Total War, Conscription and the UNSC

Community Halo Universe
1

Okay, my general perception of the Halo marines and army is that, Bungie clearly watched James Camerons Aliens and said “we want them”.

As a result the UNSC are almost always portrayed as an elite, professional and well trained force of men and women. They’re a little outclassed at times, but they’re clearly full time soldiers. I can’t really think of an instance where this wasn’t my general impression of them. True, a few freak out under combat stress but this is either because Flood or how serious things are: Scarabs. The equipment and armor they wear is also highly indicative of this. Full body plate, heads up display, heavy man portable weapons, sniper rifles, tanks and other vehicles.

This becomes a problem in the expanded lore where the scope and scale of the Human Covenant War is shown. It lasted 30 years, saw entire planets destroyed and 60% of the human population die. That’s dead. Not injured, cripplied or suffering PTSD. I mean really if you wandered a human city in 2559 it should be like Paris in 1919; millions of ex soldiers crippled, blinded and broken by the horrors of war. Not this “we are the giants” nonsense.

Which doesn’t work for me. It makes sense in Aliens to have a squad of elite troopers confront a small infestation of xenomorphs. But the scenario in Halo is what I’d call a “Total War”. This is a conflict which is an absolute, all or nothing, war of annialation; in this case nothing less than the fate of humanity being at stake.

Given the length of the war and implied rate of attrition, I find it really unlikely that all of the UNSC military would still consist of full time professional soldiers. They surely should have resorted to conscription and drafted anyone of military age. You’d need to massively increase the size of the military. I mean, frankly the Battle of Reach should look more like Stalingrad or Berlin rather than this bizarre situation of evacuating civilians.

Now, theres a few possibilities here which explain this:

Option 1: The UNSC does use conscription. But, due to the sheer size of the UNSC, it has the time to fully train and equip its soldiers. This gives them the appearance of professional soldiers but actually most of these are basically like GI’s from WW2. However, even this analogy feels kind of at odds with how they are portrayed. I don’t look at the UNSC and see WW2 GI’s in space. I’d also point out that 60% figure and the destroyed worlds whereas the US never fought a ground war on its home soil in WW2. The Soviet Union is a better analogy and even they didn’t suffer 60% dead.

Its also worth adding that any sort of Berlin style defense (sending old men and boys out with rocket launchers) would be relatively pointless since the UNSC could always surrender territory and these forces would just get glassed by the Covenant. So, it would only really be Earth that you would get this reaction and there wasn’t a general invasion like Reach.

Option 2: The UNSC does not use conscription, or deems it counter productive and unnecessary. This is basically like saying the United States would have kept its peace time army of a few thousand men during WW2. Given the rate of attrition (60% is a colossal figure people), you couldn’t possibly sustain an army of the required size with just volunteers. So if they aren’t using conscription, it means that most of that 60% figure consisted of civilians that were never put under arms like they should have been.

Personally I always felt that Bungie never got across the sort of desperation and horror that this sort of war would entail. I think they plucked the 60% figure out of thin air without really thinking it through. If the war got THAT intense, then it wouldn’t be this plucky band of brothers with a full arsenal behind them, it should be brutal conflict in which every last man is being hurled into this maelstrom. Things should be that desperate. So I don’t think they used WW2 as an analogy, I think they were too blind sided by the likes of Aliens in which humanity is in a hugely different situation and it isn’t reasonable that all the human military would be at that level. Partly this is also due to Bungie wanting to keep the games relatively cheerful and upbeat; even though things are Enemy at the Gates level bonkers.

I also don’t think 343 has really considered the physical effects of a war that killed 60% of the population. We see worlds like Meridian to be sure, but its really the people and the wounds they carry that should be stressed. There shouldn’t be a single family that didn’t lose a loved one or had somebody horrifically injured. Blinded, burnt, lost limbs, PTSD; the list is endless. The streets should be lined with beggars and broken men and women. Not “oh no, poor me, I have to mine the glass off this planet.”… :I Again, tonally, 343 might just consider that too extreme for the sort of story they want to tell.

