- BlockBurner
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
A lot of this is assumption, but I think they are reasonable assumptions and make sense.
The Covenant first gained their knowledge of plasma weapons from the Forerunners, Cortana notes how poorly and inefficiently they “copied” the technology. Forerunners, having invented and created the original technology, would have been exposed to heavy amounts of plasma during firing, testing, development, and implementation.
Now, if Forerunners are human it seems highly likely that they would have encountered Boren’s Syndrome, which results from heavy exposure of the nervous system to the electromagnetic fields emitted by plasma. Johnson obtained Boren’s Syndrome after using a crate of plasma grenades, a fairly small amount of plasma.
Dr. Halsey questioned how Johnson escaped the Flood, and survived his previous encounters on Alpha Halo. She concluded that Johnson was “immune” to the Flood because he has Boren’s Syndrome.
Before the Halo’s were built, it seems highly possible that there was an unknown surprise encounter between Forerunners and the Flood, probably lasting a significant amount of time. Around that time, Forerunners would have noticed that the Flood did not attack certain Forerunners. With their technology and intelligence I find it hard to believe that they would have not tested these “immune” individuals, and pinpointed the cause of their “immunity”, much like Dr. Halsey did. With that, Forerunners probably would have developed a “cure” against the Flood, noting how much effort was put into the creation of the Halos it’s reasonable to believe that much more time was put into defenses before the Halos.
With the advanced Forerunner technology one would think they would pick up on this. If ONI would test and try to develop a “cure”, I’m sure the Forerunners would.
I know it’s possible that since Humans would be distant descendants of Forerunners maybe Forerunners couldn’t get Boren’s Syndrome, or maybe didn’t have a nervous system at all, but that seems like a lame explanation.
Please correct me if I'm wrong about anything relating to Johnson, I havn't read the books in a while.