Panchaea



"In 2026, Panchaea was humanity's titanic plan to save the world, a 1.5 kilometer deep installation plunging to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Built by a 100% augmented workforce, it was our hopeful answer to climate change.

Until it mysteriously blew up on the day the Augs went crazy."

- Panchaea: at the bottom of the deep blue secrecy

The Panchaea are vast installations, constructed within an oceanic body of water. It is a geo-engineering project located in the arctic with the goal of curbing global warming. The Panchaea installation located in the arctic ocean is a location featured in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Background
Designed and funded by the eccentric billionaire and inventor of modern mechanical augmentations, Hugh Darrow, the Panchaea installations are designed to stem the advance of global warming. The Arctic installation that Adam Jensen eventually visits is almost operational, and at least four more are being built around the world - one in the Indian Ocean, another in the south Pacific, and two more in the Atlantic Ocean.

Darrow only hires augmented workers to construct these massive installations and states to Adam Jensen that the installation would not have been possible without them. In an interview with Picus News, Darrow explains that the installation uses iron seeding and geothermal management to regulate the ocean's temperature.

Several people are vocally skeptical, however. A common perception quoted by Darrow and several random bystanders, is that Panchaea and its ambitious potential might kill all of humanity. Lazarus believes that the installation is simply a scheme to make money, as Darrow Industries profits from global warming (though everything Lazarus says must be taken with a grain of salt).

Panchaea is a large, deep pit of over 300 meters in diameter. It features two docks that accommodate freighters powered by solar Turbosail from XNG Shipping Company and two tall towers surrounded by cranes and pylons with radar protected by radomes.

Function
The officially stated purpose of Panchaea is to counter the effects of the global warming. In order to do so, the facility promotes growth of phytoplankton by dispersing iron into the ocean. The underlying expectation is that more carbon will be trapped in biomass and then deposited on the ocean floor as sediment. The specifics of the implementation, however, are more vague and little is known about the exact function of the device located inside Panchaea. It contains a ring section like large particle accelerators (especially synchrotons) have. In said subsection of the station superconducting cryodipole magnets confine and accelerate what can be assumed to be iron particles for the experiment. They can be seen in-game flying through the evacuated beam pipes. The large cavity facing the server room is probably the place where they are being used in a way to influence the atmosphere.

Collapse
In 2027, Hugh Darrow broadcasts a signal from Panchaea that causes augmented people to lose control of their functions and wildly attack those around them, causing the Aug Incident. Jensen arrives and shuts down the signal, after a confrontation with Zhao Yun Ru that results in the deactivation of Panchaea's Hyron core.

Jensen is then given the choice between deactivating and also replacing Darrow's signal with another broadcast, or instead deactivating Panchaea's pressure regulation controls, which would directly cause the entire structure to cave in due to the weight of the Ocean. However, Panchaea was so heavily damaged that it would collapse into the ocean regardless of Jensen's actions at this point.

According to one description of the collapse, Panchaea's flood controls went offline and its structural protection system failed. However, the exact causes for the system failures, whether and to what extent it was due to damage caused by the Aug Incident, the deactivation of the Hyron core due to Jensen's confrontation with Zhao, or Jensen's possible deactivation of the pressure regulation control, remains a mystery. When Jensen wakes up in Facility 451 two years after Panchaea's collapse, Jenna Throne tries to interrogate Jensen as to what happened while he was in Panchaea's core. However, Jensen is unable to recall or perhaps unwilling to divulge the information.

Due to the mystery and circumstances surrounding Panchaea's collapse, the underground publication Samizdat calls it a trillion-dollar hole to hide a trillion-dollar secret.

Locations within Panchaea

 * Hyron Core
 * Ring Section
 * Tower Section
 * Port of Entry

Trivia

 * In Greek legends, (Παγχαΐα, Panchaia) is an island, first mentioned by ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus in the late 4th century BC. It was described as a rational island paradise located in the Indian Ocean. Inside the island's temple of Zeus is a register of the births and deaths of the gods, proving they were merely historical figures.
 * or "iron seeding" is a real, potentially viable geo-engineering technique. The full spectrum of its ecological impact is uncertain at this time.
 * It is revealed in the trailer and developer Q&A for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided that Panchaea was canonically destroyed at the end of Human Revolution, regardless of what ending the player chooses. At this point, only Jensen and David Sarif are revealed to have survived the base's destruction.