If you were abducted by a murderer and forced
to crawl through a steel tunnel full of traps, what would you do? I’m going to break down the mistakes made
by the abducted, what you should do, and how to beat the Death Tunnel in Meander. This labyrinth is claustrophobic, unpredictable,
and deadly. Surviving requires quick thinking, quick moving, and nerves as tough as the steel
tunnel walls. Ultimately, there’s a mystery about this place to uncover. It’s not just
a psychopathic science nerd’s take on Saw. We begin with a young woman lying in the middle
of a deserted road when a car drives up and offers her a ride. The woman eventually accepts
and introduces herself as Lisa to the driver, Adam. The two make light small talk about
today being Lisa’s deceased daughter’s birthday. To change the subject Lisa turns
on the radio only to hear a news report describing a murder suspect that matches Adam perfectly
down to the cross tattoo on his right hand. Look, your recently deceased daughter’s
birthday has to be a tough day. You’re not in a great place mentally, so you’re not
going to be making rational decisions. Like walking into the middle of nowhere and laying
down in the middle of the road. Death by truck rolling over you is a terrible
way to go. Another terrible way to go is being abducted by a BTK-type. Adam’s approach to Lisa is actually pretty
effective. He isn’t pushy, doesn’t seem dangerous, but still, we should not get in
his car. You have no idea who it is, if they have a
gun or knife, or what their intentions are. You are vulnerable as hell. There’s no good
way to protect yourself save for a pistol in your jacket pocket pointed at him without
him knowing. Even then, if the other person has an ulterior motive to hurt you, you won’t
be able to react fast enough in a car's close quarters. The reasons why she should get in the car;
it being the middle of nowhere, cold, dark, late at night, far from help or other people,
are the same reasons why she shouldn’t get in his car. Nobody will be around to hear
her scream. Adam said that there was a gas station 6 or 7 miles up the road. If that’s
true, she could walk that in a couple hours. She could also wait to hitchhike with someone
of less or equal physical ability, like another woman or an older person. A grungy, muscular,
30 year old male is literally the most dangerous, homicide prone demographic[a] you could pick
to get into a car with, alone at night. A 6 mile lift to the station would take less
than 5 mins by car, so I get it. It’s tempting. If I was to get into Adam’s car, which I
wouldn’t, I agree with Lisa’s instinct to not buckle her seatbelt when hitchhiking
so she has a quicker getaway if need be. If Adam turns out to be a bad guy, having to
unbuckle her seatbelt will take a couple precious seconds and telegraph her intention to escape.
Sure, she does risk getting injured if they crash, or if he intentionally pumps the brakes...
but it’s only a 5 minute drive on a slower back road with very little traffic. I’d
say Adam is the bigger potential danger. Then again, why would you get into his car if you
thought he posed a danger.. And why would you be monologuing details about
your life that make you seem like an easy target. Yah, I have no husband, child, family,
or friends that would expect me to show up anywhere. It’d probably take a few weeks
before anyone noticed I was missing. Oh weird, the radios saying something about a murderer
on the loose driving a brown truck. That initial hesitation where you’re momentarily
stunned, determines whether you survive. There’s no question that Adam IS the culprit. He gives
himself away by turning off the radio and that tattoo is RIGHT THERE. It's like that
thing where “she knows that he knows that she knows that he's the killer.” Without
her seatbelt buckled, she needs to immediately pop the door while tucking and rolling. They
are going slow enough that she’d survive it just fine. Hopefully she learned her lesson.
Don’t change the radio station in a stranger's car. She at least deserved a dribble off the
dash for that. As for Adam, if you knew you had been made
by a witness, why would you be picking up strangers in the same car a witness saw you
in, and why wouldn’t you cover your hand tattoo with a proper glove. If he really wanted
to go for number 3 right then, he should have immediately incapacitated her. I get he wanted
to ask some questions to see if she was a good target, which she fell for, but she was
laying down in the middle of a deserted road at night, it’s obvious she’s a good target.
