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How Big is Black Mesa?
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- Published on Mar 10, 2026
- bigger than yo mama!
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Music, in order:
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➡ Half-Life - Credits Closing Theme
➡ Half-Life - Black Mesa Inbound
➡ Pizza Tower - whats on the kid menu
➡ Half-Life - Drums and Riffs
➡ Half-Life - Nepal Monastery
➡ Black Mesa - Inbound Part 2
➡ Half-Life: Opposing Force - Bust
➡ Half-Life: Opposing Force - Orbit
➡ Black Mesa - Blast Pit 2 Mesa Remix
➡ Black Meas - Catalyst
➡ Black Mesa - Entangled
➡ Half-Life 2 - Lab Practicum
➡ HOME - Take Me Home
tags; ignore
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halflife2, stalkerscream, ost, zombiesounds, halflife2rtx, zombiescreamreversed, 20thanniversary, halflife2gameplay, distortedtrumpets, halflife2beta, halflife2walkthrough, april fools, halflife2speedrun, portal, portal 2, glados, chell, cave johnson, gaben, gabe newell, team fortress, tf2, steam, valve, source, sfm, csgo, counter strike, cs2, moldbun, pbody, atlas
![1900Rugrat - Plane Jane [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ce6_Btq85aU/mqdefault.jpg)
inb4 "opposing force isn't canon" dude it's the coolest thing ever who cares honestly
Peak opinion
aren't DLC have a status of "canon until said otherwise?", and i haven't heard valve officially declining the canonicity of them
real
everything valve has ever published is 100% canon to the half life universe
@catmacopter8545 team fortress 2 is canon to half life universe confirmed
i feel like black mesa was designed to be a self contained town / city for scientists working on projects during the cold war
It honestly probably is considering that it’s seemingly self sustaining too
It was primarily based on the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear testing was carried out for the Manhattan Project. It spans 22200 acres.
well in lore its supposed to be an old cold war silo repurposed into a research facility, my guess is that black mesa originally was just a collection of independent silos, roads, trainyard and other infrastructure in new mexico that was later turned into a super research facility, it would explain the differences in construction materials and age in some levels as well as justify the later existence of the high tech facilities like the lambda complex.
so id say its more like a collection of places and facilities brought together over the course of decades eventually becoming the "black mesa".
@rusovskie unironically yeah that makes so much damn sense
Just like soviet cities, it even has it's own airfield.
I like to think Cave Johnson got jealous of Black Mesa’s square-footage and made HIS super cool underground research facility WAY bigger out of spite
i accept this as canon
Id like to see more what happened to Gordon when Alternate Cave bought Black Mesa and prevented the resonance cascade.
I misread that as sprite and i want to believe
Im pretty sure GladOS expands the facility significantly too.
@FalseTailDeerAnd then Dr Breen 7-Upped Cave.
i like to think that black mesa is big enough to have parts of the facility to either be abandoned or forgotten.
blue shift even doubles down on this concept by having boarded off sectors that are decades old at best
You see abandoned areas in Half-Life 1. Pretty sure chapters 6 through 9 (Blast Pit, Power Up, most of On A Rail, most of Apprehension, maybe Residue Processing too?) are all implied to be abandoned locations.
@LightGaia09 Partially abandoned from what we can tell
BP and PU are decommissioned, OAR at least has the launch silo
Apprehension appears to be somewhat operational (?)
@jensablefur155 The entrance to Blast Pit is boarded up and Power Up doesn't seem to have a direct entrance though.
@LightGaia09I interpreted the boarded up areas in the game to be boarded up after the Resonance Cascade in order to keep Xen wildlife out. In Office Complex there’s a boarded up area with a bunch of headcrab zombies in it. For there to be zombies there must have been people there. Also, doesn’t Power Up literally have a freight rail going through it?
it should be noted that lots of half-life's landscapes are based on photographs taken by the devs in Washington
It's likely a lotta the desert textures came from the Walla-Walla Desert in Southeast Washington.
