It's a mix of Mjolnir being an extremely powerful/dangerous asset and Spartans knowing how to use basically any tech the UNSC has, on top of having access to a lot of classified info
What the hell does it matter about classified intel if the hive mind already has it the moment they're infected?
Like I guess they could pull a Keyes but still...
I don't believe they have it instantly. They would have to complete the transformation and it takes time for them to actually find the information. Keyes was almost entirely consumed and he held out for hours.
To be fair though all the info we really have is from Keyes and Jenkins, one of whom was extraordinarily strong in mind and thought he was being interrogated by the covenant, and Jenkins was taken by a very weak infection form so he retained a small part of himself.
At least as far as humans go I think...
Keyes only held out as long as he did because of his Command Neural Interface. Spartans also have advanced neural interface tech so they can integrate with their armor and with AI. It’s possible they would be able to hold out equally long, and thus worth having a damage control protocol just in case it prevents a disaster.
Exactly it's more of a better safe then sorry. Is it possible that all that information is already lost? Definitely, but maybe not and if you want to have a better fighting chance why risk it and just nuke the area on the hope that maybe it didn't go trough and they won't have that extra edge.
Not doing anything is akin to giving up and letting them have it.
Why wouldn't the Gravemind me able to just differentiate between the mechanical components & the meatbag bits making the brain tho? Why would that make it any difficult/longer to do?
The CNI interfaces with the brain in such a way that the infected person has something to pay attention to other than what the Flood wants them to think about. Keyes described it as an anchor or a life raft. This happened because the Flood cannot infect the CNI, so in essence there is an uninfected portion of the brain.
Why didn't they logic plague its ass? Since we know their Logic Plague can infect shit fast enough to, say, disable the self-destruct mechanism in MJOLNIR before it can be triggered by the Spartan in question, it should be simple enough to do almost instantly at the shit-tier tech level that a Tier 3 civ has
Because the CNI doesn’t have any logic or AI. It’s just a radio signal that replicates brain activity. Since the Flood can’t affect it and it’s integrated with the brain it provides an identity anchor for an infected individual.
Depends on whether or not there is a hivemind already present I suppose. The Alpha Halo infection likely needed to form the proto-gravemind before accessing memories, but I imagine anything infected on Delta Halo had their memories instantly accessible.
>Keyes was almost entirely consumed and he held out for hours.
The last line of that cutscene betrays that idea though. They let Keyes suffer and resist in the amalgamation for hours, but when he said that he will never let them have his information, Gravemind very sinisterly says "We already do". I think this implies that they scooped the deets for Earth immediately and just let him resist for funsies. Still, I think at the proto phase, keyes still had to be deposited into the mass, whereas with the Gravemind I think a direct neural link is possible at a distance.
I assume they didn't get it, as he was forgetting things as the Flood absorbed it. He held on to Earth until the very end. The Flood is going to mess with you, especially when it's trying to break you pyschologically.
Well what's more psychologically breaking than letting you struggle for hours, thinking you're valiantly staving off humanity's doom only to be told that you were defeated hours ago?
The “we already do” is more of a statement that resistance is futile because there is no escape from the Flood. The Flood didn’t have direct access to the info yet, but they “already do” because Keyes is already in the Flood’s grasp, meaning that it is a forgone conclusion that the Flood will get the info.
Luckily the Master Chief showed up to smash in his brain before it was too late lol.
That was my take on it too, it wasn't a literal past tense phrase indicating that it already happened, but that it might as well have already happened because his brain was their's.
What stopped the Flood from using secondary data to figure out Earth's location tho? Like what kind of a brainlet goes directly for the big boi target instead of pulling up the secondary "insignificant" data to sus out the location via tons of secondary vectors, without the extraction target potentially even figuring it out due to not being hivemind-tier intellect?
Space is big, really big, really fucking incomprehensibly utterly **BIG**
I doubt Keys had the coordinates of a ton of different UNSC planets and installations memorized, just a few important ones for an Admiral to know, and even if the gravemind managed to compare them all to maybe figure out where what might be a really important human planet might be, that would still leave them tens of thousands if not over 100,000 cubic light years to comb through an innumerable amount of star systems before it could find the Sol system.
I mean that's a very basic interrogation tactic. Tell them you already have the info or a version of it and ask them to verify or correct it to benefit themself.
They have to “transmit” those memories to a Gravemind for it to join the Flood’s Domain equivalent. Local infestations usually don’t get past the Feral Stage.
Yes, Cortana gleaned whatever info Halo had on the Flood and contained it in her report I'm sure.
