Game Theory: Is Minecraft Netherite From SPACE?

Netherrite the uber strong material that makes diamond look like cobblestone a material so powerful that it’s hiding in the depths of the scariest part of minecraft’s world the nether it’s so rare that it feels like you can only find it in your dreams well it’s not like any of us are going

To be doing much sleep tonight but why is it so hard to find what is netherrite and where does it come from trust me this is no simple origin tale friends it takes us from the depths of the nether to the reaches of outer space and ultimately to the secret origins of

Minecraft’s long-lost lore hello internet welcome to game theory the show that’s doing the hard work of piecing together minecraft slore because clearly mojang ain’t gonna do it for us we really want people to try to figure these things out by themselves keeping the sense of mystery well if the

Minecraft lore is supposed to be a mystery then consider me your persistent detective so far we’ve covered a lot of minecraft lore on the channel covering the history of this ancient builder race that constructed the monuments that we see throughout the world something that kind of got confirmed by mojang recently

So the lowdown is these cities they come from an ancient civilization but are you still recording we’ve also talked in the past about the nether and why those soul sand valleys are even creepier than they seem however across all this discussion of nether and the wider minecraft lore we haven’t talked

About one of the most important materials that you find down there netherright although netherride is one of minecraft’s newest materials only coming out in june of 2020 wait it’s only been a year since it was introduced wow seems like it’s been forever time is just an illusion man anyway despite it

Being so new from a lore standpoint netherite is one of the minecraft world’s oldest mysteries since that update buried deep within the nether you can chance upon ancient debris emphasis on the word ancient which you can then smelt to form netherrite scraps for those combined with four golden ingots

Gets you a netherright ingot which you can then use to upgrade your diamond armor into even more powerful gear all of this then raises the obvious question what is netherrite clearly it’s supposed to be a fictional substance but when has that stopped us before so what in real

Life is harder than a diamond well nothing there isn’t really anything on earth that compares the scale that real world scientists use to measure hardness the mohs hardness scale was calibrated to be a 1 to 10 measurement with 10 being the hardest and who set that level

To 10 and is also the only one in that category you guessed it diamonds i know that in a previous theory i actually went on my way to prove that diamonds weren’t actually the best material for building things like armor because although they’re scientifically hard they’re not necessarily tough which is

Just opening up a whole other can of worms that we’ve already addressed anyway since mojang keeps ignoring my letters to make diamonds more realistic diamonds are officially the strongest material for us today so if nothing in the world is harder than diamond what then is netherrite that makes it harder

Than diamond well what about something that isn’t from this world in the middle of the arizona desert there’s a massive meteor crater that’s over 1.1 kilometers or 0.7 miles in diameter and it goes down to a depth of 170 meters or 560 feet i actually got a chance to visit it

Myself when stephanie and i moved across the country last year and trust me the numbers do not demonstrate how big this thing is it is massive as far as scientists can tell this crater was formed about 50 000 years ago when an asteroid fell from orbit and struck the earth and boy did

It leave a mark not only that but upon striking the earth the meteorite actually shattered into tons of little pieces but uh little might be a bit of a stretch here’s me and ollie standing next to the largest fragment ever found as you can see it’s not so little

Regardless these fragments went flying and so scientists have spent decades hunting them down and excavating these meteorite fragments in 1967 though they discovered something that was truly out of this world blonde’s dailyites a substance that is in fact harder than diamond despite its outer space origins lonsdaleite is actually extremely

Similar to diamond from a chemical perspective a diamond is just a lump of carbon that’s been subjected to a lot of heat and pressure such that the atoms bond together to form a crystalline cubic lattice structure blonde’s dailyite also starts off as a lump of carbon but is subjected to even more

Intense heat and pressure causing its atoms to bond together differently instead of forming a cubic lattice it forms a hexagonal lattice which apparently is even stronger than the cubic lattice of diamond theoretically a piece of lonsdaleite with a perfect hexagonal lattice would be up to 58 percent harder than diamond the big

Asterisk here though is that the lonsdaleian fragments that we’ve recovered so far have just a lot of impurities and as a result only measure around seven to eight on the mohs hardness scale but in its pure form lens dailyite is basically diamond plus they’re both essentially the same material carbon just subjected to

Different levels of heat and pressure and the fact that it’s so similar to an actual diamond makes it a fascinating parallel to netherrites because remember netherright gear isn’t just something that you can create from scratch instead of putting together a couple of ingots on top of a stick you need to start from

The base of a diamond sword and then add a netherite ingot another right gear is just an upgraded form of diamond gear not only that but the lons daily recovered from that 50 000 year old meteor is all in the form of scattered fragments which i suppose one could

Describe as ancient debris just like it is in minecraft so what am i saying that netherright is the remains of ancient meteorites that fell from space well as much as i’m tempted to make this episode about minecraft’s ancient aliens the nether is a closed ecosystem with a ceiling which means it’s completely cut

