Those are the words of a man who wanted to create a utopia.
A place for the top 1% to live.
He wanted to create Rapture, and so he did.
Andrew Ryan announced that the construction was completed in the late months of 1951.
Rapture was certainly a sight for sore eyes in the beginning, but was doomed to fail from
the start.
Today, I’m going to ask and hopefully answer a very interesting question…
Could it be real?
OR well…
Is Rapture possible using today's technology or was it truly a failure waiting to happen.
To answer that, we need to travel to the mid-atlantic, under the sea roughly 2000 metres (6500 ft.) deep.
At these coordinates (63° 2' N, 29° 55' W), there and only there will we find what
we’re looking for.
Rapture has been revealed to be located there through a note which is on the package Jack
has at the very start of the game.
Where is this in the atlantic ocean?
Well it’s pretty northern, in between Iceland and Greenland, AND roughly 223 miles away
from iceland's capital of Reykjavik.
It’s located near some of shallowest waters on our planet, however it is still fairly
deep in comparison to the shallowest.
Rapture is a city, i’m sure most of you would understand this.
And what do cities have an abundance of?
Well quite a few things actually, but I am referring to the large mass of humans that
inhabit these giant settlements.
And what do humans require to survive most?
…. Oxygen.
Rapture, being under 2000 metres of a dense liquid, couldn’t possible hitch onto the
regular oxygen stockpile, produced by the many plant life on the earth's surface.
So Ryan had to find another way.
In the game, there is an area in which the player can explore, known as Arcadia.
It is basically a penthouse garden, with a wide variety of plant species….
SO, we’re sorted out for oxygen, right?
Well assuming that this garden and possibly multiple others on top of numerous tall buildings
could produce enough oxygen for the cities population, there would be the slight problem
with distributing it.
This would require major engineering to ventilate it around the WHOLE FUCKING CITY.
However that is not the biggest issue, the sunlight is so minor down there it halts many
plants from photosynthesising.
The euphotic zone, is where most of the underwater photosynthesis takes place, this however only
goes to around 100 metres or 328 feet deep.
Since Rapture is based on the real world city of New York, let’s take a look at the current
tallest building in the city.
The One World trade Center or the Freedom tower stands at roughly 540 metres or 1770
feet.
Meaning the building in which we see Arcadia in, would most likely not be tall enough to
reach the euphotic zone, despite the fact that we can visibly see rays of sunlight.
This is assuming that the tallest building in rapture is not any larger than the tallest
building in new york.
If that is the case, we won’t be seeing any plant’s providing any major oxygen supplies
for our time down in rapture.
However, this garden would infact be a waste of time, and only really for aesthetics.
Being underwater has its advantages, what’s that I hear you ask, well never running out
of a fucking water source, and therefore an oxygen source is a pretty darn good benefit.
I’m sure you all know, from one of your first ever science classes, that Water is
H20, meaning Water is made up of 2 thirds hydrogen and 1 third Oxygen.
Extracting the oxygen from said water would surely be a doddle for Ryan, having some of
the brightest minds backing his project.
Running a specific electrical current to isolate the oxygen would do it.
It’s a method that divers and even some submarines have used for many years, to retain
crucial oxygen pockets for their expeditions.
There is even a James Bond like device that can almost give you an unlimited oxygen supply
whilst underwater.
This device is called the Triton Rebreather and was conceived in North Korea by a mr Yeon.
It functions when the diver bites down on the plastic mouthpiece.
This then triggers the two arms on the side of the mask to act as gills.
As I previously mentioned these sort of devices extract the oxygen away from the Hydrogen,
this process is done in a small chamber which releases the liquid back into the ocean.
Allowing for the user to breathe at their own leisure.
As with many mobile devices, it is battery powered, and sadly not all batteries last
forever.
It is however dubbed a super micro battery, which is 30 times smaller than regular batteries
and can charge at around 1,000 times faster than any reliable rechargeable battery.
It’s still in it’s prototype stage, but it’s looking promising for divers out there.
So that’s definitely not going to be an issue.
The device may have extracted the hydrogen away from the oxygen in the water, giving
us breathable air, but we have something else, that we as humans need rid off.
A little gas that we tend to exhale, known as Carbon Dioxide.
On the surface, we don’t tend to care for this, as we are essentially giving our fair
share back to the plants that provide our oxygen.
However, as I mentioned, Plants will be pretty scarce down in rapture along with being pretty
redundant.
So we have to find a way to get rid off our damn dirty AND most importantly deadly morning
breath.
Sadly a few Tic Tacs won’t do the trick.
In the Bioshock Infinite expansion, Burial at Sea, the player returns to Rapture in the
shoes of Elizabeth.
There is a mission in episode 2, in which you are tasked with replacing the Co2 scrubber,
which is a device that cleans the co2 in the air supply that the humans down in Rapture
would breathe.
In our real world, this technology has been around for plenty of years and has even been
used in submarines and spacecraft when there is no other way getting rid of the Carbon
and just keep the oxygen.
Even in the early 1900’s, the more advanced submarines used similar technology to allow
for long periods of underwater travel.
The Co2 scrubber is implemented as a part of the air filtration system and can filter
out the carbon gas, funnelling it down a different pipe away from the general populace.
This could be harvested to use in numerous ways, one of which could be to focus on vegetation
growth if the buildings were somehow high enough to reach the euphotic zone that I previously
mentioned.
