> 2548688896268500;1:
> -Halo kills Flood as well as food. That’s established in the Halo CEA terminals among other things.
-Halo doesn’t kill the flood. The Halo CEA terminals and 343 Guilty Spark himself only said the Ring kills all sentient life in it’s maximum range. It could only kill the Flood’s organic matter, anything inorganic would survive just fine (yes, the Flood is in fact inorganic matter)
-Installation 04b was fired at the Ark. This should’ve killed any local infestation as well as any creatures remaining on the Ark.
> 2548688896268500;1:
> -Installation 04b was fired at the Ark. This should’ve killed any local infestation as well as any creatures remaining on the Ark.
Wrong. Installation 04b was fired improperly. It never completed it’s firing sequence as of what we know right now. At Halo 3’s ending, Cortana herself even stated “I’m not sure. When the Halo fired it shook it-self to pieces, and did a number on the Ark”. In other words, Cortana doesn’t know if the Halo ring fired 100% or not, or even only partially because the Ring it-self shook it-self to pieces, and did a massive explosion which caused most of the damage to the Ark entirely. As for it killing any creatures on the Ark? Lol no. Most of the Ark is protected, especially it’s life forms, VIA shields and Forerunner hard light entirely. Or at least that’s what is predicted. Not to mention if any life forms did get destroyed on the Ark, the Ark is fully capable of reintroducing any species on the Ark right on the dime, no problem. It’s literally an infinite source of life, generated/created by machines. It’s where all life in the current Halo universe inside the Milky Way galaxy originated from.
> 2548688896268500;1:
> -The Ark was heavily damaged from the firing of 04b and left it in a nearly crippled state.
Wrong again. It did a number on the Ark, but in a nearly crippled state? Nonsense. The monitor of the Ark was repairing any damages made to the Ark at a very rapid rate, and even tried doing a full on scale attack with a ton of sentinels of all types VIA the portal that lead back to Earth from the Ark. Over-all, the entire Ark was fully repaired by 2555-2556, and then the Portal mysteriously got shut down in 2557-58, but was actually shut down by the Ark’s fail-safe measures to prevent Cortana from getting to it.
As seen here:
When Installation 08 was prematurely fired on December 11, 2552, it tore itself to pieces, doing an enormous amount of damage to the Ark. This sudden destruction caused the portal to collapse while the Forward Unto Dawn was still traveling through it back to Earth. The ship was torn in to two large pieces at this time and only the fore half made it back to Earth, crashing into the Indian Ocean. The Dawn did not exit at the point in Earth’s atmosphere where it would have had the portal remained wholly intact, but instead emerged from slipspace in Earth’s orbit, just narrowly allowing Thel 'Vadam a destination to land. From that point onward, the portal remained inert and inaccessible. In March of 2553, following a ceremony honoring the fallen of the Covenant War held near the site, the Excession was isolated from the rest of the East African Protectorate and heavily guarded. Civilian xenoarchaeologists were hired by the Office of Naval Intelligence to study the artifact. While closed, it was still drawing power from an unknown source and the majority of the passageways below it were still unexplored.[3] It was suspected that the portal had additional as-of-yet undiscovered functions besides simply creating a gateway between Earth and the Ark.[3]In 2555, scientists exploring Installation 07 discovered a countdown sequence and it was determined that it was originating from the Ark. It suddenly became of paramount importance that the portal be reactivated. The UNSC reached out to the Swords of Sanghelios and a Huragok named Drifts Randomly that had worked onboard the Forerunner Dreadnaught was brought to Earth. After a few days, it was able to open the portal using data from the keyship it had internalized. A joint UNSC and Swords of Sanghelios team was sent through the portal to prevent the activation of the Halo Array. The countdown was part of a ploy by the Ark’s monitor, 000 Tragic Solitude, to make the humans on Earth reactivate the portal so that he could send Retriever Sentinels to mine the Sol system for materials to repair damage done to his installation. Many Retrievers poured through the portal and the UNSC Home Fleetengaged them in battle. Operation: FAR STORM successfully prevented Solitude’s plan from coming to fruition, however, and the sentinels were recalled.[12] Afterwards, the UNSC used the now-active portal to send researchers to the Ark."
> 2548688896268500;1:
> -Halo: Hunters in the Dark introduces the Blind Wolf back onto the Ark. So somehow, these things survived the firing of the ring.
This is explained above. The Ring prematurely fired, it never fully fired at all. Most of the damage was done by the exploding Halo ring, the actual firing did little to no damage what so ever. If anything, it left most of the middle of the Ark completely devoid of life, of which…it was already devoid of life in the beginning, because it was made to be one giant massive desert. You explore this same desert in Halo 3 to get to one of the many Ark’s control rooms that exist.
> 2548688896268500;1:
> -Halo Wars 2 reintroduces the Flood, which somehow survived the firing of the ring and have been confined to High Charity.
As explained above, you should already know how and why the Flood are still very much alive altogether.
> 2533274977919933;3:
> There is an actual answer in one of the phoenix logs from campaign collectibles. Here it is:
> “High Charity’s proto-Gravemind is a perverse mockery of a living thing, a gluttonous stump of Flood cells that remained behind when Halo’s cleansing energies burned away the corrupted biomass which once supported the Gravemind”.So the Gravemind was destroyed and the Flood itself was destroyed too but somehow several cells have survived (magic!) and attacked Banished forces.
Read everything I said, it should explain to you what all actually happened.
Also, Flood spores/cells are 100% unaffected by the Halo rings. The Halo rings target anything with a central nervous system above a certain threshold, and Flood spores don’t have a nervous system like that, so they are unaffected by the Halo rings 100%.
> 2533274806469514;4:
> The Halos are designed to only kill the “food” of the flood. This would however include certain flood forms like combat and carrier forms.
Read everything I said above this, and it should hopefully explain everything to you.
> 2548688896268500;6:
> Halo CEA’s terminals retcon that statement that it only kills “food.” It shows the pulse killing everything, including the spores.
What? The Halo ring only prematurely fired at the Ark. 343 Guilty Spark even tells Johnson that firing the ring would have lethal side effects and even the potential of destroying the Ark entirely. Thankfully it didn’t, and it only damaged it in some area’s, of which was all repaired by the Ark’s monitor and just Sentinels doing there every day job. The fact that the Ring only prematurely fired though, means it’s radius is drastically reduced, and the so called “pulse” didn’t even work correctly at all. In other words, nothing died, and only the exploding Halo ring actually caused any damage to the Ark at all.
For everything else you said, read above this reply and it should actually help you understand the entire situation a whole lot better.