Portal 2 Location Thoery.

[Nate]

I have finally came up with a setting and location for portal 2 that seems most likely.

A poster hidden inside portal 2 (in the trophy room when entering old aperture at the very begginning) says that a business man named Cave Johnson bought some salt mines in upper Michigan for science usage.

There is only one problem...there is no salt mines in upper michigan. The only salt mine to exist in the state of michigan is in the detroit area. I reasearched this mine and found that it is still in operation today and has very extensive tunnels that are far below the city. The stretch from the city to the surrounding suburbs. Now my theory about that article and why it was wrong and why it was even in the trophy hall seems to make sense. Michigans upper peninsula is pretty sparsely populated with a lot of dying towns. The Newspaper could have been trying to get popularity by stating that Cave Johnson was bringing industry to northern michigan. When Cave Johnson stumbled upon the acticle, even though it was false, he though it was funny and a novely and stuck it in the trophy room. Another thing to back this theory up is that when chell comes out of the facility she is in a wheat field. There is no wheat in northern michigan because its too cold. In southern michigan wheat is a staple crop. I have also stumbled upon easter eggs saying that Aperture Science was head quartered out of Cleveland, Ohio. This really doesnt detract from my theory because companies production factories are usually not even close to their headquarters. (Think New York City. Lots of companies are headquartered there, but do you see factories and mines in downtown?) But wait the salt mines are under actual Detroit and not out in the country. There is no wheat fields in Detroit. Wrong. For the past couple decades since detroits decline, the city has been selling pieces of land with abandoned houses on them and giving them to large farm corporations. The farm companies then build farms on them with really high yields. It is strange, but there are really farms in the middle of Detroit! Since signs point that Half Life 1 took place in 2003 and half life 2 took exactly 20 years later in 2023. Portal is supposed to take place at the same time as half life 2 so 2023. At the beginning of portal it says chell has been asleep for 90? days i think. So we can assume a year has passed inbetween the first game. Then she goes back to sleep. She wakes up again to a malfunctioning machine repeating 999999. The room is now dilapitated and decaying. 90 days would be way to short for things to decay like that, and 9000 days she would be surely dead. It is safe to say she most likely was sleeping for 900 days. So my guess is buy the time she gets out of the facility in that corn field the year is 2025, and she is in what once was downtown detroit. Sound Plauseable?

[SilentHorizon]

it definantly sounds plauseable. Good resesearch, also a great starting point for portal 3.

[Gareth]

Chell was in stasis. People can be in stasis for longer than their life span. That's the whole point of stasis. Other than that, your theory sounds pretty good.

[JameZaye]

Portal 1 happens within a year of Half-Life 1. "Bring your Daughter to Work Day" happens the very same week as the Resonance Cascade, "the rush to beat Black Mesa for funding"

Already having some sort of teleportation technology, Aperture instead focused on AI to surpass BM. As we all know it failed horribly.

[Mike Morkleson]

Originally posted by Sydney Sierota:

There is only one problem...there is no salt mines in upper michigan.

There are also no human conciousness' in robots, portals that warp space to allow you to move from point A to point B through holes in the fabric of the universe, or puddings that make you move fast.

Suspension of disbelief my guy, you're just reading too much into this.

[Milkman]

I live in Detroit, and I just have to say that Downtown has continuously been making progress since the Renaissance Center was built. So, probably not in downtown Detroit. Also, it's likely that it's not even in Detroit, but a neighboring city because that salt mine is basically on the city limits, and there's countryside southwest of Detroit.

[B the Self]

maybe youre right about the salt mines but the wheat is refering to the greek mythology
Chell is supposed to be dead
heres a pic with a lot of info related to the greek mythology and portal 2
https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/4480/1768836-portal2zp_1_.jpg

[Divided Eye]

"The only salt mine to exist in the state of michigan is in the detroit area. I reasearched this mine and found that it is still in operation today and has very extensive tunnels that are far below the city"
I see no problem with that. I mean, this is the case of alternative history. That only salt mine that still works in our history might be the same one that Cave Johnson bought. Also, the newspaper states that he bought "salt mine". A single salt mine. And as in our history it "has very extensive tunnels that are far below the city", in Aperture/Black Mesa history it might be dug out in different directions, as Cave bought it for science and not to dig for salt.
Still... someone, tell me, how deep can anyone dig in upper Michigan 'till they hit the first magma layer of the Earth?