2

The Infinity was a last ditch effort by humanity to ensure their survival, so if they lost Earth, they could take the Infinity and run faster and further than the Covenant would be able to follow. The disproportional amount of resources poured into that project is why where the Infinity is concerned, we don’t see the UNSC’s hardships.

As for the rest of the human colonies, keep in mind that most people who were on worlds attacked by the Covenant, died there, so there isn’t going to be the number of shell-shocked survivors you seem to be expecting. Most of the remaining humans would have lived on their current colony worlds, which had never been attacked by the Covenant directly, so they’d be about as status-quo as the average American, watching the news about terrible things happening across the world.

I also highly suspect that most colonies have their own agriculture, and that the agricultural planets serve primarily to support the UNSC’s fleets, and supplement the planets’ production with crops that don’t grow on their worlds. Species-wide starvation isn’t a forgone conclusion, especially when you consider humanity is fining new planets along with trying to reclaim their old ones, so they do have available resources.

3

> 2533274883501878;2:
>

Surely its unrealistic that everyone died on the spot and nobody else was affected? We see in Halo Reach them evacuating wounded and refugees. That would include people hit by shrapnel, burns, combat wounded and the like.

I mean against an enemy that used plasma, burns and people being blinded should be an incredibly common occurrence to soldiers and naval personnel.

Well, theres only 39 billion people pre war and 16 billion post war. When you think theres 6+ billion on Earth today, that probably means Earth and Reach had the bulk of humanities population. So basically the entire population would have been impacted by the war in some shape or form.

Its incredibly unlikely that any one planet would be self sustaining. In real world, all countries are interdependent and you would expect exactly the same set up in space if travel times/costs are not a factor. You also have references to Harvest being essentially an “agri world” to use a bit of 40k jargon; being a world given over to producing food for other planets. So the destruction of these people and worlds would create enormous problems. Refugees for one thing.

You don’t have to look very far in history to find disturbing analogies to where 60% of a group has been killed and realize how that would be a traumatic event for humanity. It wouldn’t be like watching the Gulf War on CNN.

4

> 2533274803587475;3:
> Its incredibly unlikely that any one planet would be self sustaining. In real world, all countries are interdependent and you would expect exactly the same set up in space if travel times/costs are not a factor. You also have references to Harvest being essentially an “agri world” to use a bit of 40k jargon; being a world given over to producing food for other planets. So the destruction of these people and worlds would create enormous problems. Refugees for one thing.

Our planet is self sustaining, and many countries are capable of functioning independently of other countries, but they trade because that option is available, and both parties are bettered for it.

I suspect that agricultural worlds were producing the necessities for the fleets, and producing crops that various planets were unable to grow on their own. So perhapse one planet is good for potatoes and other rooty plants, but not much else, so that planet trades some of their resources for the sweet or savory foods that they can’t grow on their world.

5

In the same sense that England in 1000AD was self sufficient. The economy would go galactic and be a lot more interconnected once we went into space and got that tech level.

6

> 2533274883501878;2:
> The Infinity was a last ditch effort by humanity to ensure their survival, so if they lost Earth, they could take the Infinity and run faster and further than the Covenant would be able to follow.

Actually, that’s no longer canon. The Infinity was under construction for 25 years, and while originally spearheaded by ONI, was taken over the UNSCN. Infinity would have simply been an mobile command center (for a Theater of War) with carrier capabilities.

> 2533274883501878;2:
> The disproportional amount of resources poured into that project is why where the Infinity is concerned, we don’t see the UNSC’s hardships.

The Infinity has the equivalent mass of hundreds of stalwart-class frigates. If you need to see an example of hardships, count the 23 billion casualties lost because the leadership was focusing their efforts on building a super-advanced basket to put all their eggs in; instead of upgrading the fleet or using the same resources to create more ships or a fleet of advanced warships that would head over to Covenant refueling locations and try to buy the UEG more time.

