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    Eating necromorphs 

  • Just what kind of event made people hungry enough to eat Necromorph tissue?
    • On Tau Volantis the weather is cold and harsh, so it's unlikely there's much to eat there. Once the food ran out a bunch of starving saps probably started eating some of the necrotic tissue growing everywhere. Either that or it's a weird Unitologist ritual.
    • Meat is meat. Once you've gone for nearly two weeks without anything, it was either the flesh of their enemies or their own limbs. They probably did cook it thoroughly, boil it for hours, and soaked it in all the antibiotics they could find, but it wouldn't have been enough.
    • That's for the sane people, at least. People who are driven insane by the marker will stab their friends to write on the walls in their blood, so it's not too much of a leap to think the behavior induced could be ripping off necro-flesh and shoving it in their mouths.
    • Makes sense, especially for Tau Volantis. If a Necromorph is killed, the Marker has a back-up plan. Meaning that it drives people insane enough to turn themselves into Necromorphs.
    • Now that the game is out, it's the "desperation" explanation. Turns out, Necromorphic flesh is edible, but it tended to drive its eaters insane over the course of weeks. Eventually, they all died (for a given definition of "dead"), and became the Feeders.
    • It is heavily implied that the people in charge of the supply depots deliberately sabotaged their own food, and that others susceptible to the Markers were compelled to eat necromorph flesh. It's also entirely possible that they deliberately contaminated the food supplies with their own tissue - judging by the wall messages saying "eat of us".

    Winter gear 

  • After crashing on Tau Volantis, Ellie's group scavenges winter gear to help travel, but because there wasn't enough for all of them, one member elects to stay behind. The problem is, he didn't seem to care for his well-being much afterwards. I mean, there were blankets in the room, and he didn't think of wrapping himself in them? Improvising a suit with them? Or building a shelter with them? Really, anything but just sit in a corner and wait to freeze to death. I suppose he could have accepted his death and not want to delay the inevitable, but come on!
    • Not to mention that the entire area was littered with insulated rooms complete with generators and heat sources that warm Isaac up almost instantly. The guy really doesn't care about his life too much.
    • He also could have stayed in the elevator. The necromorphs were several rooms away and wouldn't be able to notice him. That's a better plan then staying next to a broken down wall, where a necromorph or blizzard could have killed him.
    • That's great up until he has to worry about food, or when a Necromorph finally comes by and kills him (see the first game's arg: one of the ship hand's did find a nice place to hole up in, but eventually the Necromorphs figured out he was there and spent the next several hours breaking his door down).
    • They had been injured previously (visible as a puncture wound on his side). There's a good chance that he was barely clinging to life as it is, which is why he chose to stay behind- he knew that he was going to die and was only slowing the group down. But since he was probably in pain from being in intense cold as well as having been recently stabbed and then survived a shuttle crash, he probably wanted his passing to go as quickly as possible without just putting a gun to his head.
    • Considering they seem to die from hypothermia, perhaps it was to go as quickly as possible and suffer less pain through numbness. If the person is already severely hypothermic (not to mention they were losing heat through blood loss and wet clothes from said bleeding) wearing blankets would at best delay heat loss, organ failure and death (especially so when you're on an ice planet without a doctor and with zero supplies). Also, rapidly heating a hypothermic person (such as by turning on the generator) can actually do additional harm to the internal organs and heart, so the character (probably suffering from confusion as a result of their brain shutting down) probably wanted to be left in the cold to freeze as quickly and as painlessly as possible

    Human enemies 

  • The human enemies don't seem like Unitologists at all, just a bunch of guys Danik hired. They shoot at necromorphs, even though their practically worshiped by them. Also, they tend to shout things only soldiers would say, not insane fanatics.
    • I'm guessing they're soldiers that became Unitologists. Considering the Crapsack World that exists, it's not a stretch to think that many soldiers would've went AWOL and joined Danik. Not to mention Earth Gov was infiltrated by Unitologists, so it's not a stretch to think some of the moles went into the military and received military training.
    • Regarding them shooting at necromorphs: I'm guessing they have a more pragmatic way of following their religion. You can't really kill more people to create more necromorphs if you're dead. Better sacrifice a few necromorphs attacking you to kill more normal humans to convert later.
    • The necromorphs will just get reinfected later, so as long as they don't actively destroy the entire body, they should realize the Necromorph will come back hours later.
    • The enemy chatter occasionally reveals that Necromorphs are a new thing to some of them, while their leader handwaves the horrifying and violent qualities of Necromorphs away as a corruption of true unity caused by humans cocking the process up. So most of the footsoldiers who even realize the connection between the monsters tearing up their unit and their religion still consider them pitiful failed attempts probably worthy of a mercy kill.
    • It might be over-generalizing to assume this for all of them, but even if it is, cognitive dissonance and Double Think probably cover the rest. It goes without saying that indisputable evidence isn't always enough to change someone's beliefs, religious or otherwise. A common example, almost a cliche at this point, is someone citing Leviticus to condemn homosexuals and then being asked if they actually follow any of the other mandates in Leviticus, most of which would land someone living in western society in jail. The response is usually rationalization, not a concession that this is a hole in the logic of following a religion.
    • I think it's a bit of both. The Markers exerts a force on all humans, but humans react to the force in two main ways. The first is that it tries to drive them to suicide and/or Convergence. The second is that it drives them to flee and save themselves and/or fight. Humans that give into the first, the 'true believers' of Unitology, are granted protection from the Necromorphs by the Markers. The Humans that resist and fall into the second category, most of the 'hipster' Unitologists that made up Danik's ranks, are hunted down and killed by the Necromorphs. Basically, the Unitologists that you see fighting the Necromorphs don't really believe in the teachings of Unitology, in the same way that a Crusader might not have been a /real/ Catholic.
    • That may be true, but I think some of it runs a little deeper than that. In the second game, you are tricked by Unitologists to come to them. It says in reports that not all Unitologists are expected to stay with the group. It's like a normal religion based on those findings. Some of the people who affect by markers, but others were just misguided and were given guidance by true believers. According to one file of a potential candidate, they rank new with a lot of strange stats like susceptibility, faith, moral standing, adherence to doctrine, direction in life, idealism, attitude towards change, etc etc. It even says to keep the guy until he is ready to leave and not show him everything BECAUSE he will probably leave. Furthermore, these guys places BETS on when people would leave. At least some of those fighters were left in the dark and only had the wool pulled from their eyes when the necromorphs came out. The reason they don't just surrender is because they are probably friends with the guys you just killed a few minutes back and they are stuck in a hopeless no retreat situation like the soldiers on D-Day. They only knew as much as Danik wanted them to know. They may said, this "uniting thing sounds good, I guess I'll join you" and "well, Earth Gov is definitely failing and I need to pay the bills. You seem like my best option, Danik." I bet some of those guys didn't even know that becoming a necromorph was 1) terrifying, 2) painful, 3) drives you insane and BRUTALLY kills you, and 4) you don't actually become one of them, they murder you and steal your body. Your consciousness is destroyed somewhere along the line if not completely buried in dead, reanimated flesh. -Thecommander 236

