The Horrifying Subnautica "Iceberg" Explained 

Just found this today :) I really like your narration!

The distress signal messages are intercepted from the Warper enemies which is why they hunt you down.

"I'm just messing with you guys" you have no idea how much relief I felt at that. Don't ruin the sacred bladderfish.

Just want to add, the frozen Leviathan that's infected with Khara was confirmed to be dead by the devs, the Khara is still alive because it has been slowly consuming the inside of the leviathan... Similar to the way Margaret was eating the inside of the Reaper Leviathans while simultaneously using it as shelter.

The vents that peepers are circulating through to the emperor's tank were specifically designed to carry the enzyme out. When you see a peeper in the wild that has a glittering trail on it, it has interesting flavor text about carrying the enzyme. This was a small measure to slow the extinction event of the planet's life and most likely would have been a fully functioning distribution system for the cure if the precursors had been able to hatch emperors. If you put one of the glittering peepers into an aquarium with an infected fish, it will get cured. So, Maida was probably eating these enzyme-rich peepers to stave off her infection.

One thing about Tier 2. The whole point of Riley being able to leave was because he was cured. The canon being shut down wouldnt matter if he couldn't survive the virus. But in curing himself, he also released the cure (the baby leviathans) making it accessible to the entire planet. So by the time SubZero happened, the virus would be much less of a threat by then and also I dont really consider Riley leaving selfish, because he technically released the cure out onto the whole planet.

Straight up, the "why has no one found this out about the leviathans yet" point is because there have been like 6 people alive on that planet in the last thousand years, and most of them have been pretty preoccupied with survival lol

It makes sense that the warpers killed off or ensured all the survivors would die. Considering that our radio/pda can pick up the warpers sending radio messages, the warpers should be able to intercept ours. Riley, the protaganist, never sent a transmission because the radio was damaged and he wasn't awake to fix it untill everyone else was already killed off.

In regards to the whole lifepod thing, you can actually find a PDA entry in the Aurora that details that the lifepods are SUPPOSED to be stocked with much more resources than you actially find in your lifepod (can't remember the exact entry, it said that they must be stocked with multiple first aid kits, tools, etc), so Alterra isn't even stocking their lifepods like they're supposed to

I thought it was pretty obvious that the mysterious messages were accidentally intercepted communications between Warpers. The various Lifepods being empty are usually explained by the PDAs you find in or near them or their locations. Several of them are in places with Reapers or Ampeels. One's PDA recording even cuts off with an explosion.

That bladderfish bit actually went so hard, i completely believed you right up until you turned it around. Great vid lad keep it up.

Note: the Void is the actual main landmass of the planet 4546b. The reason why we are on the map at all and not down a couple dozen kilometers or stuck in the middle of the void at the beginning of the game is because the captain stayed behind and guided the Aurora onto a plateau miles above the surface of the planet. The entire map of subnautica is quite literally the top of a colossal mountain. Also, the Ghost Leviathans are bottom feeders at the base of 4546b’s main ecosystem. We haven’t scratched the surface of what this planet originally contained, and we likely never will since many of the original ideas were scrapped. (The Sea Emperor is a normal fish in the void and used to live in schools btw. It also was originally going to be the size of the Aurora.)

Ah the "all is just a dream" theory, no theory i have ever hated so much

So a few points...Sam and her sister are born and raised on Earth - in the original beta they were even outright from England (still not sure why they made them American in the final release). Margaret may have survived due to her diet and the low frequency of Kharaa in the isolated arctic region (the only real source there is the frozen one). "Transgov" doesn't mean they're government-run, it means they transcend governments - Alterra and their many competitors are pure corporate entities, which is why we get the funny epilogue in the closing credits of the first game. The Emperor leviathans probably aren't gone - we just don't get to explore much beyond the regions we work in. Also, we find out in BZ that the Kharaa is by that point extinct on the planet except for in the frozen leviathan, which suggests the disease doesn't make it off due to human intervention, having been cured by the Emperor's enzyme release (and the babies continuing the job). There is no socialism in the Subnautica future - it's a capitalist dystopia where all major groups are companies and corporations of various sorts, and even the independent ones are dependent on the big transgov corporations. Sol just means our solar system - the Sunbeam is from the Sol system, _our_ system.

