Terminals: something really didn't make sense

Community Halo Universe
1

I’m referring to the second terminal, Lord of Admirals.

Human war fleet arrives over a Forerunner planet.
Crew: There’s two billion Forerunners down there, Lord of Admirals.
Lord of Admirals: Scan for the infection!
Crew: The infection is present, but localized to small regions.
Lord of Admirals: Hmmm… Localized to small regions… yeah, we’re going to have to destroy the whole planet.
Crew: But… sir… shouldn’t we inform the Forerunners, or save at least a portion of the uninfected to let them know we weren’t acting out of aggression?
Lord of Admirals: Naaah we’ve got to kill them all right this second.
Crew: We could… I don’t know… email the Forerunners or something? Just an FYI?
Lord of Admirals: Naaah kill them all please.
Crew: Look, sir, I know the Flood spreads quickly, but we have faster than light, instantaneous communications. We’ve solved the problem of interspecies understanding. Bob has an instantaneous translator built into Whatsapp on his iPhone Theta, don’t you Bob?
Bob: That is so.
Lord of Admirals: But the infection spreads too rapidly!
Crew: So if we don’t kill literally two billion Forerunners this instant, they’ll all be infected in the time it takes to tap out a text to the Forerunner Council saying ‘sorry guys planet is infected gotta cleanse it, srsly we’re sorry’?
Lord of Admirals: That is exactly what will happen.
Crew: Couldn’t we at least take a photo and provide the Forerunners with samples of the Flood, just so we’re not triggering a war that will surely imperil our entire species?
Lord of Admirals: Seriously bro, if you don’t press the cleanse button in the next five seconds I’m going to take away your silver face paint privileges for a month.
Crew: http://i.imgur.com/Y1h46.gif
Human war fleet blows up planet, enters into horrible war with Forerunners, dies

So the only way this sequence makes sense is if the Lord of Admirals - and, by extension, the leadership of humanity - is using the Flood as an excuse to launch a war. There could be a lot of reasons for this: longstanding animosity, resentment at Forerunner arrogance, running out of habitable worlds as suggested in the books, Forthenco is just a bit of a -Yoink- and is using the Flood to further his aggression and ambition, etc.

But it seems like it would have been so much easier and better to give the Forerunners a call and say ‘we’re about to destroy the population of one of your planets, DONT GET MAD THOUGH because we seriously had a good reason.’ Or save some of the Forerunners so they could testify to the council, letting them know what happened.

I get that they’re two opposing, powerful, galactic civilizations, but surely they could have communicated in some way.

But okay, that part makes sense if you accept the Flood was just being used as an excuse to a) expand into Forerunner space and b) further someone’s ambition.

What doesn’t make sense is when the Librarian, later in the terminals, tells the Didact ‘but I’ve only just figured out that the humans were trying to kill the Flood and not billions of Forerunners!’

I don’t know, I’m just having a really hard time believing this was all some big misunderstanding. It makes sense if you consider that humans were aggressive and deceitful, but in that case the fact, that the Librarian genuinely believes the whole human/Forerunner war all came down to crossed wires doesn’t ring true.

What does everyone else think?

2

The Lord of Admirals must be a genetic ancestor to Captain DelMoron, only explanation.

3

Say they told the Forerunners about the infection on their planet. By the time the Forerunners could comprehend and respond the Flood would have taken the entire planet. Nobody said that they glassed the entire planet, but any glassing would be a hostile act to the Forerunners. Humanity also needed to expand in order to stay alive, as the Flood was taking planets from them.

Most Forerunners didn’t even believe in the Flood even after the Humans were defeated.

4

But that also presents a problem, doesn’t it? The Forerunners were the most advanced species in the galaxy, and yet they didn’t ‘believe’ in a plague so virulent it ravaged entire star systems and was visible to human vessels from a long range scan in space.

5

> But that also presents a problem, doesn’t it? The Forerunners were the most advanced species in the galaxy, and yet they didn’t ‘believe’ in a plague so virulent it ravaged entire star systems and was visible to human vessels from a long range scan in space.

Well, a select few knew. Many believed that the Humans were using it as an excuse to wage war.

6

I interpreted it like the scene in Halo 3 when Rtas 'Vadum said he would have glassed all of Earth to make sure the Flood was destroyed. It wasn’t because he hated Humans, it was because the Flood had to be stopped at all costs and total extermination was the only way to guarantee it.