Unfortunately for him, she had the insane luck to switch to a channel at that exact
moment. A few seconds in either direction, or a different station and he’d have had
her in the bag. Not that I'm rooting for him or anything. The metaphorical shot has been fired, let’s
see what Lisa does. Before Lisa has time to do anything, he slams
the brakes knocking her out when her head collides with the dashboard. When Lisa regains
consciousness she finds herself trapped in a steel box about half her height. She is
now wearing a full piece spandex suit,and finds a large glowing yellow bracelet attached
to her left hand. She tries to physically force her way out, screaming to be released,
but nothing happens. Well, that didn’t go too well. It’s obvious that Adam knocked us unconscious
and threw us into a Saw-like steel contraption he devised. Or is it? Adam seemed more like
the heat of passion murder type, not the, design a space-age steel death contraption
type. Maybe looks were deceiving, either way it doesn’t change much other than we should
be expecting high-tech pain. Judging from the lack of g’s felt from stopping
or turning, we can deduce that she’s not in a vehicle. If I was a serial killer, I’d
have built this in a factory or underground. Given that we were drugged, stripped down,
reclothed, and placed in this box, it’s slim chances help is nearby. There’s also
not much in the way of air vents, so screaming or flailing will reduce the oxygen in the
tunnel faster. We don’t see anything else resembling a
clue besides the bracelet. It’s only providing a light source. There’s no text or sound
cues. The lights on the wall look like morse code,
but are practically impossible to decode. In Morse Code, each letter is represented
by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. [b]To separate each distinct letter a longer gap,
equal to the length of a dash, is left at the end of each letter.[c] To separate each
word, a gap of seven dots is left between each word. On our tunnel walls, there’s
no gaps at all. So no groups of letters or words can be made out. Frustrating. This should
be a thing, but the aliens probably just added lights in this format because they thought
it looked cool and sci-fi. There’s honestly not much to do but stay
calm, stay chill, and wait.. After a few minutes of Lisa struggling; one
of the walls reveals an opening to a long narrow tunnel. Okay, to go through the hole or not to. I’m
going to assume this is some Darth Vader Saw reimagining where I’m going to have to survive
a game that I'm inevitably brutally maimed in order to maybe live. Considering the police
on the radio said two girls were found dead that morning, both linked to Adam, it’s
not looking good. I’m not so sure I’m ready to leave my
steel box quite yet. The police already know Adam’s height, race, age, tattoo, hairstyle,
truck type and color. Will he get caught and the police find us before we die of dehydration
in a few days? On one hand, he was dumb enough to get identified by a witness, on the other
hand, this is obviously crafted by an intelligent person. I don’t think staying will do us much good.
Our choice is die here or maybe die there. Let's go. Lisa begins crawling her way through the opening.
As soon as she makes it to the other side, the hatch closes and her wristband begins
counting down from 11 minutes. The hatch closing behind her was pretty much
expected to happen, not that there was anything she could have done about it. It might be
important to note that with no cameras, the tunnel might be reacting to her motion, weight,
or wristband location. I’m clearly being manipulated with the wristband
timer instilling a sense of urgency and if I’m being led somewhere that means it’s
completely in my captor’s control. If this game was designed by Adam, well, unlike Jigsaw
he doesn’t seem like the ‘code of honor’ or 'lesson-giving’ type. Still, sitting
on the bench meditating 11 minutes away is probably a bad idea. The 11 minutes might
be how much oxygen we have left, it might be an explosive, slit our wrist, or inject
us with poison if we don't start crawling through the Jeffries tubes. The thing about timers like this, is that
they never give you an abundance of time. If they give you 11 minutes, it means you
have 10 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the task or you die. We need to move fast
enough to not waste time, but slow enough to detect patterns, clues, or test things.
A tricky balance. Let’s keep going. Lisa, though petrified, continues ahead. Eventually,
another wall blocks her path and she is forced to inch forward through a very tiny opening. Alright, since the space is so tight you want
to try and be as calm as possible and take slow shallow breaths while moving yourself.
Shallow breaths allow your midsection and lungs to stay more compact, which might only
save you a few centimeters but you could use all the space you can get. Focusing on your breathing also keeps you
from panicking, which is extremely easy to do in confined spaces. So far, this appears to be more of a linear
tunnel, not a maze where she has to keep track of turns. Still, it might be wise to etch
markings into the tunnel walls she is in to indicate where she has been, and to check
if the tunnels are changing at all. Besides that, we need to keep crawling quickly. After successfully squeezing past her first
obstacle, Lisa encounters a split tunnel, where she could either go over or under a
platform. I’m immediately getting elevator crushing
vibes here. The blue to yellow to red colors seem to me to indicate a danger zone on both
ends, and the platform perfectly fits at the top and bottom. This may be the first trap
or test of some sort. I’d expect the floor to move up and crush me if I went topside,
and the reverse if I went low. Going high makes the most sense to me since we could
dive across it, grab the lip on the end of it, and pull ourselves across quickly. It
works with our joint directions better than going low. Like we've mentioned earlier, the wristband
could activate whatever this is. Before I jumped in, I’d try putting my wristband
under the platform to see if I could trigger it to move in the opposite direction, as well
as see how fast it moves or what other things it does. We likely need to be in the center
of the platform before it initiates anything though. No matter the case, we need to make it to
the other side as fast as possible. To not get crushed, and because the wristband is
still ticking down. Lisa climbs onto the top of the platform.
