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The Flood
Posted By: Jamirus99 <jamirus9@bestweb.net>	Date: 3/13/03 3:21 p.m.
Well, a while back I sent an email to the story page with my theory about the Flood. Unfortunately, it hasn't been posted yet, and maybe never will, so I'm going to try to outline for everybody here what I put in my two emails. Of course, those messages are gone, deleted for some reason or the other. Lets just start with a quote from our buddy Guilty Spark, in the Library: 343 GUILTY SPARK: "You can see how the body's been transformed by the genetic restructuring of the Flood infection. The small rangers carry spores that cause a host to mutate. The mutated host then produces spores that can pass the Flood to others. It is insidious and elegant. As long as any hosts remain, the Flood is virulent." So....here I came upon something that perhaps nobody else has noticed. Two very important things are said in this quote: First off, he calls the little popcorn Flood "rangers [which] carry spores" This alone should've alarmed people before- Guilty Spark is hinting that the "rangers" aren't the basic form of the Flood- rather the Flood has no basic form, it is a disease, a virus, a contact based spore infection. Perhaps over the years of Halo, however, the experiments that needed performing required the Flood to have a host- and over time, this host became an integrated part of the Flood (like mitochondria for us.) What these "rangers" were in their uninfected form remains to be seen. Second of all, Guilty Spark says "is" instead of "are" when speaking of the Flood- this happens often, as later quotes will show. I believe, for this reason, that the Flood is a single entity- maybe a hive mind. However, I've also found some quotes like this one: "The Flood must not escape the installation. They could soon evolve." This seems to disprove my notion, but notice here that he would most likely be saying "they" to talk about all of the Flood that are infected. To reinforce this, look at this quote: " The Flood are already hard at work repairing your vessel. Its parasitic nature belies the Flood's intelligence." Notice how here he reaffirms both of my points- one, when referring to the multiple Flood, he says "are" but then with the "Its parasitic nature" refers to the Flood as a single thing (it would be "Their" if it was not) MOVING ON.... 343 GUILTY SPARK: "While naturally the Flood is simply too dangerous to release, my mass sterilization protocols may have been in need of being activated. Of course, samples were kept here after the last catastrophic outbreak...for study. It seems that that decision may have been an error." (Another hallway) 343 GUILTY SPARK: "The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood. Their survival as a race was dependent upon it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce." Ah, here we have two of the most controversial quotes in Halo history. And I'm about to buck the status quo. The first quote seems to be a paradox in itself: "I can't release the Flood, but maybe I should have killed them" is what it sounds like, but then I thought about maybe taking GS literally. "Mass Sterilization" could mean, in fact, the process of making all the ranger Flood sterile, so that they couldn't transmit the spores anymore...rather than what it sounds like, which is the killing of the Flood. Of course, GS seems to be reassuring himself in the second sentence. We may assume that the last outbreak was when the Halos fired in the distant past, and that the samples were the non-sterile rangers. "Samples" however, is interesting. Perhaps the "virulent Flood" aren't the only versions..... And then we come to the second quote. I firmly believe that GS wasn't just switching subjects on the fly, but was in fact talking about the Flood, not the Forerunners. However, he does say "their" which seems to refute my theory...unless you take into account what I've just said. In the context of Guilty Spark's previous lines, I think it is safe to say that there were other versions of the Flood, perhaps more fragile in lifespan and reproductive matters. Because he couldn't release the Flood, the spores were dying and the rangers lifespans were coming to an end. So in a sick way, though Guilty spark could never actually release the Flood, he was glad to see that they/it were/was out and infecting Humans and Covenant, because it allowed him to stand true to his primary orders of studying the Flood- they needed new hosts to allow them to reproduce..... Next point for the Flood being a virus. Here's a quote from GS at the beginning of Two Betrayals: "...Which means that any organism of sufficient mass and cognitive ability is a potential vector." I looked up "vector" on Dictionary.com. Here are the results: vec·tor ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vktr) n. Mathematics. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a direction. A one-dimensional array. An element of a vector space. Pathology. An organism, such as a mosquito or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from one host to another. Genetics. A bacteriophage, plasmid, or other agent that transfers genetic material from one cell to another. A force or influence. A course or direction, as of an airplane. Anyhoo...the prime entry here is the pathology entry. So the Rangers are the "ticks" and the Flood is the "Lime Disease" To close, I hope everybody got something out of this. I certainly hope my theory will eventually be noticed by mnemesis at some point, either from my emails or this post. Make of it what you will, but I believe this is of prime importance.

Message Index

The Flood	Jamirus99	3/13/03 3:21 p.m.
Re: The Flood	Ciarán	3/14/03 6:25 a.m.
Re: The Flood	Jamirus99	3/14/03 7:35 a.m.
Re: The Flood	Ciarán	3/14/03 8:25 a.m.
Re: The Flood	Jamirus99	3/14/03 10:04 a.m.
Re: The Flood	ragereset	3/26/03 8:25 p.m.
Re: The Flood	Jamirus99	3/27/03 5:21 a.m.
Re: The Flood	Jamirus99	3/14/03 2:44 p.m.
Re: The Flood	vshields ash	3/27/03 1:24 a.m.