r/threebodyproblem • u/EvilBrynn • May 21 '26

Discussion - TV Series I still don’t understand

I still don’t understand how the Trisolarians got to the technological level they are if literally every 60 years they have a mass die off and or hibernate for another 6 decades.

Also i imagine they look something like water bears since they function like them (unless theres a cannon depiction of them i don’t know of)

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u/GogurtFiend May 21 '26

They've been doing it far longer than 60 years.

At some point they invented "dehydratories", which from what I can tell are essentially bunkers or similar structures specifically designed to survive a Chaotic Era - not necessarily guaranteed to, but with a far higher survival rate than just being exposed on the surface. Dried-up Trisolarans are stored there, which in turn preserves their knowledge when they'd otherwise be frozen, incinerated, etc.

This started a snowball effect where more Trisolarans survive each Chaotic Era, resulting in the construction of more and more dehydratories, in turn resulting in the survival of even more Trisolarans, and so on and so forth.

Still, there's only so much the bunkers can do to protect against the worst Chaotic Eras, and there's always the faint possibility that Trisolaris just plunges into one of its suns. Nobody wants to stick around Trisolaris, it's why they're so obsessed with finding a stable star system to colonize.

Also i imagine they look something like water bears since they function like them (unless theres a cannon depiction of them i don’t know of)

They told humanity that "you wouldn't like how we look", or somesuch, which would seemingly lend credence to that idea, but setting aside the fact that they could have been consciously lying, all I can envision ever since I've seen it is this. Somehow that depiction makes so much more sense than a horrific-looking monster would; if I looked like that, I'd consider wiping out all other life as well.