Incident Timeline

[Sulkdodds]

Okay, I've just written this timeline of the events at Black Mesa, assumed to be on the 16th of May. Some of it may be wrong, or other parts might not gel together. Criticisms, comments and opinions welcome.



-1:00 hours, 8:15 am 15/5/98

Black Mesa working day starts. Freeman is asleep.

-00:29 hours, 8:46 am 15/5/98

Freeman wakes up late and races to the train.

-00:05 hours, 9:10 am 15/5/98

Freeman reaches test chamber. Experiment starts.

Zero hour, 9:15 am 15/5/98

Containment failure.

+19:20 hours, 4:40 am 16/5/98

High-altitude launch centre breached. Rocket launched.

+21:35 hours, 6:55 am 16/5/98

Calhoun disappears through the old teleporters.

+21:40 hours, 7:00 am 16/5/98

Freeman’s capture reported.

+25:05 hours, 10:20 am 16/5/98

Shepherd’s chopper goes down over Black Mesa.

+26:25 hours, 11:40 pm 16/5/98

First reported sighting of Race-X.

+30:55 hours, 4:10 pm 16/5/98

Order is given for Marines to pull out. The evacuation of Black Mesa begins.

+33:10 hours, 6:25 pm 16/5/98

First sighting of Black Ops soldiers reported by an engineer who was with Shepherd and encountered them 30 minutes previously.


+33:15 hours, 6:30 pm 16/5/98

Freeman enters the Lambda complex.

+34:45 hours, 8:00 pm 16/5/98

Last evacuation chopper lifts off, leaving an estimated 210 soldiers still trapped in the facility.

+35:55 hours, 9:10 pm 16/5/98

Freeman makes the jump to Xen.

+39:50 hours, 1:05 am 17/5/98

Nihilanth is destroyed and Freeman disappears.

+40:15 hours, 1:30 am 17/5/98

Race-X mount full invasion.

+44:20 hours, 5:35 am 17/5/98

The hydroelectric dam is destroyed, flooding much of the lower complex.

+48 hours, 9:15 am 17/5/98

The thermonuclear bomb is detonated, destroying Black Mesa and blasting a thirty-mile crater in the Mojave Desert.

 

[Reaperman]

very nice, would like to see some kind of screenshots to go along with the times (not needed, but would look cool)

 

[thomashiles]

This is great, coincidentally I was working on a very similar thing myself last week! My only issue is that the 30-mile crater seems a bit extreme...I would suggest less than 5 miles, not that I am an expert on subterranean nukes....

 

[Sulkdodds]

Heh, don't ask me, I just put that in for melodrama. It probably is a little extreme...

 

[Brian Damage]

Thirty miles would probably make for some extremely weird weather around the globe for several years afterwards...

But, hey, it sounds cool...

 

[brianbitzkowski]

Where are you getting the date (May 1998) for these events? I think the events at Black Mesa were sometime in December 1998. In several of the offices in Black Mesa, there are calendars that are at December. I have attached an image of the calendar I found in the "Office Complex" and an actual calendar of Dec. 1998.

Thank you,
Brian Bitzkowski

 

[thedarkangel]

There's a problem right there. The calender in-game says there's 30 days in december... There's 31. Don't trust those to be centered around the story.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Yeah, the calendars are incorrect. I assume that the scientists were too befuddled to change them.

May is most likely the time it happens, because Freeman was hired May 5, and the experiment that caused the accident was oredered on May 11.

The year isn't 1998 though. It's all sometime between 2000 and 2009.

 

[Sulkdodds]

May is most likely the time it happens, because Freeman was hired May 5, and the experiment that caused the accident was oredered on May 11.

This is harder evidence than a screenshot. Plus, Valve can make mistakes. The date might nhave originally been December but whatevre it was before, it's May now. :E

 

[brianbitzkowski]

I should have researched this more before deciding that it did take place in december. I tracked down the manual for HL and HL:Blue-Shift, and just as I have seen others say, the date was in may. I was thinking of emailing the creator of the lambda project website (http://website.lineone.net/~wingerden/ ,which is a very interesting site), but now I know he was right about the date. I have to wonder, how much of the story was thought up by the writer of the game? Just enough to create the game? Half-Life is the first video game I have ever played, so I am not sure, but is this normal for people to be this interested in the story behind a game? I sometimes have to catch myself and remember that this is just a game, and that it never really happened. Quite scary actually.

Does anyone else know of other sites that get into the details, and tell more about before the game?


Thank you,
Brian Bitzkowski

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

It all takes place sometime during or after the year 2000.

In the manual, when you get the letter in the first pages, the date says -

May 5, 200-