Observations into the history behind the apocalypse (with pictures)

[Stefan404 11]

First of all this is my first time starting a topic here, so I apologize if I screwed something up.

 

One of the things that has interested me with DayZ has been to try to figure out the history behind the zombie apocalypse, and what the response to the crisis was, how quickly things went badly and that sort of thing. I've probably analyzed everything much more than the game devs intended, and everything I've thought of may be wrong, but it's interesting to theorize. Also, all my observations here are based on things that I found in-game. It's possible that I made a conjecture based on in-game findings that has been proven wrong somewhere else.

 

One of the main things I looked at for determining how the societal collapse happened was to look at the differences in the map between ArmA 2 and DayZ. Some of the differences are because things were added (The new northern cities and Prison Island, for example, probably didn't pop up between the end of ArmA 2 and the beginning of the apocalypse) but some stuff can be assumed to be related to the attempted containment of the zombies. The later events of ArmA 2 happened in 2009, so that gives about a year to two years between the end of that conflict and my estimate of the beginning of the zombie crisis, with more information on timeline stuff later.

 

 

All the health clinics are new, and suggest that there was an organized effort to keep people healthy. The bloodstains inside those suggest it didn't work out so well, but it does suggest there was an effort at keeping people healthy.

 

 

All the military bases are more built up than in ArmA 2, most of them didn't exist in that game, and almost all of them were probably made either during the civil war during ArmA 2 or during the attempted containment before DayZ (such as the survivor's camp near Novy Sobor) There are also a lot of bags with bio hazard markings on them, suggesting more attempts at containment. Bags can be found at most major cities as well as most military locations. Also, the amount of trash built up on the streets suggests that either Chernarus didn't have a good trash system in the first place, or the waste from the crisis became more than the infrastructure could handle.

 

 

Much of the graffiti on buildings was present before the apocalypse, however there are signs on posts in most big towns advising that people wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough. This suggests to me that the people responding to the crisis treated it as a virus, rather than as some other problem. Another one of the signs also had the date 8.9.10 (September 8, 2010) on it, with other zombie signs plastered over it, so we know that stuff started happening sometime after September 2010.

 

 

Originally I thought that the mass graves spread throughout the maps weren't there when I did my initial pass through Chernarus in the ArmA 2 editor, but then I remembered that the mass graves were part of the Chedaki rebellion stuff. However, the ones in DayZ could either be left over from the civil war or they could be new ones as people became less able to handle all the dead from the zombies.

 

The next few pictures are comparisons between buildings in ArmA 2 and in DayZ. Most of the buildings haven't deteriorated much since ArmA 2, however many of the cars are very rusted and worn down. My estimate based on that is that about 10 or 15 years have passed between the start of the crisis and the time in the game.

 

Balota ATC

 

 

 

House in Kamenka

 

 

 

 

This calendar provides interesting insights into the timeline of the crisis. The month is December, and the first of the month was on a Wednesday, which last happened in 2010. If we assume that that's the last month up on that calendar because that's when the police stopped going in to work then we can assume societal collapse happened in December of 2010, which matches with the earlier containment posters going up around September 2010. Given a collapse date of 2010 and 10-15 years since that point, the events of the game would probably be happening around 2020-2025. Of course the calendar might say December 2010 because that's when the image for the object was made by the devs, so that might not mean anything.

 

 

The military vehicles left behind also give a little insight. Most of the vehicles are Russian made (BMPs, VS3s, etc.) which makes sense given Chernarus's proximity to Russia.

 

 

However, there are also a few Humvee wrecks around Chernarus, which suggests some American presence. However, I'm not sure whether they would have been responding to the crisis or merely left over from the US involvement in the civil war. The Western weapons that can be found also give some evidence to a Western presence during the crisis. There are also a fair number of press vests around, suggesting that there was an international response to the stuff that was happening

 

 

Another interesting thing that wasn't in ArmA 2 is a wrecked convoy North of Krasnoe coming from Russia that looks like it was either bombed out or ambushed, given that some of the T72s there had their turrets blown off, which can only happen if the tank is destroyed in a violent manner. I haven't played enough of ArmA 2 to know if that was something that happened in the civil war, but it's also possible that it was part of an effort by Russia to keep the zombies out of their country.

 

 

There's also the supposed Green Mountain broadcast, which I take with a healthy amount of skepticism as to its in-game veracity, but it's an interesting thing to think about if it was legit. Here's a youtube link if you haven't heard it and would like to:

I attempted to translate the morse code beeping behind the numbers myself and got: 

 

WEAIENOSOENEIESISESTOPTHISMESSAGEWISSPSEYEVEIY

HOIIISOPEIETOISEIENOSOENEIIESPOESISESTOPMESSAGE

UEESSETOQUAIEETINESISJEDTIHAENESTOPMESSAGE) 

 

Which doesn't make much sense. However, if the place was in crisis mode whoever was putting out the message may have screwed up as they were entering something, leading to the garbled mess I translated. It's also possible that I screwed up the translating, as I don't have much experience with morse code. The wiki claims the correct translation is as follows:

 

We are no longer alive STOP This message will play every hour if operators are no longer responsive STOPMESSAGE Unable to quarantine subject change STOPMESSAGE

 

Assuming that's the correct translation and the broadcast is an actual in-game thing (which I've found no evidence of personally, though I haven't looked particularly hard) then it would suggest that scientists at Green Mountain were attempting to study how the whole zombie-virus-thing affected people. There are a few military buildings at Green Mountain, but those might have been related to the tower itself, rather than as a containment thing.

