How did the Flood survive the activation of the Halo array?
I was watching Halo Legends on Netflix, a kind of Animatrix for the Halo series, and a couple shorts talked about the early history of the Forerunners, Flood, and purpose of the Halo array.
From the shorts and games, I know that the Halo array was meant to scrub the galaxy of sentient life, and in so doing remove the Flood, which parasitized sentient organisms. It seems like it was super-effective, so how did the Flood survive?
Best Answer
The reason why the Flood survived the initial activation of the Halo Array is two-fold. One is, as mentioned, samples of the Flood were kept on the Halos for research purposes. The Halos were always meant to be a last-resort taking-you-with-me weapon. Even up until the activation of the Array, the Forerunners were intent on finding a less catastrophic way of defeating the Flood.
Secondly, the Array was never meant to kill the Flood. Simply put, it can't. The smallest parts of the Flood are the Flood supercells and spores. While the Array may be able to destroy the supercells since they are essentially monstrous neural cells, the spores would most likely survive. Basically, the Forerunners couldn't come up with a way to kill the Flood entirely so they settled on killing their food supply to starve the Flood into hibernation until a day where either Forerunner survivors or some future race found a way to definitively destroy the Flood.
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How did the flood survive the Halo Array?
Basically, the Forerunners couldn't come up with a way to kill the Flood entirely so they settled on killing their food supply to starve the Flood into hibernation until a day where either Forerunner survivors or some future race found a way to definitively destroy the Flood.Why were the flood kept on Halo?
The Flood were in search of the Activation Index, a device which would deprive UNSC and Covenant forces from the privilege of assured destruction of the parasite. On Installation 05, the Flood had been in a continual battle with the Sentinels after the initial firing of the Halos 100,000 years prior.How did the endless survive the Halo rings?
The Endless survived the Halos firing, and were found afterwards when the preserved species on the Lesser Ark were returned to their homeworlds. The only canonical means for an organic creature to survive the Halos without being on the Halos themselves is to be in temporal stasis, like the Primordial was.Did any Flood survive installation 04?
Despite the harsh conditions, some life was able to survive in the remnants of the ring. 343 Guilty Spark correctly speculated that the Flood would be able to survive the installation's destruction and so petitioned Sesa 'Refumee to enact proper containment procedures, which Sesa declined to do.How the Flood survive the firing of the Halos (+ NEW HALO ANNOUNCEMENT!)
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Answer 2
At the very least, the Halo encountered in Halo: Combat Evolved is stated in-game to have some Flood samples kept for research purposes. This is what caused the outbreak in CE. Another outbreak was caused by similar circumstances in Halo 2, which persisted through 3.
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