Arknights Lore: Rhine Lab as Terra's Manhattan Project

Thanks to Valetta for the operator birthday lore (one day I'll put it up on Gamepress too) that pointed out about Sesa's birthday being the same as Robert Oppenheimer. So afterwards I did more research on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project... and there are so many signs of Terra going to have an atomic bomb equivalent in the future as the war goes on.

You may have read that birthday document before, so here's a summarised version of the new lore and with information about other operators and Rhine Lab itself.

There will be CN server spoilers later where I will talk about A Walk in the Dust event, which proves the Manhattan Project parallels even more after Mansfield Break. I will provide a spoiler warning before then.

From this document of Terra parallels of Earth, we know that Columbia is an expy of the United States.

Columbia, the rising superpower of Terra. Unlike other nations which are ruled by either monarchs or oligarchs, the Columbian Union is the only known democratic country in the world. Her technology is the most advanced; her mega corporations such as Rhine Lab and Blacksteel could be found all around the world. Her soft power is incomparable to others; she exports her culture to every corner of Terra, whether in the classical Victoria, the romantic Leithania or the imperialist Ursus. By far, she is the only nation where the Infected are treated equally. The Union indeed is the "shining beacon" of a disastrous world.

One the other hand, Columbia's increasing power has caused troubles to many nations and to herself too. Globally, she eyes on the rich mines of Sargon and Bolivar. She is the one who is responsible for the bloody Bolivar Civil War. At home, she conducts numerous inhumane experiments; her goal is to create the latest Originium weapons that could overpower Ursus, Leithania or even Laterano. Among her citizens, there is an increasing discrimination against the Sarkaz race.

Columbia is obviously based on the United States of America. But there are so many different periods in American history. Which period is Columbia based on?

First off, Columbia is trying to develop new weapons to continue her wars. There is one period in which the US was doing the same too. You guess it; it's during the Second World War. Specifically, during the term of President Franklin Roosevelt. Thanks to her isolated location, America could quickly build up her military. Her liberty allowed many talented scientists to take refuge, especially from Germany. Because of these, she could develop the most destructive weapon in our world history.

That's right, the atomic bomb.

Then there's Columbia's interference in other nations in Terra. If there's one period when the United States frequently interfered with other's affairs aside from modern days, that would be the era of President Theodore Roosevelt. His international diplomacy was marked by his "Big Stick Policy." Back then, America was actively involved in many global affairs, such as the Spanish-American War, the colonization of the Philippines and the annexation of Hawaii. As a result, the United States began practicing some form of global expansionism, even until today, whether through military or by soft power such as Hollywood and McDonalds.

The Ohio State Reformatory (OSR), also known as the Mansfield Reformatory, is a historic prison located in Mansfield, Ohio in the United States. It was built between 1886 and 1910 and remained in operation until 1990, when a United States Federal Court ruling (the 'Boyd Consent Decree') ordered the facility to be closed. While this facility was used in a number of films (including several while the facility was still in operation), TV shows and music videos, it was made famous by the film The Shawshank Redemption (1994) when it was used for the majority of the movie.

So yes, Mansfield Prison is real. And the things going on in Rhine Lab is not fantasy either.

Translation of Rhine Lab's introduction from official CN website which did not make it to global:

Rhine Lab is a company which is from Columbia. It is a company that is committed to expanding the fields of life sciences, chemical manufacturing, and others, and is also Columbia’s key technological organisation. Rhine Lab has many internal undisclosed items, which covers a wide range. According to the media, over a period of time, some of Rhine Lab’s projects secretly expanded in recruitment scale, and there are even more rumours of military investment. As speculated by the related people, these top secret projects may be targeted towards Originium experiments on living things.

Compare to Wikipedia's page on the Manhattan Project:

The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom (which initiated the original Tube Alloys project) and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs.The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $23 billion in 2019).

Similarities:
-Columbia and the United States
-Top secret things
-Military involvement
-Expansion in scale in a short period of time

Despite causing so many deaths with the atomic bombs, the Manhattan Project had a legacy on future more positive nuclear research. For example, nuclear energy and radiation therapy for cancer. This is also like how Rhine Lab has other sections for energy and life sciences, as well as Oripathy research.

