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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle
Posted by: Wolverfrog
Flood isn't a virus like that. It functions much like a virus, but aside from Spores (which we know next-to-nothing about) there's nothing about the Flood's cellular makeup that exists as we acknowledge viruses today; the Flood is built off of the FSC, which is essentially a nonspecialized neuromuscle that has much more advanced makeup than any viruses we've ever seen. Hell, that has more advanced makeup than any cells that we've ever seen today.
The Halo Array targets cells in a body's nervous system to take it out. Without any calcium-based animal life of a certain sentience level (perhaps merely neurons, perhaps neurons or glial cells (or perhaps even other cells) of a certain type geared to a certain "sentience level"), the Flood starve out; it's the only way to ensure that the infection is completely stamped out, because if the Halo array targeted the FSCs, well, there are a few possibilities that the Flood could survive. One, the Flood specialize their FSCs and change their structure so the pulse doesn't affect them (we can assume this is possible because of the Flood's ability to organize their FSCs to mimic organs and their ability to modify host DNA): survive. Two, the Forerunner cannot calibrate their array to be able to affect the neuron-like/muscle-like structure of the cell: survive. Three, the Flood comprised of FSCs die, but the FSC-based cellular tissue of advanced forms such as Combat Forms survive, as they are not exactly the same, and they can be used to produce new FSC forms or release spores to begin an infection anew: once again, survive.
Every FSC-based method of eradicating the Flood has drawbacks. There are types of Flood, or perhaps all the Flood, that can survive such a firing simply by altering their cells. But, with neurons in animal bodies, there's a unique way to damage the Flood at the same time that you kill all of their food and simultaneously be assured that it will work: those neural cells. Neurons and other neural cells, past a certain age, no longer divide. As much as a Flood form might want to modify those cells it cannot (again, past a certain age and with any pre-existing cells; once Neurons are there, they can't be altered), and therefore those cells are vulnerable.
So the Forerunner devised the tactic, in my opinion, of destroying any Flood higher intelligence or combat forms (as the pulse, in my theory, destroys any Combat and Carrier forms, as well as the Gravemind) while simultaneously killing any "food" for the Flood that could get them back up to that state. Alone, severely weakened and with limited intelligence once again and with no food to survive on, the Flood starve and the Galaxy is cleansed.
I don't think it's a matter of their cellular structure being too basic; if anything, it's because it's so advanced and they have such control over it that they have such strength. And that's why the Forerunner turned their superweapon on themselves, and their like, in order to defend the galaxy: anything with neural cells that the Flood can infect, even beings that have already been infected or assimilated, can be destroyed as soon as the Array fires, blanking out an infection with the insertion of a key.