At this point, I think everyone's familiar
with the Nether. Minecraft's version of HE-Double-hockey-sticks. A separate closed
dimension with a bedrock ceiling and floors covered in fire and lava. Not exactly the
most inviting of holiday destinations, but hey, at least the weather's consistent. But while the conditions have always been
dangerous. This channel's favorite Minecraft characters, the ancient builders, seemed to have
thought that this was an ideal location to build big parts of their civilization. Why, though? I
always felt like I was missing something there. What was so appealing about hellfire and
brimstone that they thought that this is going to be the perfect escape from all the
horrors that they created in the overworld? Well, my friends, after my last theory about a Piglin
invasion in Minecraft legends, I started digging. And what I found absolutely floored me. Buckle up. Because the reason for the nether being such
a hot commodity is going to give you chills. Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the Piglin
of the Internet that will offer you great content in exchange for a click of that subscribe button.
As I've already mentioned, a couple of months ago, we did a theory based on the upcoming Minecraft
spinoff: Minecraft Legends, a real time strategy game where we unite the overworld in an effort to
defeat the Piglin invasion coming from the Nether. Looks like a really interesting game. I'm
actually incredibly excited to see it come out, but we deduced that the lore being
presented to us in the trailers of that game might not be the actual truth. Feels
like that's been happening a lot recently. While the game presents us as the heroes.
The Piglins are actually invading because the ancient builders invaded them first,
destroying their home in the Nether. In that episode we pointed to the ancient builders
doing what they always do over-farming resources, which eventually lowers the biodiversity of
the area, making resources much harder to find, and thereby making it harder for the Piglins
to survive. So what did they do to cause such a shift in biodiversity? Well, dear theorists, I
once again pulled out my trusty theory pickaxe, started digging, and I struck Diamond.
Not really. That would actually be incredibly impressive given that they don't spawn in the
Nether. But what I did find was Mojang dropping little hints that give us a window into the early
years of the Nether. Before the Nether wars of old, before the arrival of the ancient builders
was a world that looked very, very different. It wasn't filled with lava and barren
wastelands, but instead was a thriving ecosystem that contained the most valuable
thing to sustaining life, water. That's right. There used to be water in the Nether
and I can prove it to you. And not only that, I'm going to explain why it ain't there anymore.
Put on your biggest puffiest coat theorists. We're going into the Nether and it's going to get cold.
Now, I understand that the idea of water existing in the Nether is a huge claim. You can't even
place the stuff. It literally evaporates if you even try to pour it out. Well, while this is
certainly what happens if we go to the Nether now. I'm not convinced that it's always been that way.
And the reason for that is 2020's nether update. I’m telling you guys, this update is the one
that just keeps on giving us new lore. The Nether Update completely overhauled the Nether as we
knew it, adding new mobs like the aforementioned Piglins, new blocks like Ancient Debris and Soul
Soil, and a whopping four new biomes to explore, one of which is going to be of great
importance to us today; The Basalt Deltas. This biome is definitely one of the most
striking things you're going to come across in the Nether. When you arrive,
you'll notice the eerily quiet ambiance in the large towers of the new basalt
blocks poking out from the sea of lava. But what you might not know is that those large
pillars of volcanic rock weren't something formed out of the minds of Mojang, but rather you
can find these things out in the real world. Basalt is a substance that makes up around
90% of all volcanic rock found on Earth. When molten lava erupts from a
volcano and flows across the surface, it immediately starts to cool. If the lava
has a high level of silica and cools quickly, it becomes a black volcanic glass
that you might know as obsidian. On the other hand, if there are low levels of
silica, like in 90% of lava, then the rapid cooling is going to create something else: basalt.
It might not appear as interesting as obsidian, but this rapid cooling can sometimes cause
the outer parts of the rock to contract, causing them to crack in hexagonal patterns,
which creates these beautiful tower-like columns. You find these structures actually all over the
world, including Giant's Causeway in the UK, Devil's Tower in Wyoming, and now
they're just in the Nether too. But basalt works slightly differently in
the game than it does in the real world. While basalt blocks can certainly spawn
naturally in the Basalt Deltas and the Soul Sand Valley. If you want to make your own
basalt, you need three ingredients: Lava; makes sense, Soul Soil; a material that's only
found in the Soul Sand Valley and Blue Ice; which is basically the Russian
nesting doll of Minecraft ices. You take nine ice blocks and craft them
together to create packed ice. You take nine blocks of packed ice and then craft
them together to get super packed ice. Ah, wait nevermind it is just blue ice.
