The Freeze

The breached Cattle Car in Prepare to Brace.

The Freeze is a human-engineered catastrophic event across the Snowpiercer franchise, caused by a cooling agent named CW-7 that was developed as the answer to global warming in the film and the TV Series.

History

Comics

• It's unknown what actually caused the freeze, as Proloff says it was a climate weapon bomb dropped when war was declared (which was "fully operational"), while Al thinks it was an accident.
• Whatever the real cause was, it's implied by Al the freeze took mere hours, and Snowpiercer was quickly retrofitted with 1001 cars to sustain humanity, which was a miracle in itself.
• 9 other trains (including Icebreaker) also followed suit, departing before it became too cold.
• In the beginning of Volume 1, Proloff breaks a window before being caught by the guards, which causes outside air to slowly seep in.
• Multiple instances of breaches happen on Icebreaker which are caused by constant mishaps.
• Icebreaker collides with a 5 meter thick ice wall to get to Future Land, disabling the train.
• At the end of Terminus, a patch of flowers are seen growing on the ground, implying that the Earth is warming and life is beginning to return.
• In the Prequels, it's implied the freeze happened gradually (to the point that the Snowpiercer begins travelling across the world to pick up ticket holders) and that it was caused by 'Apocalypsters' by blowing up nuclear power plants and releasing 'black balloons' to ensure humanity's extinction.

Film

Pre-Film

• An artificial cooling substance named CW-7 was developed by scientists over the course of 7 years amidst protests from environmental groups and a number of developing countries. It was created as the answer to global warming as it could not be ignored anymore.
• On July 1st, 2014 at 0600 hours, the first plane took off to begin dispersing CW-7 into the upper atmosphere. 79 countries followed suit and started doing the same.

Throughout the Film

• Soon after dispersing CW-7, the world froze and all life except for in the deep oceans became extinct. The precious few who boarded Snowpiercer are the last of mankind. Plants and some select animals such as fish were saved from extinction and brought onboard, where they reside in special sections.
• Over the 18 years of Snowpiercer's journey (and through the "Revolt of the 7" and the "McGregor Riots"), the tail section was routinely punished by the use of "portals", through which limbs could be made to exit the train and be subjected to the freezing temperatures outside and frozen solid, before being smashed by a hammer.
• After 18 years, the world (or at least the Ural mountains) have warmed enough that life has begun to claw its way back. Sometime before Snowpiercer's derailment, a polar bear appears, revealing that not all life is extinct.

TV Series

Unaired Pilot Episode

• Like the TV Series and the promotional animation for the film, the freeze began when a cooling agent was released into the atmosphere by small rockets. However, according to the script, the visual color of the chemical was red.
• According to the script, the outside air was around -140°C.

Pre-series

• The Earth's temperature was rapidly rising due to climate change. Wars made the Earth even hotter, causing the ice to melt and all the species to crash. The Freeze is the consequence of using CW-7 to lower the Earth's temperature, as using the chemical led to a far worse result than was expected. CW-7 caused a massive drop in temperature, eventually bottoming out at around -120°C.
• The resulting climate change killed off almost all life on Earth, leaving Big Alice and Snowpiercer carrying the only known survivors.
• Before Snowpiercer's Departure it was -40 degrees in June, according to Zarah, and dropping. At departure it was -45 degrees and getting colder by the minute.
• It is revealed that the rich who didn't get to board the trains tried to hole up in bunkers or upload their consciousness.
• According to newspapers in the Library Car, medics and scientists predicted that the population would survive unless the weather changed, which it did. It also stated that millions of people were migrating to warmer countries in the equatorial, making the countries closes their borders perhaps denoting a explanation for the war spoken of by Ruth Wardell that occurred in the Horn of Africa. Other newspaper stated that first class vegetables are gone and how Nuclear Plants attracted a lot of survivors due to the possibility of survival with the residual heat of reactor cores, which could be a good explanation of how Asha survived.
• In the first year Joseph Wilford separated 3 cars from Big Alice to save weight and resources, leaving 100 people to die in their sleep, on a secondary track.
• After the failure of the Year Three Rebellion, 14 people including Old Ivan had an arm frozen off.

