Just a few questions I have regarding Halo canon:
When there’s a post-Feral outbreak, how does the central intelligence communicate with all the individual Floodians? We see the Gravemind exerting perfect control over the Flood units at the end of Halo 3, making them not attack the Chief or Arby and even talking through them. How far does this control extend and by what mechanism is the data transmitted?
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On a completely unrelated note, can Sangheili swim?
The Flood share a collective conscious that is linked between all Flood forms. This conscious is composed of the minds of all who are assimilated into the Flood, and probably the remaining Precursors as well.
Sangheili can swim.
Concerning the Flood: the simple fact is that we do not know. The Flood’s communication is very similar to popular perceptions of telepathy and the idea of a hivemind. In this way, the Gravemind is the Flood, all of the Flood, all of the time. It’s not so much about the Gravemind controlling its Flood units as the Gravemind is the total sum of the Flood.
One way to think about this is a computer network. In such a network, there technically isn’t a single computer, as they are all connected. They can all do task, independent of or in tandem with each other, and one could even be designated as the “Master Unit”, but there would never truly be a separation between the individual computers. They would “think” and “act” as one, regardless of if they were working a single task or several. This is how the Flood most likely works.
Now conversely, if a computer were disconnected from this hypothetical network, the overall “collective” would lose some processing power. This doesn’t necessarily mean that data is lost (though that is possible), but some data or “knowledge” may no longer be expressible. We can see this in instances like Halo Wars. When you take out the Flood hives, the Flood weaken because a major “server” has been disconnected from the Flood “network”.
As for how far this “communication” can reach, that’s up for debate, but it is certainly dependent on the “size” of a Flood outbreak. For example, there was a huge Flood outbreak on Installation 05 during the events of Halo CE, but the Gravemind on Installation 05 was incapable of exerting its influence on those Flood. You could almost think of these like wi-fi networks. The networks remain unaware of each other until they the add enough “network nodes” to reach each other. The exact range and how it would grow is, however, unknown at the moment.
Hope this helps!
> Just a few questions I have regarding Halo canon:
>
> When there’s a post-Feral outbreak, how does the central intelligence communicate with all the individual Floodians? We see the Gravemind exerting perfect control over the Flood units at the end of Halo 3, making them not attack the Chief or Arby and even talking through them. How far does this control extend and by what mechanism is the data transmitted?
>
> …
>
> On a completely unrelated note, can Sangheili swim?
They have a hive mind, the Gravemind is the hive mind’s physical manifesation.
Yes, Sangheili probably can swim but from what I know about their planet it may be that they probably don’t want to.
Neural physics probably?
> > Just a few questions I have regarding Halo canon:
> >
> > When there’s a post-Feral outbreak, how does the central intelligence communicate with all the individual Floodians? We see the Gravemind exerting perfect control over the Flood units at the end of Halo 3, making them not attack the Chief or Arby and even talking through them. How far does this control extend and by what mechanism is the data transmitted?
> >
> > …
> >
> > On a completely unrelated note, can Sangheili swim?
>
> They have a hive mind, the Gravemind is the hive mind’s physical manifesation.
>
> Yes, Sangheili probably can swim but from what I know about their planet it may be that they probably don’t want to.
This would be enough convincing for me.
> The Flood share a collective conscious that is linked between all Flood forms. This conscious is composed of the minds of all who are assimilated into the Flood, and probably the remaining Precursors as well.
What I’m asking is, how does the Flood physically communicate? Our brain “shares consciousness” with itself (so to speak) because it has a network - heck, is a network - of nerve fibres, which can carry electrical current. Data moves between sections of the brain in real time as flows of sodium ions.
With the Flood, there is no apparent connection, yet the ‘individuals’ still behave as one, meaning there must be a hidden link somewhere. This communication system is precisely what makes the Flood such an interesting and dangerous adversary, yet the details are glossed over completely. I would certainly expect the Forerunners to have devoted massive amounts of resources towards understanding and blocking the Flood’s network, as achieving this would be tantamount to winning the war.
Unfortunately, it looks like the answer is “343 hasn’t covered that area of canon yet”.
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Thanks for the swimming answer.
> > The Flood share a collective conscious that is linked between all Flood forms. This conscious is composed of the minds of all who are assimilated into the Flood, and probably the remaining Precursors as well.
