The blessing is access — each death gives him 21 minutes on the beach, 21 minutes to search for his family, 21 minutes to observe what the other side is and what it holds and what it means for the living world's relationship to it. He has crossed more times than anyone and returned more times than anyone and built more knowledge of the beach from first-hand observation than any living researcher. The condition that should be a terminal diagnosis is instead a research methodology.

The extinction theory he is building is Death Stranding's cosmological frame — the idea that mass extinction events are caused by the accumulation of the dead overwhelming the living world's capacity to release them, that the Stranding is not an accident but a pattern, that the sixth extinction is the sixth time this has happened and the world has survived by finding someone to close the door. Sam is the person who closes the door. Heartman is the person who figured out that the door exists.