After thinking over what Halo does and can do I was curious… Do you think it was necessary? After looking back in the Forerunner novels it showed it can be a precise weapon targeting planets, and after thinking about it I was curious could have they taken a longer but more direct approach?
Unless the shape and size of the Halo is absolutely important for the effectiveness/it’s ability to operate, I was thinking it might have been a more effective to just make a fleet of massive ships that do the same thing but on a more accurate scale. They would be able to wipe out opposing flood ships with ease since it appears that no level of shielding can protect you from the effects of the Halos nor I would assume being in slip space, I would suspect the shield worlds slipspace bubble is something special or else it would be incredibly easy to avoid the array.
In this way Forerunners could easily quarantine planets off after being cleared as clean to prevent contamination.
Take note I’m saying this while completely ignoring all political conflicts; trying to focus on feasible ways around mass cleansing then re-population. My way would leave more room for error… But would still be fixable in most cases if areas got reinfected.
Now that I have thrown that out there what do you all think/ do you have any other ideas on how they could have taken a different approach?
Also I was curious if anyone know how the shield world in Halo Wars was infected?
You should read Halo: Cryptum. The construction of the Halo Array was actually a political wedge to put the Builders in power, and in my opinion was not necessary at all.
I have to wonder what the alternative would be. The Forerunners did it all, orbital bombardment, stellar collapse, the Line Installations, none of them really stopped the Flood. Neither did the Array in the long run, but there were no options left.
> I have to wonder what the alternative would be. The Forerunners did it all, orbital bombardment, stellar collapse, the Line Installations, none of them really stopped the Flood. Neither did the Array in the long run, but there were no options left.
Well, the Cure seemed to work out pretty well for Humanity. If they let the Didact continue to assault the Flood, and also continued to perform studies like they did on Installation 07, I think one of the two is bound for success. It was careless of them to put the Didact in exile and just let the Flood expand.
> > I have to wonder what the alternative would be. The Forerunners did it all, orbital bombardment, stellar collapse, the Line Installations, none of them really stopped the Flood. Neither did the Array in the long run, but there were no options left.
>
> Well, the Cure seemed to work out pretty well for Humanity. If they let the Didact continue to assault the Flood, and also continued to perform studies like they did on Installation 07, I think one of the two is bound for success. It was careless of them to put the Didact in exile and just let the Flood expand.
They did continue. The Didact is a soldier, not a scientist. The Librarian continued to study the Humans and implant Ancient Humans into “modern” Humans in an attempt to gain access to the cure. The Didact himself apposed the creation of the Halos. His Shield Worlds were his own solution and the Builders were unaware of their location. They were described as possibly being more powerful than the Halo Array.
Edit: I wonder why this technically failed? I mean Yprin Yprikushma had the desire to tell the Forerunner about the Flood and it seems like she herself would have the knowledge they sought. Even if they killed her before she could tell them, her mind was implanted into Riser, so why did they not learn it when she “came out?”
I suppose it all comes down to not enough time since Mendicant Bias turned against them and set all of this in motion. A cure may simply have not been an option by this point.
> You should read Halo: Cryptum. The construction of the Halo Array was actually a political wedge to put the Builders in power, and in my opinion was not necessary at all.
I have read all the books and I have addressed this issue already,
> Take note I’m saying this while completely ignoring all political conflicts
> I have to wonder what the alternative would be. The Forerunners did it all, orbital bombardment, stellar collapse, the Line Installations, none of them really stopped the Flood. Neither did the Array in the long run, but there were no options left.
I had wondered what kind of flood the Forerunners had to contend with. Flood gains all knowledge it consumes, but did the flood not have the ability to store all the information it gathered? If the flood originated from precursors, did they retain all that knowledge?
From the events of Halo 2/3 and Human Weakness the flood seemed to know more than just what the Covenant and Humans could possibly know so they would be possibly contending against an enemy with the knowledge of it’s past that fought against the Forerunners.
But to that point… I’m curious how hard was the ancient flood, the flood in 2552 never really had a chance to do anything but infect everything they could get the grubby hands on. They didn’t really show any indication of building anything technological aside from possibly the Mona Lisa but that may have just been a gravemind being built.
But so far we have been able to handle the flood fairly well by just blowing everything up pretty much…
I know what we face is nothing compared to the ancient flood war but I’m curious to what extent could they have possibly been to be resilient to anything and everything Forerunners tried right up to the Halo array.
I’m thinking part of it might have been underestimating the flood by some Forerunners and other reasons might be political; namely Faber. They may have not completely exhausted all possibly avenues to tackle the flood over political reasons, they may have been just able to exhaust all of their current solutions. But that’s just my own speculation because it had been stated they tried everything.
> Wasnt it implied that there is no cure? Rather that the flood can choose who to infect
I don’t really know. It was implied but the cure may have been a form of a counter-infection against the flood, considering I believe I read that the ancient humans sacrificed 1:3 of their population to fight the flood, a counter-infection might have worked in such a way since the Flood was only fighting Humans at the time and may not have a mass infection army.
Now a current cure may be possible, with whatever they did to the Spartans from the first project made Sgt. Johnson completely immune to infection.
I believe that the Halos was unnecessary. The Forerunners could have easily dealt with the humans, with a lot less tragedy in the end. The Primordial would still be sealed, the Prophets would still be a better society of people, and the Forerunner society would still be at large.
