Don’t know if this has been asked before (Google search and a site search didn’t turn anything though I’m sure this has come up in the long history of Halo forums), but I’ve been on a Halo kick lately and have been playing through all the games and just falling in love with the Classic Halo universe all over again.
But as I boarded the Longsword and shot out into space with a enormous fireball appearing behind me and ripping apart the megastructure that we all know and love, a couple of questions popped into my mind.
Could anyone have survived Installation 04(1)'s destruction? Could colonization of the ring be possible?
From what we know via custscenes and screenshots, Installation 04 still retained some form of atmosphere after it was blown apart by the Pillar of Autumn. Granted the shockwave from the Autumn’s reactor would have devastated the bodies of almost everyone on the surface (popped lungs, etc) and the ensuing geo-technological cataclysm would have rended most if not all of the landmasses on the ring wastelands and filled the atmosphere with ash and other debris…
But as we see in Halo 2, and by the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum, “Life Finds A Way”.
So let’s use an example of a marine squad that was presumed dead by the time Alpha Company boarded the Truth & Reconciliation and were planning on leaving for Earth. This marine unit was cut off in the chaos following the Flood Outbreak and the mass scramble to get off the ring.
Now, could they have survived by holing up in a Forerunner structure or by descending deep enough into the ring’s bowels? Assumingthey did, would they have been able to survive on the surface until their food supplies ran out?
Oppositely, could Covenant search teams from High Charity operate on the surface or set up outposts? Surely the Covenant would leave some form of presence there while the remainder left for Delta Halo, the question is, with the ensuing civil war, what would happen if they were left to fend for themselves on the devastated surface of the ring?
Look forward to any theories anyone has.
As a sort of heads up, this isn’t a look into the canon or anything, this is simply a thought exercise. I know full well the Covenant did not leave research teams on the ring nor did any UNSC presence outside of John-117, Cortana, Johnson and the others in the Pelican survive it’s destruction (Mona Lisa having occurred after the explosion and did not land directly on the larger portions of the ring).