An Analysis and Discussion of the Cryostasis Story

[idiom]

Well lets get some of the facts straight from the game itself:

From the game manual:

The North Pole, 1981…..Amidst the
deathly silence of an icy kingdom,
meteorologist Alexander Nesterov
is the last man aboard the floating
station Pole 21. He has just received
an urgent message from the mainland
and must leave the vast Arctic
immediately. A comfortable ship will
pick him up at a designated place and
time to bring him back safely, or so
he thinks. Instead of a warm reception
and an easy ride home, the scientist
soon finds himself in a real-life
nightmare when he accidentally boards
the atomic icebreaker, North Wind,
which has been drifting for years in
an endless sea of ice.

From the game message files, the Captain's diary:

The nuclear icebreaker, North Wind, hit an iceberg at 2:16 AM on 24 March 1968. The vessel's bow and starboard suffered heavy damage which resulted in partial flooding of the third deck and damage to the stern's starboard crane. There were no casualties and the ship is currently still afloat. Repairs are under way but may take up to a week...

From the game message files, radiogram to you:

Alexander Nesterov, a junior research assistant at the Pole 21 polar station, is due at coordinates 86°21' N, 74°57' E on 27 March 1981, where he will board the nuclear icebreaker North Wind.


So the whole thing is a paradox, the North wind was an active ship in 1981 but when Alexander meets up with it he finds it wrecked several years ago... He then proceeds to "correct" this and the story then ends as the original radiogram indicated, i.e. he is picked up by the North wind and taken home.

Why wasn't the ship decommissioned as per the radiogram from HQ? well I think the turning point there is with the chief engineer, where he gives the captain the model of the ship he's been working on and says "Here, take it. We'll send it to HQ... Let them disassemble it.".