More dodgy Rhine Lab things from Silence's Archives 4

After joining Rhine Lab, I realized that their best...rather, their most subversive product was still locked deep within the lab, resting on a proposal document. They couldn't bring it out yet, not for the people, not for the existing order, and not for this land. Perhaps it's still too soon. Yes, it's still too soon.

Just really dodgy looking.

Even more from Saria's Archives 4

She said that the upper echelon of Rhine Lab is covering up the truth and that Silence is completely in the dark about all this.
...
We must be careful when dealing with the Rhine Lab issue. Amiya should be wary of some of the involved players' political inclinations.

After the atomic bombs were launched, it was a huge surprise to most people in the United States because it was so secret. Most lower workers at the Manhattan Project had no idea about how their work was going to contribute to weapons of mass destruction. It matches how the truth is covered up in Rhine Lab.

There's a lot of political issues around the Manhattan Project. Especially when they still wanted to research on the hydrogen bomb after World War 2 and many scientists involved in the Project tried to stop it, out of their consciences.

Scholars have extensively studied the effects of the bombings on the social and political character of subsequent world history and popular culture, and there is still much debate concerning the ethical and legal justification for the bombings. Supporters believe that the atomic bombings were necessary to bring a swift end to the war with minimal casualties, while critics argue that the Japanese government could have been brought to surrender through other means, while highlighting the moral and ethical implications of nuclear weapons and the deaths caused to civilians. This remains the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.

What will be Terra's atomic bomb? It might be Ifrit, for the Flame Demon Incident has happened and even her weapon sounds like a nuclear weapon.

The flame emitter used by Ifrit is unquestionably one of Rhine Lab's finest works. What a wicked thing... It's impossible to tell that just a few cubic meters of the Originium contained within this thing would be enough to infect an entire building full of people!

But such research is still going on in Columbia and other non Rhine Lab people are investigating Originium energy too...

Terra has no gunpowder, but we sure have Originium as uranium because there are parallels to nuclear fission and quantum physics.

I plucked this from Wikipedia because I have no physics knowledge to explain anything.

Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay.

Nuclear fission of heavy elements was discovered on December 17, 1938 by German Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann at the suggestion of Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner who explained it theoretically in January 1939 along with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch. Frisch named the process by analogy with biological fission of living cells. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). Like nuclear fusion, in order for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be greater than that of the starting element.

Check out this part from Silence's Archives 2:

At that time, Rhine Lab was holding a scientific exhibition to show off the results of its research from a tour of Columbia. The new medical equipment she saw optimized Originium transmission efficiency based upon new results obtained from live trials, making possible a whole new generation of dazzling treatments.

She had an extraordinary talent for Originium Arts, and soon got the opportunity to participate in several experimental projects related to important Originium technology and clinical treatment. But as well as her career was going, and as much as the upper levels of the company recognized her achievements, Silence never forgot her original dream - to join the Originium Technology and Life Science Applications project.

The medical industry relies on nuclear fission for the production of radioactive isotopes – which are essential for a range of scanning techniques and cancer treatments.

It is important to remember that nuclear energy is not all negative and has many positive applications. Even though we hear about it from tragedies from nuclear energy reactor disasters (Chernobyl and Fukushima) and the atomic bombs.

It depends on how this energy is used on whether it will be blessing or a curse. Next, I will be discussing about operators with parallels to people involved in the Manhattan Project.

Mayer is likely named after Maria Goeppert Mayer, who is the second woman who won the Nobel Physics Prize (the first was Marie Curie) proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.

During World War II, she worked for the Manhattan Project at Columbia (the university in the United States, not the country in Terra) on isotope separation, and with Edward Teller at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the development of the Teller's "Super" bomb.

Both of them are very passionate in their work, overcoming many difficulties. For a woman to pursue science then was even harder than now. Terra has it better though.

Luckily real life Mayer’s work during the Manhattan Project did not succeed or contribute much, so she does not have to live with all consuming guilt. She was already feeling bad about her work when she worked during the Manhattan Project, especially if it would kill some of her family in Germany.

Mayer in Arknights also seems to be in the dark about the project.

Archives 1 has this: ‘Mayer often feels a sense of regret when reminded of this instance but had she known the true goal of the project, she would have pulled the plug herself.’

But unfortunately Mayer’s Archives and lore is really short, so I cannot write so much unlike the other two other operators that I will write about in more detail. Let me know if you have more lore on her though.