So as someone who got really into this game, I just want to clarify the subject matter at the beginning of tier 4. The things hunting people and keeping count of targets remaining are the purple teleporting squid creatures. They are hunter/seeker androids built by the aliens to kill survivors from shot down ships. You even encounter a factory where they are assembled inside one of the alien structures.

12:29 Just a minor note on Ghost leviathan, much like Diablos in monster hunter, they are highly territorial, but not carnivorous. So they wouldn't eat the survivors, just tear them to shreds for existing.

The giant peeper thing was in all honesty probably a bug. When Subnautica first went into Early Access, I played it on a really cruddy Dell All-In-One desktop (basically a monitor with a PC in it). It could barely run the game and it took up to 15 minutes to load a save. I played on this for 2 years until it crapped out. Occasionally, I'd have issues with area & model loading, and sometimes I'd see things like giant reefbacks spinning wildly in areas they don't normally spawn in. In the early days, the game's prototype stage coding could just swap the AI and models of some fish, leading to - for example - a reefback in the dunes with the AI and size of a reaper leviathan, and that was back when you needed reefback DNA for depth upgrades! It's still a neat urban legend, but really it's not all that surprising.

The fact that the only human is no kind of predator and is in fact essentially bait, just suriving by their wits, is probably my favourite thing about the first game.

After years of questioning how Maida is alive we finally got an answer. Last bacon interviewed a dev about it and he said that, basically, since Maida ate a reaper and a reaper has a lot of enzymes from the animals it eats she was able to be alive 10 years later

This is critical to your theory about Natural Selection and the Kharaa: In the original version of Below Zero, the Kharaa bacterium WAS actually going to get off the planet. They changed producers in the middle of Below Zero’s development and massively altered the storyline when they did so. In the original iteration, the satellite above the planet is actually called Vespa Station, and you have to regularly send supplies and samples to the station while you are working for Alterra (your sister is actually ON Vespa Station and was very much alive when you were there). During the game, you actually send a sample of the Kharaa bacterium secured from the Leviathan to Vespa Station which somehow escapes containment. What happens after this, we’ll never know since the situation was never resolved before the story change.

Subnautica is 100% the scariest game I have ever played. I couldn't even make it out of the starting area. Then again, I have a lifelong fear of deep water and the unknown things that dwell within it.

For that big gargantuan leviathan skeleton you found in the lost River. There as an extremely well done mod that has it depicted as coming back to life and accurate to its actual size when it was alive it’s called “return of the ancients” and they even have one of the original composers for the first game working on it

About the gargantuan leviathan theory, we need to keep in mind that the playable area for subnautica is situated in a volcanic creator as stated by the first few messages of the PDA, so if the planet really is full of water as the PDA states, there should be more than enough space for the gargantuan leviathan, or even bigger creatures, to roam outside of the creator. It might have got inside the volcano for testing from the precursors or even by accident.

7:50 The Mesmer's entry in the PDA states at the end that you should get a closer look. This means either that the PDA wants to implicitely harm/kill you or that the Mesmer is capable of hacking the PDA. i'm not sure what would be scarier

39:15 It's the Warpers. They're basically biological AI watchers created by the precursors. They're not distress calls, we're just accidentally tapping into their radio frequencies.

15:36 Bioaccumulation is the process by which materials such as vitamins and microplastics are gradually concentrated in organisms closer to the top of the food chain. This occurs because, while the prey (peepers with Enzyme 42) have a low amount of the material, their predators accumulate a lot of it by eating many of them, and then their predators eat many of them, and so on. So Reapers would have a very high concentration of Enzyme 42 in their body due to preying on so many organisms that prey on organisms containing Enzyme 42. This is most likely how eating a ton of Reaper flesh was able to cure Marguerite

39:00 the "distress calls" talking about hunting / analyzing is the Warpers communicating to each other via radio waves. The reason most survivors are dead is because the warpers found and eliminated them. The reason Riley survives is because his radio breaks and therefore cannot send out messages

The secondary mission wasn't top secret really, it was a "while you are in the area for this time, search for what happened to the ship that disappeared near this planet" mission. This is because the degassi ship that was shot down had an insurance policy that required the insurance company to pay for a reasonable effort to search for it in the event it didnt "come home". It was known that the planet was an ocean planet and is why the aurora was outfitted with subs and the new mark 3 prawn suit specifically so it had the tools to perform a thorough search of this planet. Also, as for the missing life pods the game literature addressed that as well. The Aurora was damaged in such a way only the port side life pods could deploy and those are all accounted for. The starboard side life pods were immediately destroyed explaining why they are never found other then maybe being pieces of scrap metal.

