How the Halos stop the Flood

[Backdemon]

Ever since Halo CE I have been interested in these Galactic scale Genocidal Weapons. Though to anyone who played Halo and enjoyed the campaign did I guess. Though even after reading all the books and learing all the lore I could since I started playing Halo CE, the workings of the rings kill everything mode still escape me.

 

We know that they destroy the Flood by starving them, as well as destroying all Flood within range, this being explained this in game. But they have never shown this happen. Except for one small scene in one terminal of Halo CEA of a lizards arm dissolving. But that raised more questions than answers. It looked like the trees in the background were not harmed at all. That made me think of Cortana in Halo CE when she said it destroys all sentient life large enough to sustain the flood. But in games like Halo 2 and Halo Wars you can see Trees being consumed by the Flood for biomass.

 

I always liked to believe that the rings sent out a huge pulse of radiation in the form of Hardlight that the Forerunners use so much that just burns every organic cell it touches leaving crispy blackened sterile planets. Does anyone know if this is correct or total crap that Im talking about here?

[Is not JL]

Tree's aren't sentient.

 

I guess the Forerunners don't care about the Flood if they have the intelligence of a tree.

[Guest Frogger24]

See thats the thing that ticks me off. Bungie had it perfect in the first game with Guilty Sparks in game comments.

 

"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood."

 

Right there he is implying a research station not a weapon, which they screwed the pooch with and turned them into weapons in the next game.

 

"More or less. Technically, this installation's pulse has an effective radius of twenty five thousand light years. But, once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood."

 

The bolded part is the important part. That doesnt limit Flood infection to "sentient" species but any organic creature of sufficent biomass to sustain them. That would include trees, other various plant life, animals...

 

That is what has always ticked me off about Halo. They couldnt keep a straight story from the wonderful start they had with Halo CE. Yes 343GI does say that the rings will kill sentient life in the galaxy in Halo CE (very, very, very rare quote), but you need to pay attention to what he says afterwards. The two quotes above set up a wonderful story to go both forwards and backwards in, yet they were ignored.

 

Dont get me wrong the following Halo games were still outstanding, just they never seemed to really fit to me. Anyways I am ranting again, I hope the quote above helped you understand it a bit more.

[Frankenzer]

In halo CE Guilty Spark said they were weapons of mass destruction so did Cortana. 

[BaconShelf]

I believe that the rings effectively fry the brain, giving the flood forms no way to control a body. The flood then starve over millennia as they have no food source.

 

Oh, and I believe it says that any life form over 1mm long is killed as that is enough to sustain.

[Fishy]

See.. this is the exact reason I want to be a tree when I grow up!

[Caboose The Ace]

what the rings do is simple they kill all sentient life in the galaxy because sentient life is the floods food and without it they die 

[AnimeAddict]

I always think of them like a universal Nuke

[AsquithMike]

What most people seem to forget is that Bungie had never made a full three game story arch, and thereby causing the above mentioned issues with consistency in regards to what the Halos were designed to do.

 

However, in most of the books, primarily the Forerunner Saga, it is mentioned that the lesser Halos (7 rings controlled by the Lesser Ark) manipulate the structure of Neural Physics, a pulse effect that eliminates cellular structure in all life. It was mentioned that the neural physics aspect was never intended, as said by the Master Builder Fabar. 

The 'Halo Effect' is the energy created by the halos, it was designed as a powerful antimatter energy that reverts sentient life into their base molecules and elements. 

 

One must also remember, that there are actually two sets of Halos, Omega Halos and Lesser Halos, that were made, and they deal with the flood in two very different ways.

Omega Halos were controlled by the Greater Ark, and the Lesser Halos were controlled by the Lesser Ark.

 

Initially, there were supposed to be 12 ring worlds - 7 were actually built - called Halos, however they were renamed Omega Halos after the construction of the Lesser Ark and the Lesser Halos.

--The Omega Halos were far larger in scale and used a considerable amount of slip space to move around the galaxy

--the Master Builder commissioned the Lesser Halos construction just before Mendicant Bias assaulted the Forerunner capital

--almost all of the Omega Halos were destroyed - one was accounted for and saved

--the Omega Halos only fired a beam of the aforementioned 'Halo effect' - basically they were a crap design, theoretically they would have been used against singular flood infested systems, instead of the galaxy wide pulse effect, they would target only singular planets. 

 

As for how the Halos stop the flood, they are basically giant Anti-Matter pulse amplifiers. They revert sentient life to is base molecules, as stated in numerous articles, and some of the information can be found in the first three games.

 

Now most of the information I have is based on the games, some from the books. Though because 343 endorses the books, I would imagine they would use the back story and details provided in them. 

 

Anywhos, just figured I would put my two cents in on the matter. 

Sorry, it posted before I finished tweeking!!

 

But yes, BackDemon, they basically fry everything in the galaxy, though the planets after many years become fertile again - due to the base molecules and elements left over from the reverted sentient life. 

 

They never do show the Halos being fired, which does bother me in a sense, although the books describe it in a sufficient way I suppose. If you have ever seen 'Prometheus' the movie, in the opening scene the man that drinks the liquid, basically the halos do a galaxy wide version of that - minus the creation of life afterwards.

[AnimeAddict]

yea and it will take us another probabbly at least 2500 years to get to that point altho id be we wouldnt get there even in 5000 years

[I Mendicant Bias]

See thats the thing that ticks me off. Bungie had it perfect in the first game with Guilty Sparks in game comments.

 

"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood."

 

Right there he is implying a research station not a weapon, which they screwed the pooch with and turned them into weapons in the next game.

 

"More or less. Technically, this installation's pulse has an effective radius of twenty five thousand light years. But, once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood."

 

The bolded part is the important part. That doesnt limit Flood infection to "sentient" species but any organic creature of sufficent biomass to sustain them. That would include trees, other various plant life, animals...

 

That is what has always ticked me off about Halo. They couldnt keep a straight story from the wonderful start they had with Halo CE. Yes 343GI does say that the rings will kill sentient life in the galaxy in Halo CE (very, very, very rare quote), but you need to pay attention to what he says afterwards. The two quotes above set up a wonderful story to go both forwards and backwards in, yet they were ignored.

 

Dont get me wrong the following Halo games were still outstanding, just they never seemed to really fit to me. Anyways I am ranting again, I hope the quote above helped you understand it a bit more.

 

 

At this point i wouldn't be holding so dearly to the original canon to explain and fit with everything in the current. As a member later points out bungie did not have everything planned out from the get go. Ultimately Majority of the story elements were created after CE's success during the era of halo 2. Which is where the truth came out that the rings kill all lifeforms that have the capacity to infect the flood which are.

 

A  Central Nervous system

 

Sufficient Calcium Deposits

 

A Spinal Cord

 

 

Cortana's statements weren't to ever be taken as factual seeing as she isn't a Forerunner AI and pretty much dumbed down the bad news for chief. We know from the novels (clearly shown in The Flood) that chief doesn't care much for details. As for Spark Bungie Labeled him as instable from the get go by saying "He isn't really crazy we just don't know what he is talking about". Later on we see that intellegence will not stop the flood from infecting a being nor do the rings have some arbitary method of selecting "intelligent" and "un-intelligent" races for destruction.