@fojisan2398 that’s where I live. Every time I go anywhere it looks like a Clint Eastwood movie, not the evergreen PNW a lot of people expect.
Xen is definitely up there with them
@lolwutizit They used a lot of insect photos for Xen textures
the skyboxes might be. parts you see in Surface Tension look more like southern Utah, Monument Valley/Glen Canyon area. The rocks are too red to be anywhere else.
all the false doors, area mentions, etc? I get the feeling we see a quarter of the facility at best
tbf most of those could be storage units or small rooms
Black Mesa mods that shows what behind those doors are best
@ayzekpie9432 best...... what??? huh???
@FourB4three wouldn't be able to tell actual names (it was years ago) but there was a couple that expand original maps, like we got hostiles into whole complex.
Actually, my fuzzy memories saying me that also might be gmod ones. Probably search for both
ACCESS
*D E N I E D*
Hey, my old Black Mesa map pops up again :D (I'm Per "Sterd" Borgman)
One note about the map is that it is split into two disjoint parts, since it isn't clear how the trash compactor connects to the area Gordon is ambushed in. So the *image* shape might be completely off.
Sterd, in the flesh! Seeing the effort others have gone through to map Black Mesa makes me want to create a complete, physically traversable map of it. If only I had infinite free time. Of course, a lot of creative liberty would have to be taken. But just imagine having the whole thing definitively mapped out, even more amazing would be having the whole thing actually "playable" with all the spaces fully modelled. One can dream.
do you still make 3d models
tjena per
Sure, and I drank vodka with H1tler
I don’t know why are you asking me
me too
Ken
Ken
Ken
Ken
i just assumed black mesa was that game world's area 51
Yeah you’re not wrong like
It makes sense. Area 51 would be a simple military project facility, created to deviate the public opinion from Black Mesa. While everyone thinks BM is simply a science research facility, people would think Area 51 as this alien, ultra advanced research facility from the government, ignorant of the true experiments Black Mesa carries on, its secret hidden in plain sight
it is, there are several real life area 51 in separate states. So we technically could have our own game world's area 51 and more at different location
@bennypika3575 No. There is only ONE Area 51. The name refers to a zoning map of New Mexico. The entire state is divided up into large square areas that are numbered. The base is in the one that happens to be numbered 51.
@protoborg lol there are one in Nevada, one in New Mexico, one in Colorado, and one in Az. I've seen them on google map and drove pass them on way to CA
Regarding the rail systems (not the trams), they were likely built before the facility itself to help with construction, and were kept in place after. The sheer volume of freight it can handle makes sense when you consider them hauling millions of tons of concrete and steel to the middle of the desert
Considering construction is still going on, the huge cargo capacity definitely makes sense.
They still need to have construction materials, food and equipment brought in. I don't think they have a ranch on site for the carcasses that we see in Office Complex.
then there is also the idea that black mesa does a lot of "regular" military and astronautics manufacturing which also require transporting. And because it was based on a cold war bunker complex as a starting point, it wasn't likely very well laid out as you would have with a purpose build factory
I agree and clearly they keep tacking bits onto the structure and large exotic experiments would be oddly shaped leading to a windy transit system that's additive.
Yeah how the hell else going to get so much science shit way out into the desert? Even if they helicopter and everything and they'd have to still move it around in facility
I worked on the Black Mesa mod, and one thing we discovered while looking at early skyboxes was that THE black mesa was a mesa VISIBLE from the facility, in the distance. The Black Mesa logo is how it appears during sunrise. You can see it in Surface Tension.
Nope. That is actually a different mesa.
Could you elaborate? When you say "early skyboxes", are you talking about unused HL1 skyboxes? Or do you mean skyboxes made for the black mesa game?
@rudolph2937 He's probably talking about the surface tension tunnel exit at the cliff edge where you kind of see a semblance of the black mesa logo.
Thank you for your work. :)
what years of no third game does to a person:
eh this isnt that unhinged
I can feel it in my bones
An announcement for Half Life 3 will happen within the month
@yacabo111 nothing ever happens
@hohladychsomething happened two days ago
TF2, HL, and Portal fans all bear the same cross...