Another theory is that the kharaa that we encounter in the first subnautica game cannot survive in the freezing temperatures of Sector Zero, therefore not killing Marguerite. And the frozen leviathan we see in Below Zero has the kharaa, but isn't contagious.

The bone plate leviathan looks more like a crustacean than a slug. The holes on it's sides are where it's legs or similar appendages were attached. The holes are reminiscent of a crustacean with its legs removed.

The one about the life pods not being built to save you is for two reasons. 1. It’s a game and is meant to make survival harder for the player 2. Most life pods and boats are meant to keep you alive long enough for rescue under normal conditions

31:37 I always assumed the massacre of Obraxis Prime was caused by a survivor of a crash on the planet that got a little too "trigger happy" with either the wildlife or his fellow survivors, prompting them to remove all weapons except for the survival knife to prevent excessive damage. 33:50 One theory on the anatomy of this creature is that it was an invertebrate with a shell, which is what is left behind, and it would have "legs" that came out of the holes that line its sides.

The frozen leviathan is dead. It's been confirmed multiple times. It died a long time ago and it's body was preserved in the ice.

Just so you know, you got flora and fauna mixed up. An easy way to remember is that plants are on the floor(a). Or that a fawn(a) is a baby deer

I don't know if this is a commonly missed detail, but in the PDA Ghost Leviathans are filter feeders, but due to their size they aggressively protect their feeding territory through ramming attacks

9:22 you forgot to mention the game says that the skeleton was just a juvenile a juvenile that was a mile long

I doubt Riley would infect the world, since he technically owes 3 billion credits to Alterra because of all the equipement, alien techonoliges, life pods, and basically the entire Aurora itself since he's the last survivor from the Aurora, and they gotta blame someone and CHARGE someone or else they're not letting him land.

Man I would've loved a Peeper Leviathan as a non-hostile counterpart to the Reaper Leviathan

45:00 the Kharaa got its name from the Mongolian word for "Watch Out!" This was stated in Natural Selection 2, where the name originally came about when the first recordings of the bacterium were recovered from a Mongolian ship, in which the recordings consistently had the ships crew shouting out the phrase. It was at first assumed to be the first name of the infection, and the misconception stuck around after it was disproven.

Theory about the gargantuan leviathan. It was a juvenile when it entered the lost river to eat ghost leviathans but due to the absence of food it didn’t leave until it grew too big to swim back out. Left to slowly starve as it tried to escape. The bones might in fact still be of a juvenile leviathan…. It could very well be bigger

It was so wild when I realized that Unknown Worlds made this, back in 2002-2006 i played natural selection 1 competatively, winning a couple of tournaments with my team. I was playing subnautica without realizing it, and when I saw the term "the kharaa virus" i almost did a damn back flip. I really wish they'd make a NS 3. NS 2 didn't catch on and I think that was because the engine they used was so different from the original source engine and the original half life engine, but with ultra modern engines like unity or UE5, you can make a game feel like whatever the hell you want!

I don't think Riley is the karar spreader, i believe Alterra probably took the karar in the frozen leviathan intending to use it as a bioweapon but allowed It to get out, either intentionally or unintentionally

That single cell zone along with the Atlas sub visual give me hope that it will be in the next game. We know that it will have likely have multiplayer, which probably means a bigger sub and therefore a bigger map. Perfect opportunity to implement an idea like the single cell zone.

The best part is, the gargantuan leviathan skeleton that is in the game, is the juvenile version, meaning the full grown version is much larger!

IIRC, the unused biome below the lava zones was from the alpha builds when the Emperor Leviathan was being implemented. Its been a loooong time since I've seen the development updates from that period, but I do recall a biome at the bottom of the map that was essentially just a big empty bubble of safe shallows where they'd test locomotion for the larger species. Again, my knowledge on this is incredibly dated, so I could very well be wrong entirely

Durin the bit where he talks about A.I, there's also a PDA entry on the Aurora where someone reprogrammed a bot to have a personality and only responds to politeness or something similar. Been a while since I've seen it, but I think it's interesting to note.