Throughout the Series

Season 1

• It is revealed that the temperature outside of Snowpiercer during it's passing of Yukon, Canada is around -120°C.
• After the failed revolution Ruth Wardell freezes an arm off of Suzanne, who volunteered to save her daughter Winnie.
• While traveling through Yukon, a Class 3 avalanche breaks a window to the Cattle Car, killing all of the cows and workers, leaving bovines extinct.
• After realizing Andre Layton escaped from The Drawers, Melanie Cavill tortured Josie Wellstead in The Hospitality Car by using a hose connected to the outside and shattered one of her fingers. Later, with help from Bess Till, Josie freezes the rest of her hand to escape and attempts to kill Melanie by flooding the room with the Freeze. Instead, Melanie escapes, leaving Josie to die in the room filled with outside air.
• During the Revolution, the Jackboots executed prisoners, such as Walter Flemming, by Lung of Ice.
• At the end of the Revolution, 7 cars were separated from the train and sent onto a siding. The occupants froze to death in 13 minutes.

Season 2

• After suffering a suit breach, causing frostbite to her shoulder and lungs, Melanie discovers snow falling despite the fact that it is supposedly too cold for snow, suggesting that the planet is beginning to recover from the Freeze and coming alive again. After further study, with a Weather balloon, Melanie determines that CW-7 is actually breaking up in the upper atmosphere and falling to the Earth, meaning that the planet will potentially be suitable for colonization again in the survivors' lifetime rather than in a thousand years.
• Wilford brought Snowpiercer to a stop twice, in a attempt to freeze everyone to death, but is foiled both times by Melanie.
• During the failed invasion of Big Alice, Icy Bob activated a Freeze deployment system in the Docking Car, that released Freeze air, that injured and killed the invaders and forced them to retreat. Icy Bob also exposes himself to the Freeze, in a sub-zero chamber, in the lab on Big Alice.
• After blowing up the Connecting Mechanism, Wilford told Melanie: "My crew know life below zero. We've run a lot of rough miles together."
• After being discovered as Wilford's informant, Pastor Logan commits suicide by breathing in the Freeze, with a hose and bag on his head.
• Boki lays the Breachmen to rest by dumping the bodies out of a car while passing over a bridge. The bodies then shatter upon impacting the frozen surface.
• After the Breachmen murders, rioters (including Jakes Carter, Annie and Thirdie Yeller) attempted to Freeze off an arm of Pike and then Layton, before being stopped by Ruth.
• Icy Bob later walks along the top of the trains to sabotage The Engine and afterwards dies aboard Big Alice.
• Josie exposed her hand to the Freeze in a chamber designed to open to the outside and discovered she has resistance to the cold.
• After taking control of the train, Wilford executed the 8 Breachmen murderers (including Eugenia) in a car by the Lung of Ice.
• After Wilford sabotaged her rescue, Melanie returned to the Breslauer Weather Station. Realizing she would not survive, she used the last of her power to save the data, wrote a note to Alex, put on her EVA Suit and walked outside to die.
• Wilford attempted to have Josie kill Bennett Knox (and Sykes) by breaching The Engine.
• When Josie breached The Aquarium to create the Pirate Train, the cold caused the water to freeze, killed all aquatic life and expanded, destroying the Car and injuring Boki and killing some Jackboots.
• After being recovered by Layton and Alex, Melanie's data shows several areas that are warming, in most of Central America and South Mexico, parts of the top and bottom of South America, Spain and southwest Europe, much of the upper parts of Africa as well as the Middle East and Greece, parts of Asia, South Africa and Madagascar, about two-thirds of South Australia and two small spots in the Dominican Republic and South India. However, North America still appears to be completely frozen over with no warm areas.