Plus the gravemind talks through every form so you could probably figure it out that way if not for the other.
You seem to only say the same thing over and over again, maybe develop an actual response via your brain(whatever is left of it) and stop talking like you know everything when you clearly don't
In the story Saturn Devouring His Son, the spartan specifically has his head detonated. Assuming he was any kind of spartan worth a damn, he likely held out before his brain was *thoroughly* pulped. So, in all likelihood the flood had a *VERY* effective combat form, but very little in the way of high level unsc secrets, plus the chance that the armor itself would shred the body within by overcompensating due to the possibility of damaged neural interface. So, still scary, but not outside the capabilities of the UNSC.
there is a recent canon audiobook released where a fireteam of spartans got infected, the armor measures dont work, the flood uses the spartan neural interface to infect the armor with the logic plague, and the explosives in the helmet dont work to stop the knowledge stealing, since the flood has natural neural physics.
sorry to reply way later, but it is implied the place was infested to the brim, there was probably a proto gravemind from the forerunners era inside there
That'd be obvious af from space tho, given a Keymind is a Gravemind the SIZE OF A PLANET (well its surface at least, although I guess it prolly does start to fill subterranean & underwater areas too of course?)
1. We've seen how greatly Flood Combat Forms enhance the physical abilities of the species they infect (eg: how high they jump and how fast they can swarm enemies).
2. The Flood (even in pre Gravemind states) gain access to the host's knowledge upon infection, thus they'd get access to the amount of combat experience a Spartan would have, along with all Flood counter measures used by Humanity which they could then subvert and the ability to drive most vehicles which they could use to escape the location and spread the outbreak further.
3. If the Mjolnir remains somewhat intact, it becomes much harder to deal with the resulting Combat Form.
If the Flood gain knowledge of Mjoilnir, they could more easily infect other Spartans too, exponentially increasing their lethality with every spartan infected
> The Flood (even in pre Gravemind states) gain access to the host's knowledge upon infection, thus they'd get access to the amount of combat experience a Spartan would have, along with all Flood counter measures used by Humanity which they could then subvert and the ability to drive most vehicles which they could use to escape the location and spread the outbreak further.
Would destroying the flood infected spartan even prevent this, though? We know the flood is basically psychic.
And from this perspective, ONI personal would be even more a risk then Spartans would be if infected.
I really have a hard time seeing flood infected spartans being this giant risky thing as more then just cool fanservice/marketing hype
Unless there's is a hive mind formed in either a gravemind or keymind they don't have the ability to transfer information to the species knowledge, it would be stored within the individual so you could still remove it from the flood knowledge.
In terms of ONI personnel it's really not a threat. As information is so fractured within ONI (on purpose) that the only worry would be someone high up being infected, which is unlikely. They assimilate an ONI operative and the flood simply learns about the cover mission the operative has been given when in reality they were probably doing something completely different without knowing.
>I really have a hard time seeing flood infected spartans being this giant risky thing
You've seen how effective Spartans are by the self in terms of infiltration and destructive capability. Imagine if their abilities were multiplied, on top of gaining the ability to create an army using their own genetic augmented biomass to enhance the flood forms around and now you have what would become quickly a planetary threat. Within hours they would be able to capture a ship capable of hyperspace and when that happens there's no telling where they would go or how far the infection would spread, only that it would.
Because nukes are relatively valuable resources and broadly, it's better to be able to cleanse a Flood infestation with as minimal collateral damage as possible. Spartans have proven themselves to be effective at dealing with local infestations on several occasions, so deploying a Spartan Team to clear out the Flood without leveling the area is usually preferable. Why waste what could be valuable people and assets on the ground that could be realistically recovered?
The issue with an infected Spartan is that conventionally clearing the area no longer becomes a viable solution.
Flood infection already greatly increases the physical abilities of the infected host. Flood combat forms are strong enough to threaten a Spartan in Mark V Mjolnir with their punches. So take a Spartan, who is already stronger than 99% of people on the battlefield, and then make them even stronger and more resilient (because killing a Flood combat form is broadly more difficult than killing a baseline host).
So in a 1 on 1 fight between a regular Spartan and an infected Spartan, you should probably expect the infected Spartan to win presuming equivalent equipment (obviously the calculus is a bit different if we're comparing a Spartan-II in GEN3 Mjolnir to a IV in SPI). Once a Spartan is infected, risk to other Spartans and the likelihood that conventional forces can successfully clears the area effectively drops to zero. And you also need to kill the Infected Spartan because the Flood gains the memories of the host and Spartans have lots of sensitive information that you don't want the Flood to have.