    Norton 

  • After Norton betrays the group and Isaac is force to kill, he completely screws up his explanation to Ellie why he killed him. "I Did What I Had to Do," then "He pointed a gun at me," and then finally "he betrayed us," which finally placates Ellie. he knew the full story, and Carver can attest to it. Seriously, all he had to do was say "Norton was the Danik's mole, he cut a deal to get the us offworld in exchange for letting them kill me. He still tried to kill me after Danik betrayed him, so I had to kill him in self-defense," and Carver had to say "Yep, that's what happened!" So, why the hell would he give the most ambiguous explanation for telling Ellie why he shot her boyfriend in the face?
    • Isaac just finished getting swallowed by a giant monster and having to shoot an ally. He was stressed out and wanted to get straight to the point. He was trying not to hurt Ellie's feelings, but that was inevitable.

    Necromorphs on a ship 

  • Why were people packaging necrmorphs on a ship, where they could have broke out and attacked?
    • They had research facilities there, and hoped to study them. They also brought their dead onboard, so when one escaped despite all precautions, an outbreak could happen. They might have even brought iced specimens aboard even before they knew they could reanimate. If they really all were killed as a part of the liquidation order, it could be that the necromorphs onboard could escape, since no security was watching them anymore.
    • It's mentioned in Dead Space 2 that Unitologists don't believe in cremation or burial, and instead freeze their dead for "Convergence" (hence why the Unitology church had a cryolab in Dead Space 2). It also explains why there's bodies everywhere (such as the food freezers) on Tau Volantis, and why they even had specially marked body coffins in stock.
    • That said, it's not clear that SCAF had a sizeable contingent of Unitologists; most of the Unis you hear about in the first two games from logs tend to be rather obvious in their devotion (Challus Mercer, Kyne, Captain Mathius etc), whereas you don't get that in 3. The SCAF motto does translate to "For God and the Colonies" or similar, but there's very little Unitologist-specific religious references by the SCAF (nothing regarding Altman, for example). While they are there looking for Markers, it's purely scientific, whereas a Unitologist would be flipping out over the multitude of divine relics on the planet; I got the feeling that Unitology didn't became enshrined as the dominant religion until after EarthGov won the war (keep in mind, theres substantial overlap between the upper echelons of both organizations).
    • That being said, there is still no evidence for or against other religions still existing, just that Unitology is the fastest growing religion there is. Keep in mind that religions say the same thing today and they are usually referring to a percentage increase of their previous numbers which is misleading. Say Unitology grew by a hundred percent margin in its first year. That could be going from 100 people to 200. So, yeah, they could be growing the "fastest," but that doesn't mean much in that context.
    • Its very likely they were fine, until someone lost track of their job and a Necromorph escaped through a vent.
    • Also of note, canonically being stabbed by an infected is not the only way to become a necromorph. The infector is just the fast way while being exposed to Marker signal will slowly convert any deceased tissue into necromorph flesh. That process is what converts dust made from dead skin cells into that meat moss that gets everywhere in each game. Those corpses leftover from the SCAF cleanup which was done based on the idea of a traditional infection converted into necromorphs slowly over time locked away never needing to move until Isaac and Carver disturbed them.

    Ellie and Norton 

  • What did Ellie see in Norton? Is he a different guy when not around Markers or his girlfriend's exes, or did Ellie subconsciously seek out the biggest Jerkass around in order to hurt Isaac?
    • At the time, Ellie was very upset with Isaac for his perceived abandonment. She had watched her home be lost to the Necromorphs, and she wanted to jump back into the fray to prevent that from happening to anyone else. Preferably, with Isaac, but he just wanted to bunker down and look out for himself. I'm guessing Ellie was contacted by EarthGov, asking her to use her expertise to help find a way to combat necromorphs, which she likely jumped at. Once she got that assignment, she undoubtedly worked with Norton, who was everything she wanted Isaac to be: handsome, experienced, confident, and willing to jump into the fray with her. At the same time, that chivalry was mostly bravado to hide Norton's cowardly nature, and with everyone else his subordinate, he never had any competition for his Crazy Jealous Guy traits to shine through. During the events of 3, Ellie mistook his Jerkassness as just being under a lot of stress with a lot on the line, and didn't realize how far he'd go to posess Ellie.
    • I kinda got the feeling that the Markers were fucking with his head, though not to the extent they did with Carver. On Earth, he was an abrasive jackass, but he wasn't that bad. When they get to the Roanoake, he even acknowledges Isaac has a good idea when he starts at a workbench. It wasn't until a bit after Isaac meets with Ellie that he starts being possessive, and it seemed at least as much about keeping Ellie safe as it was keeping her his. But as the game wears on, he becomes much more possessive towards her, and starts breaking in on conversations between her and Isaac, then he became outright paranoid regarding her, to the point of calling the evil cult that wants EarthGov dead. He was always kind of an asshole, but I think the Markers played a role in how outright psychotic he ended up.
    • Ellie repeatedly says that Norton's acting strangely while on the planet, that he isn't usually like this. It's a fair bet we have some good old Marker-madness infused with jealousy over his girlfriend (which is an understandable feeling to have, if not to act upon).
    • His final words even hints of what the markers had been putting into his head from the moment he reached the planet. Heck, they might has not been aimed so much at Isaac as to himself.
    Norton:(Firing warning shots at Carver) "STAND DOWN SERGEANT! (Turns to Isaac)THIS IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT! SHE DOESN`T LOVE YOU!"*Bang*
    • In the Comic/novel Liberation, it's shown that Norton actually was pretty much a jerk even before they the events of the game, he really was just an asshole that was made to cause some kind of triangle/betrayal plotline. Ellie just made a really stupid choice in a dude.