I swear the PDA used to say that the incident on Obraxis Prime was about a guy who crash landed on the planet then eliminated all the wild life, so they only put the Survival Knife in the essential survival kit

I think it would be absolutely incredible if unknown worlds were to create a whole bunch of bigger games that encompass a larger scope of the subnautica universe entirely

About AI research on 4546B: This was pretty much confirmed in some of the PDAs in Below Zero. A few of the scientists and researchers either had some background in AI, or were there for the express purpose of AI research.

Great job packing all of that lore into this one video. It definitely felt a lot shorter than 40 minutes, very entertaining.

I love the idea of Azmuth sitting over the Ultimatrix in a blind fury while he tries to figure out why, after millions of years of evolution, all his DNA samples keep turning into crabs

The idea of the life pod theory, the one where you aren’t actually supposed to survive, seems super plausible. Honestly Alterra is a super ruthless and vicious company, they don’t seem to care what happens to employees. If a employee(s) survive far from earth they don’t want to spend money recovering them. Evidence for this theory is lack of supplies, as said in the video, but another piece is that look at how the life pod is constructed. When Riley was shot off it started to break, the fire extinguisher instantly came off, then the panel that knocked him out came off, it also caught fire that could have killed him. Maybe it’s just me, I mean obviously anything would have probably caught damage, but Alterra is a super advanced company. Don’t you think they’d be able to keep a fire extinguisher and panel of all things in place? Idk maybe just me.

My theory on why maida survived so long: As Frankly said maybe consuming the reaper may have helped her but what if that reaper may have consumed a pepper with enzyme 42

My experience playing Subnautica wasn't necessarily thalassophobia, but general fear of the unknown. I refused to use guides or maps for the best experience of this, only knowing what to expect from clips I saw online. Only after I had a true genuine idea of where everything was, including the lava zones did I look at a map just to 100% some stuff. It was one of the most fun experiences I've had with a video game. By not knowing where anything was, even the Grassy Plateaus were scary at first (LOL). Little did I know just how deep the ocean got, how dark the surroundings could get, and how surprising some of the fish could be. It kept me on my toes at all times not knowing what I'd find. However, that somewhat hurt the replayability for me because knowing what to expect and where everything is just takes the fear aspect out of the game. It's still very beautiful, just not absolutely terrifying the way it is initially. Below Zero helped me experience that feeling all over again but still just fear of the unknown. I can't wait for subnautica 3 to experience it all over again.

The theory about the Kharar virus being a “natural response” to the universe’s draining resources reminds me of the theory regarding the monsters in Evolve (remember that game)? Where those monsters were meant to stop colonization, since they’re incredibly aggressive, spread fast, and essentially decimate an entire planet (in a week iirc). The difference here is that I believe it was hinted that the monsters were artificially made, while the kharar is still up in the air as to whether or not it was made artificially or naturally.

Wonderful video. It’s wonderful to see how much thought and imagination you’ve put into the world of Subnautica. I shall neither confirm nor deny anything herein. Happy hunting. -Flayra (design director on Subnautica and Natural Selection 1/2)

I like to think that millions, or even billions of years ago, there was a primitive civilisation on 4546b because of the fact in an older build in Subnautica, there were strange underwater structures that almost looked like buildings with bridges

Fantastic video! I have never played Subnautica but I have always enjoyed the lore behind it. Who knew something that seemed so shallow could actually be hiding a lot in it's depths

Yeah idk about the entity one, man. The radio signals talking about the unaccounted target are from the warpers communicating to each other. And they're talking about you the player Edit: Forgot to point out. Notice how the warpers mostly watch you and study you, especially before being infected. In my opinion they are the creepiest things in the game

For the part being talked about at 7:45 there's literally a pda that's about some robot assistant acting up because one of the crew members started fiddling with it, so they could have somehow integrated that into all the blueprints. (Like near the propulsion cannon fragments in the Aurora.) 18:30 there probably wouldn't be enough reaper leviathans to use as a cure, thus they had to rule that out and besides, did the precursors even eat meat?

man i remember hearing about the single celled biome and wishing it was in the game. Its such a cool idea, but it feels kind reasonable that it was cut