As she makes her way across, the floor begins to rise. She dives for the other side, narrowly
avoiding being blocked off and crushed to death. Not bad, Lisa, not bad at all. It’s good that she didn’t try to back
her way out in a panic, which would have been far too slow and ended up with her getting
crushed. We see that the platform that almost crushed
her resets once she’s past it, which would imply that it’s reused, meaning there’s
a chance there might be others also abducted who could help. Or.. who will be pitted against
us in a match to the death. The latter is far more likely. Best to watch our backs in
here.. As Lisa catches her breath, her wristband
displays just over 5 mins left on her timer. Still not knowing its purpose, she pushes
ahead where she next finds a rotting corpse wearing the same wristband as her. Okay, other participants in this game, partially
confirmed.. Crematorium traps, fully confirmed. We’re still on the timer, but I think taking
a few moments to assess and loot the body is worth it. This person was incinerated here. There’s
no sign of the body being dragged around. This means the tube is capable of producing
burners anywhere, and getting torched is what happens when our time runs out. Their cuff is blue while ours is yellow. Possibly
because she’s dead, in which case using it to prematurely trigger traps likely won’t
work. Still worth a shot. I’d take the cuff and inspect the inside to see if there're
any obvious lethal mechanisms, or ways to take it off. Also doubtful this would reveal
anything. At the very least it would be something to throw in self defense. This corpse’s femur would also be great
to take for self defense, attempts to trigger traps, or attempts to wedge between closing
hatches to give us more time. I say the femur because it’s unbelievably strong. Typically
19 inches long and weighing a little more than 10 ounces it can withstand up to
4,000 newtons of force before breaking. This is also what makes it great for self defense.
Recent studies have shown that Stone Age Hunters Used Human Bones when making their weapons.
And ancient hunters had elaborate daggers made from the thigh bone. Researchers estimate
the weapons could withstand about 31% more force than other daggers of the time. Point
being.. Take the femur. We’ve used up enough time on this corpse,
and unless we want to end up like her we need to stomach our disgust and crawl over her
quickly. Lisa slowly clears the corpse from her path,
dismembering a few limbs along the way. A gate drops down that Lisa can’t squeeze
past, preventing her from moving. As she struggles to go forward, her bracelet and the tunnel
both start glowing red, burners emerge from the walls, and the cuff begins counting down
the last 60 seconds. Just as it looks like she has nowhere to go, the wall opens up behind
her and creates a crawl space. Well, I think the burned corpse mystery is
solved. There’s clearly no way to squeeze through or pry open the gate. The burners
line the tunnel all the way back so there’s no way she can crawl backwards to escape it. Our only realistic choice is to get into that
crawl space before the clock runs out. Lisa scoots herself over to the area in time
and is sealed inside. Fire then engulfs the entire segment of the tube while Lisa remains
protected behind the glass panel in her space. Once the fire is extinguished Lisa is shoved
out, and her bracelet timer resets, counting down from 11 minutes again. Damn, yah, that corpse lady was just a few
feet from the crawl space when she was torched. That sucks. We now know that the 11 minutes is a countdown
to the incineration interval. And as I mentioned earlier, you only have 10 minutes and 30 seconds
to make it to the safe space. There’s no time for counting your blessings,
gotta keep moving. After taking a few precious moments to compose
herself, she continues slowly wriggling her body to the next part of the maze, which is
a portion of the tubes that’s been submerged in water. God, as if claustrophobia wasn’t bad enough. Drinking some of the water is probably a bad
idea. It might be tempting, because hydration is important for physical activities like
crawling through tunnels and cooling down after the burners go off, but there are just
too many risks involved. It could be contaminated with a chemical, or a rotting body of another
victim. And really, It’s only been 15 minutes, you can’t be that thirsty. Since Lisa is wedged on her back she doesn't
know how wide, or deep the opening is and if the passage ahead is completely blocked. I would have made an initial dive into the
water to get my bearings of the surroundings down there, then gone back up for air, before,
making my way down a flooded tunnel with no visible exit. Before the final plunge, we need to get our
breathing right. When you hold your breath, the instinct to
inhale is triggered not by a lack of oxygen but by the accumulation of carbon dioxide.