15:59 This is untrue; Xen was clearly discovered decades before the Lambda Complex was built, as the teleportation systems we see in the old '50's' labs in Blue Shift directly utilize equipment on the border world set up at the time, which modern teleportation technologies have means to bypass.
And in Black Mesa Blue Shift (Unofficial, I know) when entering one of the Xen portals in the Prototype Labs can see a lot of old stuff in Xen bases, including old HEV suits and audio logs from 1983, so yeah, they're pretty old.
I think you’re confused; he must’ve mean’t that the Lambda Complex was built based on the newer portal technology CAPABLE of exploring Xen easier. Not that they actually discovered Xen through the Lambda Complex.
@TheKingofBunga2912 I think he misspoke.
2:46 - "… Mesa Diablo, Sand Basin, and *Black Butt."*
"Butte" is pronounced more like "beaut" (or "beauty, minus the 'y'"), but I can't blame you for cracking that joke. :p
As someone who discovered the term "Butte" from the BattleTech community making fun of the planet Butte Hold... yes.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that or “butty” in regards to La Butte Montmartre
butt
I once ordered a "Black Butt Porter" before my girlfriend correcting me that it was "butte". 😀
N
i feel that a nuke would NOT destroy the entirety of black mesa , especially when its in a parking garage in a corner of the facility.
It would likely collapse enough to make getting out of the underground areas impossible and destroy the above ground buildings.
What if it's the Aperture Science Super Nuke that the government bought from Aperture during the cold war?
Probably correct. Black Mesa was a government funded research facility constructed during the Cold War. Not only is a large amount of the facility underground, but we can assume that many of the surface buildings were constructed to withstand indirect blasts. However, if we assume Black Mesa to have a minimum area of ~0.2mi^2 (as shown in the video) and given the bomb was detonated on the surface within Black Mesa itself, a bomb with a yield >1 Mt. would be more than enough to severely damage or demolish surface facilities and collapse underground structures near the epicenter. Many underground structures may survive, but survivors will most definitely be trapped and be given a fatal dose of radiation of survivors did escape.
@Jimothy_Jimone nuke specifically designed to destroy black mesa
@keganmemestar4465 "but survivors will most definitely be trapped and be given a fatal dose of radiation"
Something something Gordon is a professional
It's a common misconception that the Black Mesa research facility is built into a mesa. The truth is, the research facility came first, and the mesa was constructed around it.
Of course not, it was constructed on an ancient indian burial ground
@Buckshot_McJones So that's why you hear ghostly screams in On A Rail.
@ChefProwlnosNah those are all the players who died in the level
@Buckshot_McJones black mesa isn't haunted, gordon. you're just being paranoid!
@tornadogamah Gordon doesn’t need to hear all this he’s a highly paranoid schizophrenic
5:12 The mesa is the same one, just flipped :D
yeah idk how he missed that
Idk about that. The top of the mesa in the right picture seems much wider and flatter than the mesa on the left
I love megastructures like this. Black mesa feels almost possible, but so much larger than anything on earth... right now
it's easily possible. we can build a lot of crazy things already, so long as there's funding.
@512TheWolf512 the soviet underground rail system / metro is also insanely huge, but often overlooked because its Soviet and thereby neglected.
@thelvadam2884it's not very impressive
@thelvadam2884 The next giant fictional Valve facility should be Soviet and located somewhere underground in the Ural Mountains. How cool would that be🔥
@Vasily_dont_be_silly that would be amazing!!
But it's not one building, it's a campus of multiple buildings underground and above ground.
Okay but those building make up one Black Mesa facility which is what we're measuring here
@mikeyes620yes, but the comparison is a huge aircraft hanger. A better comparison would be Los Alamos or Vandenberg AFB or something.
counterpoint: you can still more or less get from one end of the underground portion of the complex to the other without needing to go to the surface
This is significant.
