Resonance Cascade



"I never thought I'd see a Resonance Cascade, let alone create one..."

- Scientist

Doctor Gordon Freeman was the scientist who was chosen to insert a very large crystal into the base of the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, which upon doing so, created the Resonance Cascade. The Cascade caused an aggressive rift to form between the Xen border world and the Black Mesa complex on Earth. While at first mostly Xenian basic wildlife, like Headcrabs and barnacles fell through the rift, eventually other intelligent creatures, such as the Vortigaunts, were sent by the Nihilanth to the other side. The cascade would continue until someone stopped it, so Gordon Freeman took up the job. After the rift that resulted from the Cascade was stopped on Earth's side by Gordon Freeman when he launched a large satellite rocket into outer space, the remaining scientists from the Lambda Core discovered that the portal was being held open on the other side by Nihilanth, the current Xen overlord. Gordon Freeman then went through another portal to Xen and killed the Nihilanth which closed the Cascade's rift.

According to notes from Gordon's desk in the game Half-Life: Decay, he states that every object has a set Resonance. When studied, the object will resonate even more, and sometimes even rapidly. If the object resonates too much, it has capabilities of splitting dimensional rifts and opening portals. When the G-Man delivered the large sample of crystal, it resonated so much that it created a very powerful portal.