This is why the best strategy for holding your breath is very slow breathing for several
minutes, try to lower your heart rate as much as possible, and then take a big, deep breath
before diving in. I also would have kicked off with my feet
to get some extra speed. Though it may seem counterintuitive, breathing
out a little air as you swim would let you hold your breath longer. When you breathe
in, you’re contracting the muscle of your diaphragm, pulling it flat so that the volume
of your chest increases – and air is drawn into your lungs. When you hold your breath,
you keep your diaphragm in this contracted state. Breathing out a little air lets the
diaphragm relax a bit, and increases how long you can hold your breath by delaying how quickly
the diaphragm muscle gets tired. We can’t forget about the femur. We could
shove it under our suit or carry it against our non dominant forearm bone to reduce drag
while swimming. Hopefully this is enough to make it to the
other side. Lisa tries to slow her breathing, then dives
in. The exit isn’t too far away, but when she gets there, that segment rapidly begins
to fill with water.. and another rotting corpse. Okay, the only logical thing to do in this
scenario is rush to where the water and bodies are pouring in from. For all we know, the
hatches behind us closed up. We know that there at least has to be an entry point big
enough for a human body because a corpse came in with all the water. It didn’t look like
the water pressure was too intense to climb up against. I don’t think we need to wait
for the room to fill up and settle before swimming or climbing up it. Like all the traps we’ve encountered so
far, moving fast, usually forwards, is the best option. Lisa waits until the room fills with water
before swimming up the next tube section. Struggling to continue through a seemingly
unending tunnel, Lisa feels a glimmer of hope when she hears another victim screaming for
help. As she makes her way to the voice, the floor underneath her opens up to reveal a
bubbly green pool. I think it’s pretty obvious from the bubbling
and green lighting that this is a pool of corrosive acid. I wonder if they had the green
lighting installed because previous victims accidentally jumped in and ended themselves
too quickly. Since we know nothing about the corrosive
material in the pool; other than its green, it’d be a good idea to tear off a piece
of cloth from the suit, or use the femur we’ve been dragging along this whole damn time,
to test how corrosive it is. Is it basically lava, or a bubble bath leading to safety that’s
dressed up to deter us. Yah, it’s probably not a bubble bath. We need to cross it. We could use the acid to burn off an edge
of the wristband, though that carries the risk of ruining the timer and our source of
light. The source of light shouldn’t be an issue, since we smartly chose to bring
the other victim's blue wristband with us. The timer also doesn’t really matter, or
it hasn't so far. We just need to keep moving quickly. With our cuff partially severed, we could
take it off, put it on the end of the Femur, and dangle it over the acid pit to try to
activate any surprises the trap has waiting for us. Since it’s damaged, it might not
help us, or whoever is controlling this might be triggering traps some other way. It seems too easy to crawl across the edges.
If I had to guess, the walls will retract while we are in the middle, making it more
and more difficult as we go, similar to the crusher platform. I don’t know what the goal is here, but
our captor's selection torture process oddly favors an ability to.. quickly crawl. Getting
Cube vibes, if the Cube was made by an 8 year old that sucked at math. Which the Cube was..
So it’s even worse than that. I digress, and the clock is ticking… Lisa rips a piece of cloth off her suit and
confirms the acid test. She figures the task must be as simple as using the side walls
to crawl across without falling in, and she’s correct. When she makes it across she loosens
up too early and dips her knee in, scalding it badly. Once fully across, the floor closes
up over the acid pool and she continues following the voice of the other victim to a crossroads
in the tunnel. She yells down the hole, with no response from the man. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bummed
the walls didn’t retract over the acid pool. Talk about a missed opportunity. Lisa accidentally dipping her knee in is going
to cost her by making all the low crawling, which is already insanely taxing on the body,
even more difficult. The muffled voice is good and bad. The good:
This means that not everyone dies immediately and you CAN find a way to survive there for
a bit of time. The bad: Desperation can bring out the worst in people. We do have an option to find them, or avoid
them. When we initially heard the voice, it appeared as though there was a potential path
forwards that we could have chosen instead of going down the hole into the bottom tunnel. I hesitate to find the man. This, being a
confined tunnel that only one person can fit through at a time, doesn’t seem like a team
sport. Having a wildcard blocking off our front or back would have gotten us killed
in the crusher platform and burner traps. The argument for finding him is that he’s
made it further than us, could provide useful learnings, and those traps, excluding the
burner trap, did reset after we passed them. And even the burner trap did have enough room
for two people to squeeze in. I say we go find him. After we go down the hole, we should also
use our cuff to etch an X next to the hole so we keep track of our way back. Armed with our acid sharpened femur, I think
we are prepared enough to take our chances with the other victim, and kill him if need
be. Which, if we’re being honest, is inevitable. Lisa crawls down into the bottom tunnel, follows
his voice, and eventually finds a disheveled man on opposite ends of a gated passageway.