> 2533274883501878;2:
> As for the rest of the human colonies, keep in mind that most people who were on worlds attacked by the Covenant, died there, so there isn’t going to be the number of shell-shocked survivors you seem to be expecting.

The post-war universe begs to differ. By the way, you don’t need to physically be somewhere to be diagnosed with PTSD - recovered footage, videos posted on the UEG internet-equivalent, and the influx of immigrants speaking of an nigh-unstoppable army of aliens exterminating most of humanity could demoralize the populace in extreme ways.

> 2533274883501878;2:
> Most of the remaining humans would have lived on their current colony worlds, which had never been attacked by the Covenant directly, so they’d be about as status-quo as the average American, watching the news about terrible things happening across the world.

A better comparison would be a french local living in Paris during May 1940.

> 2533274883501878;2:
> > I also highly suspect that most colonies have their own agriculture,
> >
> >
> > > 2533274883501878;2:
> > >

Harvest was notable for being the planet that fed most of the Sol System. Harvest was lost decades earlier. Five years following that, most of the outer colonies (the same places feeding all their resources to Epilson Eridani and Sol) went dark.

> 2533274883501878;2:
> and that the agricultural planets serve primarily to support the UNSC’s fleets

And what about your civilians? You know, the same guys building those fleets?

> 2533274883501878;2:
> , and supplement the planets’ production with crops that don’t grow on their worlds.

So you want to introduce foreign crops and foods, relying on unique environmental factors for proper growth even with genetic modification, to locally sourced farming?

> 2533274883501878;2:
> Species-wide starvation isn’t a forgone conclusion, especially when you consider humanity is fining new planets along with trying to reclaim their old ones, so they do have available resources.

The problem here is that finding planets is a lot simpler then investing billions of credits to developing the necessary infrastructure for farming development and geological surveying. That excluding the excessive costs and resource reallocation for transportation, storage, waste-management, and then the actual considerations for human occupation and sustaining their stay… which brings its own problems.
Before the Covenant showed up and started glassing worlds, humanity had occupied a rough sphere of 83 light years. Lets say for the moment that the UEG has the capacity to access each and every star system in that vicinity - that’s somewhere along 2500 star systems.

10 to 25% of those star systems will have a body of sufficient mass to be recognized in the Circumstellar Habitable Zone. That leaves us with 250 to 625 Star Systems with potential spots of occupation - disregarding serious environmental differences due to unique development - though fortunately, the UEG possess some terraforming technologies.

Let’s say that every solar system is just like ours - two planets may undergo ecosynthesis for mass-scale food production equivalent to Mars or Earth (we’re ignoring smaller self-sufficient space stations or moons). That gives us 500 to 1250 “earth-like” planets within 83 light years. I’m gonna go with 850 worlds of interest. Problem here is, distance and effort are major considerations for observation (ships that have to travel weeks around human space to deliver much needed supplies is a delay that cannot be afforded in a war of this magnitude).

So we’ll assume that everything within 40 light years is acceptable: scaling down that gives us 425 worlds.

Surveying Corps/Pathfinders are gonna consider that number carefully and look at their criteria.

-Humanity will lose 700+ colonies by 2552, so we’re gonna assume that only 10% (70) of those lost colonies are Earth-like worlds within 40 light years.

-New Blood states that the UEG avoids colonizing planets with active volcanoes. Looking at the list of extraterrestrial volcanoes within our system… its not a far-fetched conclusion to assume that less hospitable worlds will feature volcanic activity. Let’s assume 10% (43) of all worlds found fit under this category.

-You also need to avoid locations with weak geomagnetic fields/violent solar seasons, otherwise your crops are gonna get messed up and everyone will catch space-cancer. That’s another 10%

-Virulent diseases and terrible soil dominant a few outlying worlds. Minus 10%

-The atmosphere composition is too inhospitable for colonization and will require precise, long-term management, these worlds will take decades of shaping before the efforts come into fruition. 10% is gone.

