I read in Halo Fractures that a Guardian shuts down a frigate in low orbit and its falling from the sky when Hood & Co escape the blast. They speculate later on that if its drive core had exploded that would have destroyed the city.
I thought detonating a UNSC ships reactor was really difficult? The Autumn (a much bigger ship!) survived crashing into the ring and the Enamber Clad rams into a tower on High Chairty. In both cases Cortana had to consciously deactivate the failsafes to get the thing to explode (in the second case I think its implied she couldn’t do this because Gravemind). So does that mean the frigate would have simply hit the ground from low atmosphere but not explode?
So is this speculation on the part of the characters just worst case scenario to convey the sense of disaster, or is Sydney actually a giant crater. Which is bad because that’s the seat of the UEG, UNSC and ONI; plus a few million people.
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> > 2533274893363107;2:
> > I hope not because i live there. lol
>
> Nah, you’ll just open your door and find a crashed UNSC frigate.
> 2533274803587475;1:
> I read in Halo Fractures that a Guardian shuts down a frigate in low orbit and its falling from the sky when Hood & Co escape the blast. They speculate later on that if its drive core had exploded that would have destroyed the city.
>
> I thought detonating a UNSC ships reactor was really difficult? The Autumn (a much bigger ship!) survived crashing into the ring and the Enamber Clad rams into a tower on High Chairty. In both cases Cortana had to consciously deactivate the failsafes to get the thing to explode (in the second case I think its implied she couldn’t do this because Gravemind). So does that mean the frigate would have simply hit the ground from low atmosphere but not explode?
>
> So is this speculation on the part of the characters just worst case scenario to convey the sense of disaster, or is Sydney actually a giant crater. Which is bad because that’s the seat of the UEG, UNSC and ONI; plus a few million people.
Well even failsafes fail sometimes. There was this incident in US in 1961 where they accidently dropped two atom bombs from the plane. 3 out of 4 safe measures failed to activate. I don’t know how close they become exploding but I think it is similar situation here. You don’t want to crash a spaceship with slipspace engine to highly populated city even though it was designed not to detonate from the impact.
Cortana was trying to get the ships to explode. That is something that shouldn’t be easy. And the POA had a controlled crash landing. That is way different that a frigate falling out of orbit with no power. So yes, I think it is super likely a core could explode that way.
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> Cortana was trying to get the ships to explode. That is something that shouldn’t be easy. And the POA had a controlled crash landing. That is way different that a frigate falling out of orbit with no power. So yes, I think it is super likely a core could explode that way.
If she did then she would have had her AI launch every nuke and make every ship explode; exterminating the bulk of humanity in radioactive fire. Since we didn’t see that in Halo 5 this means she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. All we see is that she turns off all of the defences and ships in orbit.
As far as a few km of armour plating crunching across the ground goes…
But the drives don’t explode even if the ship is destroyed by enemy weapons fire. So surely they have those containment procedures built so that the ship won’t go supernova even in the event of it being destroyed by weapons fire; much less a low orbit crash?
You also have the flood ramming Enamber Clad into a skyscraper, which would probably have been going faster than terminal velocity if the Sydney frigate dropped like a stone. If the ship can survive that (a non flood crew wouldn’t!) without exploding then the Sydney frigate wouldn’t have went off.
I mean why would you have a frigate defending Sydney if it being shot down would result in the cities immediate destruction.
“Guardians had numerous roles and functions in service of the Mantle, but the primary one was the monitoring and subjugation of all local power networks. If necessary, Guardians could instantaneously neutralize these networks through a series of debilitating attenuation pulses. The deployment of multiple Guardians allowed the constructs to strategically coordinate their strike, rendering all but the most sophisticated foe completely inefficacious. This method of control was largely unchallenged.”
So yeah, it can turn off the lights with a big EMP, but theres nothing about it being able to specifically shut down containment protocols. Since something like a power shut down would be very common from accident, lack of resources and weapons fire I’d assume that failsafes would work even if the power was cut. Don’t nuclear power plants work on the same basis?
Also, when we have seen in comics ships hit by the Guardians, they seem to keep their life support and limited functionality like heat. In other words, enough to keep the people on them alive in the short term until presumably Cortana gets around to sending soldiers to deal with them.
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> If she did then she would have had her AI launch every nuke and make every ship explode; exterminating the bulk of humanity in radioactive fire. Since we didn’t see that in Halo 5 this means she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. All we see is that she turns off all of the defences and ships in orbit.
It was obvious that she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. She wants to enforce a peace, not wage more war. But, she is prepared to strike back to civilizations that “can’t play nice”.
> 2533274803587475;1:
> I read in Halo Fractures that a Guardian shuts down a frigate in low orbit and its falling from the sky when Hood & Co escape the blast. They speculate later on that if its drive core had exploded that would have destroyed the city.
>
> I thought detonating a UNSC ships reactor was really difficult? The Autumn (a much bigger ship!) survived crashing into the ring and the Enamber Clad rams into a tower on High Chairty. In both cases Cortana had to consciously deactivate the failsafes to get the thing to explode (in the second case I think its implied she couldn’t do this because Gravemind). So does that mean the frigate would have simply hit the ground from low atmosphere but not explode?