So because you can't really expect to be able to defeat an infected Spartan with conventional forces (not without risking other Spartans being infected and making the problem even worse), it's only then that the only option to quell the infection is to level the area. Before the Spartan was infected, there probably was a realistic chance that the infection could be halted without glassing the area.
But isn’t the Spartan’s physical ability limited by the armor as well as enhanced by it? A combat form inside of it wouldn’t be able to make the armor or shields better, or weapons more effective. Strength couldn’t be proportionately boosted.
And I figured a lot of the combat forms’ physical prowess came from all the new tissue they grow. There wouldn’t be room for that inside the armor.
>A combat form inside of it wouldn’t be able to make the armor or shields better, or weapons more effective. Strength couldn’t be proportionately boosted.
Yes, the Flood wouldn't be able to increase the abilities of the armor itself, but the armor amplifies the base user's abilities. The stronger the base user, the greater the output of the overall armor system. Presumably, the Flood
Also again, the boost offered by the Flood infection can be pretty extreme. Flood infection allowed normal humans to harm the Master Chief in his Mark V. It's entirely possible that even if the armor's adding nothing at all, the Flood boosting the base Spartan's strength would still render the infected Spartan as stronger than a Spartan in functional Mjolnir
>There wouldn’t be room for that inside the armor.
True, which is why the Flood expands to the outside of the armor.
I want to know how it can operate the suit, while breaking apart the undersuit. Makes no sense. The armour would be broken, unable to be powered. And how can the flood mutate a Spartan, with carbon fibre nap tubes weaved onto their skeleton? That's inorganic material right there. That would make mutating the bones impossible.
>I want to know how it can operate the suit, while breaking apart the undersuit. Makes no sense. The armour would be broken, unable to be powered.
Intuitively, we know that the undersuit can be breached without rendering the entire suit inoperable, as Spartans have been injured via breaches to the undersuit without the entire armor being bricked. And when we look at [Rusalka](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fc4s0xe0di5zb1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D736%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dce93728442c0369c10810e18722eb9a3e76ed935) and [Transgressor](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F453firux97wb1.png), we see that large portions of the undersuit are still intact. No obviously, we can assume that there would be some loss in functionality, but the armor remains intact enough that it would still be providing something.
> And how can the flood mutate a Spartan, with carbon fibre nap tubes weaved onto their skeleton? That's inorganic material right there. That would make mutating the bones impossib
For starters, the augmentations to the bones of Spartans is never 100%, it's still mostly bone. And even then it's not like the Flood haven't been able to integrate with inorganic materials before. Likewise, it's not like the significantly more augmented Forerunners were immune to infection either. And even if the Flood couldn't integrate the bone themselves, nothing would stop them from successfully infecting the rest of the body.
The only thing that confuses me about this is the fact that the Gravemind left Chief and Arbiter uninfected. If infecting them only enhances their abilities, why wouldn’t he just infect them? They’d be just as capable (except perhaps their proficiency with weapons) if not more so, and they’d be under the Gravemind’s direct control.
Okay so I think I read this in a book or saw a YouTube video about it or something but anyways I believe the reason was that in order to access forerunner tech you can’t be infected and the point was to stop the rings from going off so infecting Chief would’ve given the flood a stronger weapon yes but not the ability to turn off the rings and with Arbiter it’s just that you’re not going to infect him cause Chief would know you’re just using him and when he’s done you’ll just infect him and Chief or Cortona would just self destruct the suit including themselves
Halo 2? Presumably existing Forerunner countermeasures prevented Gravemind from exercising control outside of the quarantine zone and the Arbiter and Chief were able to bypass them (I feel like I've read something about the Forerunner teleportation grid simply preventing the Flood from teleporting which would explain that but IDK if that was real or a fan canon explanation).
Also, at least in the Chief's case, if the firing sequence were started, only the Chief would have been able to halt the activation of the rings. Doesn't work for the Arbiter but it works for Chief.
By Halo 3, he arguably tried. He did send hordes of Flood after them, but the two fought their way through. Granted, there was the Gravemind's flashy tentacle thing at the end of the Covenant, but that mission has so many plot holes to begin with I honestly would just throw that in the pile of 'stupid things Halo 3's villains did,' because it's a long list.
The only thing I could figure is because then there’s a highly infectious parasitic organism running around in a suit of the single most advanced combat armor made by man, but like the other guy said, we’ve seen Spartans killed before even with MJOLNIR, so really it is pretty questionable why they’d go to such extremes.