-The position of a couple Goldilocks worlds places them in the way of daily meteor showers and in the path of a couple asteroids. The necessary defenses and sensors for monitoring the activity of an entire solar system exceeds the budget for human intervention. -10%

I placed six simple filters and lost 288 worlds. That leaves me with 137potential worlds to search in a 40 light year radius and further filters will quickly remove most of them. The reality is, Harvest was a jewel that took hundreds of years to find (and even then, the UEG could not feed all its citizens). It will take the UNSC a minimum of decades to go through possible worlds for colonization, centuries to find a replacement for Harvest (without dumb luck).

The average UEG citizen will either be eating some nasty vat-grown stuff that makes the omelet MREs taste like heaven or soylent green.

7

Conscription would possibly further inflame the already fragile political state between Earth and the colonies. The UNSC isn’t a nation with any sense of identity or loyalty among the masses of humanity, so the UNSC conscripting people from colonies would probably go down as well as the UN coming to any of our countries and conscripting us without our government’s consent. It’s basically a foreign power taking away citizens.

It would also be difficult to justify it even with the argument that humanity’s existence is on the line because conscripting additional soldiers isn’t going to do anything to improve the UNSC’s chances. The war was primarily a naval war.

> 2533274803587475;3:
> Surely its unrealistic that everyone died on the spot and nobody else was affected? We see in Halo Reach them evacuating wounded and refugees. That would include people hit by shrapnel, burns, combat wounded and the like.

However, evacuating people is a costly and time consuming effort that relies on fragile logistics. In the midst of a Covenant attack, any notion of practiced drills and protocol for evac would go out of the window as general panic sets in. Making matters of coordination worse would be the fact that the Covenant had total air superiority, meaning that they would be shooting down evac transports and destroying orbital elevators. Anything that makes it into orbit has to get through a Covenant blockade. Out of millions of inhabitants, you’d probably be lucky to evacuate even the merest fraction of that.

And then, where do you send them? Evacuating to the nearest colony would be the most pragmatic option (If for example you had people seriously injured. The less time of flight required, the less food and other stuff required for a voyage as well), which means that there’s a good chance these refugees will be facing another Covenant invasion in a few months, slashing their chances of survival again.

I could believe that the war was literally a case of survivors having never even seen Covenant before.

> 2533274803587475;3:
> I mean against an enemy that used plasma, burns and people being blinded should be an incredibly common occurrence to soldiers and naval personnel.

With demonstrated 26th century medical technology though I believe this would be a very short term issue. I doubt there will be any significant number of people permanently physically maimed by the war. Mental scars are completely different, but again I don’t believe that proportionally speaking enough people would survive a Covenant encounter for this to have any major impact on human societies post-Halo 3.

> 2533274803587475;3:
> Well, theres only 39 billion people pre war and 16 billion post war. When you think theres 6+ billion on Earth today, that probably means Earth and Reach had the bulk of humanities population. So basically the entire population would have been impacted by the war in some shape or form.

Earth had 10 billion IIRC, and Reach had 500 million, so there are therefore more colonies out there. My expectation is that they are all the colonies on the other side of the UNSC colonial sphere from the Covenant’s advance.

> 2533274803587475;3:
> Its incredibly unlikely that any one planet would be self sustaining. In real world, all countries are interdependent and you would expect exactly the same set up in space if travel times/costs are not a factor. You also have references to Harvest being essentially an “agri world” to use a bit of 40k jargon; being a world given over to producing food for other planets. So the destruction of these people and worlds would create enormous problems. Refugees for one thing.

Depends on how responsive UNSC infrastructure is and how quickly it can adapt. My guess is that this would have been a problem early on in the war, as human space was not designed with the possibility of external invasion in mind. As the war went on however I’d expect some policy being implemented for worlds creating their own essential production efforts. It would be questionable for the UNSC to have seen the disastrous practice of centralized agri-worlds in the context of an external invasion they can’t fight off, and not have done anything to mitigate further loses. They had 30 years to do something about it, after all, and they have 26th century technology at their disposal (I.e. The possibility of fast growing GM crops in a range of environments, environmentally sealed farms, in vitro meat, etc).