    Markers being created 

  • Ok, we know now that Markers create Brethern Moons, but do we know what creates Markers? Specifically, the "original" kind, Black Markers? I initially thought the Moons themselves did, but that creates a whole Chicken-and-Egg thing that makes my head hurt. Or was there an explanation I missed in between screaming like a gi-I mean, Reb Brown?
    • Well, the point of the markers is that they're old. Extremely old, as in "around even before mammals were common" type old. Brethren Moons have been eating civilizations for hundreds of millions, if not billions of years, and the aliens on Tau Volantis knew as much about the true origin of the markers as we did. For why there's no explanation, see Canon Fodder; they need to both retain some mystery and enigma to the Necromorphs and markers, and they probably still want to continue the series. Or, perhaps, they didn't want have some psychic hallucination from the Brother Moon manifesting as Nicole give some shoehorned exposition for the faulty logic that they are 'saving' advanced civilizations by preserving them in Necromorph form. Perhaps we'll get a proper origin in the future, but if you're hungry for theories, go to the WMG page.
    • In the last level of the game, the Brethren Moon throws what looks like a (fleshy) Marker at you. Thing is; necromorphs pop out of them. That means that Brethren Moons can create Markers. The Black Marker could be a Marker created from a Brethren Moon.. This also means that a Brethren moon may have visited (Earth?) at some point in the past.
    • That just raises another question! If the Brethren Moons make Markers to cause others to make Brethren Moons, how did the first Brethren Moon come about?
    • Now, I have no idea, but the Necromorph in its basest form is some kind of bacterium with virus-like properties. Who knows where it came from? It might have been a science experiment Gone Horribly Wrong. It might have been part of a planet's biosphere that an ancient spacefaring species accidentally gave access to the stars. The thing is, we don't know, and we don't exactly need to know. That's something for the expanded universe to explain, and chances are there's no way anyone in the Dead Space character lineup, living or dead, that could know.
    • So it's entirely possible the virus was the result of a random mutation in an alien disease that cascaded into making the first Convergence Event? What kind of aliens were they, Leviathans? Flood? the Engineers from Prometheus?
    • Another possibility is that the original Moon was formed by a species that willingly underwent Convergence (minus necromorphs) as a way to increase their own power. That Moon then began spreading Markers, produced internally, to other planets to create more Moons. The Brethren Moons mention being part of a "network", which suggests that their minds are linked and that the more of them there are, the more powerful the group as a whole is.

    Prologue and the CEC suit 

  • In the prologue, we see SCAF personnel using fully functional R.I.G.s and holographic display systems. The same is true of the other "vintage" suits you find on Tau Volantis. However, the Suit Kiosk description for the CEC Engineering Suit states that it was among, if not the first to use that kind of technology. Is the Engineering Suit really that old? Also, why do the 200 year old suits have collapsible helmets, while all the suits from Dead Space - set 200 years on, have standard helmets?
    • I think a lot of the technological discrepancies (Such as two-hundred year old tech being compatible with contemporary tech) lies in the Hand Wave that technology has stagnated signficantly since the time mankind discovered Tau. Humanity has been on the brink of total resource starvation for quite some time, to the point when even planet-cracking is no longer viable solution for long-term survival. As a result incremental technological advancement has slowed to a near stop in an effort to conserve resources as much as possible. As for the helmet thing, I think we can take for granted that the SCAF team's technology was top of the line for it's time, whereas the average engineers suits that Isaac had to wear in 1 were hopelessly outdated. Or it's inconsistent artistic design.
    • It could be that it's talking about the RIG itself, and not the suit. The RIG is more a part of the Engineering Suit, like it's integrated into the suit's design, while the rest of the suits have the RIG jutting out from behind Isaac's back most of the time.
    • Possibly Fridge Brilliance. Perhaps the description refers not to the model, but the longer-running series of suits. Perhaps the same company that made the CEC RIG from 1 was from a centuries old company, and also created the Antique RIG from 2 that was an older model of Engineering suits. Presumably, that same company also invented the RIG technology. Think of it like the Volkswagen Beetle: the original model is old, and the series has been redesigned constantly, but each carries the legacy of the "Beetle." The Engineering suit is just the latest in a long series.
    • Or, rather, that technology is not new. Sure, the S.C.A.F. expedition took place two centuries ago, but that's still 300 years from our time. That gives plenty of time for someone to invent holographic displays, folding helmets, and matter replicators, some of those technologies we are prototyping even today. For RIG technology, the above explanation seems plausible, and for the folding helmets, perhaps Isaac felt old-fashioned, and just changed his mind the next game.
    • Personally? I think the department of CEC who managed The Ishimura and Isaac's repair crew preferred the non-collapsible helmets as seen in Extraction. Maybe its standard issue for Planet Cracker crews to have the solid helmets. The collapsible ones seem to be rather easy to remove, if the Puker Execution of Isaac is any indication.
    • Could be that Isaac simply never activated the collapse function in Dead Space one. In 2, in 3, he regularly collapses his helmet and even one which he puts on separately is capable of collapsing into the suit he wears it with (the EVA suit from the Eudora). To our experience, the one for the standard engineering suits in Dead Space didn't collapse, but very similar (but not quite identical) helmets in Dead Space 2 DO collapse. So, this may just be a case of the simplest answer: Isaac chose not to collapse it during Dead Space.