Unless it’s more because well *the Flood* and making sure the parasite is destroyed than who it infected. Maybe it’s because the Spartans are there in case a lesser human gets infected, they’re the last conventional line of defense and there’s little chance a normal human could kill a Flood Spartan one on one
It is overplayed in my opinion but there is a kinda logic to it that works.
There have been examples/rumors of spartans containing minor flood outbreaks before and sometimes you don't want to go scorched earth destroying valuable assets in the process.
But if a spartan becomes infected the flood now has a very effective spartan killer and the one unit that could maybe hold back the flood is no longer sufficient.
Its not that an infected spartan is that much of a greater threat that WMD's suddenly become reasonable, they always were an allowed option with the flood. However an infected spartan means WMD's are now the only option.
It's not even that a infected Spartan is that dangerous on its own, imo it's mainly that Spartans usually have a lot of knowledge about UNSC, their structure, weapons etc. Combining Spartan physical abilities with their knowledge makes them a gigantic threat if they reunite with a gravemind
I think there are two "reasonable" reasons for this:
1. If a Spartan falls, then containing a Flood infestation has likely exceeded what ground forces are able to fight against. A fully armored individual with failsafes in play is the sort of tipping point. If the Flood bypass all of that, then there isn't much else the UNSC can reasonably deploy to handle it. On top of that, the Spartan can likely snowball infection since they are likely a bit more durable than other forms, and can eat up focus for individuals opening them up to other Flood attacks.
2. Spartans have a lot of knowledge and training. Nothing to the level of "They know the launch codes of every nuke in the system", but enough to make a local Flood group and their Hive Mind a bit more difficult to contain. How all weapons work, how to operate various vehicles, protocols, etc etc. I think once a Gravemind is in play, this is fairly trivial, but it's again one of those things that tip the scales a little too much.
Ultimately, the risk of any Flood unit getting away is present, and a Spartan presents a nice option of a durable escape unit that knows how to operate and navigate things a bit better than the average Marine.
But I think the first point is the stronger one. Spartans have been able to combat Flood infestations successfully. But if they fall, then what else is there really to do?
I also think it's important to point out that I think Spartans are deployed because what they want is to minimize collateral damage. Captain Alvarez sent Spartans because he didn't want to lose out on the resources available. They should have nuked it from orbit from the jump, but Alvarez thought it could be sidestepped and contained.
It's more of an "obvious move" in that nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure, but sometimes fighting for a particular resources may be worth it. But if Spartans fall, then go back to what should have been the case in the first place instead of committing more resources to the loss.
Honestly it’s to artificially inflate the drama. You’re right that Flood-infected Spartans may be more dangerous than most other infected combatants, but probably not “nuke the whole site” dangerous.
But I can’t complain about it too much, because I feel like it sort of evokes Bungie’s old rule of cool. Like, why do we have to nuke the entire planet if a Spartan gets captured? Uh, because it sounds *totally badass* and adds a ton of stakes to Spartan missions in Flood-infected areas! Duhhhhh!
That’s not really an argument. A nuke is one of the most effective ways to fight *anything*, but that doesn’t make it logical to resort to that immediately.
It’s more a question of how much of a threat an infected Spartan would pose. I don’t think they pose a big enough threat to warrant a nuke regardless of circumstance or strategy.
The biggest threat an infected Spartan may pose would be that the Flood could potentially brute force their way through enemy lines and infect people more rapidly, but the Flood already basically do this.
In fact, the traditional way to deal with the Flood is to nuke everything already. The Forerunners nuked all life in the galaxy 100,000 in the past to deal with the Flood. Master Chief used the Pillar of Autumn to basically nuke Alpha Halo to deal with the Flood.
The Sangheili basically glassed “half a continent” to deal with the Flood on Earth in Halo 3. And then John and Cortana’s best strategy to deal with the Gravemind was basically to use Installation 08 to nuke the Flood and GTFO.
The only time I can recall in the setting where this type of strategy was not used was in Halo Wars 2’s Awakening the Nightmare, where the Banished forces basically managed to push back the Flood and contain them at the High Charity wreckage.
Other than that one time, the standard strategy for dealing with the Flood has basically always been to get the hell away from them and use overwhelming force at a distance to contain them.
I just don’t personally think an infected Spartan changes that standard too much. Especially since Spartans are not as durable as most people think they are. They can be downed with enough plasma and lead like any other infantry target.