On a side note, I realise that there's more lore to male characters who get lesser screentime in the main story than the female characters. Therefore the lore library has more information on male characters who have more subtle and secret lore that I have to explain here.

It is also apparent that at Chapter 8, I write way more about Mephisto than Rosmontis, because this is how Arknights lore is.

Wow, this man. I mean, this lore section exists because of him and I keep coming back to his lore because it is endless. I still cannot believe that Hypergryph manages to write an unholy amalgamation of two of the most tragic scientists of all time into the same character.

Sesa is not even Rhine Lab faction and has no screentime in Mansfield Break, but he gets screentime in a future event called A Walk in the Dust where more Columbian technology is revealed. Anyway, he worked in a still unnamed Columbian military laboratory before and he refuses to tell Doctor anything. Suspicious much.

Remember the Nobel parallels? Not to say the Nobel parallels are no longer valid. The research topic (industrial firearms that do not require Originium Arts), brother dying in an accidental explosion, and selling weapons were what drove the initial Nobel parallel. Also, Nobel is a lot more famous than Oppenheimer, as the founder of the Nobel Prize. We have now gone from dynamite to atomic bombs.

Refer to the 'Sesa is the older brother' theory too because he's actually a really smart person who is pretending to be a chuunibyou once we read his archives and voiced lines more deeply.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, born on April 22, 1904, was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico. Then Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings happened, killing many people.

After the war ended, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos Laboratory and became chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission. He used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb during a 1949–50 governmental debate on the question and subsequently took stances on defense-related issues that provoked the ire of some factions in the U.S. government and military. His security was revoked in a much-written-about hearing in 1954. Effectively stripped of his direct political influence, he continued to lecture, write and work in physics.

As a teacher and promoter of science, he is remembered as a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics that gained world prominence in the 1930s.

Oppenheimer was known to have a strong interest in Hinduism where his favourite text was the Bhagavad Vita. Perhaps this is why his expy in Arknights is named after a nagaraja (serpent/dragon king) from Hindu mythology.

And perhaps you might know Oppenheimer due to this line:

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

This really famous line said during the Trinity Test was from the Bhagavad Vita. This Hindu mythology is relevant to the Rhine Lab lore which I will explain later.

These voiced lines of Sesa do make some allusions to being a destroyer:
-Destruction, your time has come!
-I shall be your end! It's fine for me to say stuff like that, right? (JP/CN translates more to: I am your destruction/destroyer... which is even more like the Oppenheimer quote)

The questions remain on what the hell happened at the Columbian military laboratory. The mysteries have yet to be revealed, except that Sesa is going after his former laboratory, which is still unnamed. My theory is that it is Rhine Lab, because it will be laborious and dangerous to go after it, so he does not name it at all. The next section will explain the theory in relation to the divine weapons in real life and Arknights.

Anyway, here's the Sesa/Oppenheimer similarities summarised:
-(possibly) older brother with a less accomplished younger brother
-Rich upbringing
-(possibly) leader of military laboratory, developing explosives
-A pacifist, tormented by the impacts of technology on the arms race, who tries to stop those impacts: Sesa not telling anything about his technology and warning Doctor about its impacts is like Oppenheimer after the war.
-Philosophy from religion: Interestingly enough, Sesa's philosophy in his voiced lines leans towards Buddhism more than Hinduism. Both religions are related and come from a common root in India. For more religious and mythological references that I cannot stuff here, check out this document.
-Eccentric personality

When asked if the Trinity test was the first detonation of an atomic weapon, Oppenheimer’s answer was: ‘Yes, in modern times.’

Which implies that it was detonated before in ancient times? And Oppenheimer seems to believe in this, which may have inspired him to come up with the atomic bomb.

Hindu scripture documents such things, and there is even real life evidence that points to the possibility.

An astra is a supernatural weapon, presided over by a specific deity and imbued with spiritual and occult powers that caused its effect or impact. Later the word came to denote any weapon which was used by releasing it from one's hand (e.g. an arrow, compared to keeping it one's hand e.g. a sword (Shastra). In Ramayana and Mahabharata, Arjuna had more astras than any other warrior. Various texts have stated that Arjuna possessed almost all astras except Narayanastra. The divya ("divine") astras were generally invoked into arrows, although they could potentially be used with anything.
Among the most destructive of the astra was the “brahmastra,” created by the god Brahma, a “single projectile charged with all the power in the universe. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race. There was neither a counter attack nor a defense that could stop it.” This is believed to have inspired the atomic bomb.
The weapon produced “an incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns that rose in all its splendor. After, corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white… After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected.

