In that vein, chirlaium is responsible for Timefall, rain that ages everything it touches: people, plants, structures, even chiral printed structures. (You think if humanity crumbled tomorrow the Midwest United States would return to looking like the Scottish highlands ?).
As mentioned, build ups of chiralium often precede huge storms that blur the lines between our world and the next – indeed, it has changed the entire physical makeup of our planet. While the premise of the game rests upon the notion that we need this network to rebuild America, it quickly becomes obvious that it is also deadly. Now, it’s useful to note that this chiral network is relatively new- it is theorized (and presented to us in chunks of research as the game progresses- that Chiralium has always been present in our Universe since the Big Bang- but that it resembles something like dark matter- ever present although we have been unable to see or interact with it until the events of the the most recent (Heartman theorizes that what we refer to as the Death Stranding is only the most recent example of an extinction event that has been preceded by at least five others, all connected by their association with The Beach, or the “Other Side” – an interpretation of recorded mass extinctions from the ordovcian, devonian, permiam, triassic, and cretaceous periods interpreted within with the context of the game’s scope) We are unsure if it’s finiteness- we can detect when it concentrates in the atmosphere, and it’s connected to the beached things (a by product of their world or the source of their monstrous mutations?) The chiral network allows what remains of us to share information and communicate instantly- it allows us to build structures and fabricate, or print vehicles and weapons that would be impossible to do with what little remains of civilization within these isolated bunkers of humanity. The word chirality is derived from the Greek χειρ, “hand”. The name is a reference to ‘chirality’, where an object and its mirror image cannot be superimposed over one another. But we should be aware of these questions that still remain while exploring this analogy. I’m going to save the most nitty gritty of chiralium and just how our understanding of the beach might intersect with out understanding of string theory and parallel universes in order to understand whether chiralium is finite, and we will need a replacement for it eventually (the way our fossil fuels will only last as long as we can find remains of ancient dinosaurs and shit). My point here is that the characters use Chiralium as a resource to further their short term needs for connection regardless of its long term effects on the environment, or the consequences of high concentrations, similar to the emission and pollution problems we face today. Your job is to now retrace her footsteps and connect these terminals to an internet of sorts.
Your…sister? Soulmate? has gone before you to build terminals across what remains of the United States. The entire premise of the story revolves around you, Sam, connecting humanity through the Chiral network. Is Amelie a giant corporation selling us the lie that we cannot survive without a resource that is already killing us slowly at first and then all at once? My main argument is that chiralium is a fossil fuel. I want to talk about an undertone of human exceptionalism and conservation inherent in modern discussions of climate change and environmental justice that remains a constant throughout the society created by the events of the Death Stranding. I’m going to ask you to stretch for this take, too, but I promise it’s a slightly different kind of stretch. An editorial in WaPo from 2019 claimed that it was a metaphor for modern day internet toxicity after Hideo Kojima confirmed that one of his major themes was responding to our digital trending towards media echo chambers. Most discussion of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding centers around its more obvious themes: death, connection, rebirth.
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