The recent audio book does a good job at showing why it's a big deal. A single Spartan gets infected, and the fusion generator doesn't detonate, allowing the brainless body to be reanimated. The now infected Spartan proceeds to wipe out the rest of its former team, and the outbreak which was starting to be contained, immediately counters helljumpers and Cyclops and nearly escapes. It's such a momentum changer that you don't even try to risk further containment, you just wipe out everything.
When someone is infected by the flood everything they know is also assimilated. Mjolnir armor is stupid powerful but they also get the knowledge of that Spartan. Everything the Spartan knows including the knowledge of how to operate the weapon systems, the location of classified UNSC crap, all of it.
Imagine learning all the knowledge of your teenage child. A bunch of basic human survival stuff and useless crap you already know. Then after that you receive all the knowledge of the President of the United States. It's insanely valuable information
Read/listen to [Halo: Saturn Devouring His Son](https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-saturn-devouring-his-son), a story containing the first ever account of a spartan being assimilated into the Flood.
If you want the TL;DR: [Watch this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6Ni3dMwLw).
Because now you've got a combat form thats highly resistant to everything short of direct hits from weapons that can kill an IFV. If theres anyone else in the general area thats a fucking *problem*. Even sending in Spartan teams with heavy weapons is risky so the safest way to handle the infected Spartan is just delete the area from orbit.
I feel like a lot of it has to do with the growing importance of Spartans, both in the narrative and from, like, a meta franchise perspective? Since we play as Spartans, they want to make sure we continue to feel that power fantasy dynamic, to the point that even a single Spartan getting infected is a cataclysmic event.
That being said there are also plenty of 'real' reasons why a Flood Spartan warrants even more action than a 'normal' infection. For one, MJOLNIR is probably the single most powerful piece of infantry equipment that the UNSC has, and an enemy getting their hands on it means dealing with that threat instantly becomes much, much harder. If a Flood gets it, not only are they now much more difficult to kill (remember, the UNSC primarily uses ballistic weapons, and the Flood are already sort of resistant to ballistics seeing as they're really just big bloated bags of gas and melted organs; that's why weapons like the sniper do barely any damage whereas the shotgun and assault rifle do better, since they're better at doing generalized structural damage instead of the accurate *brain destruction* the sniper excels at, but if you add energy shields and titanium plating on top of that it gets even worse), but MJOLNIR has a suite of advanced military hardware that, at a bare minimum, allows the wearer to access a ton of valuable information about UNSC operations in the area.
A good example of this is the defiled FARNDALE attachment. It lets the wearer tap into ONI intelligence, and the 'defiled' variant specifically mentions that it can now be used to feed that ONI intelligence right into the Flood hivemind. And that's just a single attachment, too. A HAZMAT Spartan? Boy, it would suck if the Flood learned the specific quarantine routines they use to take care of Flood samples. I bet they could even turn into a pretty good cross between a combat and carrier form; attachments like the sample pack and biolocker shoulders are already designed to store samples, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to adapt them to be nice vulnerable bubbles, ready to explode and scatter spores everywhere while leaving the Floodified Spartan inside nice and safe.
MIRAGE? I'm not sure if it maintains the active camo capabilities of the original SPI armor, but if it does... Invisible Flood forms sounds like hell.
Rakshasa is designed to be maintained on the field, which means you sacrifice a lot of the nicer features of core MJOLNIR for the sake of being easier to keep at 100% (or close to, at least) functionality for longer. We can see from the Flood cosmetics that they seem to prefer wrapping their own warped flesh around armor when something gets damaged, but surely making it easier to do both would keep that combat form active for even longer, and that's not even touching on some of the worrying attachments they could take advantage of from that core. Like the coolpack torso piece and the coolshot shoulder pieces, which are both used to keep heat signatures down, making it that much easier for the Flood form to sneak up on its prey, or the fox 2449 wrist attachment, which is yet another method for the Flood hivemind to suck up as much of that tasty, tasty data from UNSC intelligence.
Hell, if we wanna dip into the Firewall fracture stuff (which isn't canon but is a theoretical plan that COULD have become canon so I think it's more worthwhile to examine than, like, Yoroi or Eaglestrike), could you imagine a Flood CHIMERA Spartan? CHIMERA Spartans are piloted by an artificial intelligence, but they're artificial intelligences piloting a (mostly) inert meat puppet, so they're still very much vulnerable to Flood infection. Something like the defiance protocol torso piece have built-in nukes so they can self-destruct, and while normal MJOLNIR have self-destruct routines as well they're primarily designed to ensure the armor isn't captured. As far as I know, that doesn't mean a nuke, that means smaller explosive charges set around the neck and head to destroy the human inside, but a nuke could do quite a bit more damage if need be.