    Black Marker 

  • So, the Black Marker shows up on Earth and creates horrible monsters, so it's sealed off. Later, the red markers are created by humans and create horrible monsters, so they get sealed off. Then what does happens? The government tortures Isaac for information about how to build another marker, and (surprise surprise) it creates hordes of horrible monsters. Why do they keep doing this? It has never worked. Ever. How has everyone failed to make the connection that Markers = Necromorphs? Admittedly, Unitologists seem to actualy want to make Necros for some reason, but I thought that Earthgov was responsible for the incident on Titan Station, and they definitely don't.
    • 1. They're desperate for resources, 2. Most of them don't know about the necromorphs 3. They believe that they can "perfect" it so it will work for once.
    • The Titan Station outbreak was more of a False Flag Operation. Unitologists had infiltrated EarthGov so thoroughly that their upper echelons were filled with Unitology's upper echelons. Unitlogists played both sides; they authorized the rapid creation and distribution of Markers before the risks were apprent, then they had a specialist (Vandal from Mobile) release preserved specimens and then fooled her into opening the gates to the residential area, while also stonewalling containment efforts to maximize how many people were infected.
    • The thing is, the containment fields work, for the most part. The Aegis VII marker on its pedestal only affected the minds of people who were standing within touching distance for several workdays worth of time, and the Golden Marker had a huge buffer zone between itself and where everyone else worked. Necromorph infestations are just an accepted risk against the chance to solve Humanity's energy crisis forever. The staff was being as safe as they can, but they didn't count on Unitologists deliberately sabotaging containment effects.
    • Suddenly this sounds a lot like Jurassic Park, with the Unitologists filling in as Nedry.
    • We need to remember that we're talking about two different governments when it comes to the Markers. The Sovereign Colonies were the ones who sealed off Aegis VII and the other Red Marker sites. However, at the time the Sovereign Colonies were also in the middle of the Secession War. It is implied that the military personnel the Sovereign Colonies sent to far-off places like Tau Volantis to seal off the Markers made them too weak to fight the war effectively. The Sovereign Colonies administration was toppled, and EarthGov was formed. All the information the Sovereign Colonies government had about the Markers was destroyed in accordance with Scenario 5 policy, though it sounds like not everything was completely purged. That explains why EarthGov knew that Red Markers existed and that they were manmade, but didn't know where they were until the Aegis VII Marker was accidentally discovered.
    • This is actually explained in game, the Markers give off a low level psychic compulsion to create more Markers, as evidenced by Isaac in 2, even if you don't want to create Markers, it will make you, even by causing hallucinations claiming you are going to destroy the Marker, also, an audio log in 2 is about a scientist waking up and finding he had made tiny markers out of materials in his bedroom, in his sleep.

    Suits and toxic gas 

  • So the suits the characters are wearing can become completely airtight for going out into space right? Well, then why can't they do the same for toxic gas?
    • There's a difference between being surrounded by a vacuum and being immersed in a corrosive acid. In space, all the suit needs is to be airtight and insulated against the cold, intense sunlight, and radiation; it isn't built with the expectation that the environment is actively trying to catalyze it. Presumably, at least a few of the RIG suit's hermetic seals are based on organic compounds, which the toxic gas explicitly dissolves. Even an opening the size of a pinhead will be enough to allow more toxic gas inside the suit to Isaac's very organic body, resulting in his painful death.
    • Before anyone asks, it really makes no sense for players to burst into flame upon contact. It's probable that the programmers just gave it fire's coding as an environmental hazard, and called it a day.
    • Also, the suits lying around that level actually seems like a bit of Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror. If an airtight RIG offers no protection, it's likely that a trenchoat and cask masks will be the same. But I also recall that workplaces often install fake thermostats that serve only to fool workers that they changed the temperature, so presumably S.C.A.F. did the same. They serve only to make the staff feel safer, but if a situation actually called for gassing, it would be more important to contain the threat than saving anyone inside.
    • Potentially, the suits react to pressure differential by locking down their air passages to the internal supply. In essence: the suit can open or close vents to selectively keep air in or allow air-flow when in an atmosphere unless the air is toxic. The sterilization stuff may not register as a toxin, and it definitely doesn't remove the air pressure. In essence: the suits don't seal, so the scary bad-stuff killing super-acid just goes right on in through the vents with the air. It may even be intentionally designed that way to prevent infected individuals from escaping.

    Isaac's parents 

  • It's been 3 games. Are we ever going to learn anything more about Isaac's parents? The hidden data log at the end of the New Game Plus in the first game gave us a lot of tantalizing plot fodder: his dad was a Space Marine who was classified as "missing in action" after going on a top-secret mission. His mother became depressed her husband's disappearance and turned to Unitology as a form of solace, and ended up ruining the family's finances by giving it all to the church. To date, she sounds like she is still alive, though she seems to be estranged from Isaac (as her reckless spending forced Isaac to go to a low-ranked university instead of more prestigious institutions that he actually was qualified for). Those details alone sound like they could go in very interesting directions.
    • See also: Canon Fodder.
    • His father was a ship architect that did work for the marines, but he was not himself a marine. The log from the first game also indicates the mother is still alive and contributes to the church. For convenience, here is the log.

    Key subject 

  • So is Ellie a "key subject" like Lexine from Extraction? She never seems to suffer from hallucinations or Marker influence at all at any point. However, I can't remember if Isaac or Norton's team ever have hallucinations while around Ellie in the second or third games. I know Stross has freakouts around Ellie quite alot in Dead Space 2, but you could say that he's so far gone that his brain is essentially fried at that point.
    • Probably not. It's far more likely that Ellie simply never stayed close to Markers long enough for them to have any sort of lasting influence on her, or if they do, she's better adjusted to dealing with it than Isaac. Still, others had the same amount of exposure to them and went crazy, so perhaps on the spectrum of "immune" to "not-immune," Ellie is more resistant than most, but not entirely immune.

    Awakened 

  • For the Awakened DLC, Isaac and Carver use a Unitologist transport with its Shockpoint drive removed to travel to the Terra Nova. Once parking it, they salvage another transport's Shockpoint drive, and install it on the Nova to travel back to Earth, overloading many systems in the process. ...Did they actually just pilot a ship filled with Necromorphs to Earth? Why not just install the Transport's shockdrive into the perfectly functional and Necromorph-free transport waiting outside? Surely reattaching a part designed for that exact model of transport would be easier than what the duo goes through to activate the Nova. Sure, they might be going a little crazy at the time, but they aren't acting stupid.
    • The minefield was still active, IIRC; one of Carr's logs even mentions that a large portion of the remaining Unitologists did not make it aboard the Terra Nova; perhaps the capital ships had some form of IFF or something that protected them from the mines. It's not unthinkable that Isaac and Carver would prefer using the ship that hasn't been hit by mines, rather than going back out into the vacuum to try and reinstall the shockpoint drive aboard the transport in the middle of a minefield.
    • Besides, at this point one more ship filled with necromorphs is quite frankly, the least of Earth's problem's right now.