Season 3

• Without Snowpiercer’s engine, temperature inside Wilford's Rolling Gulag was in the negatives. First Class is decommissioned, with temperatures in the 1st Class Dining car reaching -25°C. Deaths also occurred from influenza.
• Research reveals that the Philippines and the Horn of Africa are warming.
• While returning to the Pirate Train, after collecting the ice cores, Bennett falls through the roof of a bunker and almost freezes to death, when his suit nearly runs out of power. Layton and Josie rescue him, though Layton himself almost freezes to death after giving Ben enough battery to last until getting on the train. While investigating sounds, Layton finds a survivor.
• Later Bennett determines that the locations checked out won't be habitable for about a century, as even though it's warming, the trends aren't steep enough to be habitable yet. However the Gulf of Aden had yet to be investigated.
• Kevin McMahon used a hose filled with the Freeze in the Night Car to torture Strong Boy to death.
• After failing to escape the rail yard and the Pirate Train, Wilford threatened to kill everyone on the train (including himself), unless the Pirate Train reconnected.
• After taking the train, Layton tells Snowpiercer that they have visited Sulawesi (Indonesian Island), Gujarat (India), Managua (Nicaragua), the Atacama (Chile) and that not one of them was warm enough for life.
• Big Alice later arrived at the warm spot, a microclimate (inversion), in a valley, in the Horn of Africa and found the temperature to be above freezing, with a lake of liquid water and melting snow.

Season 4

• While habitable, New Eden experiences some strange earthquakes that Alex monitors along with the warm spot with the help of Boki. This is a result of the atmospheric erosion caused by Gemini.
• Dr. Nima Rousseau reveals that he's a part of an international research team of 80 scientists working out of the International Peacekeeping Forces bunker in Djibouti. Nima reveals that his team developed a compound that causes CW-7 to denature in the upper atmosphere and fall from the sky, leading to the creation of the six warm spots. However, in order to spread the compound across the planet and end the Freeze, Nima needs Snowpiercer's help. Melanie agrees to retrofit the train for the mission and to stay at the bunker and help with the research.
• Nima Rousseau says the scientists where given the task ”pioneering the next age of humankind” or the reversal of CW-7’s effects by the government, however if said government is still active in any form at the time when Snowpiercer is hickjaced, remains unknown.
• Before dying, Joseph Wilford reveals that Nima was the one who created CW-7 in the first place and caused the Freeze, possibly due to Nima being too prideful to listen to warnings that CW-7 wasn't safe.
• Melanie's data shows increased radiation levels and high toxicity. Combined with Alex's data from her work at New Eden with Mr. Sprinkles, Melanie realizes that it means that Gemini is eroding the atmosphere, threatening to bring about a second end to all life on Earth, this time a permanent one. However, Nima refuses to accept that he's wrong, hijacks Snowpiercer, and sets out to launch Gemini. In the process, Nima slips up and reveals that he's been working on Gemini for fifteen years which is six years longer than the duration of the Freeze.

Trivia

• The mean annual temperature of the interior of Antarctica is -57°C, making the world in the peak of the Freeze twice as cold.
• As mentioned by Alex, nematodes (roundworms) will survive.
• After the Freeze killed all life on Earth, the only animals left are on Snowpiercer and Big Alice. They include, a pet tegu (in First Class), Erik Sotto's cat (Snowpeter), aquatic life in the Aquaculture Cars, fish in a tank (in Jinju Seong's quarters), pigs, goats, poultry, sheep, rats with the Tailies or the Headwoods' Lab, 2 or 3 dogs, (including Jupiter) cockroaches, bugs and worms (in Sanitation Cars).
• Bees and cows survived on Snowpiercer for 4 and 7 years respectively, before going extinct.
• CW-7 was originally engineered to last a thousand years, in order to protect the Earth from Global Warming for that long.
  • It's later revealed that Doctor Nima Rousseau was the one who engineered CW-7 and caused the Freeze.
• According to the first weather balloon launched from the Engine, the temperature in the upper atmosphere is at least -86 degrees Celsius (presumably -26 degrees or more, due to beeping heard from the computer every time the readout got warmer).
• In reality, creating a thing like CW-7 would be stratospheric aerosol injection.

Gallery

The final days of the Freeze

Departure

Chicago frozen

After the freeze in the film

Frozen station

Comics (Volume 2)