The god is awakening... but when exactly? The hologram of the Jjaro diplomat Ryu'Toth provided a date and time... or did it?

On page 2 of the Manual we learn:

Timetable

Ryu'Toth, the Jjaro representative, appeared via hologram in the Pentagon at 1500 hours (3:00PM) on Thursday May 5, 1994. You and the rest of the assault team will be dropped from a C-151 transport over the Yucatan shortly after 0200 (2:00 AM) on Sunday May 8. This leaves five days before the dreaming god awakes, sometime in the afternoon on the following Friday.

In addition to weapons and ammunition, your squad of eight men will carry a small, low-yield nuclear device and three radio beacons. The bomb must be placed at the lowest point you are able to descend into the god's tunnels. Detonation can be delayed as long as forty-eight hours by the bomb's timer, but should under no circumstances occur after 1400 (2:00 PM) on Friday.

And also on page 17 it states:

Time

The game starts at 6:13 AM on Sunday morning. You must detonate the nuclear device before 2:00 PM on Friday to complete the mission.

So the Dreaming God will awaken just after 2:00 PM on Friday 13th?

Not true as Matt Heath <MHHeath@aol.com> notes:

One thing I've noticed about the PID manual is that it gives faulty info about the deadline to set the bomb before the dreaming god awakes. The manual says the limit is 2:00 PM on Fri. May 13, 1994. Actually, the god doesn't wake up until 6:13 PM on that day -- exactly 5 1/2 days after the start of the game on Sunday morning, May 8.

Why do we need to detnote the nuclear device before 2:00 PM on Friday 13th if the Dreaming God doesn't awaken until 6:13 PM? What happens in the intervening 4 hours and 13 minutes?

Some time ago Raul Bonilla <lassonde@hotmail.com> wrote:

I found an unused sound in the PID resource fork. Snd 10660 seems to belong to a monster -maybe the imprisoned demon originally have a voice or it was a creature that never made it to the final release.

Snd 10660 (Size = 22053) is in fact the sound of the Dreaming God awakening. Of course the only way you'll hear this is if you fail to detonate the bomb before the God awakens. The worse possible scenario in the game. However it's odder than that. You'll only hear Snd 10660 if you are resting. It's the sound that wakes you up. If you are awake the sound that the Dreaming God makes is completely different!

Concerning the time at which the Dreaming God awakens Question 7 of Bungie's old Pathways Into Darkness Tech Support page revealed the following:

7. I just got an error dialog that says "The Dreaming God has awakened." What's that mean, and how do I get around it?

Well, the whole purpose of this game is to eliminate this Dreaming God. The pyramid you're exploring, and all the monsters therein, are a physical manifestation of this God's dreams. If he wakes up, you're toast, and so is the rest of the planet.

How to avoid this? Very simple: finish the game before time runs out. One of the windows shows you the date and time. You have until 5 PM on Friday to set the bomb and get out of there.

Of course this is different from the manual. If you set the bomb at 5 PM Friday that leaves you with 73 minutes before the Dreaming God awakes. Since you need to allow ten minutes for pickup, and another ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance after signalling the extraction team you actually have 53 minutes to get from "Ok, Who Else Wants Some?" to the exit on "Ground Floor". How fast can you make it... assuming you stop off at "Beware of Low-Flying Nightmares" to find out what's behind that Gold Door?

In Pathways Into Darkness manual, part of the story introduction reads:

Sixty-four million years ago, a large extra-terrestrial object struck the Earth in what would later be called the Yucatan Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico. The dust and rock thrown up by the resulting explosion caused enormous climactic changes in the ensuing years, and many of the Earth's species became extinct during the long winter that followed.

The object itself was buried thousands of feet below ground, its nearly two kilometer length remarkably intact. It remained there, motionless, for thousands of years before it finally began to stir- and to dream. It was a member of a race whose history began when the Milky Way was still a formless collection of dust and gas- a powerful race of immortals which had quickly grown bored of their tiny universe and nearly exterminated themselves in war.

This is the Dreaming God, the awakening entity we are sent to stun and bury under millions of tons of rock using a low-yield nuclear device.

At 'nearly two kilometers' in length the Dreaming God is one large entity.

The Empire State Building with its antenna spire included, stands a total of 1,454 ft (443.2 m) high. So the extra-terrestrial object is roughly four and half times as high (long) as the Empire State Building!

In the manual it tells us you have to "carry a low-yield nuclear device down to the god's body and detonate it there."

Now the deepest level in the game is Ok, Who Else Wants Some? at an elevation of -3276.8m or 10,750.7 feet below ground. Now 10,750.7 feet is just over two miles deep. So the 'nearly two kilometer' long Dreaming God is buried over two miles below ground?

That's one large entity buried deep in the Yucatan.

And why does Bungie mix US standard lengths with metric lengths in this single sentence?

The object itself was buried thousands of feet below ground, its nearly two kilometer length remarkably intact.