They talk to each other and it becomes clear that the man has been trapped for a while
and is now losing his mind from the pressure. Unfortunately, it seems like it may be too
late for our new companion. Since he doesn’t see our arrival as any reconciliation, we
can safely assume that if we aren't the first person to interact with him, then he has either
killed others in order to last this long or hopelessly watched them die. Time to get the
Femur dagger out.. Lisa tries to calm him down but is unable
to get any helpful information. Their conversation becomes hysterical once both gadgets begin
counting down at the last minute, the lights turn red, burners start emerging from the
walls, and that same crawl space appears halfway in the tunnel between them. It’s a race. Firstly, Lisa should NOT have put her head
through the bars. This could easily have led to a decapitation with the force the gates
move with. Why risk your neck in between there?! I think it goes without saying, this is a
Kira get that ass moving moment. The previous burner had enough room for two, but we can’t
expect that to be the case here, nor that this crazy man growling at us will be kind
enough to share. Time to get the Femur dagger out.. The gates separating them open. Lisa and the
man fight each other for the safe space. Lisa eventually gets the upper hand on her opponent,
kicking him out and pinning his arm to the wall with her foot just before the area is
sealed. The partition comes down like a guillotine, severing his arm off and stranding him. Well, there was enough room for the two of
us to hug it out while the tunnel got torched. There simply wasn’t enough time to negotiate
and calm him down. Even if there was, the risk that he might betray us and push us into
the guillotine at the last second was too high. Lisa did well using her legs to push him out
while bracing her back against the cubby wall, but the Femur dagger would have given her
an immense advantage. As for the crazed man, when his hand was pinned,
instead of trying to pull his arm free, he should have tried to roll his body inside
the cubby and onto her. Wouldn’t have helped much since he’d get shived to death by our
bone knife. Nonetheless, we got in before the lock. Sayonara
bro. Before the man is overtaken by fire, Lisa
sees the same tattoo on his hand as Adam, the serial killer who attacked her. Adam then
gets incinerated by the burners, leaving nothing but a corpse resembling the one from earlier.
Lisa faints after the flames disappear, and awakens to a hybrid organic and technological
probe emerging from the ceiling. The device is a fusion of a humanoid organic skull and
an inorganic exoskeleton. It heals her knee and then connects a tube to her suit which
restores her memories of what happened in Adam’s truck. Adam attacked her with a knife,
after she was stabbed the two were approached by a huge bright light in the sky. Wow - this changes absolutely everything. First let’s talk about Adam attacking Lisa.
The best way to defend against knife wielding attackers is, well, running, but by the time
our face recoils off the dash a knife is already coming at us. The second best way is by grabbing
their knife-wielding wrist with both hands, pulling and twisting it away from them. Easier
said than done. Adam’s stronger than we are, has the advantage of being the one with
the knife, and it’s well understood that in any knife fight you’re almost guaranteed
to get cut. Good thing we never buckled up. This at least gives us a chance to pop the
door and run if we somehow manage to survive his first stabs. Secondly, it’s now clear Adam isn’t our
captor, and we’ve either been abducted by Aliens, this is a secret government testing
facility, or this is some kind of purgatory before the afterlife. Like a mix of the Cube
and Circle. I think we can rule out purgatory because on the radio, a man was heard talking
about a bright light hovering in the sky[d]. Sounds like a UFO to me. Adam’s hair growth would suggest he’s
been inside for years. I don’t know how he’s been keeping his beard so trim though,
or how could survive in this tunnel for that long. As for why we’re so fresh. It’s
possible we were kept in stasis cryonically while Adam was sent into the tunnel first. Why aliens would choose us and torture us,
we can only speculate. So far the only winning strategy has been to keep moving. Maybe there
are more clues up ahead.. After reentering the maze she inspects the