[GoodGooglyMoogly]

Detroit is not the only place in Michigan that there are/were salt mines. Who is to say in the HL universe that all mineral deposits are exactly the same as this universe. I saw a document from 1953 showing that multiple counties in the lower peninsula contribute to the overall salt exports. It's true there are none in the UP but you're probably reading into this a bit too much.

Its like saying the events in portal couldn't have taken place in the 2000s because we haven't invented a portal shooting gun yet.

Too cold for wheat in the winter in our universe but how do you know what the climate is like 10000 years from now in their's?

By the way "your" theory was posted 6 years ago on knowyourmeme of all places...

[Megalodon4]

Sorry but I doubt it. There is a bluescreen message during Chapter 8 or so, when Wheatley has control over the Facility and it is slowly falling apart. The message says something like: "Warning, reactor overpressure, push any button to release nuclear gases into the Atmosphere."
No one would want a huge Facility below a (densly) populated Area, that could irradiate the whole Place. The Government would not tolerate that.
If we look for Salt mines and Wheat Fields, and go as far north as possible, then there are only 2 Regions that might fit. Muskegon or St.Clair. But SC is not even close to the North
But if we look for both Salt and Salines, then Manistee is another interesting canidate. But there is no data on Wheat fields of 1997, maybe Aperture Science planted a few fields for their light bridges, which were not enough to have an impact on the overall data. Gratiot is the last possible County, but it is not close enough to upper Michigan.

Mainsteen, Muskegon or Midland. One of these Countys probably.

[Turambar]

I don't think that this has any sense you forgot lot of things and doesn't count in mind thousand of solutions.

First the fact that there is not salt mine in upper michigan in real life doesn't mean a ♥♥♥♥ since aperture science is working for goverment in secret so its coordinates could be easly hide from public.

Second, cultives were planted by aperture science droids clearly to hide aperture science entrance, maybe those cultives will die because the weather, but combine are drying the world wide water, maybe they forced climate changes but even if this is not good enough for you what if salt mine is in upper michigan but the entrance is at other random place and portal techonology make this possible. Maybe the entrance we saw in portal was the real entrance righ over the salt mine that the entrance of portal 2 is places at for example Ohio.

[unusable]

Megalodon4 has the closest accurate guess to the location. Midland county uses 77% of their land for crops, and wheat is chief among them. More importantly, Midland is located above the center of the Marshal aquifer and the Michigan basin. This provides saline brine for solution mining, which Midland still produces due to Silurian Period salt deposits. These saline striations sit about 7,000 feet underground.

The drilling could actually be deeper here due to the bowl shape of the Michigan basin, which bottoms out at around 17,000 feet above the Keweenan Basalts and Gabbros (lava rifts). This depth corresponds to the Test Shaft 09 depth of ~4500m (14,763 feet) where Chell fell down.

I'm using the depth posted on the signs with yellow numbers in Chapter 6 when falling with potato GLaDOS. They appeared at 125m intervals up until 4250m and then one more at 4375m when you break through the wooden boards. You awake somewhere below this, which led me to believe there was another 125m below (4500m total).

[Takashi Strauss]

Im pretty sure Half Life started in 2004...

[Takashi Strauss]

Portal also takes place in 2010... Just saying ;)

[Morgan Fun Gamer]

Originally posted by TheSecondComing.exe:

Im pretty sure Half Life started in 2004...

Okay

[EeveeCadence69]

If Black Mesa Is Nearby Aperture Labs Based On Lyrics In Still Alive Then That Means Half-Life Probably Takes Place In Michigan As Well. Either Before Portal One, In Between The Two Games, Or After Portal Two.