    Body dumping ground 

  • The Unitology church have their body dumping ground right next to an office? Wouldn't the neighbors complain?
    • They were commencing operation "necromorph everyone," and they were killing every non-Unitologist they could find and dumping them in a convenient place for the Necromoprhs to collect. The neighbors weren't complaining, as they were a bit occupied with being dead or trying to escape being dead.

    The Pack 

  • Why was the Pack on Tau Volantis?
    • Disturbingly, they only appear in the Awakened DLC, and we go through the Unitologist outpost to reach their ships. This likely meant that the Unitologists brought their kids with them to be necromorphed. This would fall well in-line with the Circle's typical zealotry.
    • The Pack in Awakened don't resemble the Dead Space 2 kind. They look mummified and oddly proportioned. They're either aliens or old SCAF soldiers put back together poorly.

    Using the machine 

  • The machine was all done. Why didn't the Aliens just turn it on instead of freezing their planet?
    • The few aliens operating the machine didn't have a functional codex, so the only option available were "Freeze the planet," and hope that someone would bring a codex to finish the job. The Aliens probably expected some other Aliens to come from their own planets to do so, not several millenia and an entirely different civilization to do so.
    • Dr. Serrano's logs explain the benevolent aliens left behind a language crash-course. This might have just been good planning, but it can also be taken as a sign that they expected to be wiped out. But, it is convenient for the sake of the story that they were able to build a city-size doomsday device and not put what was literally the final piece into place.
    • In the flashback after you put Rosetta together, you see the Machine activating literally as Convergence was happening. Not too much of a stretch to assume that it was some other poor guy's suicide mission in a Necromorphed world just to activate the unfinished machine.

    Killing all the humans 

  • Can someone please explain to me why the necromorphs murdered every human on Tau Volantis when the Markers/Moon kind of needed them alive to complete it's demands to "Make us Whole/Turn it off"? It would be awfully difficult for Isaac to turn the machine off if a necromorph kills him.
    • It could be that the necromorphs either didn't know Isaac would be able to do his mission or they knew that he would screwed over two markers. He also proved it was resistant to marker influence. He was a rouge element. Also, individual necromorphs seem to run on instinct and are too insane to care about letting a possible helpful individual survive. Think of Pvt. Sam Ackerman. He was attacked by cannibalistic humans who ate necromorph meat. All they could think about was finding him and eating him. As he escaped, they were yelling, "MAKE US WHOLE ACKERMAN. DON'T LEAVE US!" Maybe they were trying to force the hand of the humans and put them in a position to do exactly what they want, but at the same time are too angry and hungry to care about their objective and are willing to wait forever until someone can squeeze by them. It's like they only want the strongest people to survive and have them do what they want. Blue-and-Orange Morality anyone? After all, in the second game, the Marker used Isaac to kill everyone in the facility that protected it, then tried to absorb Isaac, one of the creators of markers and one of the few with the ability to destroy Markers. See if they killed him, they win. If he survives long enough to wipe out the facility, they win. If Isaac was killed by Earth Gov, they win. They were probably hoping that if Isaac got that far that they could kill him and be in a better position then they were before. It's the same thing on Tau. -Thecommander 236
    • It was something of a Xanatos Gambit. The moon was trying to manipulate people into freeing it, and if they do, it'll kill them and continue where they left off. If they fail, that's one more body for the pile when it eventually gets free. The only thing it didn't count on is somebody diving into the mind of one of the old natives and realizing that the Moon's message was bullshit.
    • It's implied that the Necromorphs are working on faulty information from the Moon, kill, make more Necros, trying to start convergence, The Moons actual messages isn't to try and start a convergence event to make a new moon, but to get to the Machine and turn it off to finish The Dormant Moon's own Convergence, but because of the moon being dormant they only have an echo of "Make us Whole" to go on, it's like if someone left a message on an crap answering machine, and instead of getting "don't bring eggs" you get "@$%}...Bring Eggs"

    Marker in the first game 

  • Was there ever any explanation given for why the Marker in the first game actively helped you contain the necromorphs and emitted a "Dead Space" field that could suppress them when amplified by the pedestal, while the Markers in the sequels instead emit a signal that powers the necromorphs and are working to spread the necromorph infections and initiate convergence events?
    • The Markers are sentient. Its possible that the Aegis VII Marker simply decided it didn't want to spread the Necromorphs. Its odd that nobody ever acknowledges the discrepancy, but then again, the Aegis VII Marker did destroy Isaac's sanity, so maybe he doesn't have very fond memories of hanging out and fighting necromorphs with it.
    • I always wondered if maybe the Aegis VII Marker was "reprogrammed" by its makers. For all their obvious intelligence, the Markers appear to be machines devoid of free will: they do only what they're meant to do, which is drive people insane, make necromorphs, and initiate Convergence. It's not out of the question that Marker 3A was altered from its original purpose when the necromorph outbreak became uncontainable, to put a lid on the hivemind/incomplete Moon. And as for why nobody's been doing this lately: most of the Markers created recently by EarthGov, such as the Golden Marker at the Sprawl, are under the covert auspices of the Unitologists, and the last thing they want is to stop Convergence.
    • A possible fix is that the marker itself didn't stop want to stop the necromorphs forming, the platform/dias simply somehow reversed the signal, it did not amplify the marker signal, it outright stopped it, the platform was a early containment/suppresion field like the one shown on the lunar colony, possibly (seeing as we saw no way for someone to build one) it was the one that the red marker originally was stood on when the Aegis VII colony found it, excavated and brought to where you find it.
    • Based on evidence from the entire franchise, including the prequel books, it may be that the markers have some sort of fail-safe program in them to try and prevent a "Premature Convergence" from occurring. We know that the ultimate purpose of the markers is to induce a civilization into creating lots of marker copies and spreading them among their population until a convergence can occur and a Brother moon forms, and it occurs when a civilization reaches it peak. So it would make sense that the markers would want a civilization to "fully mature" before activating the convergence, so in a less than ideal situation the markers may try to discourage the species from spreading the necromorphs until a more ideal time. This could explain why the Aegis VII marker wants to be placed back on the pedestal, so it can make the necromorphs and the hive mind go dormant until the "proper" time. The Red Marker experiments were conducted on off world colonies for a reason, to minimize their impact on earth, and they only had small colonies of probably a few thousand people to spread the infection to; not the most ideal situations for convergence. It also jives with details from the prequel novel Martyr, where some of the hallucinations produced by the Black Marker try to warn people away from the marker and to NOT start convergence, and the marker signal falls silent once it gets Altman to understand that it wants to be replicated. Evidence seems to suggest that previous Necromorph outbreaks were caused by human error in spite of what the markers want, because the marker signals have a difficult time communicating with the human brain. It's mentioned in Dead Space 2 that it compels smart people to want to replicate it, but it drives less intelligent people insane, and Altman in the prequel novel likens the Marker hallucinations to an alien intelligence desperately trying to communicate with beings that are too different to really understand it. Seems that things do not go smoothly with the markers and humanity because the markers cannot effectively communicate their intentions to us without us being driven insane and/or misunderstanding them.