remaining hand of her companion and sees ♢, X, ♢ symbols branded under the glowing wrist
cuffs. Before she can inspect the limb any further, the crawl space closes, pushing her
into the tunnel. Seconds later, sharp spinning blades at her front begin moving towards her. I’m alarmed that there was nothing left
of Adam in the tunnel. It takes hours at extremely high heat to incinerate someone and even then
there is ash and bone fragments left behind. Sublimation, AKA vaporizing[e] Adam’s body,
would take about 3 gigajoules of energy. [f]That is equal to about a ton of TNT or a low yield
atomic bomb.[g] This is improbable, to say the least. What’s more likely is his body
was removed via a trap door mechanism. Not sure why, when other corpses were left in
the tunnel. Not sure why he has hugs n kisses symbols
on his wrist, or if he had them before all this. Not much time to deliberate with the
death fans approaching. Placing our hands against the fan casing’s edges as it pushes
us back isn’t as great as it seems. It would push us all the way back into a wall, and
it’s concave shape would push our hands inwards towards the blades. It’s pretty
obvious bone nor cuff will stop those blades. There isn’t much else we can do here besides
shuffling backwards towards the hole in the ceiling we came down from and hope it’s
still there.. Lisa retreats and escapes back up through
hole in the ceiling she came from at the last second. While up there a growling creature
drops in behind her. When she looks back she notices it’s missing its left arm.. it’s
Adam, a horribly deformed and charred zombie version of Adam. Doesn’t seem too friendly
after what happened. Damn, even dying is hard in this place. It’s
possible Adam wasn’t actually incinerated, just crisped up a bit and dropped through
a trapdoor. One things for sure, Adam’s continued existence is a punishment for both
of them. Lisa spends way too much time just waiting
there with the Adam-Zombie behind her. We’re on a time limit. A growling corpse is not
there to make things easier for us. He seems to be blind and partially deaf, only
getting alerted when she makes a noise. If we must, we do have the femur dagger which
we could shank him down with, kick him in the head, or grab his other arm and break
it, but a fight takes time and energy we don’t have. We need to start quietly crawling away
as quickly as possible, taking care not to bang our cuff. Hopefully he doesn’t notice
us. After giving Zombie Adam the slip, Lisa enters
an area where she can finally stand and choose between two open tunnels to continue her journey.
She hesitantly picks the left one and as she moves through it, it echoes the sounds of
her dead daughter singing happily. The tube opens up to walls displaying scenes from Lisa’s
life including the day her daughter died after falling out a window. Okay, as hard as it is, we need to try not
to get caught up in the IMAX screening of our life story. This reeks of being another
trap, just instead of blades and acid, it’s using emotional manipulation as an stalling
obstacle we have to overcome. The clock’s still ticking. Just as Lisa starts moving into the next tunnel,
Zombie Adam gets lowered from the ceiling behind her. Lisa rushes into the tunnel to
escape. Finding herself in another fire tunnel that is about to be consumed, she excruciatingly
crawls through barbed wire slicing her back trying to reach the end. The Zombie takes
shelter in the safety nook that belatedly appears, but Lisa doesn’t make it before
time runs out. As the fire erupts, the floor drops out beneath her and she plummets into
darkness. I don’t get this. Why not have the crawl
space appear after the razor wire, thus testing our will to cross it to live? What’s the
point in pulling all this Shyamalan deus ex machina shit. At this point, all I can think
is that the aliens get off on inducing anxiety in their lab rats. Crossing past the razor wire was the only
reasonable move, and there wasn’t time to go back once she did. However, Lisa made this
more painful than was necessary. When we reached the barbed wire, we should
have flipped onto our back and used our cuff and the femur to help hold the wire up away
from our body as we shimmies under. At this point, we might as well name the femur Wilson[h].
Once the wire is over our hips, we should be in the clear. Not that it matters with the trapdoor saving
us at the last second. The purpose of all this is getting confusing. There has to be
another way. Lisa wakes up in the starting room again.