Off from outer space so that seems pretty unlikely plus the truth about lonsdaleite is even though we’ve found it in meteorites it’s not strictly an alien substance remember it started off as regular carbon scientists in fact believe that well it was floating in space the carbon was just simple

Graphite no different from the graphite that you can find in your pencil but okay not exactly the same the tip of your pencil is only 65 graphite 30 clay and five percent wax and other resins but still basically the same idea anyway thanks to the meteorite size it was big

Enough to survive the heat and pressure of entering our atmosphere and in turn created the conditions necessary to create lonsdaleites now if only there were somewhere in minecraft that was super hot and pressurized hmm oh wait there is a reason it’s called netherrite after all places like the

Overworld and the end simply don’t have the environmental conditions necessary to create this stuff not only that but netherrite in item form literally floats on lava seems like a pretty useful property for any civilization making its home down in the nether so was netherite made by this ancient race of builders

That i keep harping on about i doubt it we believe the ancient builders to have come to the nether centuries ago they built the nether fortresses that we find storing their loot in their chests they farmed netherwort to feed their pigs and they did weird experiments to revive the

Souls of their fallen comrades but through it all netherrite and ancient debris are nowhere to be found you never just see it lying around a fortress or used to fortify any defenses it’s not found in any chest it could be that mojang just never updated the nether fortresses but they never have been

Afraid to change old elements to include new ones for example drowned now don’t drop gold but copper which feels like a pretty major change so it must be a purposeful decision to not include those elements in the nether fortress meaning that the ancient builders aren’t the

Ones that we’re looking for however in a surprising twist mojang did actually hint at some of the lore implications when the nether update happened back in 2020 take a look at this quote piglens mined it all out now the only way to obtain it is by salvaging netherrite

Scrap from ancient debris the piglen can mine blocks this is not a mechanic that we ever see in the game piglens can hunt they can barter they can even dance but we never see them mine which means this isn’t a game mechanic but war sweet juicy lore if they’re capable of

Mining as well as the other things that we just mentioned what else could they do how about starting a civilization think about it there isn’t just one type of piglen much like villagers and illiters there are a couple of variations of piglens namely the piglin brute they hunt in teams they celebrate

Together in victory plus they’re able to barter with us for resources if this isn’t a society well then i don’t know what you’re defining a society as but it doesn’t stop there piglets are found all over the nether but there’s one very particular place where they’re found congregating bastion remnants which if

The name doesn’t give it away aren’t entirely in one piece they’re remnants of their former selves clearly in the lore of the game piglens have been able to form societies build civilizations and defend against intruders who then were the intruders given the fact that piglens are immediately hostile to you

The player i would suspect that they’re at war against the ancient builders our ancestors this would first of all explain the ruined state of the bastions but would also explain what all the natural netherrite was mined for in the first place if they’re under attack netherrite would provide them the

Perfect defense the ancient builders were using diamond gear so why not counter with a fortress made of netherrite parts it’s fire resistant it’s perfect for being built into the landscape of the nether and it’s super strong however like most natural resources it will eventually begin to run out their defenses weaken and

Although netherite is stronger than diamond it’s not indestructible so with no netherite left to replace the broken parts the bastions fall and are left in ruin the piglens seem to have won the war i mean look who’s still kicking around the nether in the present day but they lost the most valuable resource

That they had in the process as centuries passed those bastions that fell became buried underground much like the ancient cities that exist in our world but with netherrite’s fire resistance any broken scraps that were left in the bastions would survive the lava flows and ground shifts so it would

Never really decompose leaving us with the ancient debris buried deep underground that we know today something else i always thought was weird about the bastions that you can find netherrite and ancient debris in the chests but not netherrite tools or armor with this in mind it does kind of make

Sense there are no diamonds in the nether so they had no means to make netherright gear they had plenty of gold so they could make ingots and blocks in order to fortify their bastions it would also explain the piglen’s affinity for gold what do we use to create a

Netherright ingot four scraps and four gold ingots knowing that they have a limited amount of pure netherite the piglens have resorted to making a netherite alloy of sorts using one of the other natural resources that they have down in the nether gold which is why they’re willing to give you all

Matter of items for even a single nugget they’re trying to collect whatever scraps they can to rebuild their civilization after the ancient builders destroyed it and their hatred still stands today why else would they be immediately hostile to you you’re an invasive species one whose kind has already been down here before and

Brought ruin to their thriving society piglets get especially mad when you try and take a look in the bastion chests now you’re trying to steal the limited resources that they have left to rebuild what they once were they’ve even trained piglet brutes to not be blinded by gold

To just remove that intruder at all costs in the end much like we find ourselves trying to piece together clues that we find throughout minecraft to construct a history of this world the piglens themselves might be in the same position piecing together remnants of their past in order to reconstruct their

History but hey that’s just a theory a game theory thanks for watching You