Super packed ice though, a lot more fun. Also, can I just say, Mojang, your ice is
already blue. It was always blue. Naming aside, this means that you need a total of 81 blocks
of ice just to make one block of blue ice. Point being, they’re really cold. Which I suppose
makes sense when real life basalt towers are made from rapidly cooling lava. So good job developers.
Way to know your science. In the game. The only place cold enough for blue ice to form is on
the bottom of icebergs in the frozen ocean. You can also find it stored in snowy tundra
village houses and in the ancient cities in a structure literally called the ice box.
The main thing you'll notice is that none of these locations are the Nether.
There is zero ice of any kind in the Nether. It is simply too warm of
an environment for it to make sense. So the question becomes how could basalt
form in the Nether if there was never blue ice to be found there? But what if there was
blue ice in the Nether at one point in time, way before we ever made it there?
What if the Nether had an ice age? Nobody. Nobody wanted round two or three
or four or five or…there's a sixth movie in development?! ah, who am I to talk? This
is our 33rd Minecraft theory. In fact If you didn't realize we had so much Minecraft
content, it probably means you're not subscribed. So why don't you just go ahead and
do that right now, we always have the hottest Minecraft theories in town. Definitely one
of the cooler Minecraft channels out there. And don't worry, there are plenty more bad
puns waiting for you on the other side of that subscribe button. yall subscribed?
Cool. Let's take a look at the evidence that shows that the Nether went through an
ice age. Not the cringey movie type either. Besides these massive basalt biomes, we actually see evidence of an ice age in
one of the other ingredients for basalt; Soul Soil. Take a look at the texture of the
block, the waves and streaks on its surface. Other dirt and sands in the game don't
have textures like this. But there are places in the real world that do, and that's
thanks to glaciers. While glaciers are made of solid ice. They actually flow just like a
river of water would just much, much slower. This movement of ice ends up shredding and tearing
up the solid land it travels over, leaving behind sediments and streaks in the surface, just like
we see in the streaky texture of the soul soil and the sedimentary nature of soul sand. Large blocks
of blue ice, cutting through the landscape of sout soil, hitting the lava, creating the basalt
that we see in the soul sand valleys, and more impressively, the basalt deltas. But the Nether’s
covered in lava. How on earth could ice have ever formed there? I hear you and I understand. But in
real life there is a precedent for this: Iceland. Iceland is essentially one giant volcano
that's been constantly spewing lava onto its surface. And despite the myth
that Greenland is icy and Iceland is green. Iceland is in fact very icy.
An icy place can absolutely be volcanic. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
What makes the place volcanic is whether magma from earth’s center can make its way
to the surface and erupt as lava. Meanwhile, something like a cold climate is determined
by a variety of other factors, things that are completely separate from whether or
not there is a volcano in this location. Considering the Nether is a closed off system with
no sky, it seems very clear that ice was plausible here. The Nether wasn't always so hot. Instead
it was cooler, maybe even frozen. And just like we've always suspected with Mars, if there's
ice, that means water and water means life. Something that we know has to be true thanks to
the fossils that we find throughout the Nether. These massive rib-like structures are found all
around the soul sand valley and they can get as high as seven blocks tall. Considering
a block in Minecraft is one meter tall, that means that a single rib from this creature
is seven meters or nearly 23 feet tall. That is one tasty and expensive rack of ribs. And
that's just talking about the rib. Imagine the kind of creature that would be big enough to have
a rib that large if the Nether was once icy. These creatures were likely some gigantic mammoth-like
mobs that roamed free in the landscape. But obviously something changed along the way.
How could the nether go from being a balanced, biodiverse environment with giant mobs
to a lava filled wasteland where only skeletons remain? This is where our “good guy
heroes”, the ancient builders, come into play. They would have escaped to the Nether
looking for resources and ways to defeat the Wither that they'd created up on the
surface. And so they would have seen all the luscious environments, the materials,
and they would have farmed them heavily. We know that the ancient
cities used polished basalt, so they probably mined a lot of blue ice in
order to create it on their own. And sure, taking the only real source of water
ain’t the greatest move in the world. But that's not what really caused the
downfall of the Nether. What caused the downfall was the ancient builders moving in in
the first place. You see, I suspect the ancient builders didn't just bring themselves.
