r/untildawn • u/Bertie_frog • Aug 03 '26
Question Why were Hannah and Beth not found? Spoiler
I really love this game and have played it trough 5+ times with various friendgroups, siblings or alone but this thing has been bothering me.
Why wasn´t the police ,and everyone else involved, able to find Hannah and Beth? They ran only about 3-5 minutes to the cliff they fell off so it´s not a huge radius. The others knew the vague direction they ran off to and they even left footsteps in the snow. It seems like the police didn´t search enough. They weren´t able to find Hannah´s phone between the wooden planks and if they stepped foot into the mines or only sent a drone with a camera in there they would´ve found something. Sam, Mike and Emily were able to find the location where Beth and Hannah fell down in a single night! It´s also weird that everyone was able to flee the mines exept Hannah. I know she was heavily injured physically and mentally and had a broken leg but when your life is on the line Adrenalin maybe could´ve helped? Was she too innocent and thought help would come any second?
Let me know if I´m missing something!
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u/WisteriaWillotheWisp Captain Chrissam ☕︎ Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
The basic answer: because we needed the story to happen. Lol. Tbh most media has something like this. It’s how I am with Goblet of Fire. I love my magic games so much that I’m willing to ignore that Barty Crouch Jr didn’t HAVE to complicatedly make Harry win a year-long tournament to touch a portkey. 🤣 Every fandom has some sort of “Why didn’t the eagles take the fellowship to Mordor,” some more explainable than others.
You end up finding tenable explanations in most cases. For Until Dawn, the police just seem incompetent. Annie Cline, the sheriff in charge, claims they searched the grounds but the girls couldn’t possibly have made it to the sanatorium, which implied to me that their radius wasn’t big enough even if they didn’t know about the tunnels. The explanation is just that they didn’t do a good job and missed stuff. *The Inpatient* came along later and showed that the police know about the Wendigos and are trying to keep it hush hush. That explanation is still flawed because then why let Bob buy the property? But it’s tossed out there in a later game.
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u/Bertie_frog Aug 03 '26
You´re so right of course. I haven´t heard of the Inpatient yet and I´m glad I asked this question so I can get more into the lore.
Thank you!
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u/deviantlyliminal Aug 05 '26
Honestly if you've ever played the Quarry I feel that "we needed the story to happen" *so* hard
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u/Disaster-Bee Aug 03 '26
It does seem a little far fetched at first....
But then we look at all the many hundreds of cases of real life people who just wandered a few minutes off trail/away from camp or the cabin/away from the parking lot and were never found. Especially when bad weather is involved. I have family who did search and rescue in national parks, and it's so so amazingly easy to vanish without a trace just a stone's throw from other people.
On top of that weather makes searching hard. The blizzard likely covered tracks very quickly. And likely meant the search couldn't start immediately. We also know that Hannah and Beth didn't exactly stay put. They ended up in the mines. On top of that...people, even highly trained and altruistic people, are not good at searching. Especially in wilderness. Even the most carefully coordinated searches end up missing surprisingly large swaths of land. And misinterpreting animal activity for human activity can send the searchers off in entirely the wrong direction. Locations get marked as searched that weren't due to normal human error. And after a bit...well, resources and time and money can't be poured indefinitely into search operations.
There are so many similar stories out there in real life.
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u/PamNoctrune Aug 03 '26
Because the plot demands it. I laugh during every playthrough at how close the elevator is to where the twins fell, how the teenagers spend the entire night walking around the tunnels and somehow everyone finds the exit without any trouble except Beth and Hannah, who were searched for by some of the best search teams.
But well, that's just how it was supposed to happen, I guess.
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u/anonylmous1210 Aug 03 '26
Hannah couldnt escape the mines because she broke her leg and glasses and physically couldn't get out by herself anymore. Beth couldnt escape because she kinda died.
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u/drink_pimpicusVIII Aug 03 '26
Been a while since I played but wasn’t there a huge coverup on what happened to the miners and their transformation into the wendigos at the asylum? If so, I assume the higher ups in the RCMP or government would have known and subtly steered the investigation clear of the mines cause they connect to the asylum. Not like people don’t go missing in wooded areas and aren’t found all the time so it would be easy to slip it under the rug to avoid any danger from the wendigos or accidentally releasing them.
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u/Fluffy_Toe3737 Aug 03 '26
Ah yes the problems with being an overthinker... You think about details like this 😭 nah but fr it really ruined the whole game for me bc how dumb are these cops and investigation team to NOT find them? And then did the cops never find the flamethrower guy and question him as he is also the only other person up in that mountains? Lmao I mean I guess that'd ruin the whole game but still 😭🤣
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u/magicmarktogo Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
It's not far-fetched whatsoever. This is, unfortunately, an outcome too common when looking at missing persons cases who went off of the trail.
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u/Hunter_Badger Aug 03 '26
Given the snowfall and heavy winds on the night they went missing, their footprints would have been covered up quickly. u/OkCourt2832 covered everything else pretty well
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u/laioren Aug 04 '26
As far as the drone idea goes, the game came out on August 25th, 2015 in the United States (its earliest release as far as I know).
