We discuss how under certain conditions the black hole information puzzle and the (related) arguments that firewalls are a typical feature of black holes can break down. We first review the arguments of Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully favoring firewalls, focusing on entanglements in a simple toy model for a black hole and the Hawking radiation. By introducing a large and inaccessible system entangled with the black hole (representing perhaps a de Sitter stretched horizon or inaccessible part of a landscape), we show complementarity can be restored and firewalls can be avoided throughout the black hole’s evolution. Under these conditions black holes do not have an “information problem.” We point out flaws in some of our earlier arguments that such entanglement might be generically present in some cosmological scenarios and call out certain ways our picture may still be realized.

• Received 9 December 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.91.024004