    Convergence 

  • Now that we know that convergence is when a Marker sucks up all the organic matter on a planet to form a moon-sized necromorph, doesn't that imply that the convergence event that nearly occurred in Dead Space 2 was doomed to fail regardless? The Sprawl had a population in the single digit millions. That's a lot of dead bodies but not enough to form a brother moon. What happens when a Convergence event doesn't grab enough bodies? Does the half-formed moon hunt down more settlements to absorb until it completes itself? Or maybe that's how a Hivemind is formed?
    • Your first theory is probably correct. Look at the moon again, specifically the hole part, and you can see what looks like layers. Convergence events are triggered by reaching a threshold of available biomass, and X numbers of bodies are in one layer. The absolute minimum crates a small proto-moon, and with more biomass absorbed more layers are made, each wrapping around the other one (which is why the Moon looks damaged, the layer it was on wasn't completed). Presumably, the potential Titan Convergence Moon would have been smaller, due to having only around 800,000 people, but by then that Moon would just travel to other population centers, eat them and grow, and continue until it would be invincible against any attack and eat the rest of mankind.

    Uninfested dead 

  • Why are there so many uninfected dead bodies on Tau Volantis? That made sense in the first two games because those infection events were very recent or still occuring, but Tau Volantis was infected over two hundred years ago. All the dead S.C.A.F. personal should really have transformed into Necromorphs long because Isaac arrived on the planet.
    • It's possible they froze before they could turn, or there were no nearby necromorphs to infect them. The games seem inconsistent on what is required for a person to become a necromorph. Could be they simply couldn't get at the bodies until Isaac turned up and started opening doors.
    • Most of the bodies were of recently killed Unitlogists.

    Dr. Serrano's log 

  • One of the Alien Artifacts gives you a log wherein Dr. Serrano claims that there is much evidence that the alien civilization that lived there were not bound to that planet but in fact had a large interstellar empire. So how did a convergence event that hadn't spread beyond one planet and the flash-freezing of said planet kill them all? Did every alien in the galaxy return to Tau Voltanis before the convergence event to witness the activation of the Marker and/or to help fight the necromorphs? It seems really unlikely to me that a widespread space-faring civilization could have been wiped out by a plague and sudden ice-age that only affected one planet.
    • As for why the Aliens all died out, remember that their empire had Markers everywhere. At that point, it's likely that most colonies faced Crippling Overspecialization, with entire planets relying on food imports from lightyears away. Even if the Necromorphs didn't reach them, there would still be hordes of zealots and murderous insane that could do the job. If they destroyed enough infrastructure, starports, held genocides, or even began to use WMDs, their civilization would easily have be reduced past the point of recovery, likely dying out slowly over the next few centuries...
    • Which still doesn't explain why humans never found any of their structures on uninfected planets. Supposedly, they only died a few thousand years after the event occurred. The game mentions millions of years, but that's how long it took them to discover the Markers, not how long ago they died off. Still, that would mean their structures could have disappeared as shown in Life After People, but they KNEW the Markers existed and attempted to warn other species of the threat. They couldn't establish some beacon or machine on another planet to draw attention to the fact? Even if they had a few years before extinction, surely they would have been smart enough to realize that once the other species arrived on their frozen planet, Tau Volantis, that the alien species could fall under Marker influence and that they should be warned BEFORE they got there if at all possible. Nothing is ever found of their supposedly huge civilization.
    • IIRC, Seranno never said there was evidence that the Aliens had spread all over the galaxy, that was just a theory of his, considering the same thing was happening to humanity. Even if they did have a huge civilization and no evidence was found of it... well space is really freaking big, so it's not that surprising.

    Tucker's tallies 

  • Tucker Edwards made tally marks on the floor. This probably represents how many days he survived. According to the wiki, the tally comes out to 3,870 days. That's over ten years and seven months. The wiki brings up some good points about how it is strange that this is possible. (From most possible to least possible.) How did Edwards stay uninfected and how did the necromorphs not find and kill him by breaking in the vents? It's not like the explosives in the vents were very powerful if you can melee them. How in the world did Edwards entertain himself? Was it that he took up writing or did he use the computers for that? Finally, after a few days, everyone else was probably dead and Tucker stayed there for ten years? He's a pilot and there was a shuttle, however crappy, in the aft of the ship he could've used to escape, so why didn't he just leave? Even if he had just waited a year or even a few months, the necromorphs probably would've been dormant by then.
    • In his mind Tucker didn't have anywhere else to go. Tucker set up his fortified boobytrapped section expecting an attempt to kill him at some point that never came, likely because everybody was dead. Tucker went insane from fear and paranoia and as a result he couldn't bring himself to leave even after it became apparent that nobody was going to come after him, and he probably assumed that if he managed to get back to Earth he'd be hunted down and killed on the spot. Eventually though the loneliness, boredom, and constant fear got to him and he offed himself. It's actually rather impressive he managed to hold out for that long.
    • Well, for one, there's was no where to go. It's one thing to seal yourself in a fortress. It's quite another to break out of that fortress when it's surrounded by monsters. Necromorphs don't become dormant unless there's an environmental reason, which there wasn't one. How they didn't find him is a good question. Possibly he just stayed really damn quiet. He probably didn't take the Crozier because a) it's busted and b) there's a ton of mines in and around the flotilla. As for entertainment he did have his music.
    • It's also possible that he just figured escape was pointless. While a Lieutenant is still relatively low ranked, he was still a member of the SCAF military and the SCAF was busy being annihilated in a civil war that would be won by the orgization that formed Earth Gov. Riding back to Earth or any other colony in a ship broadcasting SCAF codes using SCAF channels could've marked him for death by the new government. Plus, if SCAF did survive, it was his superiors that ordered his death and the deaths of the fleet. Riding back home with SCAF in charge would lead to them vaporizing his ship to prevent Necromorph infection. For him, "better the devil you know" might be in full effect. Finally, while he didn't want to die, maybe he also didn't want to risk the infection coming back with him. After all, the Scenario 5 situation can be solved just as well if the survivors chose self-exile instead of death (assuming they could keep their sanity like Tucker could).