In terms of real scientific research centers- Fermilab, outside Chicago, had a particle collider with a 3.9 mile circumference (~1 mile across) and which was 200-600 feet underground. The actual space it physically took up, though, was a tiny fraction of that volume.
@technoturnovers7072 So universities with underground tunnel systems connecting the buildings would count for this, and we can add up the entire volume of all connected buildings on campus?
For my headcannon and thanks to the infinite amount of mods, Black mesa is as big as New Mexico state.
since it's mostly an underground facility this makes sense
@qubadaismastervelopethesecond Sucks to be a metro in new mexico
@Mr._Tyrannosaur
"Hold on, you can't build that there."
"Why not?"
"You just can't."
@thelonelyregigigas6126 Wasn't black mesa public knowledge? But probably if they reveal a facility in the size of a state taxpayers wouldn't love it
Internet cannot tell the difference between "cannon" and "canon" lmfao how.
11:34 For non USA residents:
Wide: 536,45 m
Long: 825,70 m
Deep: 438,91 m
Volume: 2.092.700.000 m^3
Mvp. I hate it if americans just refer to there own used system noone understands
@Blackbirdone11 I hate that non-Americans just refer to their own system
@pXnTilde You mean like the rest of the world?
@undercoverneunzehn And? Most of the English speaking youtube viewers are Americans, this is an American RUclipsr, and it's about something that is American. Cry more
Stop colonizing my comfort measurements
7:38 hey it’s me!
Your the one who made the map????!
Holy shit you're old
YOU LIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
shiii ain no way
It's a really nice-looking map.
I did point of service work IT at Boeing so I had to walk all around the facilities. During that period I started playing Half Life for the first time because the anniversary updates were coming out. Some of the Black Mesa facilities eerily reminded me of work at the Boeing offices.
Shout out to all aerospace people! I work at a small firm that supplies parts to Boeing among others, and in '98 we were making some of the parts for the then top secret yf22.
A facility this big has to have a food testing wing. And with the protein requirements for soldiers they might have one huge MEAT PACKING ROOM!
The meat packing room
1:57
Saving the scientists? ❌
Using them as cover? ☑
YOUR USERNAME IS MANGOS??? BOOOIIIIIIII TS SO TUFF BOIIIIIIIIII
MANGOS MANGOS MANGOS MANGOS MANGOS MANGOS 💀💀💀💀🥭🥭🥭🥭🥭🥭🥭🥭🥭 THOSE WHO KNOW
11:05 Where I can find this map with a bigger resolution?
21:07 I SAW THAT LMAO
pyrocynical catching strays 😭
oh fok, okay
Shots fired 🔥😂😂😂
Petscop 2!!!1!1!1111!!!
6:23 entirely unrelated but these line descriptions do not list any of the transfers which really annoys me
aleast 12 rooms big
I counted 15 once but I could be wrong
I know you mentioned that black mesa would be taken into account very minimally, but the closest we have to a semi-official answer for how large is, is in one of the slideshow boards in anomalous materials in black Mesa claims that the facility owns 2000 square miles. As a circle, that’s about 25 miles In radius. Of course they wouldn’t develop a lot of that, but considering the bmrf’s likeness to a small city, i wouldn’t be surprised if that means that there is some sporadic areas of above ground facilities stretching maybe even as far out as the edge of that. It also conveniently makes room for almost any fan game to put their own part of the facility inside without it really colliding with anything.
Don't say that, my desire to make a game in that universe was already strong enough before.
If I ever have enough money to burn, HL fans will be very happy, and that cash will be spent in an instant.
@theRPGmasterI’m literally in the process in making a mod that gets this exact concept across lol. Like the whole point is that you’re trying to go as far as possible into the facility as you can starting from the *outskirts* of the facility
@thewoodpeckers655 That sounds awesome. Do you have discord or something? It's always fun to chat with fellow devs and modders.
Well BM is roughly 238 square miles itself so...
@protoborgdo you mean the space the game itself takes place in? If so, does that include Xen?
Just sat down with my food, this might be my greatest algo pull of all time
5:16 they flipped the photo horizontally in the game graphic. You can see an "indentation" on the left on the real photo, and a similar one is on the right on the game picture.