The alien head comes down to heal her wounds, but she tells it to just leave, seemingly
giving up on living. She uses her blood to wall paint the diamond, cross, diamond symbol
she saw on Adam’s wrist in hopes of helping the next contestant. Right before the alien
euthanizes her, she has an epiphany that the 3 symbols are actually 6 left & right arrows
serving as a guide for the Y shaped tunnels like the one she found, and that she needs
to remove her own cuff in the acid to access her own instructions which will properly guide
her out the tunnel. Finally thinking she found the way out she halts the lethal injection
tube and prepares to run the course again. Okay, it’s a bit of a jump to think these
random symbols are directions. Why have directions obfuscated in such an abstract way? It’s
not some tricky riddle or code we have to decode intelligently, it’s just a terrible,
confusing way to write directions. It would have been more clever to write each trap or
Y section’s directions as a riddle in the morse code lighting next to it. Hell, it’s
the same weird issue with the morse code lighting, there’s no gaps in between them. What is
with these aliens not adding gaps to delineate things properly. If we assume they are directions, how do left
and right arrows help us navigate all the ups and downs? Sure you could turn your arm
horizontally so the arrows pointed up and down, but then that adds confusion. Is an
arrow considered used when we go up/down or left/right? That can’t be, because in most
cases we have to go down or up, like the acid pit or submerged tube. It doesn’t make sense
an arrow would be used for those. The hole we went down to find Adam also is irrelevant,
since the fan pushed us back up the hole anyways. These arrows don’t seem to be relevant for
ups, downs, or the challenges themselves. If we’re assuming these are only left and
right directions, this means traps are defeated by our own wit and speed, and the Y tunnel
we faced must be the first of 6. Adam’s symbols directions would have taken us down
the same left tunnel we ‘died’ in. There’s no reason to expect we have the same starting
place or would have the same directions in a tunnel that morphs. We need to check our
own wrist. We shouldn't need to burn our cuff off first because Adam’s symbols were visible
with his cuff still on. We should be able to pull the cuff back enough to make out the
top of the marking at least, which would be enough. Which again, is dumb. Why not make
it so the contestants have to figure out how to remove the cuff in order to access directions.
Missed opportunities everywhere. If for some reason we had to use the acid to remove the
cuff, that serves as further evidence that the directions are only left and right, since
we’d have passed by a few up downs already. If we pull our cuff back to check, we’d
see our markings are X X ♢. Translated it’s: right, left, right, left, left, right. So basically, with this theory, we need to
do the exact same thing we did before, skipping the Adam tunnel, and use these left right
arrows to guide us through assumedly 6 Y-shaped tunnel splits. I almost hope this doesn’t
work with how dumb it is. Lisa successfully traverses the course again.
When she gets to the acid pool burns she burns off her cuff, revealing her own directions
branded on her wrist. XXO. She skips going to the Adam tunnel and hits the first Y split.
Instead of going left like last time, she goes right as the arrows indicate. She goes
left in the next Y split, then right through the third one. Right when she gets into the
3rd tunnel, the Adam Zombie drops down behind her through a hole in the ceiling. God damnit, this actually seems to be working.
We just need to make it past whatever challenges confront us, while following the remaining
left, left, right arrows in the next 3 Y splits. Adam isn’t going away on his own. He’s
almost like another challenge we have to face. Between Y split tunnels there seems to always
be a room tall enough to stand in. These are perfect areas to attack him from. We would
be standing with Wilson, sharpened and ready to plunge into Adam's neck while he’s vulnerable
crawling out of the tunnel. He’s blind and only follows the sound we make. He wouldn’t
even see it coming. Literally. Because he’s blind.
Lisa makes it out the 3rd Y split, and correctly goes left in the 4th Y split. She makes it
out of that tunnel into a spinning room, and escapes it with Adam still hot on her tail.
She panics at the 5th Y split when her cuff begins to beep and flash purple. She throws
it down the left tube to misdirect Adam, while she goes right. After taking a moment to catch her breath,
Lisa realizes that she sent the zombie down the path she was supposed to take and now
has no choice but to take the unsafe option. I mean, Leading Adam down the wrong passage
is smart, but of course it would have been better to send him down the OTHER tunnel you
didn’t need. Or just shank him with Wilson as he came out of the tunnel so we could navigate
with a clear head. If I were Lisa, I wouldn’t continue in the
wrong direction, which most likely leads to a dead end full of burners. I’d yell to
bait Adam back out so I could shank him down and continue down the correct left tube. Let’s
see how the right tube shakes out for Lisa. Lisa arrives at a membrane leading to an alien
womb-like room with creatures on the other side of the walls. She keeps moving forward,
punching through the fleshy membrane leading into a second womb chamber. In this one, an
unconscious Zombie Adam is at the other side, with her bracelet in the middle. As she snatches
the cuff, it beeps with the burner countdown, awakening Adam. Lisa retreats backwards into
the tunnel and gets into a shelter right before the partition closes. Instead of torching
the tunnel, the partition opens and Lisa is pushed back out to fight the zombie. After
a struggle Lisa crushes his skull with her heel, finally killing him. I’d like to see Adam come back from that.