    Carver and the Codex 

  • Why the hell did Carver hand over the Codex to Danik? I mean, he said himself that he wanted to finish it, to see the threat eliminated, yet he just shot all of that straight to hell! "There's more than one kind of right." The hell does that mean? If he really wanted to play hero, he could have shot Danik while Isaac stasised both him and Ellie. The entire ending is Carver's fault because he did what he did, but WHY?
    • It is possible that we have no idea what Stasis does to the human body, of note remember that in game nobody has been "stasised" except from Gameplay and Story Segregation towards enemy combatants, my theory is that Issac/Carvers' stasis modules are actually overpowered, due to (in Issacs' case at least) being jury-rigged from a medical grade stasis unit, for all we know stasis actually causes something akin to complete organ shutdown in the manner Issac uses it. just a theory however but it would at least make sense of why the numerous times Issac/Carver didn't just Stasis a problem, like Norton or Danik.

    Feeders 

  • Feeders are the result of humans ingesting necromorph flesh due to lack of food. However, the flesh was still infected and proceeded to warp them into necromorphs, presumably killing them in the process. Meat is often cooked at certain temperatures to remove bacteria and viruses. What I want to know is did they actually cook the flesh first before eating it or did they just eat it raw? Considering the toughness of the disease, would cooking it over a long period of time be able to kill it? What happens if the necromorph flesh were to be cooked when reanimation and death were very recent?
    • The Necromorph Virus is a "The Thing" level contagion, it is a Sentient From a Single Cell Virus, shown to survive everything except Immolation, it is even theorized that you aren't actually killing the necromorphs themselves per se, just causing enough damage that the host body is unsuitable for its current from, like a slasher dismembered will probably be "reorganized" into an Infector or Corruption, remember the goal is to Combine into a massive single Eldritch Abomination I assume that if even a single cell of necro infection is enough, and it is hardy, also the markers probably gave the compunction to munch on Necroflesh.

    Mining colony probes 

  • Is this game really asking me to believe that no one on the mining colony thought to send probes to the broken moon, just to see if anything of value was on it? They would have figured out it was made of meat almost immediately. Sure, they probably wouldn't have actually done anything about it... except talk about it in their omnipresent audio and text logs. Seems to me like "hey, we have the only moon in the galaxy made entirely of meat" would be a great conversation piece.
    • That's... a really good question. I have a few theories; 1) Given that the Moon was shown sucking parts of the planet during Convergence, it's possible the outer shell is actually made of rock to disguise it (though since it's incomplete, it doesn't explain how they would miss the massive hole that would likely be filled with flesh). 2) Since the military were dead set on finding the source of the Marker signals, it's possible and fairly likely that they focused all their efforts on unlocking the secrets of Tau Volantis since that was where the massive amounts of Marker signals were coming from. 3) It's possible they did send probes over, but the Moon's Marker EMP effects (which they do have, check the original ending for Dead Space or Dead Space Liberation) could have shut them down before they got close enough and those could have been dismissed as effects from the Marker signals. 4) The Markers could have been sending subtle signals into everyone's brains saying "this is a normal moon, nothing unusual about it, just go turn on the Machine on the planet instead." 5) They ultimately did record that in their logs, but when Scenario 5 was enacted, they destroyed most of the information about it. #5 seems like the most likely event though all of them are admittedly rather weak justifications, and really the best answer would likely be "the Markers did it".
    • Alternatively, the Tau Volantis facilities were not for mining but were military installations supporting civilian scientists aligned with S.C.A.F. in a Marker Research initiative. Note, we don't see mining equipment outside of hand-held stuff used by a Dig Team (Archeologists, not miners), a few bulldozers for clearing snow-pack and a core sample drill. Taking those things at face value, most likely they were focusing on the planet which was emanating a massed quantity of Marker signals over the Moon, with intent to eventually examine the Moon after completion of planetside ops. The issue is, they scrubbed every single computer core, datapad, memory stick and even vehicles of anything related to their mission, allied bases and point of origin. We find pretty much all the stuff that they missed in the rush to enact Scenario 5, most of which is useless for anything other than speculation until the very end. In other words: the Moon was irrelevant to their mission at that time, and they didn't want to divert resources for a pointless reconnaissance mission. Add in that the Markers may have been actively interfering with their attention toward the Moon and it may as well not exist. Did you pay attention to it except for when Isaac and Norton mention it after deshock?
    • The possibility of them knowing about the moon is probably higher than them not knowing. After all, it's existence might explain why Major General Mahad was so ready to start a Scenario 5 cleanup. Imagine you have a 97% completed berthen moon hanging over your head that could kill all of humanity, you got a full blown Necromorph infestation, and you have a scientist who insists he can "stop this". You may just say "fuck it" and kill everything just to be sure. After all, the Markers are known for tricking people into helping them when you think you are working against them or working towards your own interests. Mahad may have even believed that Serrano was right and they could stop it, but do you really wanna take that chance? After all, it seemed like you would have to do a dozen things in the middle of a Necromorph infestation to turn the machine fully on, but only do one thing to turn it off and doom humanity. Meanwhile the marker is driving all of your men and all the scientists insane. Are you really going to trust a scientist who "figured it all out" at the very last possible second? What are the chances that he ISN'T being manipulated by the most manipulative entity in the known universe? That machine turns off for one minute and it's over. Let's not poke the giant space god hanging above our heads and just play it safe, huh? Of course, we know now that he was wrong, but the general didn't and he was probably deep in a sunk cost fallacy. "Well, I already had 95% of the survivors killed and I don't want to think that I did that for no good reason, so I'm just going to shoot this kid that Serrano is giving orders to. They could both be compromised anyways."