> I believe that the Halos was unnecessary. The Forerunners could have easily dealt with the humans, with a lot less tragedy in the end. The Primordial would still be sealed, the Prophets would still be a better society of people, and the Forerunner society would still be at large.
> I believe that the Halos was unnecessary. The Forerunners could have easily dealt with the humans, with a lot less tragedy in the end. The Primordial would still be sealed, the Prophets would still be a better society of people, and the Forerunner society would still be at large.
Uh…how?
You seem to think that the halos were meant for humanity, when the were not. But maybe I’m reading it wrong…
What solutions to yall propose instead of the halos? Keep in mind that the flood is as strong as the things it infects. Perhaps stronger since it has no moral values and no reason to hold anything back.
I don’t think the primordial is even that important in the grand scheme of the flood. Infection would continue whether it was locked up or not.
Ever wonder why your doctor tells you to damn well finish a two week course of antibiotics, even though you feel totally fine now? Its like any serious infection. Youve got to get it all at once, or it will come back.
Perhaps the forerunner could have cut the infection out without killing the patient. God knows they tried with MB. But in the end, they totally fluffed it, while humans were actually able to hold the flood off. Which is why they chose humanity v2 to take over the mantle and left the galaxy in disgrace, and why the didact had to fire the halos even though it killed his wife. MB and the flood were at the barricades, they were out of time.
> Ever wonder why your doctor tells you to damn well finish a two week course of antibiotics, even though you feel totally fine now? Its like any serious infection. Youve got to get it all at once, or it will come back.
>
> Perhaps the forerunner could have cut the infection out without killing the patient. God knows they tried with MB. But in the end, they totally fluffed it, while humans were actually able to hold the flood off. Which is why they chose humanity v2 to take over the mantle and left the galaxy in disgrace, and why the didact had to fire the halos even though it killed his wife. MB and the flood were at the barricades, they were out of time.
The Mantle was always ours and I don’t remember reading the demise of her so it’s still possible she’s alive, especially since she knew of the Halo’s already and most likely planned on avoiding the array.
> > Wasnt it implied that there is no cure? Rather that the flood can choose who to infect
>
> I don’t really know. It was implied but the cure may have been a form of a counter-infection against the flood, considering I believe I read that the ancient humans sacrificed 1:3 of their population to fight the flood, a counter-infection might have worked in such a way since the Flood was only fighting Humans at the time and may not have a mass infection army.
>
> Now a current cure may be possible, <mark>with whatever they did to the Spartans from the first project made Sgt. Johnson completely immune to infection.</mark>
Actually, though that did help, Johnson was exposed to high doses of radiation from a crate full of plasma grenades. so actually, just make every single being in the galaxy have radiation, and boom! end of the Flood…
> > > Wasnt it implied that there is no cure? Rather that the flood can choose who to infect
> >
> > I don’t really know. It was implied but the cure may have been a form of a counter-infection against the flood, considering I believe I read that the ancient humans sacrificed 1:3 of their population to fight the flood, a counter-infection might have worked in such a way since the Flood was only fighting Humans at the time and may not have a mass infection army.
> >
> > Now a current cure may be possible, <mark>with whatever they did to the Spartans from the first project made Sgt. Johnson completely immune to infection.</mark>
>
> Actually, though that did help, Johnson was exposed to high doses of radiation from a crate full of plasma grenades. so actually, just make every single being in the galaxy have radiation, and boom! end of the Flood…
That was just a cover-up for his ORION augmentations.
> I believe that the Halos was unnecessary. The Forerunners could have easily dealt with the humans, with a lot less tragedy in the end. The Primordial would still be sealed, the Prophets would still be a better society of people, and the Forerunner society would still be at large.
Yes but the thing is, the Forerunners never knew of the Primordial, never knew of the two fronts of war the Humans were fighting until after they won.
The Didact stated they may have stopped the war if they knew what the Humans were facing (I think so atleast, been over a year since I read Cryptum).
If it was a perfect universe everything you said would have happened, but it did not.
And my only solution would be some sort of super Halo ship gun that allows you to fight the flood incredibly effectively for ship to ship, if there was a way to stop all slipspace activity in an area they could easily take out enemy flood ships; planets even.
But my idea is relying on there isn’t any sort of structural requirements for a Halo’s firing capacity.
I’m curious though, if that is a permanent fix to being infected or if the flood could figure a way around it, because from my understanding, the augmentation done to Johnson effected his nervous system in a way that the flood could not sync into it.
That’s how I think it worked out though…
If so they could maybe figure an inoculation procedure for crews most likely to come into contact with the flood. An inoculation that’s least invasive that is, I don’t know what the effects of the “Boren’s syndrome” are but it might not be that great to have.
But it would be a good contingency plan to be able to rapidly inoculate any and all populous that’s risked of imminent infection.
-Edit-
After reading about Boren’s syndrome it would be a hell of a lot harder to make that sort of inoculation… But I’d say not impossible for they have a starting point to go from and that’s something very useful.
I brought this up before, but I also think it’s interesting to compare them to nuclear weapons we have today. We can cause great devastation with them, yet the purpose of them is not to destroy all human life on Earth. However, we have so many that we could.
The Halos could be the same way. Used together, they can destroy sentient life in the whole Milky Way, but that doesn’t mean that was their intended use when they were first built.