“Any target hit by the brahmastra would be utterly destroyed; land would become barren and lifeless, rainfall would cease, and infertility in humans and animals would follow for aeons of time.”
In the Bhagavad Vita, the brahmastra was detonated at the end of the final 18-day battle of Kurukshetra. The Pandavas vanquished their enemy, the Kauravas, with the devastating weapon, but the few surviving Pandavas discovered that there was nothing left to occupy, and no one left to rule. The brahmastra had destroyed the entire Kauravas society and turned the region (present-day Rajasthan) to desert. The war also marked, in the Vedic system, the beginning of the current “Kaliyuga” age.

Sounds very much like the atomic bomb with its effects of congenital effects on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The leading cause of death in New Mexico, the location of Los Alamos, is still cancer since the Trinity Test.

After the similarities, what is more chilling is that there is physical evidence for these in ancient times. When the Trinity team discovered the green glass in the bomb craters, they named the material “Trinitite.” The glass also called “nuclear,” “atomic,” and “desert” glass, was formed when silica sand was heated to temperatures above 1,700 degrees centigrade by the blast.

Ten miles west of Jodhpur, a city in the Northern Rajasthan region of India, a three-square-mile radioactive zone was discovered during excavation for a housing project in 2015-2016. Under the ground surface were a layer of highly radioactive dust and ash in a circular pattern, “consistent with what occurs underneath a typical air-burst nuclear detonation.” A 1983 National Cancer Registry report stating that leukemia and skin, bone, and prostate cancer occurrences were much higher in Jodhpur than the rest of the country.

While officials and mainstream scientists continue to find alternate explanations for anomalies like desert glass, radioactive skeletons, ancient nuclear dust, and ash, etc., the simplest explanation is that at some point in distant human history (because there was no such record in modern history), radioactive devices were detonated. Then afterwards, it might have been documented in the Hindu epics. People may regard it as myth, but there might be truth to it.

EDIT: Connections of nuclear weapons to the divine weapons might really be conspiracy theory and not that real. But if something is believed in enough, it might become truth even if it is not. And this is how it becomes a thing in Arknights. The divine weapons have been haunting me for a long time from July 2020 to February 2021 and I finally get an answer somehow.

Alright, back to Arknights. The divine weapons have appeared in Arknights before. In Ayerscarpe’s Archives 4 where the unknown speaker is likely to be Sesa, divine weapons are mentioned. With the Oppenheimer parallels and the Hindu divine weapons, there is even more evidence and there is also a theory that Sesa's former Columbian military laboratory might be Rhine Lab.

“In the hands of ordinary people, these "divine" weapons are not even as useful as a logging hatchet.”
“As for what Rhine Labs did, I actually have an idea.”
“They designed a “divine weapon,” but realized that it is nothing but a hatchet.”

We know that the speaker has experience in developing weapons and selling weapons. Sesa's specialty is Originium firearms and then RT-01 has a gun mechanism inside. Furthermore, after the explosion, Sesa had spent time in Sargon's black market selling weapons. Rim-Billiton's black market was also where Ayerscarpe bought RT-01 from.

This means that RT-01 is a prototype divine weapon and its power had enabled Ayerscarpe to protect Leonhardt and let them escape Rim-Billiton.

Another possibly related Rhine Lab weapon: Ifrit’s flamethrower

The flame emitter used by Ifrit is unquestionably one of Rhine Lab's finest works. What a wicked thing... It's impossible to tell that just a few cubic meters of the Originium contained within this thing would be enough to infect an entire building full of people!

Nuclear weapons are especially devastating in how when it does not kill, those who survive end up having long-term health issues such as cancer due to the sheer amount of radiation.

Originium will be like uranium in the sense that exposure causes Oripathy. So such a weapon may cause lots of infection and is highly dangerous.

A Walk in the Dust confirms the references of Manhattan Project even more. With the introduction of Passenger, it looks like our Nobel expy may transcend to become the Oppenheimer expy. From dynamite to atomic bomb.

Sesa’s mysteries are not revealed that much, but there can be still more of an understanding on what kind of person he is, with Passenger as a contrast, and Passenger is likely a catalyst for Sesa’s future too.