    Awakened ending 

  • Just what was up with the ending to the Awakened DLC?!
    • Could you be more specific?
    • Not sure if that's rhetorical or not. But if we're assuming that what happens in Awakened is actually happening, and not some crazy hallucination that a dying Isaac is having "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"-style, then Earth is being devastated by multiple Brother Moons while the population is chomped by Necromorphs, and who knows what is about to happen with Isaac and Carver.
    • Isaac isn't dying, yet. He's still alive by the end of DS 3. So it could be a hallucination. Personally i find it hard to believe that a 200+ year old ship (made by humans i mean) can still work good enough (and not blow up) to make a hyperspace jump (especially with overloaded reactor).
AND that Brethren Moons Actually need Earth for anything. Unless our Moon is a Brethren Moon as well.

    Markers, virus, and necromorphs 

  • So, WHAT is the relationship between the Markers, the virus, and the Necromorphs? Because from what I understood, a virus of some sort reanimated the corpses and changed them into Necromorphs, and it responded to the marker symbol. In Dead Space 2, it seemed to confirm that. However, in Dead Space 3, when the Marker was activated in the first part of the game, it just jumpstarted a necromorph invasion without any need for even an Infector. So what the hell causes the infection? Is it a virus or can the Marker just do that?
    • The games have always been inconsistent about this. The Marker emanates some kind of "signal" that causes dead tissue to begin reanimating as well as the hallucinations, suggesting it's a memetic agent rather than a physical virus. The suggested explanation is that this signal takes a great deal of time to fully transform a Necromorph; Infectors have some ability to "speed" the process so that it takes seconds rather than hours. On the other hand, if this was true, the outbreak at the beginning of 3 should not have happened so quickly: it should have taken a few hours at least for it to really get going after the Marker's activation. It is possible that the Unitologists, who were apparently planning that outbreak for some time, somehow "prepped" the bodies around the Marker for quick transformation, but the game never indicates anything like that.
    • The relationship is a bit complex but works as follows.
      • The Marker sends out a signal that passively converts any dead tissue into necromorph flesh. This includes dust made of skin cells, hair or other body trimmings, and any other organic material that is deceased without exception.
      • This flesh in then generates a viral agent allowing the next stage of the infection to take hold. By some means it gets into a living being creating a singular necromorph usually an infector, note the presence of a corpse can skip this initial phase by converting directly to a necromorph. The virus also allows necromorph infections to spread passively beyond the limits of the Marker signal.
      • The necromorphs serve one of two functions, kill people to create corpse or inject the virus into corpses to created more necromorphs which would go on to kill more people. Any necromorph physically disabled by damage goes dormant either being reco figured for another purpose or melting into more necroflesh.
      • All of this leads to a Convergence event once a critical mass of corpses has been created which merges all those necromorphs into a singular planet sized being with a consiousness of it's own. This is a Brethren Moon, a galactic apes predator, that then generates a new Marker and deposits it onto a suitable world to begin the cycle anew.

    The Sovereign Colonies and the Markers 
  • 1) Why did the Sovereign Colonies know about the Markers, the necromorphs and the truth about Convergence after Earthgov covered it up and the only info about Markers/Convergence was from Unitology? And 2) Why did the Sovereign Colonies think it was a good idea to spend resources to permanently get rid of the Markers while they were in the middle of a civil war? 200 years before the story no one was trying to make new Markers, so why the urgency?
    • 1) Sovereign Colonies is as old as Earth Gov's cover-up and even if not had independently discovered the Markers. 2) They saw that markers, aside from potentially false uses as a power source, were driving people nutso and that while their opponents in Earth Gov were corrupt enough that billions of deaths are utterly irrelevant to their interests, S.C.A.F. and their civilian counterparts in the Sovereign Colongies government wholeheartedly disagree with that thinking. They were, admittedly, doing their own experiments but with much more rules and much less civilian population.

    The "Freeze-the-Planet" machine 
  • It must have taken a lot of time for the aliens to build the machine which would flash-freeze their planet, so they must have figured out the truth of the Markers years before Convergence happened. So if they had years to do it, why not instead lift the Markers off the planet and then shoot them out of the solar system?
    • They had their own equivalent to Unitologists who cut short every attempt to do so? Less snarky: there were some among them, just as among humans, who actively worshiped Markers. Sabotage, secrecy. In the end, the 'why' is less relevant than the fact that it happened. I mean, based on what WE see, the machine was complete and ready for purpose, why wasn't it properly calibrated? I'd imagine the same reason as they didn't just fire the Markers into the sun (which is actually a better choice than sending them on an exit vector from the system).

    Religion and Atheism 
So it seems that in the modern day of Dead Space, atheism is the norm and Unitology is the last major religion left. There may be hold-ons to begone days (mostly because Visercal didn't want this to turn into a religious debate), but they are minor or unimportant to the two major powers. Major General Mahad seems to be religious, though, and his religion seems to be some form of Christianity based on his reference to God. Unitology shouldn't exist yet as it was invented by some Earth Gov executives, at least, I think. So if that's the case, was Earth Gov responsible for the abandonment of religion or was it a natural process after SCAF was destroyed. It makes sense that Earth Gov may have encouraged atheism as a form of control especially once Unitologists started infiltrating the government. The Unitologists wouldn't want any competitors to their own religion. As humans are naturally inclined to seek out spiritual meaning, religion will probably never truly die and being the only religion left would benefit Unitology greatly. After all, the downtrodden and dissatisfied elements of society will always seek out spiritual meaning and guidance. Is there anything that explains how the main 3 religions, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, mostly died out or, at least, lost influence while Unitology formed a monopoly on belief or is this unexplained?

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