Horizon Zero Dawn Explained: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

9. Operation: Enduring Victory - The Lie That Killed Mankind

Part of the Zero Dawn's repopulation program involves enrolling a number of leading figures in all sorts of major academic areas (environment, language, culture, technology etc.) to aid in designing encapsulate A.I. archives that could later be accessed by future humans on Earth.

However, due to the enormity of what they're being asked to do - and the ramifications of global chaos if the world's populace found out they were doomed in 15 months - all were brought to Faro's various complexes under anonymity, before being told that they either had to sign up and help, live their life in isolated luxury, or opt for euthanasia (assisted suicide).

Even their families could not be told.

The Zero Dawn program would allow relatives into the facility so these individuals could live out their days surrounded by loved ones, but once you knew the truth about the mechanical apocalypse, your life on the outside was over.

It's a dark, dark moment, in-game, and really grounds the notion that the events of Zero Dawn only happened because all those involved 1000 years ago accepted the idea of building a future for humankind.

However, on the surface, Sobeck travels to meet with the Joint Chiefs, enacting 'Operation: Enduring Victory' - the requirement that every able-bodied person on Earth take up arms and fight. The global populace was sold the lie that the mysterious 'Zero Dawn project' was some sort of way of defeating the machines for good, and if they 'just held out long enough', they would all be saved.

Obviously this was not the case, and everyone other than those asked to work on Zero Dawn (a minuscule fraction of the populace, separated by career status and IQ, among other academic factors) were essentially 'fed' to the machines to provide time for the real Zero Dawn to come together.

Grim.