>
> What I’m asking is, how does the Flood physically communicate? Our brain “shares consciousness” with itself (so to speak) because it has a network - heck, is a network - of nerve fibres, which can carry electrical current. Data moves between sections of the brain in real time as flows of sodium ions.
>
> With the Flood, there is no apparent connection, yet the ‘individuals’ still behave as one, meaning there must be a hidden link somewhere. This communication system is precisely what makes the Flood such an interesting and dangerous adversary, yet the details are glossed over completely. I would certainly expect the Forerunners to have devoted massive amounts of resources towards understanding and blocking the Flood’s network, as achieving this would be tantamount to winning the war.
>
> Unfortunately, it looks like the answer is “343 hasn’t covered that area of canon yet”.
>
> …
>
> Thanks for the swimming answer.
I’ve thought a lot about this as well, and have tried to apply what I’ve learned as a training medical scientist to Halo lore whenever possible.
Here’s my head cannon currently:
we see Flood-infected areas often contain this murky, cloudy air - it appears like there are a lot of spores and other biological ‘stuff’ floating around.
I think that - at least in part - the Flood have evolved a highly advanced pheromone communication system between physically separate Flood beings.
So in the context of a ‘hive mind,’ the Flood and my hypothesized pheromone communication system is analogous at the organ/cellular level to a brain. Individually a neuron (a Flood-infected form) is quite useless. But when it has the capacity to communicate to networks of neurons via neurotransmitters (my hypothesized ‘pheromones’) it can now form more advanced & coordinated plans, maneuvers, and thoughts. Eventually enough Flood organisms (neurons) congregate to form a gravemind (‘central nervous system’) which can effectively take over regional/global communications and coordination of all Flood forms within a certain area.
This fits well with the known Halo lore on past successes & failures against the Flood. In atmosphere, the Flood has been near impossible to stop, whereas a pheromone communication system cannot work in space. Essentially, any Flood-controlled ship would need a gravemind physically present on it to be able to effectively use the ship technology to communicate & coordinate with neighboring Flood ships. Flood boarding parties to nearby ships would lose much of this essential coordination and revert to a primitive, indiscriminate attack until they can infect enough numbers to form a new gravemind on another ship.
It is why after the Battles of Installation 04, 05, and the Ark, we didn’t see a ton of Flood infested tiny slipspace-compatible craft jumping all over the place to quickly infect all human & Covenant worlds. Only human & Covenant capital ships have adequate crew sizes to infect & form a local gravemind capable of coordinating advanced strategic functions.
Its not a pheramone thing, the beastiarium specifically says that once the gravemind is formed the flood no longer uses spores to communicate.
“s. Synchronization among remote groups of varied forms and the use of [occupational specializations] by members within local and remote groups can no longer be accounted for by the use of [pheromone-based] communication. Group reactions to situational changes at a strategic level are instantaneous or near-instantaneous with no perceptible [time lag] attributable to distance. It has been theorized that post–Feral stage Flood have some form of [telepathy[?]], although this has not been verified.”
I’d say its most likely the domain, or something similar to the domain, given the flood’s origins.
damn. well, my head cannon fails.
I don’t have the Beastiarium, which is why I’m not familiar with that passage. Thanks for the information UrbaneRocket.
Crazy. . . direct biological connection with the domain? Is that really possible?
The theories I’ve come to understand are either they have a neural physical link(think ender’s game) to each other or they have a direct connection to the domain.
> damn. well, my head cannon fails.
>
> I don’t have the Beastiarium, which is why I’m not familiar with that passage. Thanks for the information UrbaneRocket.
>
> Crazy. . . direct biological connection with the domain? Is that really possible?
The flood can directly interface with computers, as shown in Human Weakness. The domain itself is a precursor artifact, and seems to be alive in a sense. If anything, the forerunner’s connection to it is probably a hack (like grafting an arm onto someone) while the flood has a true ‘natural’ connection.
That said, both brains and computers run on electronic impulses, and run very similarly.
> The Flood share a collective conscious that is linked between all Flood forms. This conscious is composed of the minds of all who are assimilated into the Flood, and probably the remaining Precursors as well.
The Flood have a neural-share of sorts, aka a hive mind, much in the same way that the Forerunners had the Domain. Different, yet quite similar. What the Forerunners had/used/added to was just an offshoot of what is actually out there… that the Flood currently uses… and what the Precursors once used. The Gravemind even shows glimpses of it to Cortana.