This only vaguely relates to the video, but I like to think there had to have been a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories about Black Mesa in the HL universe, like Area 51 does in real life, and somewhere out there, there's a whooole buncha people who lost their actual shit when they found out they were right.
8:03 I love maps like this, someone did this for Metal Arms and it's so fascinating seeing the entire journey laid out
The Santa Fe county black mesa is right next to Los Alamos, which is an obvious inspiration for HL Black Mesa (secret new mexico lab, weapons development, cold war infrastructure, ...). The Los Alamos campus is about 40 square miles
i think they combined two ideas. as you stated, they settled on new mexico for lore reasons, but used their own inspiration from photos taken by the dev team, during the pre-production phase where they surveyed the eastern parts of washington state's desert. the mesa itself is taken from washington, but placed in new mexico near los alamos/black mesa.
13:19 Nice to see that the broken texture Easter egg made it into the video
funny how yesterday i watched the aperture science one and searched to no avail for a black mesa one just for me to stumble upon this gem today
I've always loved the idea of Black Mesa. Tons of cool research alongside office spaces, living spaces, entertainment and what not. A cool underground city.
I wish there was some kind of game or mod to explore more of Black Mesa in it's working state. I could get lost in there.
on the off chance you havent heard of abiotic factor, that game scratched that itch for me a little bit, although its not perfect.
A complex. Not a single building
a complex complex
black mesa and aperture hated eachother so much they even competed over who had the largest facility
I always thought that Aperture hated Black Mesa but Black Mesa was only minimally aware of Aperture Science, but it's been a long time since I've played through HL or Portal
@jeffs1571 while i agree they likely only knew a bit about aperture as they generally seem to be secretive (mostly because of their horrific experiments and lack of safety, causing them to actively hide their crimes from the feds.) they also seems to have been doing major espionage on aperture, based on everything we heard about black masa through portal. Though how complete the information they actually managed to smuggle out is questionable, as they never seemed to figure out their portal technology, despite aperture having that since the 1950s as well as other technologies like their robotics.
13 minutes ago? the bun ain’t even moldy yet
it aint even cold from the oven
10:50. RIP headphone users
How DARE youtube hide this from me for 5 minutes
One of the things Abiotic Factor really nails with the Half-Life/Black Mesa inspirations is the scale of the facility.
tbh CERN is a large IRL scientific facility for physics and its size is as big as micro countries or some provinces on some countries.
And is in two countries France and Switzerland
Should resident workers there carry passports in their workplaces?
@shinsenshogun900 From what I know, CERN was given a special international area status, same level of status as international waters or that location in France where the Metric system of measurement institution is.
But I do get the concept they might need some passport control between the facility, maybe they got TSA agents inside as well haha
@ninjasiren I doubt that there is a TSA agent or border control inside the facility thats handled when you enter it and as long as you are inside its your inside the country you entered.
that said ods are there are high security areas that have ID checks like any other high security area.
@Zack_Wester you didn't get the satire
but anyways, there would definitely be a large amount of security within and around the facility
Even tough most of you guys are likely sarcastic, I do feel the need to say that borders between schengen countries are mostly open without border control 😅
making your very first clip a generational point blank miss is insane
8:56 forklift certified moment
5:38 dude the facility is just named after the Black Mesa, its doesn't have to be located within the exact confines of the mesa lol why would the facility be forced to be the size of the mesa just because its named after it? Black Mesa facility is massive, I assume it was originally built near a mesa named Black Mesa, so they named the facility after it.
2 identical comments on two different accounts
Given that Gordon has a goal during the game and doesn't just take a tour around the place, I'd argue we see very little of Black Mesa. Probably only a quarter at best. With how many interesting spots there are, which are what the player visits, you have to imagine there are probably at least three times as many unremarkable offices.
The idea of a civilian industrial instillation being so large that it needs accommodations fit for a city (waste processing plant, airport, police department, fire department, housing, etc.) has always amazed me. Like Hershey, Pennsylvania on crack
Don't spend those nickels in one place.