 

 

As far as the numbers in the Green Mountain broadcast go, they lead to hunting stands on the west side of Chernarus. I went to them and mapped out where they were (with lines connecting the stands connect-the-dots style with an arrow indicating which direction the stand was facing) but I don't think there can be any significant observations learned from that. 

 

 

The last thing I've thought about was the hotel in Chernogorsk and the freighter on the East Coast. My two theories on the hotel are that it was either a civil war thing from around the time of ArmA 2 as the rebels doing a terror attack (unlikely, given how 9/11 happened, I doubt the devs would do something so similar, but if it was an implied thing from the history maybe, but I don't know) or it happened during the crisis. The plane is coming from the direction of the Balota airfield, so it probably took off from there and had something go wrong during takeoff (either zombie related or not) and crashed into the building. The other mystery is the freighter. I've spent a fair amount of time exploring the ship and for the most part it seems much less affected by the signs of violence that show up in most of the locations in the game. I haven't found many bloodstains, and everything seems to mostly be in order, asides from the ship being split open on the rocks and stuff being knocked over, presumably from running aground. I honestly have no idea how that happened, unless the crew all got turned into zombies and then the ship ended up going out of control into the shore, but then it would seem like there would be more signs of a struggle on the ship as is the case almost everywhere else.

[Parazight 1603]

Good post!  

 

Personally, I like that the background story is a mystery.  Letting one's imagination fill in the blanks sort of enriches the experience, somehow.

[zeotrope 76]

Really great post. 

However. Speaking of Green Mountain is somewhat taboo. You should already know that. :)

[Calvin Candie 189]

You had my curiosity now you have my attention.

Beans

[Whyherro123 2283]

1) Gasoline only really lasts for two years, and that is in the best of circumstances (away from light and heat, with fuel stabilizers added)

 

2) Same thing with medications, like epinephrine, morphine, and antibiotics

 

3) Up until a couple of patches ago, we had fresh tropical fruit being found all across the region. Fresh tropical fruit. In autumn  (which is the season Day Z is set in), fresh fruit can only stay on my table for a week or so, before it starts to go bad. In those patches, we would find "rotten" fruit, yes, but also "pristine". That suggests it has been less than a week since either 1) refrigeration or 2) international trade stopped.

 

4) Ammunition degrades over time. A couple of years ago, after my grandfather died, we donated some relatively-new .22LR ammunition to my local Boy Scout camp. The rangemaster opened a case, looked at the ammunition, and refused to shoot it. He also offered to dispose of it properly. Apparently, the propellant had degraded to the point where it wouldn't reliably "push" the bullet out of the barrel, the primers were iffy, and the cases tore into chunks after extraction. These were only a couple of years old.

 

We don't know how long it has been exactly, but it has definitely been less than two years. I, personally, believe it has been a year at most. Remember: Chernarus in general, and South Zagoria in particular, literally just underwent civil war (pretty "heavy" civil war, too) right before the outbreak. That, in and of itself, explains the destruction and ruination, and why things weren't cleaned up before the disease outbreak. 

 

As for the buildings, like the clinics and schools and such, ignore the differences between the ARMA II map and the Chernarus+ map. The clinics weren't built for the infection, and all those "high schools" weren't built for no reason. They are reinventing the map, not adding to it. Making it more "believable", if you will. 

 

Oh, and don't forget, the devs are going through the entire map, and making it more "overgrown" and "abandoned". Take a look at the new Berezino for what it looks like. Said overgrowth looks like nothing more than a couple of months worth, or a season or two. Nothing too extreme.

 

 

Good work, though.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Whyherro123

[BlinkingRiki182 54]

1) Gasoline only really lasts for two years, and that is in the best of circumstances (away from light and heat, with fuel stabilizers added)

 

Theoretically, if it is stored in a stainless steel container with no oxygen and is stirred regularly it might last for much more then a decade (possibly hundreds of years).

The problem is that it's never stored like this in reality. However if a doomsday scenario is to happen, gasoline might be stored in such special containers and can last for many years (although a normal person won't be able to find or construct such a high-tech container anyway). The army doesn't need to store gasoline, as gasoline can be extracted from crude oil which is easier to store and can last for millions of years (obviously). This is why such long lasting gasoline storing containers are impractical and have never been developed.

Edited August 20, 2015 by BlinkingRiki182

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Sweet post , I really like the clues of the police station calendar , that says to me this virus happened in 2010 and Maybe we could be up to three - five years (max) into it , around 2013 -2015... Just when gas and bullets are starting to degrade (hence the "scarcity" in certain builds of those things).