Anyway, TL;DR, but generally speaking while I think a lot of it can just be chalked up to '343 wants Spartans to feel unique and special compared to other units because we play as Spartans and they want us to feel that power fantasy so we feel good while playing Halo', there are plenty of super valid reasons why I would NOT want Papa Plant Zombie from getting ahold of a Spartan for longer than is absolutely necessary.
There is at least there's one confirmed canon executor running around in the Chimera suit. Was confirmed a week or two after it's last Intel drop however long ago.
So the Windgo kit is even more frightening, should it ever be canonically confirmed. What's worse than a rampant ai. Shedding info to infect other Chimera executors similar to the flood, literally transforming the suit into something else? It now getting infected by the flood, or having it going wild due to logic plague *if* the flood couldn't infect it.
I think the pressing issue with Spartans falling to flood is the vast stores of knowledge that the spartan has access too. Sure a flood spartan requires nukes and the like to ensure it doesn't spread, but if the flood ever gains enough biomass to have a gravemind form, all of the UNSC info the spartan has access to, the flood will too. Im pretty sure there was a flood infected spartan that survived from being nuked in one of the short stories 343 posted a while back.
Spartans often have top secret clearance to UNSC secrets as they are the ones trusted to carry out top secret missions and what not.
Since the flood essentially absorbs the memory of those they infect, these top secrets can be exposed and used against the UNSC. Plus given how powerful MJOLNIR can be it would mean that one of the UNSC's most powerful assets can be used against them.
For example, if a Spartan IV fireteam was ordered to carry and arm a tactical nuke on a banished controlled planet. The S-IVs would have the code memorized to arm the tactical nuke. They deploy on their mission but halfway through the flood shows up and managed to infect the S-IV fireteam. The flood would not only have possession of a nuke but would also know the code for arming it.
If one single infection form can decimate an entire planet we can only imagine what a combat form made from a super soldier with inhuman strength, speed, agility and itelligence can do. And it is also clad in the best armor humanity can produce, with personal shields and possibly carrying weapons of mass destruction
The Flood is just too inconsistent in its Memory-acquisition.
On the one hand we have Keyes who put up a fight for each scrap of Intel where somehow the Flood would avoid his death before complete assimilation and then we have Regret who got his skull caved in like a tin can and the Gravemind only goes: Abra Kadabra and he's perfectly alive and in character while the Gravemind had access to all the necessary Intel.
I think the extermination protocol is just for drama because the Flood Combat Forms can already run faster, jump higher and hit harder than any other biological or enhanced being. I don't think Mjolnir would give them much aside for the shielding. Also the mutation process would break the armor anyway.
The only question is how fast the memory is transferred and secured and what Intel, aside from the current mission, the Spartans would provide that the UNSC and the Flood would deem absolutely critical.
Eh, honestly it sounds to me like a meme that got out of hand and entered canon.
A Spartan flood would obviously be much tougher than a normal one to kill, but spartans have been killed loads of times and individual toughness is not what makes the flood dangerous.
The issue is that the UNSC needs to get as close to a 100% anti-Flood success rate as possible. If the Flood escape Forerunner containment than the UNSC can manage them. If they ever break UNSC containment and escape into space, then stopping them is practically impossible. They can travel to any planet they like, steal more ships, travel to more planets, rinse and repeat. The UNSC are spread too thin to stop the Flood, and it won't take long at all for a Gravemind to form. At that point the only realistic option is to fire the Halos.
That's what makes Flood Spartans so dangerous. Spartans dealing with regular Flood have a great chance to succeed, but even they are at serious risk if they have to deal with a Flood Spartan as well. At that point, playing around with any non-guaranteed options is too risky. Nukes and MACs are 100%, so that's the next step.
Honestly to me an infected Spartan is just another combat form it's no different than an elite form and elites have already been proven to be a lot stronger than Spartans let alone the average human especially bigger in size the only reason I would consider of why the UNSC treats flood infected Spartans a bigger threat than any other form is probably because of their years of service and due to the how much knowledge they know that's about it.
If a Spartan is deployed to an existing blightland, it’s probably because something there is important enough that it’s worth the risk to try and recover rather than destroy it in orbital bombardment. Be it surviving personal that need to be evacuated, or intelligence/technology that is particularly valuable. If there was nothing valuable in a flood-infested area, they would probably open with orbital bombardment and quarantine.