So far so good, right?
Well, another crucial part of survival is body temperature.
In Rapture, being roughly 2000 metres (or 6560 feet) below sea level, the temperature
can drop to below 4 degrees celsius or 39 fahrenheit.
Sure, it’s not freezing, but you will definitely feel uncomfortable in it.
Your body will slowly drop in temperature unless you can find another source of warmth,
via many many layers of clothes, a lovely fire or central heating.
You probably don’t feel drastically cold very often when you’re in your home due
to 21st century central heating, which averages out at between 16-21 degrees celsius or 64-70
degrees fahrenheit depending on the time of year.
This temperature allows your body to keep a healthy temperature average above 35 and
below 38 celsius(OR 97-100 fahrenheit).
Raptures location is actually the key to it’s success in this field.
You may recall me mentioning it was fairly near Iceland, and what is iceland known for?
(Well, now it’s known for knocking England out of the Euro's.
But it’s more commonly known for having) A lot of brilliant geographical locations.
Iceland is situated between two tectonic plates, which generally means a lot of geological
activity is in that area.
In 2010, you may recall the volcano of...ehm… i’m not even gonna try to say that (Eyjafjallajokull).
Anyway, this Volcano erupted causing a major air traffic disruption due to a massive ash
cloud it created.
This sort of thing happens on a regular basis along that tectonic plate, although, we don’t
notice it most of the time as we don’t really experience any major inconveniences as they
generally aren’t to this scale.
These events can produce massive amounts of energy in numerous ways.
Geothermal energy has actually become a very popular source of renewable energy in iceland.
So much so, that It’s used to produce about 85% of the country's total energy usage.
And you know what?
The folks over at 2K have made their fictional city use this exact method.
The eighth level within Bioshock, being Hephaestus, is a giant power station designed by Andrew
Ryan to harnesses the heat from geothermal vents on the ocean floor.
It was an early structure in the construction of the city, to make sure it would definitely
have power throughout the building process.
So it’s sorted for electricity, but what about the thing I was talking about, heat.
Well incase you’ve missed the whole point, i’ll say it again.
Rapture uses geothermal energy, which is basically pockets of natural heat energy being pushed
out from the depths of our planet.
The folks under da sea will be able to capture and harness this energy in both power for
lights alongside anything else electrical along with ye old central heating.
So Rapture’s looking pretty good, isn’t it.
Oxygen, check.
Relieved of deadly amounts of Carbon, Check.
Heating and electricity, double check! So why doesn’t it exist in our real world
already?
One major flaw, that I subtly mentioned early on, was the location of the city.
There are multiple areas along the mid-atlantic ridge which would in fact be much more suitable.
The problem, is actually the depth.
The skyscrapers that are roughly 2000 metres under the ocean would undergo around 20500
kilopascals of pressure, which is about 203 times that of what our buildings at sea level
receive.
The force would ultimately crush the buildings from the outside in, especially those in which
are much taller.
Some of you may be wondering, what about the underwater hotel buildings currently being
built across the world, be it in fiji or Dubai.
WELL, they are in much shallower waters, in comparison to what Rapture would be in.
The Deep Ocean Technology Dubai project only plans to go 10-15 metres below sea level in
a very controlled environment.
It’s certainly a start, but look at the architectural design, very smooth and streamlined
in comparison to our blocky skyscraper-like buildings in Rapture.
The water pressure would be massively decreased at those levels along with the ability for
the water to smoothly go over the top of the underwater segment.
There is also numerous laboratories located across multiple locations on the ocean floor.
The Aquarius laboratory, along with two others, is located in the florida keys.
It acts as a place for divers and scientists to go down to study marine wildlife for long
periods of time.
It isn’t much deeper than the previously mentioned hotel, at roughly 20 metres deep.
But it does show that scientific fields have thought about it and are willing to commit
resources on developing it further.
I mean this lab has been in action since 1986, so another , much deeper lab may be just around
the corner, pushing our boundaries yet again under the ocean.
So I’m sorry to say, but Rapture would not be plausible today.
Sure it checked alot of the stuff we need to survive but the building would get crushed
like a tin can under that amount of pressure.
And i’m not going to touch erosion today, because that shit has rigged it from the start.
We need to work on the ability to build much stronger structures that could withstand even
more pressure if we have a chance at Rapture.
As I mentioned, there are plans and development projects for underwater buildings happening
right now, but they are very small projects and in much shallower waters.
There are shallower waters that might have given Rapture more of a chance to the north
east, but it’s still a stretch.
So it's not looking great.
So that was my video on Andrew Ryan’s Rapture within the Bioshock series.
The outcome really does suck, and it would have been much cooler to tell you guys we
can build it today, but sadly that’s not the case.
Anyway, my name is Andrew or Stalli111, I’d like to thank you all for watching and i’ll
invite you to follow me @StallisMilitia and the ShoddyCast on twitter.
Would ya kindly like this video and maybe subscribe to our channel for more awesome
content.
If you would like more Bioshock topics, do tell me in the comment section below and if
you have any questions feel free to shoot them there aswell.
If you’d like to do more than that though, you can shoot us a dollar or two through patreon
for some sweet exclusive benefits.
We appreciate that a bunch.
I hope you enjoyed, and i’ll see ya on the next one.