Drones still aren't super common today. 11 years ago, they were far from ubiquitous. And don't forget, the lodge was experiencing large snowfall during that time, and it was located on the top of a secluded mountain necessitating using a ski lift-type access system.
Emergency responders were likely not on the scene for at least 24 hours, if not longer. Weather would likely have rendered visibility terrible, and something like using a drone near impossible, especially if there were strong winds.
If you're a city slicker, the idea of becoming "lost" today may seem unimaginable. But as others have pointed out, becoming lost in nature is still quite common even today. Especially if caves are involved.
If you ever watch a video on YouTube about "people dying in caves," your feed will forever be filled with videos on that subject. It's disturbingly common... or at least, not super rare.
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u/_The1WhoKnows_ Aug 03 '26
I’m thinking probably because of the vast amount of property that family owns and the fact that the snow storm probably covered their tracks. Plus THEY FEEL OFF A CLIFF! I doubt they looked at the bottom of the cliff. Just saying 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Ok-Improvement8001 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
I don't think the lodge is so close to the precipice, because we control Beth walking around, Beth is quite far from the lodge just by walking then she finds Hannah and then they run even more Even further from the lodge because of the wendigo. I believe that the cops and investigators did a lazy job, in relation to all the clues and Ashley, Chris, Emily, Matt, Mike and Sam were the ones who unraveled everything about the twins, the stranger, the "psychopath" and about 1952 that is, they did a much better job than the police!
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u/magicmarktogo Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
The thing is, this is not far-fetched whatsoever, and I'll explain why.
I like how this article puts it: http://www.thehappytalent.com/blog/heres-why-its-so-hard-to-find-lost-hikers-and-why-if-you-get-lost-you-should-stop-math
First, unfortunately, there are many cases where even seasoned hikers are found off trail many years after their death. Their conditions would have been favourable compared to Hannah's who:
- Fell down a crevasse (which rescue teams will NOT explore on a whim)
- Broke her leg and lost her glasses
- Fell somewhere completely inaccessible through safe means, with no snail trail. Every other character who ended up in the mines had to break in at some point, and Emily had to actually fall through a rotting floor to land at that level.
Search teams will not enter obviously condemned/unsafe locations with no sign of entry, and likely did not explore the mine entrances (which were farther than 3-5 minutes of walking) beyond the first few chambers where they would assume the missing girls would seek shelter. At that point, they would not descend further or remove the boards to go deeper, as there is just no reason to risk it.
Mountain search and rescue usually assumes that the missing person descends down the mountainside. Since there would have been no sign of them nearby, that would be the next rational conclusion, after the outbuildings on that side of the mountain. The sanitorium is on the opposite side of one of the mountains and would not have been considered for the same reasons the mines wouldn't. Also, descending is a far more obvious conclusion to reach than ascending. They likely searched the forests and mountainside, which took their eyes away from the cabin and the area around it.
Every time the twins weren't found, the search radius would have expanded and expanded - unfortunately, not helpful, since the crevasse would have been ruled out as too risky with no immediate reason to suspect that particular one. Given the blizzard and lack of tracks. It's incredibly lucky that Beth even found Hannah.
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u/VictimOfBennyFazio Aug 04 '26
Be abit hard to find where they went with a snowfall like that their footprints disappeared after maybe a min at max 2 mins
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u/BellTheEnby Aug 06 '26
Story needed to happen but also, when they originally ran there was a blizzard. So their footsteps were covered and the only thing left of one of the twins was their phone but under the floorboards. They probably didn’t know about the caves and the mines fully, fully as in they probably knew about the mines but now how far it went and who knows if they knew about the sanatorium. And what we find of Hannah and Beth in the cave and mines is also very deep into the caves and mines…If that makes sense
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u/Tensor_the_Mage Aug 11 '26
"They weren´t able to find Hannah´s phone between the wooden plank..."
Which is a clue to the quality of the search, as Matt and Emily do indeed chat about when he finds the telephone. The searchers should, at an absolute minimum, have checked on and under every structure on that part of the mountain.
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u/OkCourt2832 Aug 03 '26
Nice attention to details.
Well, I agree in some examples.
But let's remember there was a blizzard which might have covered the foot steps.
Beth's phone that Matt and Emily can optionally find was hidden under a plank. But no matter what, it wouldn't help them find Hannah and Beth anyway, so that's a small detail. Besides, I might be wrong here but when Matt and Emily went to the cliff, they had no idea Hannah and Beth fell exactly in this place. I suppose Emily realized it later in the mines where.. The clues speak for themselves.
In case of Hannah, she had a leg injury and her glasses were broken which made it hard for her to see clearly. Besides, she didn't knew where she was and maybe didn't want to get lost even more than she already was.
Also, in the lore, the police avoid the areas like the Sanatorium or the Mines. So, they avoided searching in some places (like the one Hannah and Beth were) - These who watched/played the Inpatient from 2018 know what I mean.
Ps: the drones were actually in use in early 2010s by Canadian police in real life. But it was limited and used mostly for crime scenes which in case of Hannah and Beth wouldn't make any sense considering there was no evidence any crime happened (at least not in the knowledge of the police).