I am happy moldbun mentioned my city’s transit system
The heiday of rail systems was before the 1960s. When the game was made, there were still many old, abandoned, but usable rail systems all around the country. New Mexico would've had dozens of usable lines during this time period. With a definite possibility of many secretly used ones.
1:36 There’s actually a Black Mesa casino in New Mexico lol, drove past it on my way from Phoenix to Denver once, fitting since they were gambling with cosmic forces.
Will you go in there to see if G-man and Adrian are in there?
Me and my friends pass by it all the time when we go fishing up the Rio grande. Who knows, maybe Gordon Freeman likes to gamble and get drunk with some natives 🤔
@ChimiChancla505If you found Barney there, he's probably gambling to get the money for Gordon beer
Man, why'd you have to drop this right as I'm going to bed
can you take it down and repost it in 8 hours please
Ey same
Get a night shift job, yo!
Good morning you can now watch it during breakfast
@Alex_K221fantastic, thank you for letting me know
It's crazy that the HECU were able to cover almost all the facility
8:19 faciwity
"r/usernamechecksout" ahh
I love walking around in HL and portal...
I remember the everett boeing factory!
I went in there one time as a kid with my granddad and jesus christ it is huge! like you have to see it to believe it, and they even got tunnels for getting across sometimes cause of the airplanes, it's really cool.
When I was a child I used to draw Black Mesa sections from HL1, Blue Shift, & Opfor and merge them together where I can, I even adds ne areas.
Was a fun thing I used to do, still have all the sketches, too bad I never finished it.
It's very odd that this video at no point mentions the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico which Black Mesa was clearly based off of. It employes 14,000 people and is basically its own town. If your trying to figure out the actual size of the facility you should be looking at the real facility its modeled after.
Im glad you fully considered op4 blue shift and decay into your analysis. Awesome video
What I really like about Black Mesa is that it's implied size it much larger than what is ever shown in the official games. That allows fan made mods (like Field Intensity and Echoes) to feel somewhat plausible and - if you integrate them into your head canon - really add to the atmosphere of replaying the base game by "knowing" how much more of the facilty is out there and even that is probably only of fraction and there still is a lot we haven't seen.
I’ve gotta sit down one day and play these
Butte is pronounced buewt not butt lol
Don’t white wash Black BUTTe.
this guy sounds like hes about to sneeze
Being such a large facility, and housing at least one known freezer room full of supplies and hanging meat, you'd think for practicality purposes that Black Mesa would need some sort of dedicsted room just to pack that meat at. It would make sense for ease of transportation around the facility if nothing else.
I think every food court has its own freezer and processing place, though maybe not as big.
@codemancz798surely it must come from some larger, central processing department of the facility. It's not as though they deliver a whole slab of completely unpackaged meat to every cafeteria in the building. They've surely got an entire room dedicated to it.
The meat packing room, the meat packing room
This is where your mother, goes kaboom
The meat packing room!
I’ve been looking for a video like this for a very long time and finally someone uploaded it
this shitpost is so elaborate that i almost believed half life was a real video game series
I truly hope you are joking. Because if you're not, you are either the stupidest human being on RUclips or...well, no that's it.
1:45 bruh I dead ass thought that too but with aperture
Look Gordon! We made it black into Back Mesa!
"Gordon, with these deaths I can confidently say that we have wiped out the entire United States military!"
@fojisan2398"Look Gordon, Ropes! We can use this for Big Pits!"
world's least funny half-life series
@4zy1 lol ok?
bro i was actually wondering 2 days ago if u have ever made a video similar to the one about Aperture Science but about Black Mesa and here it is!