Also take into consideration the Flood’s intelligence. They grow smarter with each race they assimilate and by this time they were infecting Tier 1 Humans and San 'Shyuum. Assimilating Tier 1 Forerunner would have only made them more powerful and they didn’t have time to diplomatically sit down and tell the Forerunner all about it.

7

Except the Lord of Admirals didn’t take that choice of his lightly as your summary makes it seem. He was obviously distraught at what he felt like he had to do. And even if the infection was in localized areas, it would spread within a matter of hours. Ancient humans tried to warn the Forerunners about the Flood too, the Forerunners did not listen.

8

If he was distraught, surely there could have been some attempt made at apology, some chance of reconciliation.

Look, I’m not saying that the idea is a bad one. Humans expanding into Forerunner space and triggering a war is a great idea, especially if they were backed into a corner. I just think the way the terminals portrayed it is overly simplistic and falls over if only the most basic of explanations was attempted by ancient humanity.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the terminals, and I think they added a lot (a whole lot) to my enjoyment of Halo 4, but this particular scene just bugged me. The only way I can make it make sense is if it’s the Librarian’s best guess as to what the humans did, as opposed to their actual decision making process. But that’s a bit unsatisfying - like the ‘Halo Legends makes sense if it’s Cortana’s idea of what must have happened’ thing.

9

> If he was distraught, surely there could have been some attempt made at apology, some chance of reconciliation.

Honestly, how would he do that? “Hey, sorry we glassed this planet. But there was an intelligent virus-thing on it that would have spread all over. Where is it? Oh, well we destroyed it. But it was there all right!”

The Forerunners would have accepted no explanation for the death of millions.

10

Yeah, I’m kind of with you on this one, I’ve read the Forerunner books and from those it was just seen as the Humans and the Forerunners didn’t trust each other and when the Humans started to retreat from the flood into forerunner space the war started. I don’t think 343 needed to make Humans come over as though they were Just making the tough decisions for the greater good.

I enjoyed the terminals and it is what it is but sometimes I do feel that the in game plot devices are a bit weak compared to other halo media.

11

A localized infection on 26th century Earth is nothing to sterilize an entire planet over.

A localized infection on a Forerunner world with unbelievably advanced esoteric technology is something to crap your pants over.

It makes more sense if you think about how Forerunner civilian ships are more than likely capable of initiating in-atmosphere slipspace jumps to the atmospheres of other planets in neighbouring systems, or even to other parts of the same planet, at any time. The Forerunners also have these interstellar slipspace gates littering their planets that one can use at their convenience to arrive at their neighbouring solar system as if they were merely jumping in a taxi to the local shops, except that is faster. If I were the Lord of Admirals, I’d be ripping my hair out. Those localized infections could be spreading to other planets via slipspace jumps and gates. Blockades would be completely ineffective. So would containment of localized sites. The planet is already lost, simply put.

An a sense, with all of that taken into consideration, there probably isn’t such a thing as a localised infection on a world where the technology can grant you instant and unstoppable access to all parts of the planet. Well there probably is, but the timeframe in which you could call it such a thing is likely to be very, very small before the Flood gets its hands on this technology. The Flood then just slipspace jumps to the neighbouring city, or uses these portals, bypassing your shields and walls and such. The Forerunners can shut down the portals, albeit when it’s too late, but there’s little we know of that can stop slipspace capable transports from infiltrating. Distance would no longer become a factor in determining the growth and extent of the infection, which is a very worrying prospect.

We also know just how interconnected Forerunner structures are with all of these Sentinel conduits. Flood spores would be almost impossible to contain once they have infiltrated the subsystems of Forerunner mega-structures.

So the planet is already lost without a massive and intensive application of manpower and resources, which are not immediately present. By the time they have been assembled, the Flood could grab some slipspace capable vessels and begin spreading exponentially invariant of distance. Even if saving the planet was possible amidst this, nothing assembled at that planet would be able to deal with the transports slipping away to other systems.

Just thinking about those slipspace gates on almost every Forerunner world, it’s no wonder the galaxy almost fell.

12

> If he was distraught, surely there could have been some attempt made at apology, some chance of reconciliation.

There was, the Forerunners didn’t listen.

13

Also, contacting the Forerunners would have been a waste of time anyway; counter-productive even. The required response to the infection would have been no different, but the Forerunners would likely have wasted time on trying to contain the infection and evacuate the populace, giving the Flood even more time and opportunity to escape the planet.

14

I believe it simply came down to desperaion and fear on ancient humanities part.