>
> So is this speculation on the part of the characters just worst case scenario to convey the sense of disaster, or is Sydney actually a giant crater. Which is bad because that’s the seat of the UEG, UNSC and ONI; plus a few million people.
How the ship lands (side? Tail end first? Nose first?) would factor in. Still, that is a multi thousand ton object slamming into the ground at terminal velocity which is still going to kill thousands to millions of people as it slams into the city assuming it doesn’t
land on its nukes and cause an accidental nuclear detonation. Nevermind the fact Cortana may detonate the reactors anyways for -Yoink- and giggles since Halo 5 shown she is blood lustered enough to murder innocent bystanders just because they’re there and hunt them down like a serial killer would so it isn’t out of the question for her.
> 2533274803587475;3:
> > 2533274893363107;2:
> > I hope not because i live there. lol
>
> Nah, you’ll just open your door and find a crashed UNSC frigate.
Frigates aren’t that big, think Forward Unto Dawn from Halo 3 and since it’s hollow and has to fly it must be relatively light. Thousands of tons must be too much.
> 2533274803587475;13:
> Frigates aren’t that big, think Forward Unto Dawn from Halo 3 and since it’s hollow and has to fly it must be relatively light. Thousands of tons must be too much.
UNSC Frigates canonically weigh 3900 tons (The Fall of Reach and Halo Evolutions) despite being almost double the size of a Nimitz class carrier (weighs 100,000 tons) but given how 343i has said they wish to retcon the Bungie’s “lighter than air” starship weights, we can expect a frigate to, at the bare minimal, weigh around 200,000 tons whenever they release the starship book provided they use some common sense and have a basic understanding of mathematics.
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> > 2533274803587475;7:
> > If she did then she would have had her AI launch every nuke and make every ship explode; exterminating the bulk of humanity in radioactive fire. Since we didn’t see that in Halo 5 this means she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. All we see is that she turns off all of the defences and ships in orbit.
>
> It was obvious that she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. She wants to enforce a peace, not wage more war. But, she is prepared to strike back to civilizations that “can’t play nice”.
Kind of hard to enslave humanity if you kill them all. Her peace is basically slavery, as she notes that she will compose all who resist in Halo 5. The Civilizations that “can’t play nice” just happen to be free of her imperial will.
Also, I guarantee people died from the EMP. Advanced aircraft seen in Halo are not naturally aerodynamic, and likely most use fly by wire systems. Cut power and you have tens of thousands of aircraft raining down on people, not to mention ships in low orbit, automated car accidents, heavy machinery failures, life support system failures, intensive care patients, etc.
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> > 2533274804813082;9:
> > > 2533274803587475;7:
> > > If she did then she would have had her AI launch every nuke and make every ship explode; exterminating the bulk of humanity in radioactive fire. Since we didn’t see that in Halo 5 this means she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. All we see is that she turns off all of the defences and ships in orbit.
> >
> > It was obvious that she doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. She wants to enforce a peace, not wage more war. But, she is prepared to strike back to civilizations that “can’t play nice”.
>
> Kind of hard to enslave humanity if you kill them all. Her peace is basically slavery, as she notes that she will compose all who resist in Halo 5. The Civilizations that “can’t play nice” just happen to be free of her imperial will.
> Also, I guarantee people died from the EMP. Advanced aircraft seen in Halo are not naturally aerodynamic, and likely most use fly by wire systems. Cut power and you have tens of thousands of aircraft raining down on people, not to mention ships in low orbit, automated car accidents, heavy machinery failures, life support system failures, intensive care patients, etc.
A slave is a person reduced to property that you use to do labour without pay. Cortana is an incorporeal AI and has all these machines. **She has no need for slaves.**The people she rules don’t fit the definition of being slaves since they aren’t being put to work or doing anything to benefit Cortana and (going off the Balaho fodder article) seem to be free to do whatever they want as long as it does not involve war and even then shes content to let them build mechs.
A better analogy would be a gilded cage. Cortana wants to make everything better for everyone but only if they follow the ground rules. They’re not free, but they aren’t slaves either.
Its mainly because Cortana doesn’t stand to gain anything herself from doing this. Slavery implies exploitation and I don’t think that’s what 343 is going for; as well as not making a lot of sense since shes an incorporeal AI.
> 2533274888057089;16:
> Kind of hard to enslave humanity if you kill them all. Her peace is basically slavery, as she notes that she will compose all who resist in Halo 5. The Civilizations that “can’t play nice” just happen to be free of her imperial will.
Slavery’s already been addressed. But the “composing all who resist” was the later half of my statement. She’s not assuming that humanity as a whole is going to fight her, thuys her goal is not to wage war against humanity. She is prepared to destroy those who do fight back - human, Sangheili, Jiralhanae or Kig-Yar.
> Also, I guarantee people died from the EMP. Advanced aircraft seen in Halo are not naturally aerodynamic, and likely most use fly by wire systems. Cut power and you have tens of thousands of aircraft raining down on people, not to mention ships in low orbit, automated car accidents, heavy machinery failures, life support system failures, intensive care patients, etc.
Then it wouldn’t really be the EMP that killed them, it would be various crashes. However this point is silly, as we know that people died when Cortana raised the Guardians.