Spartans would also be assigned to security around a quarantine zone or flood research facility, to make sure nothing gets in or out that isn’t supposed to. It seems there maybe have been a few minor outbreaks which have been contained by Spartan quarantine units, but no major outbreaks or infected Spartans yet.
Because a Spartan is considered hardware, so is Moljnir. As a general rule you don't let hardware/software fall into enemy hands. SOP in Afghanistan was to destroy any equipment you couldn't recover
>spartans have a fuckton of combat experience, and knowledge on both alien and human technology
>the flood makes the things it infects way more stronger, an spartan is already a monster with its augments, add to it the flood supercell
>add to the last point that spartan 4s armor is their main source of power, most of the inhuman shit they do is thanks to MJOLNIR
infecting a spartan doesnt only gave the gravemind cataclysmic amounts of knowledge to evolve, its the equivalent of making an alex mercer in the halo universe
As others have said Spartans are extremely powerful soldiers, they are a biological journal of UNSC secrets and there is a propaganda angle. Spartans don't die but they can be infected with terrifying parasites.
POV a 7'6 giant in full power armor and a working shield system. That uninffected could bench press an elite is charging at you full kilter with a assault rifle in hand unloading in your general direction. You have .2 seconds to live.
Cuz now the flood ok now all the containment protocols and all of their weaknesses so that gets tossed out of the window. They know strategies, now and also the training they get. As well as you know having a super soldier combat form
Flood Spartans would be incredibly powerful, and the flood would get all of the Spartans knowledge which is incredibly dangerous. Not to mention they also need to destroy the mjolnir which is why they nuke the whole area.
I think the simplest answer is if the situation is dire enough that a Spartan has fallen to it and been infected, it's been FUBAR'd a *LONG* while. At that point the ONLY option is to just glass the area, be it the general Halo glassing or just carpet bombing the area with Nukes till there's nothing left.
I think it’s more of an issue of how much technical and sensitive knowledge that Spartans have. If it makes its way to a gravemind, that’s a major strategic risk.
Flood increases a natural human’s strength to that of a spartan without mjolnir. Imagine what it will do to someone fully augumented in a mjolnir suit.
Spartans have bombs in their helmets that explode their head incase they're infected by the flood (presumably to deny them any knowledge), no clue why they don't just put some bombs in the chest too and blow up the infection form, would be way easier than a nuke
One reason why it's also a big deal, aside from the potential threat a Flood infected Spartan could pose, is the *propaganda* impact.
Imagine, word spreading of one of the UNSC'S greatest weapons, now turned against Humanity. Not great for morale.
An incredibly strong, highly trained super soldier with armour that can survive a fall from space is now part of the zombie hivemind, I wonder why that’s bad
Honestly, not sure why it's a thing.
The Flood took out warror servants and pre-Spartan human warriors alike and that alone wasn't game ending despite both of those being far more capable than Spartans. Spartans have already trained against simulated Combat forms, and they're far rarer than elites, so they don't stand to be a major occurance.
Biggest issue, IMHO, is not the combat form, but the Flood potentially gaining insight into how to defeat Mjolnir armor security systems as well as Spartan psychology.
That being said,>! the only instance it happened literally had to be contrived out of numerous redundant failures and coincidences to make it work. Pure forms that survived the Halo ring's purging blast? A captain that prioritized a salvage wreck over a HYDRA level existential threat, which already was a massive discovery that probably would have gotten him promoted? Who then sent infantry to kill an infantry devouring threat despite complete air control and access to armored vehicles? Who then apparently then ran to hide and get drunk in his room while on duty? Yeah, I don't buy how it happened. !<
It’s because the Flood when infecting you it’s not just your standard zombie infection where you die and the virus uses you to infect others where as the flood not only do that but get full access to your memories and anything else so say a scorpion operator gets infected well the infected tank operator knows how to use tanks because it’s a memory. The second reason why an infected spartan is so dangerous is because the Mjolnir armor is so advanced to where the Flood can use the armor to be effective and agile in combat because once again it’s in the infected spartan’s memory on how to use the armor. Reason 3 is the final reason on why not just send people after them well the risk is your average marines and ODSTs aren’t as highly combat effective against spartans and sending more Spartans risks the Spartans getting infected and it just adds a threat. There’s your reason
an entire fireteam of 4 spartans was infected, the stupid captain decided to nuke it all too late and it is implied that the first infected spartan used its knowledge to pilot a condor and escape....so there is a 50/50 possibility that maybe, that flood spartan used the condor slip space drive to escape.