I always had some re-writes, but you can take them and twist them into theories if you want: It has always given me some sorts of sad-delight to imagine the Precursors where driven to find a cure because they viewed themselves as the only Intelligent and maybe even Sentient life out there. The death of their whole species wasn't just something tragic to themselves, but as one of the 'Fermi Paradox Barriers' so difficult to overcome in the first place... it might never have reoccurred. Now if only this race was also telepathic, and hadn't driven the one creature that could help into seclusion. Thus the precursors died thinking they where the only ones, and the last ones, to know the fear of extinction before it's cold touch. The part that you can use as a theory though: A desperate group working in this very research station, after everything had obviously failed, decided to do something heretical at that point. They deliberately intergraded their consciousnesses into a range of bio-machines knowing that it would destroy their sentience. It was a last ditch attempt to hold onto at least some of their intelligence, putting it into these cold machines that are driven by purposes programed. Creating not only a whole range of creatures that we know to be the warpers but things we have yet to see down there in the Void.... Perhaps something more machine then biological, at this point.

One thing to know is that you can find a Natural Selection 2 poster in the upper deck of Wreck 1 located in the Grassy Plateaus, as well as in the deepest section of Wreck 2 inside a Prawn Suit bay, found in the same biome. A third poster can be found in the Living Quarters (Cabin 6) of the Aurora. This 100% proves that both games are based in the same universe.

The warpers were sending the messages as the crew members were all infected they hunted them after the distress messages were sent until riley was the last person left and after he is cured they dont attack him they are hunting the infected to stop the spread

I can see its already been said but yeah, the intercepted transmissions are from the warper's although i do like the idea that they are purposefully using the distress signals from the other life pods to lure any survivors into more dangerous territory, adds more intelligence and intention that feels very chilling. (Its also a neat bow that gives an in lore reason as to why you can find broken and abandoned life pods well before you ever get their distress signals.)

Really love the way you do iceberg videos, rarely do the first tiers get me this engaged as much as the last tier. Awesome video 🔥

42:45 - 42:60 Bro was having a stroke trying to say “No struggle at all”

Idea for a terrifying third game: subnautica the void. Set at the bottom of the bottom of the void's ocean floor, you have one objective. Find your way up back to the surface

26:00 I’m 100% confidant that the biome was based on the crypted “the black carpet”

36:54 I'm pretty sure this message system was from the teleporting cyborg squids made by the precursors. It would make sense since they are like the automated security force and they probably got a few body counts on the leftover human survivors in the crash clean up. Hence, them detecting one last human alive (you).

38:00 That's the Warpers communicating.

The scariest part of the gargantuan leviathan isn't that it's big, it's that it's dead, meaning something else may have killed it.

happy halloween man! love your videos so much, the quality is always great and you are a really good narrator, wishing you a horrendous amount of subs ❤

If that single called landscape thingy was added, it could be the void instead. It’d make sense

Really enjoyed this video and the comments explaining things as well. I’ve had this game for years and finally found the time to play it over the holidays, thankfully my steam deck runs it great. And now I’m addicted to the lore so your video was recommended just in time. Quality content! ❤

Fascinating video. Just got this game for the fam. Thank you for making this. I know it takes a lot of work. 😀

I'm honestly still so upset about the way that margaret survived, bc it doesn't match up AT ALL with what Bart's later description of the attack on their base. Even ignoring how little her story makes sense on its own, Bart describes LIGHTS coming UP from the CAVES BELOW THEIR BASE. He describes the creature that attacked them as "massive tentacles from the deep" and the ONLY creature that matches the description is a sea dragon leviathan (massive, tentacled, lives in deep caves, bioluminescent) and we also ALREADY KNOW that the sea dragons come up to the open waters periodically to catch and drag reaper leviathans down into their volcanic caves and eat them, so a sea dragon is the only thing that makes sense. Best I can tell is they totally retconned the attack to bring margaret back. I honestly have so many criticisms about below zero (and ESPECIALLY ABOUT ITS STORY) but I don't feel like typing it all out here bc I would be here for forever. og subnautica is an absolute masterpiece and should be played by everyone, but below zero was just. mid.

