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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle
Posted by: Sum Vestri NeX
Firing of the Halo Arrays killing the Flood....
Since the rings only target sentient life, it leaves to question, and it seems that all theories hinge on the answer...
is each Flood form sentient? or part of a hive mind?
If the hive mind is correct, then the Gravemind would be the only affected Flood form. Then one must wonder if all or most other flood forms would die soon after the Gravemind's demise, such as a head being cut off of an organism. In the Terminals, when describing the battle between Mendicant Bias and Offensive Bias, said that after the arrays fired, the Forerunner and the Flood commanded ships drifted useless in space; I wonder if each Form is indeed sentient. Even in Halo: The Flood, it describes each infected humans' battle against the infection form within, and how it seemingly sifted through its mind like a careless archaeologist.
But then, if each soldier were sentient, the Flood would have been much more dangerous in ground engagements, without their only advantage being sheer numbers.
Hmmm..
A good thing to bring up, and I have a theory as to why the Flood cannot be killed by the array but they suddenly dropped off the map after it fired. Forgive me if this gets a tad technical, I have a thing for anatomy.
The Halo Encyclopedia, in one of its better descriptions, discusses how the Halo array kills. It tells us that the array focuses only upon sentient life by using harmonic frequencies to destroy nervous cells. The exact passage lies on page 170. It reads:
"When activated, they [the Halos] would wipe out any sentient life within three radii of the Milky Way Galaxy's center by sending out a harmonic frequency, targeting certain cells in the nervous systems of any sentient organism."
Now, with that said, there is a section on the Flood that brings up an interesting point about their biology (also located within the Encyclopedia). On page 152 at the bottom-left, it reads:
"Flood biomass is composed of an undifferentiated cell-type that is referred to as the Flood Super Cell (FSC), which can be described as approximating "thinking muscle." The FSC closely resembles neurons or glial cells in structure. The Flood can arrange these cells to mimic any organ it might need."
Now we know that the FSC is essentially an undifferentiated cell type that contains both the characteristics of glial cells (which essentially hold neurons together so they can function as part of a whole), neurons, and muscle (the most important). This basically means that any "pure" Flood form's FSCs functions as skin/connective tissue (glial), muscle, and neurostructure all at once. As glial cells are typically only found within the neurosystems of organisms, if the FSC contained only characteristics of glial cells and neurons this would not be quite so great a theory, but because they take on characteristics of muscle cells as well, it's much more likely.
Now, the harmonic frequency that kills focuses completely upon neurons (or glial cells, it doesn't quite specify) to kill all sentient life. The Flood do not possess strict neurons or strict glions, however, they possess neuro/glion/muscles in the form of the FSC. This means that the harmonic frequency sent out by the Halo array would likely not kill FSCs or strictly FSC-based organisms, because the frequency would not react with those Super-Cells that serve so many separate functions.
Now the question arises, why did those ships go dead? Easy. The Flood use Combat Forms as hosts to carry out more advanced functions (like, oh, operating a ship). While the Infection Forms within the Combat Forms are FSC-based, the Combat Forms themselves possess their original cell structure. This turns the Halo Array into more of a weapon against the Flood than originally suggested, because the Array would not only kill all sentient life that the Flood could possess, it would kill all sentient life that the Flood already had possessed as well, by destroying key cells within the host's neurological structures that the Flood needed to operate the body. When the array fired, it took out those Combat Forms that the Flood were using to operate the ships, and they went dead, making it easy for Offensive Bias to obliterate the fleet.
The only Flood forms that would have been able to survive something like that would have been strict FSC-based organisms, namely Infection Forms and Pure Forms. "What, no Gravemind!?" you ask? Here is the truly relevant portion of my theory: yes, no Gravemind. The Graveminds are composed of Combat Forms.
On page 157 of the Halo Encyclopedia, Brain Forms (Proto-Graveminds) are discussed. The overall passage is relatively useless, but one sentence is of great relevance:
"...the Proto-Gravemind is the product of the syntactical fusion of several Combat Forms, merging all of its subordinate forms into a massive, bloated, spherical organism..."
Now, if the Proto-Gravemind is constructed of Combat Forms (which we can assume is accurate based off of Captain Keyes' inclusion into a Brain Form in Halo: CE), it is safe to assume that the final Gravemind will also contain components of the Combat Forms used to create it during its Proto-Gravemind state. This means that the Gravemind will possess the same weaknesses of the Combat Forms and Carrier Forms: retaining neurological characteristics of the original host. The Encyclopedia seems to agree with this point, as it states on page 159:
"It appears that one [a Gravemind] existed over one hundred thousand years ago but was destroyed by the first firing of the Halo Array."
And there you have it, the reason why Combat Forms, Carrier Forms, and the Gravemind itself are destroyed by an Array firing.
[Edited on 05.16.2010 10:10 AM PDT]