Originally posted by Toblo1:

(1): The boy is somehow not mulch despite only having only a grate of metal between him and the pulse.

Yeah, that is strange. Maybe its the angle or something, or maybe its an indirect hit, although that wouldn't make sense.

Originally posted by Toblo1:

(2): Why did those two pulsewaves go off in the first place? Did the lift go down into another room with whatever was creating the pulse or did somone or somthing set those two pulses off deliberately to sabotage the lift?

I think the area before the lift had enough insulation between the boy and the source of the Pulse to negate the sound, and the lift moved into an area that was affected by it, and probably not designed to move while the testing of the Pulse was in progress.

Originally posted by Shadowspaz:

Another inconsistency- you hear the bass thump of the pulse several rooms before you reach it, with it slowly building in intensity as you get closer, but it completely goes away a room or two after leaving.

Hm, yes that is inconsistent, however it was necessary gameplay-wise to convey anticipation beforehand, and when it goes away it shows that the player is done and past that section, as a sigh of relief, before suprising them afterward by destroying the elevator.

[Mus]

The weapon idea is interesting, but if it's that powerful couldn't it destroy whatever your near? If you set it up at a base couldn't it destroy the base? Do you aim it in a certain direction? Even if it's not aimed, it probably couldn't be set up in the middle of nowhere. Since it's so powerful, it's probably to big to set up frequently. I don't think anyone can answer these questions, I'm just asking.

[aquariusdeepblue]

How do I up-vote your post? It's great!