Second Sun

"Our weapons still work, which means we can still kick some ass."

Second Sun is the thirteenth level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Walkthrough
You start out from where you left off in Of Their Own Accord where Pvt. Ramirez's team has just been shot down and are now defending their position. As Russian forces approach you, a search light whites out the screen, then you play as Sat1, an unnamed astronaut on an EVA mission. Houston then asks you to look toward the dark side of the Earth for a bogey (the SLBM that Captain Price launched). The minority of the level is simply observing the missile's path until it eventually detonates in the atmosphere. The shockwave soon reaches the ISS and destroys the station while Sat1 is thrown into space before he is hit by a solar panel. The explosion causes an EMP that blacks out most of the East Coast, but it also saves the lives of many U.S. Army Rangers back in Washington D.C. Aerial vehicles start to fall from the sky as your team makes way for a building to take shelter. After everything goes quiet, a runner tells the team to get to Whiskey Hotel. After plowing through some remaining Russian personnel in an office building, you get to the President's bunker on the East Wing.

Tips

 * When the EMP detonates, all power goes out, including Red dot sights and Holographic sights. It is best to find weapons that don't have these attachments because it gets in the way with accuracy and can be annoying to aim with. ACOGs are still usable, though the red crosshair will be gone and can be difficult to use in low-light areas. Any sight with tritium paint on it is preferable.


 * There are at least three M4A1 Grenadiers and two ammo crates before you first encounter enemy forces. All of these, are equipped with their standard Iron Sights, making them a good replacement for the Holographic Sight Equiped M4 you begin with.

Trivia

 * The part where you control Sat1 was supposed to be in a separate level/interactive cutscene called "International Space Station", like The Coup. It was merged with this level in the final version of the game.
 * While the concept of a low-orbit Nuke detonating and causing a wide-spread EMP is feasible, no shockwave would ever reach since the ISS at Perigee is at 341 km altitude, however, the station would eventually be damaged by the electromagnetic pulse.


 * This is probably the only level in any COD game where you control two characters within the same level.


 * When you get to the President's bunker under the Eisenhower building Cpl. Dunn says he thought it was under the west wing, but Sgt. Foley says that one's for tourists and it must be the real thing. In a real map, the Eisenhower Building is actually west of the White House. When you start the next level, Whiskey Hotel, you somehow start east of the White House when in this level you ended west.


 * When Foley throws you a magazine for your gun while you are trapped in the helicopter, the previous magazine given to you by Pvt. Wade disappears mysteriously.


 * The EMP emitted by the ICBM blacks out almost the entire Eastern Seaboard, from South Carolina all the way up to at least New York State as you watch seconds after the detonation.


 * Ramirez sustained severe injuries on both of his hands, yet this does not affect his aiming or use of weapons in the slightest and you can't see the scratches on his hands when reloading.


 * The player cannot remain outside, despite avoiding the helicopters. If they look up, they will see a never ending amount of helicopters falling from the sky. One of these, a Little Bird, will actually "track" the player and will always crash close enough to kill them, regardless of where they are on the street.


 * The in game appearance of ISS is modeled after the configuration the station was in from 2002-2005. The current configuration (as of November 2009) is different, in that the Station is slightly larger with the second node and the European and Japanese labs installed, and the P6 Solar Arrays have been relocated from the top of the Z1 truss as seen in game to the port side of ISS, with another set of solar arrays on the starboard side. The 2009 configuration is actually close to how the station will look when completed in 2011.


 * The astronaut in the ISS scene appears to be grappled to some sort of a satellite. Such a spacewalk would be impossible to conduct from ISS, as all spacewalks conducted on ISS are tethered, where the astronaut is connected physically to the station, and it would be impractical to investigate a satellite from the ISS.


 * The crew of ISS as seen in game appear to be American. As ISS is an international venture, there are typically astronauts of other nations on board, and every ISS crew to date has had at least one Russian astronaut (or "cosmonaut"). It's possible with the political situation in Russia, space flights to ISS were suspended, although 2 Russian Soyuz spacecraft can be seen docked to the station.


 * When inside, the copy machines still have a light on, even though the EMP wiped out any electronics.


 * The ISS orbits at an altitude of 341-353 km. The missile appeared to explode much lower than the ISS, which is somewhere above the Gulf of Mexico or Florida (not affected by the EMP), and while an explosion from that distance may have caused damage, it would probably not have destroyed the station.


 * Price launched the missile to create an EMP over Washington D.C. to destroy or render useless the Russian's equipment and vehicles. As the pulse wiped out the Russian's support, the US forces were given a much higher chance of taking back the city. Although Shepherd made Price out to be a war criminal over the fact that he destroyed the ISS and killed its personnel, he would likely have been pardoned if Shepherd was found out and everything by him laid bare as he did save the US forces from being destroyed and helped them take back the capital. He also would not have known the range of the pulse and shockwave.


 * At one part in the level you kill 3 men trying to open what looks like a fried BTR-80, After you kill the men Cpl.Dunn says "What about the men inside?" Sgt.Foley says "What about 'em?" If you listen closely you can hear Russian Soldiers banging on the walls and saying something in Russian. They only say this once when triggered and they do not speak again after.


 * Dunn's remarks about the other Russians in the BTR could be a nod to earlier Call of Duty installments. In earlier titles, allied characters would always finish off a stricken vehicle by throwing a grenade down the hatch.


 * Ironically, Captain Price launched the EMP to save the Americans from getting wiped out. But at the same time, the EMP is shown to have downed also several American helicopters and a commercial jetliner. Basically he saved the US Rangers, but also killed US pilots in the process.


 * Whether or not this goes throughout the entire game, when you are given the M4A1 at the beginning of the level, you can see for a brief moment that it has retained its iron-sights even though it is attached to a holographic sight. However as soon as you pick it up from the soldier giving it to you, it turns into what a M4A1 with holographic sights should look like, meaning the iron-sights disappear.


 * The Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight's internal illumination is defeated by the EMP shockwave, only leaving the dim crosshairs. ACOGs, however, do not use electricity for their light source (fiber optics for day and tritium for night) and therefore should not have been affected by the detonation.


 * Before the player goes into Sat1's perspective, you should have no ammo or only one magazine. After the nuke goes off, the player will have full ammo.
 * It is likely that the missile itself was armed with a nuclear warhead instead of an EMP. Detonating a nuclear weapon at high altitudes, however, also creates a "Compton Effect" in which an electromagnetic pulse radiates from the blast site and can expand to the size of an entire continent depending on the distance and size of the blast. It is likely that Captain Price was aware of the Compton Effect and purposely detonated the warhead early.
 * After leaving the building where you take shelter from the falling helicopters, if you look at the newspost, the headline for the newspapers are "Call of Duty 2"
 * Dunn is the first to notice optic are offline, mentioning that "My Red Dot's down." However, if you look at his weapon, you'll see he is actually using a Thermal Scope.
 * When Vaughan approaches, Dunn shouts "Star!". Vaughan replies "I don't remember the damn countersign all right? I'm just a runner! Don't shoot!" This is a reference to Band of Brothers, in which American forces landing in Normandy during the airborne invasion run into a runner who does not know the countersign to "Flash!" and says the same line.