How long do you think MC would live for, taking his accounts of Cry-Sleep and his super-human augmentations.
I’m assuming he’ll definitely live up to an average of 120 yrs old, who would agree?
Not sure, seeing as there hasn’t been a case of a Spartan dying of old age.
Heroes never die…
But seriously, I’d say probably over 100. Definitely with cryosleep.
But I remember reading on one of the articles on Waypoint that Forerunner sentinels described Master Chief as:
> “This Reclaimer has had some form of genetic therapies and Physical augmentations. While these may be questionable for its long-term health, their use in combat are clearly evident.”
This guesstimation at answering your question probably features more science than anyone cares to hear, but I would actually posit he’d die at a much younger age than anyone expects, maybe as young as 60 or 70 in biological age.
Some boring science-y stuff…
Assuming people in cryosleep don’t age appreciably, since their metabolic functions are presumably suspended to near stasis, let’s not count that time towards the age. Factoring in time dilation from traveling and superluminal speeds, we can shave 5-10 years from Chief’s “numerical” age for his real, biological age.
Master Chief was around 14-15 when the Covenant invasion began (kind of crazy, huh? a 7’ 300-lb 14-year old behemoth…), fought for 27 years against the Covenant (can you imagine spending 2/3 of your life in active combat??), and after four years adrift, he’s should be around 45 numerically, and 35-40 biologically. It’s been stated that Jorge at his time of death had shown no signs of slowing, and clearly, Chief hasn’t slowed a bit either. But… that doesn’t necessarily mean this prodigious productivity is sustainable.
Now, Halopedia tells me the Spartan-II augmentation involved among other things, restructuring the bone matrix to include up to 3% carbide to make them Wolverine-style, and some sort of HGH dispersion device right in the thyroid. Furthermore, they receive an injection that boots muscle density, growth, recovery, etc., and “superconducting fibrification” of dendrites to boost neural function. While in the short term (adult, healthy life), these modifications can prove highly effective to robust health, it is very likely that as the Spartans age, these will actually become detriments and speed up their senescence.
For starters, if bone mass starts to deterioriate (ie osteoporosis), the remaining carbide will result in a compromised and potential unstable bone matrix structure. Furthermore, it is possible that when this happens, the body will start to reject the carbide, a potentially slow-deteriorating and painful condition. The HGH both in the muscles and thyroid are probably the biggest problem; besides increasing the chance of cancer, it will probably prove detrimental to the Spartans later in life (think negative pleiotropy, as in high testosterone). The neural modifications seem bad too because neurotransmission, both electric and chemical, are highly regulated events and even minor disturbances can prevent the firing of an action potential. The high doses of transmitters will likely person sensitivity by “burning out” receptors (ie ecstasy and serotonin insensitivity), leading to neurodegenerative diseases, as will the constant firing of signals, possibly also leading to demyelination.
Plus the stuff with eyes will probably make him blind.
Long story short, these modifications will make Spartans awfully super while they’re fit and (relatively young), but very rapidly, as soon as they begin to senesce, the negative side-effects might start to pile up.
Aging fundamentally is just DNA damage, accumulated over your life. Also, cells have a limited # of divisions, known as the Hayflick limit, after which each division will result in chunks of useful DNA being lost. Since none of the modifications boost DNA robustness or repair, Spartans will age normally. For these reasons, I suspect Chief will be active and fit all the way up to the age of 55 or so, when the modifications can still offset the effects of aging, but shortly thereafter, he will see sudden reduction in his abilities even faster than normal aging, and degenerate into an invalid within just five or so years.
I suppose he will last just as long as 343 wants. If we find some reason that he may only live a few more years, then they could just add something to the fiction that effectively cancels that theory out.