When I first saw that Passenger’s real name was Eliot Grove, I was very shocked because these are two names that I read when researching on Oppenheimer. I also cannot believe that all this reading actually led me to future relevant lore.

Elliot: T. S. Eliot.

Author who wrote The Waste Land. The Waste Land is one of Oppenheimer’s favourite literary works along with the Bhagavad Vita and Hamlet.

Similarities of Passenger and T. S. Eliot
-Prodigy in youth who assisted a professor: Elliot was an assistant to Professor Thorne at age 16 like how T. S. Eliot was a philosophy assistant for a professor at age 18.
-Moving in countries: In 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land as an American citizen, later in 1927 he became a British citizen. In a similar fashion to Passenger, he was a Columbian citizen and in the course of the event, he became a Sargonian. Both the writer and the character share a similar consensus that returning to their old citizenship was something they both don’t want to do. .

Some of T. S. Eliot's writing also matches A Walk in the Dust and Passenger.
-'April is the crulest month': A Walk in the Dust took place in April on the CN server.
-'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.': Keyword of 'dust' and the event is called A Walk in the Dust.
-'I have measured my life out in coffee spoons': Passenger drinks black coffee.

-'What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.'
-'In my beginning is my end.'
Compare to Passenger's EP introduction: , time is waiting, fate is churning, welcoming the opening called the end.

Grove: Leslie Groves.

Leslie Groves, another important figure in Oppenheimer’s life, is a military director who held commands for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Manhattan Project. In relation to Passenger, one of his voice lines mentions how he can show us the power of what a war weapon works.

According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, both Groves and Oppenheimer had different fields of studies yet they managed to overcome their differences to achieve a common goal. Both saw each other as equals due to the other's capabilities. Oppenheimer was more willing to answer Groves who could follow his flow of thought. As for Groves, he treated Oppenheimer as someone crucial to make the project a success.

Not only that, there are some similarities with Passenger’s character and Sesa’s character as well. Passenger was a genius, skipped a few grades, became the assistant of a well respected head scientist. Passenger is a reference to Grove, who was less educated (now this isn’t a remark of their intelligence but more of how long they stayed in an education institution) but more practical.

Remember that Sesa had finished his university education before working in the military laboratory. Passenger had probably only graduated from high school and then had to live at Sargon for 22 years.

Also, there is this part in Passenger’s Archives that sounds like Terra’s equivalent of nuclear energy:

When asked about the source of this core energy, Operator Passenger did not evade. The technique originated from some experiment from Columbia. The researchers there think that this is related to ancient Sarkaz witchcraft. They shaped a kind of rare spell to Orginium energy, and discovered several traces of Originium crystals. The related Columbian research centers think that this is an entirely new energy possibility, and started research. Afterwards, Passenger did not reveal too much.

The event story did say the box Passenger held had the power to turn greenery into desert too.

There’s Archives 4 too:

If he was not restricted with the status of a Rhodes Island operator, we cannot imagine, if Sesa and Passenger can really take revenge on that military company or not.

What kind of revenge? Passenger’s idea of revenge was a huge fire. And if this was combined with Sesa’s firearms, we really might have a weapon of mass destruction.

In the script of A Walk in the Dust, Eliot says this to Kal'tsit:

'If really like you said, this Originium energy can become a weapon in some form--'

Much foreshadowing. Then there is how Sesa is a weapons and firearms specialist. If that dreadful technology of Passenger and Sesa's firearms were to be combined, Terra's atomic bomb might just happen.

Though for now, Sesa believes in Buddhist philosophy and names himself after a Hindu nagaraja while Passenger said before that he would not let his teacher's technology to be used for war. But how sure are they? Will their opinions change as the war on Terra goes on?

Therefore, the fact that Passenger’s real name have references to two people who have influenced Oppenheimer may imply that Passenger is likely to influence Sesa and possibly change Sesa’s future. And maybe that of Terra.

There are so many signs that point to weapons of mass destruction becoming a thing in Terra. And a thing about WMDs is that due to the threat of mutually assured destruction, there has not been any more uses of nuclear weapons or major wars since World War 2. Hopefully it stays this way.

Wars have ravaged history and we cannot take peace for granted. And of course there are also other wars being referred to in Arknights.

Either way, I look forward to how the plot will progress from here.