Ever since I first played Half-Life all I've ever wanted was a re-creation of Black Mesa I could explore from end to end without loading zones. The game is so linear but Valve did such a good job of making you feel like it was a real fully fleshed out facility.
have you played abiotic factor? it still has loading zones, but might provide you with some of what you are looking for. its a survival game basically set in a copyright free version of black mesa. its a bit janky at times and i have some issues with the level design but it has a lot of value to offer for half life enjoyers (in my opinion). i decided i was done with the survival aspects at one point and just turned god mode on and gave myself a jetpack and had a blast exploring.
id love to see a video like this about the gate cascade research facility in abiotic factor, a game heavily inspired by half life
Why is this video narrated by MoistCr1tiKal
Bro i literally thought the same. Im still not convinced its not him
I had to go and search for feet to meter conversion multiple times haha
Volume is cubic feet, not feet
Love that I got this video during my 2nd playthrough of Half-Life 1. Most of the scientists and staff at Black Mesa lived there in an entire dormitory sector as well. So although they'd import most of their food, the on site production of that food would have to be just as immense as their power generation in the event of slowed or halted imports. I never thought about how old Black Mesa is either, which really does explain the appearance of some sectors or why other locations have fallen into disrepair.
100% subscribing after seeing this and the Portal video, so much detail I love it!
Black Mesa has so many hidden nooks and crannies that it isn't a stretch to think that there could be a.. Packing room, somewhere in there. A MEAT packing room.
yeah yeah the black mesa anthrax testing range and cattle ranch we've all seen it
Sounds gay. I’m in.
Please use proper units of measurement.
It would likely be way more effort than it's worth, but it would be really cool to see a high estimate or like an upper bound for how large the facility **could** be. This video gives the lowest possible estimate since it's **just** based on what we see in game. But we never see the huge portions of Black Mesa that are locked behind various closed doors (e.g: there's at least four other train yards in Blue Shift that we never see, and presumably hallways/offices connecting them all).
Additionally, Half-Life is an old game. It's possible that, due to technical limitations, many locations are far smaller in game than they "should" be or are smaller than Valve imagined them to be. So, the solution is that someone could do the math on how large Black Mesa **would need to be** for the game to make **logical sense.**
E.g: How many square feet of dorms would be needed to house all of Black Mesa's employees? How many square feet of parking spaces to house their cars? How many train yards and warehouses would be needed to run their logistics? How many buildings could their energy grid realistically power given the size of the hydroelectric dam and Lambda reactor? How large would the facilities to build their robots, rockets, HEV suits, and so on need to be? We see Black Mesa branded SUVs all over the place, which implies the facility is so large that people need to **drive** to some sections of it, so I think any estimate under a few miles across is underestimating.
Compared to real world examples, I imagine the "true" size of Black Mesa would be something like if you combined all the facilities of a medium college campus, NASA, Raytheon, Cheyenne Mountain, and a small shipping company into one mega-complex. I imagine Black Mesa probably spans miles above and below ground. Testing and manufacturing the kinds of advanced technologies that Black Mesa does simply takes up a lot of space, far more than we see in game. By combining what we see in game with how large the real world parallels to Black Mesa's facilities are, we could probably get a good estimate for a "logical" or "realistic" size that Black Mesa would need to be if it were a real place.
IDK if enough people are interested I'll give it a proper attempt.
A quick estimate would give us somewhere around 80 thousand people working there (Boeings plant employs around 30k right now) you would need about 1.5 million square feet to 15 million square feet of parking, housing would take up somewhere around 2-3 square miles
For power, i cant find a good estimate of the dam, but it reminds me of Glen Ferris Hydro which generates 18,953.8 MWH Annually, if they have several reactors on top of that (i suspect that they do) that could be another 5-8 TW Annually
With family and so on, you would probably be looking at something really approaching a small city with 3-4 small firestations and a Bus fleet of 40-60 buses1
Road maintenance depot, 1-2 multi-story parking structures
municipal solid waste transfer station,composting/organic processing facility
The whole place would be truely massive.
@Swedar87i've imagined it as something more unassuming overall. The Complex as having nuclear testing like Giant borders, but less than 4000 people regularly working there, if not than Half that. With serious depth, And maybe 1/4 by 1/2 mile of the most recent facility.
Overall A mile by two of construction, or Half that, And That's it for the science complex without additional power making facilities.