I still think Wilson would have been a far better method for removing Adam’s head,
but at least he’s gone. I’m not sure how Zombie Adam ended up in
the chamber in front of her when he had been in the other tunnel; the only thing I can
think of is whatever is controlling this whole setup stepped in and course-corrected Adam’s
trail. Since we went down the wrong path, I don’t
think I'd use Wilson to cut out of the womb and confront the alien things. Best to assume
they are hostile and it’s another trap. The burner trap not activating is strange.
It may have something to do with our destruction of the cuff. Can’t rely on this being the
case though. Now we can go back to the 5th Y split and
go left. Lisa retraces her steps and correctly goes
down the left tunnel of the 5th Y split. However as she is about to go through the right side
of the last one and be free, her dead daughter appears, asking her not to leave. Though tempted,
Lisa ultimately leaves, confronting the fact that her daughter is dead, nothing will bring
her back, and realizing that this is yet another emotional manipulation challenge baiting her
the wrong way. I’m glad Lisa didn’t fall for this obvious
test of her ability to let go of the past. She did burn a lot of time. Don’t want to
get fried and turned into Lisa Zombie after getting this far. We need to keep moving. Lisa is almost free with her final obstacle
being guillotine blades that slice up and down at regular intervals. What is this thing? I mean, there’s no useful
purpose for there to be a bunch of choppy crushy things in the middle of a hallway[i]. We’ve been assuming the arrows were left/right
directions this whole time, and so far they seem to be leading true. This may be the last
challenge. We just need to count each blade’s rhythm
first. The 4 second interval is doable, the 3 second one is tough, the 2 second one is
going to be painful. For the last door with the two second timer,
I would have tried to curl up parallel next to the panel after it lowered. Once the blade
drops, I would lean into it as it raised up, giving me the most time possible to roll through
it, instead of the slight delay waiting and watching it might give. And by rolling in
a more tucked and curled up position we have the least amount of exposed area for the blade
to hit. This would still be difficult, and is no guarantee we would make it through unscathed,
but would give us a better chance than rushing in a crawling position with our feet dragging
fairly far behind us. In case you’re wondering, yes I think we
should hang onto Wilson still. Lisa counts the rhythm of the blades and safely
makes it past the first two but slices off the top of her right foot on the final and
fastest blade. Though in agony Lisa finally makes it to the opening that leads outside
only to find “the outside” was just another illusion. Overcome by despair Lisa breaks
down crying as the chamber glows red as a signal it’s about to be Flamethrower O’
Clock. Lisa accepts her death but instead of fire she is transported to a ravine on
an beautiful alien planet with her daughter, who tells her she’s free, and now only needs
to focus on living. Wow. Didn’t know all I needed to pass through
your pearly gates was a Nintendo cheat code. Great test guys. I feel like Lisa just made
a breakthrough in her grieving process and hanging out with her dead daughter is probably
gonna be a setback in accepting her death. What is Lisa supposed to do, live that cavewoman
life with her ghost daughter? I’m not sure if the daughter is actually there physically
or just an alien hologram constructed to look like her. Either way, she is Lisa’s only
connection at this point to any intelligent life or any answers. I would continue to ask
questions. Can I ever go back home? How will I survive here? What will I use for food,
water, and shelter? Why did you select me? Will you ever stop abducting other people?
Will you atleast improve your trap design because it’s arbitrary as fuck? Things along
those lines. Hopefully we can get some useful information from the Nina clone. Depending
on her answers, we prepare for our life in a new alien homeworld, are taken care of like
a pet, or somehow find a way back home. Regardless, at least we beat the death maze. You can ultimately look at this situation
in 1 of 2 ways. Either: 1. They were abducted by aliens. This is more
than likely what’s going on and like I mentioned earlier, the garbled radio channels reported
a UFO sighting. Why aliens give a shit about Lisa’s life story, tortured her to test
her will and if she was strong enough to be accepted into a utopian illusion is beyond
me. Why not patch her up and drop her back off at home so she can move on with her life.[j] The second way you can look at this, is it’s
the afterlife. Lisa and Adam both die during their altercation in the car, and at the end
Lisa is being rewarded with ‘paradise’ for overcoming her fears and accepting her
daughter's death. You could say part of her punishment is proving that she WOULD fight
for her life. Zombie Adam’s prolonged treatment is because - he’s a crazy psycho serial
killer. [k] I think the tunnel maze was BEATEN because
even though we couldn’t make our way back home, we could have navigated the tunnel with
less suffering, we did somewhat get a new lease on life, and we still have Wilson. Thanks for watching, and remember, don’t
hitchhike near Area 51.
