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This topic has moved here: Subject: How Did Life Still Exist After the Halos Were 1st Activated?
  • Subject: How Did Life Still Exist After the Halos Were 1st Activated?
Subject: How Did Life Still Exist After the Halos Were 1st Activated?

Sorry. I don't know much about the Halo universe, but I read that the Forerunners activated the Halo arrays thousands of years ago, but if the Halos destroy all sentient life in the universe, how did the Flood and all other forms of life still exist?

  • 07.21.2010 8:11 PM PDT

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRR I AM THE MONSTER!!!

They don't destroy any life on The Ark, so the forerunners stayed there. EDIT: except for when in Halo 3 the halo was activated ON The Ark and only destroyed sentient life on The Ark.

[Edited on 07.21.2010 8:13 PM PDT]

  • 07.21.2010 8:12 PM PDT


Posted by: Tomato Grande
They don't destroy any life on The Ark, so the forerunners stayed there. EDIT: except for when in Halo 3 the halo was activated ON The Ark and only destroyed sentient life on The Ark.
But what about the Flood? How did they survive? They weren't on the Ark. Weren't they on the Halo Installations? And if every being outside of the Ark was destroyed that would mean that all the food for the Flood was destroyed so the Flood shouldn't have been able to survive for 3 thousand or so years without food.

  • 07.21.2010 8:21 PM PDT

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRR I AM THE MONSTER!!!


Posted by: EliteCrusher13

Posted by: Tomato Grande
They don't destroy any life on The Ark, so the forerunners stayed there. EDIT: except for when in Halo 3 the halo was activated ON The Ark and only destroyed sentient life on The Ark.
But what about the Flood? How did they survive? They weren't on the Ark. Weren't they on the Halo Installations? And if every being outside of the Ark was destroyed that would mean that all the food for the Flood was destroyed so the Flood shouldn't have been able to survive for 3 thousand or so years without food.

The Flood Survived so that Bungie could make the level 343 guilty spark, the best one ever.

  • 07.21.2010 8:23 PM PDT

Halo is great. Bungie is great.

The flood were kept in containment and research facilities. In 343 Guilty Spark the Covenant accidentally release them. After that well......

  • 07.21.2010 8:41 PM PDT


Posted by: Captain Unami
The flood were kept in containment and research facilities. In 343 Guilty Spark the Covenant accidentally release them. After that well......

So why did the Forerunners need to activate Halo? Why couldn't they just contain the Flood?

  • 07.21.2010 8:50 PM PDT
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Of course not. The Forerunners were getting their asses handed to them, but that didn't mean that they couldn't capture some Flood and store them for research on the Halo arrays. They kept them alive there to study. Check out a much more through description: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Forerunner-Flood_War

  • 07.21.2010 10:23 PM PDT

The Halo Legends dvd covers it as well on the episode "Origins."

A true piece of art, in my opinion.

  • 07.21.2010 11:38 PM PDT


Posted by: Notanoob7
Of course not. The Forerunners were getting their asses handed to them, but that didn't mean that they couldn't capture some Flood and store them for research on the Halo arrays. They kept them alive there to study. Check out a much more through description: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Forerunner-Flood_War

Okay dude, thanks. That really helped and I understand now.

  • 07.22.2010 8:10 AM PDT

Leader of the Deadly Viper Squad

Let's get some facts straight:

1. The Halos don't directly destroy Flood (they destroy sentient life), which makes the Flood slowly starve to death.

2. Sentient species were stored on the Ark to survive the Flood, think Noah's Ark. Then they were released back in to the universe and the Forerunners either died out or left.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: I didn't read all of the comments, but after reading some posts, decided to post this. If you're a genius who already knows this, good for you.

[Edited on 07.22.2010 3:08 PM PDT]

  • 07.22.2010 3:05 PM PDT
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Good points there, Conquistadorr. As a (no books) Campaign only guy, I'd always thought that the Halo firings destroyed everything with the exception of bacteria, etc. Life would evolve pretty much the same way over time, and eventually there would be humans or something like them. I thought the Flood were a similar logistical conclusion that would eventually come up at some time again, if evolution were left alone. The storage thing never really registered that way.

  • 07.23.2010 6:04 PM PDT

"Halo doesn't kill Flood it kills their food. Humans, Covenant, whatever. Were all equally edible" -Cortana

[Edited on 07.24.2010 1:13 AM PDT]

  • 07.24.2010 1:13 AM PDT

http://i.imgur.com/fsISj.png

Can somebody adress a plot hole I've just realised? In Halo 3, at the end, you activate the new Halo to kill off the local Flood. How would this work if the Halos don't directly kill Flood?

  • 07.24.2010 1:30 AM PDT

-Sic transit gloria mundi

Posted by: annoyinginge
Can somebody adress a plot hole I've just realised? In Halo 3, at the end, you activate the new Halo to kill off the local Flood. How would this work if the Halos don't directly kill Flood?


There's still alot of guesswork about what the Halos do to the flood.
We know from the campaign that the Halo Array kills all sentient life, or as 343 Guilty Spark explained at the beginning of Two Betrayals, it kills all sentient life with sufficient biomass. Perhaps the "sufficient biomass" detail has been ignored by Halo's storytellers over the years.
We also know from the books and Halo 3, that the Ark, as well as shield worlds like the ones in Halo: The Ghosts of Onyx and Halo Wars, were meant to store humans and other species (i.e. jackals, elites) and keep them safe from the Halo Array. As depicted in Origins, these species would be returned to their respective home planets by the Forerunners after sufficient time has passed, or presumably after the flood have "starved to death."

The two things that confuse me are:
One- The plot detail that you brought up, how Installation 04b was supposed to kill the flood.
Two- The depiction of the Array firing in Origins, which shows the Halos killing flood directly.

This is what I think as solutions to these issues. As for the first detail, I think that because Installation 04b was unfinished, firing it prematurely cause the ring to explode rather than fire, causing enough physical damage to kill all life (including the flood) on the ring and the Ark. After all, Cortana says at the end of the credits that the ring "...shook itself apart, and did a number on the ark."
I think the second detail is simply not canonical. There were many canon discrepancies in Halo: Legends which Frank O'Connor readily admitted, so it wouldn't surprise me if the makers of Origins simply were wrong to depict the Halo Array Firing in such a way.

  • 07.24.2010 9:52 AM PDT