A lot of outside made automation, who's assemblers never see the more interesting parts of the complex.
You can make tunnels And rooms, And all that, with proper connections needed, with two handfuls of people, who can be escorted through "no-see" corridors to get on site.
400 armed people,120-160 security walking about inside, And some good sized support of 20+/ 40, as far as cameras And security "logistics". Black Mesa New could be mostly that, other corridors And tunnels From before could/would also be there.
Outside armed forces would be nearby, having a different base close-ish by, but not a part of the complex itself, which would be secure through Its remoteness, build impenetrability, and other armed forces nearby elsewhere.
The Tower in HL2 seemed pretty huge too
Imagine being a custodian in Black Mesa
There have been a few mods made about that exact thing.
Abiotic Factor's take on an underground facility is about how big i imagine it is
Would honestly be curious to hear your thoughts on Abiotic Factor and the Gate Cascade Facility as an unofficial successor to the story of Half Life. Watching this really made me realize just how much of Black Mesa's layout and infrastructure ended up inspiring the vast underground facility hidden in the depths of the Australian Desert, and now I want to hear what someone of your position has to say about what I truly consider to be one of the best games of this year/decade.
i had the same thought. i think a lot of half life fans dont even know about abiotic factors existence. i only found out about it a couple months ago and was like wtf how did i not hear about this.
A half life video on my yt starting page in this economy.
Black Mesa research facility is science fiction labs based in real underground bunkers complex like Cheyenne Mountain military complex, a bunker made to resist a nuclear blast and protect military commanding crew inside the bunker in times of nuclear war. Half Life game is fiction full of things that make sense in real world. Half Life and the remastered version called Black Mesa depicts at beginning tecnologies that can shift the destiny of the whole world, like a nuclear missile
I hope Rachel had fun playing repo
I like the idea that black mesa is enormous/labyrinthine to the extent of being the size of manhattan or something. Though it gives me chills, the idea of some massive complex to explore was one of the chief reasons why I loved the game, and also why I love Abiotic Factor so much for basing its overworld environment on that very fact.
Crazy how after all these years we still learn new stuff and want newer stuff
7:56 Transmit maps arent literal. They're used to clearly show train networks and roughly where things go, but if its based on the London Tube Map, its about as inaccurate as to actual scale and shape as it can be.
great editing in this, great job
5:29 ...But why? This makes no sense. Just because the literal _mesa_ that Black Mesa gets its name from is one size, means the whole facility must be that size...? That's... silly. They can get the name "Black Mesa" due to the nearby geographical landmark, but the whole facility doesn't need to be on or inside it. Obviously.
I totally needed this info
Would be nice to have the measurements in metric as well
1 cubic meter is 35.315 cubic feet, grab your calculator and go wild
@zachhart-n1dWhy dont you grab your calculator
@vrikt0r427 Why would I? I understand feet and inches unlike europoors. No need to convert anything over here!
@zachhart-n1d ah yes, truly the superior american mind at work here, boys. the masters of making everything worse and more expensive for themselves just because of their endless ego.
also, you DO need to convert over there, your own scientists mostly use metric, and you buy all sorts of equipment from other countries, none of which use imperial.
@zachhart-n1d The entire non-US world uses metric, not just "Europoors", Mr. ignorant xenophobe.
the use of the black mesa ost here is a good choice, really makes it a perfect video
I've thought "Mesa" in the name of Black Mesa, was the Spanish word for Table, for like the entire time I've been a Half-Life fan.
This is correct, since is means "table top mountain" in this case.
"Mesa Negra"
Meseta negra🤷♂️
ah yes, Mesa Negra 🤓
Wait til he sees the Gate Facility from Abiotic Factor
CUBIC FEET. IF YOURE TALKING ABOUT VOLUME IT IS CUBIC FEET.
The "cubic" is implied by the volume. In many trades it's more common to specify linear feet, and "feet" just refers to sqft or cuft depending on the thing being measured
There are also the OpFor CTF maps which have a location so high up it is covered in snow.