I have this theory that the Flood, being of Precursor origin, use the Domain or a Domain-like entity for all their communication and knowledge and data. (You can then assume that Flood are Precursor Catalog. “Catalogs” and “Floods” are incorrect in labelling them, too!)
“But Bigfoot, the Halos destroyed the Domain!”
Precursors built it, Flood store memories of beings they infect, therefore Flood could potentially know how to rebuild it. It’s a stretch, but not exactly impossible.
Now, it’s been a while since I’ve read the Forerunner Saga, but wasn’t there also something about the Domain being slow/unresponsive/acting strangely during the Forerunner/Flood War? Both the Forerunners and the Flood (according to this theory) would’ve been using the Domain at the same time. The Flood, having Precursor knowledge on how to operate the Domain, would have much better control over it and could potentially lock Forerunners out.
Having the Flood use the Domain (and being able to maintain/rebuild/perfectly operate it) opens up a whole lot of other interesting ideas about the Precursor/Forerunner War too: did the Precursors manage to record details of the war before the Forerunners learned how to use the Domain? Did the loss of the Domain speed up the defeat of the Precursors/victory of the Forerunners? Did the first Forerunners using the Domain lock away the information that was ‘lost to time’ on purpose?
Well for those that read the Forerunner saga you would know that the flood are the remains of the precursors that became corrupt and turned into a parasitic life form,and as we know the precursors used neural physics which was how the domain was created. Although the domain would have been destroyed after the firing of the Halo array, maybe some of the remaining flood which were kept for studies on the Halo’s found a way to access it, which could give a gravemind access to it, which in turn possibly could be used to contact other flood forms?
Just a theory…A game theory.
> > damn. well, my head cannon fails.
> >
> > I don’t have the Beastiarium, which is why I’m not familiar with that passage. Thanks for the information UrbaneRocket.
> >
> > Crazy. . . direct biological connection with the domain? Is that really possible?
>
> The flood can directly interface with computers, as shown in Human Weakness. The domain itself is a precursor artifact, and seems to be alive in a sense. If anything, the forerunner’s connection to it is probably a hack (like grafting an arm onto someone) while the flood has a true ‘natural’ connection.
>
> That said, both brains and computers run on electronic impulses, and run very similarly.
Yes, this is similar in concept to the humanized Cylons in the BSG reboot. The more we learn about the brain the more it appears to be a biological circuit board, of sorts. Amazing stuff. I listened to a talk recently by a Nobel laureate that could literally RECREATE memories & implant false memories in mice simply by stimulating certain mapped regions of the brain that were associated with the formation of that memory. It was amazingly complex stuff.
Still, I want to know how they can communicate independent of physical contact. Telepathy is a crazy concept.
Could they have evolved systems to perceive and transmit data through things like RF, or even faster methods of ‘wireless’ information delivery?
As Toa said, Bungie never went into deal so nobody knows.
But! Halo’s Flood is primarily based off “The Vang” in Christopher Rowley’s Starhammer (link takes you to amazon) and you can read more about it’s influence on Halo here.
In the Novel said omni-parasitic intelligence communicates via telepathy.
The Formics in Ender’s game were able to communicate telepathically by tapping into the universe’s natal consciousnesses or frequency. We know This novel to be a critical piece towards Halo’s establishment as well.
In both examples a form of telepathy is how aliens communicate, Which might as well now include Xenopmorphs from said franchise. So I’d wager without worry that is same for The Flood at an intergalactic stage. Prior to that I think pheromones were brought up during a bungie update or some short interview.
Naturally someone might try to connect how the Formics communicate to the Domain which,eh. This is something naturally (bless them) to the Formics whereas the Flood is dependent on Precursor architecture to communicate. Which is a simple SC-FI plot. Though since we know some Precursors existed spiritually** perhaps the Floods own malformation have given it such a connection? Not to bad of an example IMO.
Makes you wonder if Rampancy is possible for the Flood.
Nah.
As others have mentioned, I would bet for the Domain.
The Domain Librarian found on Path Ketona was “organic”. What tells us the Domain the Forerunners were familiar with wasn’t Precursor conscience all the time?
Mind powers… enough said.