I actually felt that Earth being no longer existent was implied…that is why majority of the ships/PDAs/pods have enough knowledge to be able to let humans construct habitat in other planets (i remember there was even a terraforming gun before)…meaning Alterra is somewhat like Weyland Yutani supplying humans with necessary technology to colonize other planets…same goes with other intra company ships…

34:10 I think the big holes on the sides are basically for fins, and it does seem similar to sand sharks in terms of body plates. I don't think it was a sea floor animal, more like an agile omnivore (judging from the eyes on the sides) that is a ancestor to said sandsharks

i an interview with a dev, he said that he created an animation that would play just before the game ends where an infected cave crawler scuttles across the roof of your shuttle right before the screen cuts to black, implying that Riley did in fact carry the infection off planet and was the catalyst for the war seen in Natural Selection

I think you might enjoy a Divinity Original Sin 2 iceberg, lots of stuff going on there that gets crazier the more you learn and what characters you interact with. Really in depth game and very fun

I wonder if the Single Celled Biome is inspired by The Black Carpet. It's an old wives' tale about a giant black organism that crawls across the seafloor and is basically a conglomerate of billions of single celled organisms.

Id like to add that the sea dragon didn’t randomly attack the base. The precursors knew that the sea emperors could produce the cure for Kharaa, so they stole its egg. The sea dragon then rammed the facility, leading to its death and the spread of khraa to the whole planet.

if you look at the map at 40:57, you can see icons for Peepers on the edge of the map (near the Grand Reef, the Sea Treader etc) - maybe some more support to the theory of Peepviathans? :p

Absolutely love this game and suggest it to anyone who enjoys singleplayer exploring. I've dumped hundreds of hours into both 1 and 2. Just being alone in a world with only your PDA speaking to you really sets the mood. Not to mention the simple building and crafting allows your to get lost in just building bases before you even get far into story progression.

Below zero has a lot of icebergs, literaly

"Margiruet might have accidentally cured herself from the Kharaa by eating a Reaper Leviathan" Mission Failed Successfully.

Great video, I bet the Devs are sitting in front of their monitors watching this like: Write it down, write it down!!!!

your iceberg videos are really entertaining, so much so that I can't stop watching them lol, keep up the good work and wish you the best of luck with your career!

The infuriation I felt during the section in which they were unknowingly talking about the warpers

Just want to point out that we do get a little bit of lore about earth (although not exactly about the planet itself) when we scan the cuddlefish (yes that cute little guy/girl) where it states that the dolphin species (pretty certain it's the battlenose dolphin) went extinct. So I'm assuming that implies earths still around and populated though it's probably unrecognizable at this rate.

If I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve never played any of the subnautica or natural selection games. After watching this, I found out that subnautica is much more than an underwater survival game. That is truly fascinating.

The bladder-cult joke gave me China IL flashbacks from that episode where Frank is kicked out for pissing on his brother, and ends up as the chosen one. Ugh, the sounds whenever his stomach moved. Thanks, rly needed to remember that lol.

Imagine if the next game took place on a similar water world, but tidally-locked, and it takes place on the night side. We could see the Single Cell Biome there Subnautica: Into the Abyss

All i can hear watching a video about Subnautica is "Detecting multiple leviathan class lifeforms in the region, are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?"

i think the case of the missing life pods is a easy one, some probably got destroyed on release from the debries around them, some probably burned up in the planets atmosphere and became "wrecks" or like you said landed on the outside of the map where no one will ever see them again.

The strange messages you get about the hunting/analyzing I think are from the warpers because they both make clicking noises and in one of the bases the warpers data scan says that it’s possibly made up of multiple creatures so I think the precursors made the warpers to kill anything with the virus because after you get cured with enzyme 42 the warpers stop attacking so I think it’s the warpers studying you and seeing if you have the virus cause at first you don’t see a lot and then as the game progresses you see more and more and also I noticed the warpers often attack other creatures with the virus

You know in original beta the original ending showed a cave crawler infected with the virus had made it onto the escape ship

33:27 So I'm watching this while playing a game and I came to the conclusion that the holes on each side of this boy might be where boneless cartilage appendages such as tentacles would be placed but of course over time they rotted away leaving just the skeletal structure. idk I just thought of this and wanted to share it lol.

So, one possibility with the Reaper potentially curing someone by eating it, is something that happens in real life: Mercury builds up in larger predators because the mercury from their prey gradually builds up inside of them. It's possible that the enzyme may have functioned the same way: as the Reaper or other predators eat more and more prey, they eat both Peppers and smaller predators that ate the peppers, possibly causing the enzyme to build up in their tissues and making Reaper flesh hyper concentrated with it. Another possibility is the disease simply doesn't do as well in cold climates as it does in hotter areas.