They brought their technology with them, their crafting tables, their torches and
fires, their animal herds, their smelting. And those things all release gases, CO2 from
creating fires and burning fossil fuels. To all the gases that release when you smelt
metal, to methane from cow farts, all of them are greenhouse gases because their presence in
the atmosphere causes it to warm significantly. Much like the air inside of a
greenhouse is warm. And unlike in the overworld where these gases
can escape out into the atmosphere, I suspect in the closed ecosystem of the
Nether, these gases began to collect. They had nowhere else to go.They were stuck
forever under the bedrock ceiling. Bit by bit, the Nether started to heat up. The ice, which
was already being farmed away by the builders, began to melt faster and faster
until one day it was just gone. All the water had dried up. You were suddenly left
with a hot series of caves, fires spontaneously bursting out of the ground. The large animals that
once roamed there in peace began to die out due to asphyxiation. There just wasn't enough fresh air
to go around, and soon the builders would die too. The only ones able to survive were those who
found another escape route. A new portal got a bit, though. This is a pretty impressive
new record for the ancient builders. They just doomed the Nether without even trying.
By the time Steve walks in from the overworld, millennia have passed and the gases have long
since dissipated. But the damage has been done. Animals are gone. Plants are mostly gone.
Even many of the builders have died. With only the walking skeletons left behind.
The once icy glacial temperature of the Nether has become a fiery place of death as the
temperatures have risen to unsustainable levels. Desperate to hold on, the ancient builders
created ice rooms in an attempt to keep what remaining stores they had. But
it was no use. It was way too little, way too late. This is how the ancient builders
wrecked the biodiversity of the Nether, and no amount of gold is ever going
to be able to fix the Piglins home. In the end, Minecraft is revealing itself to be
more and more a story of overuse of the land, disrespect for its resources, a warning to those
coming later about the dangers of pollution. The story of Minecraft is one of protecting
the world that you've been given living in harmony with it rather than fighting against
it, overusing it, milking it dry. Mojang has been secretly hinting to us the truth of the
Nether for over two years with all of these updates. But only now is it all starting to
come together. Only now is it making sense. No wonder the Piglins are so mad. Their home
was ruined. The builders turned the thermostat up to inhumane degrees and then left it
all to burn. Now that they're attacking, they're just bringing the fight to
someone else's turf. So the next time you think about the Nether, remember
this hot place’s secretly cool origins. But hey, that's just a theory! A
GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching. And if you like this theory, you can always
check out our last Minecraft theory where we talked about how the ancient builders
completely wrecked The End. Seriously, there's nothing that these guys aren't able to
ruin. Link to that video is on the left. Or you could check out our deep dive into Netherite, what
it is and why it's so scarce. Spoiler alert. Also, the ancient builders' fault. That video
is the one on the right. As always, don't forget to subscribe and
I'll see you all next week.
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Yeah ngl, this theory is stretchy at best, misleading at worst and lacks research into what could have caused the heating up and the effects of greenhouse gazes which is the thing that annoys me the most. Greenhouses do not "just make zone hotter", they need a sun or something to work which doesn't when there is an actual ROOF on top of the nether
Oh Dear, this has to be one of the flimsiest theories they've made so far...
The existence of basalt in the nether merely implies that the lave can still cool off, this does not prove the existence of water.
Comparing the streaks in a type of soil with glacial markings left in stone makes no sense.
"Considering the Nether is a closed off system with no sky, it seems very clear that ice was plausible here"I really don't follow this leap in logic. How does that indicate anything about the existence of ice?
"Crafting releases CO2" -The Game Theorists, 2022
The most ridiculous part about this whole forced global warming tangent is the fact that you claim that the lack of an atmosphere for the gasses to escape to would somehow accelerate global warming. The green house effect wouldn't even work without an atmosphere in the first place!
Not to mention that, according to the video, this higher heat had somehow spiralled far enough to cause volcanic activity?
If the nether really had water at one point, then where's the signs of it? We even have ancient river beds on mars, there's no way it wouldn't have left a mark in an entire dimension!
I never liked the idea that the Nether is some kind of post apocalyptic landscape. It's an entirely different dimension, why can't that just be how it looks?
I like how he brought up the ripples in the soul soil, as looking for ripples is an actual technique used by geologists to tell the history of the area.
Unfortunately, mat drops the ball when he says they’re evidence of ancient ice flows. While glacier movement CAN cause ripples, so can literally anything gradually moving over a surface for a long time.
Ripples can also be found after lava flows. Since we know that lava actually exists in the nether, I think it’s more reasonable to say that lava flowed over the soul sand valley at some point.
There were plenty other bad tales made in the video, but I think this is really indicative of GT trying harder to be contrarian for the sake of views instead of making the educational-ish content like they used to. Sad.