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Finding Aperture Science

Last posted Jun 30, 2011 at 10:58AM EDT. Added Jun 29, 2011 at 05:12AM EDT
12 posts from 10 users

Oh boy was this damn hard to crack.

Ok, I believe before it was established before that Aperture Science headquarters are in Cleveland, OH.

Source: HL2EP2

Though, this has been found.

Source: Portal 2
It can be assumed that the Enrichment Center is there, as there is an underground mine in the game.

Now here's the catch: Not only are there no salt mines in the Upper Peninsula, the surface as seen at the end of Portal 2 is flat with wheat growing. The UP is very mountainous, so it is impossible that it is flat for miles and miles. Also, no wheat is going to naturally grow there, it is too damn cold. Also, Michigan only has ever had one salt mine. (Source: Michigan State University, Lansing MI) We can either call paradox or assume the newspaper fudged up and meant to say Lower Michigan. Taking that into consideration, Aperture Science bought said mine from the Detroit Salt Company in January 1944. (Source: That Newspaper article from the game. The number 1944 is very hard to read.)

So, see this map from Detroit Free Press.


That is the location of the Salt Mine. Unless Valve wants to call a sensible location, I am the first person to pinpoint the exact location of where Portal takes place.

So, is the field of wheat at the end of the game possible? Yes. Although this is Downtown Detroit, enough time has taken place for all the standing buildings to be gone.

First of all, Half-Life takes place in 2003. (Proof below)

Source: Half-Life
A December like that only happened in 03 and 08. Also, in the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, a note by the series's writer mentions the date March 31, 2003.
HL2 takes place 20 years later, making that 2023. Portal happens around the same time as HL2. The minimum amount of time that Chell could have been in hibernation is 2.4 years, so Portal 2 takes place during 2025 or later. (The wake up call tries to specify the amount of days in hibernation, but just repeats 9, so 900 days is reasonable. No facility will decay in 90 days) 29401 AD is also plausible. (9999999/365.25+2029) For many possibilities, it is long enough for the buildings to just plain fall apart. Even for 2025, The Combine may have turned Detroit into scrap metal.

Though, Valve really needs to do the research to make this make more sense.

Last edited Jun 29, 2011 at 05:13AM EDT

That is just awesome…
I'd like to find out more about how the GLaDOS interacts with the Combine… there's a part in the original Portal where she says that she's "the only thing keeping them out". Since Portal takes place in the Half Life universe, who else is she keeping out? Also, how is she doing it?
I'm getting mental images of turrets mowing down headcrabs…

Now here’s the catch: Not only are there no salt mines in the Upper Peninsula, the surface as seen at the end of Portal 2 is flat with wheat growing. The UP is very mountainous, so it is impossible that it is flat for miles and miles. Also, no wheat is going to naturally grow there, it is too damn cold.

Make less assumptions about the agriculture of the UP, please. It's not nearly as mountainous as you assume, and there are in fact lots of wheat fields. Also, Yoopers.


(source)

Woah, that's pretty awesome. Connecting the sots to figure out where and when things happen canonically is something that always intrigues me. Some may call it "overanalysis", I call it awesome. Nice job, you really did your research!
+1 karma and a clap for you!

Joaquin Phoenix wrote:

Now here’s the catch: Not only are there no salt mines in the Upper Peninsula, the surface as seen at the end of Portal 2 is flat with wheat growing. The UP is very mountainous, so it is impossible that it is flat for miles and miles. Also, no wheat is going to naturally grow there, it is too damn cold.

Make less assumptions about the agriculture of the UP, please. It's not nearly as mountainous as you assume, and there are in fact lots of wheat fields. Also, Yoopers.


(source)

I wouldn't say that you won't be able to see absolutely no mountains in the background, right?
Though, I've never been to the UP, even though I lived in Northern Michigan before.
Though, I did my research, and there were no mines up there. Vlave did intend for the game to take place there, but it's not possible.

ArdentGamer wrote:

Wait, if we can find aperture, then do we know where city 17 will be?

Bulgaria, Ukraine, or somewhere along the Black sea. I read an article on it once, in which all they pointed out how all the signs in the mines used Bulgarian Cryllic, meaning that it is most likely in Bulgaria. The coastlines, however, seemed very similar to the ones along the Crimean peninsula, and the architecture of the buildings within city 17 are remeniscent to Soviet Architecture, making it more likely that City 17 was in a former soviet republic, such as Ukraine.
.
My memory is probably flawed, since it was so long ago, but thats what I remember reading.

Isn't there a calendar in the beginning of portal one. You could use that time frame, add the number of years/days she has been sleeping, and come up with the relative time frame that portal one takes place in. That is unless the counter for the number of days she has been sleeping hit the maximum number. (If 9999999 was the maximum number of days allocated to the computer for a counter then it would not be able to roll higher with out an error. And if there was an allocation error then it would just spit out random numbers, so the days sleeping could be an allocation error and the numbers would be meaningless.)

Skeletor-sm

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