It looks like the only one is Fireteam Leviathan. One S4 was infected and started to turn but the entire team and area was nuked into oblivion. So none of the flood made it out
thats not what happened, the spartan got infected and started massacring and infecting everyone including the other spartans, but while the massacre happened, alvarez launched the nukes, while the nukes reached and killed the other spartans, the first spartan ran to the condor and is implied it piloted it, but by then the saturn was in full alert of any escaping vehicle, its ambigious if it escaped or not, since condors have integrated slip space.
Well, considering what we know of a Spartans and how powerful they are and infected one with their abilities then the added abilities of the flood would be an absolute nightmare that probably doesn’t even cut it close to describing it
It's definitely blown out of proportion.I don't see an infected spartan being that much more dangerous than an infected elite or brute. I bet the flood could even create pure forms that are about as effective or even better anyways. And assuming there is a gravemind present, it would already have access to all the knowledge that the previous gravemind accumulated from contact with modern humans, so any additional Intel an infected spartan could provide would probably be insignificant.
Realistically, it’s because 343 thought it sounded cool.
There isn’t any in universe excuse that makes it make any sense. Sure, Spartans are tough, but the flood are already super human. Some of them are even capable of greater feats than Spartans are.
It's a mix of Mjolnir being an extremely powerful/dangerous asset and Spartans knowing how to use basically any tech the UNSC has, on top of having access to a lot of classified info
What the hell does it matter about classified intel if the hive mind already has it the moment they're infected? Like I guess they could pull a Keyes but still...
I don't believe they have it instantly. They would have to complete the transformation and it takes time for them to actually find the information. Keyes was almost entirely consumed and he held out for hours.
To be fair though all the info we really have is from Keyes and Jenkins, one of whom was extraordinarily strong in mind and thought he was being interrogated by the covenant, and Jenkins was taken by a very weak infection form so he retained a small part of himself. At least as far as humans go I think...
That's true, but if Spartans are anything, they definitely have a strong will.
This is true
Keyes only held out as long as he did because of his Command Neural Interface. Spartans also have advanced neural interface tech so they can integrate with their armor and with AI. It’s possible they would be able to hold out equally long, and thus worth having a damage control protocol just in case it prevents a disaster.
This is a great point.
Exactly it's more of a better safe then sorry. Is it possible that all that information is already lost? Definitely, but maybe not and if you want to have a better fighting chance why risk it and just nuke the area on the hope that maybe it didn't go trough and they won't have that extra edge. Not doing anything is akin to giving up and letting them have it.
Why wouldn't the Gravemind me able to just differentiate between the mechanical components & the meatbag bits making the brain tho? Why would that make it any difficult/longer to do?
The CNI interfaces with the brain in such a way that the infected person has something to pay attention to other than what the Flood wants them to think about. Keyes described it as an anchor or a life raft. This happened because the Flood cannot infect the CNI, so in essence there is an uninfected portion of the brain.
Why didn't they logic plague its ass? Since we know their Logic Plague can infect shit fast enough to, say, disable the self-destruct mechanism in MJOLNIR before it can be triggered by the Spartan in question, it should be simple enough to do almost instantly at the shit-tier tech level that a Tier 3 civ has
Because the CNI doesn’t have any logic or AI. It’s just a radio signal that replicates brain activity. Since the Flood can’t affect it and it’s integrated with the brain it provides an identity anchor for an infected individual.
Spartan have enhanced minds so it’s reasonable to assume they could hold out just as long
Depends on whether or not there is a hivemind already present I suppose. The Alpha Halo infection likely needed to form the proto-gravemind before accessing memories, but I imagine anything infected on Delta Halo had their memories instantly accessible. >Keyes was almost entirely consumed and he held out for hours. The last line of that cutscene betrays that idea though. They let Keyes suffer and resist in the amalgamation for hours, but when he said that he will never let them have his information, Gravemind very sinisterly says "We already do". I think this implies that they scooped the deets for Earth immediately and just let him resist for funsies. Still, I think at the proto phase, keyes still had to be deposited into the mass, whereas with the Gravemind I think a direct neural link is possible at a distance.
I assume they didn't get it, as he was forgetting things as the Flood absorbed it. He held on to Earth until the very end. The Flood is going to mess with you, especially when it's trying to break you pyschologically.
Well what's more psychologically breaking than letting you struggle for hours, thinking you're valiantly staving off humanity's doom only to be told that you were defeated hours ago?
The “we already do” is more of a statement that resistance is futile because there is no escape from the Flood. The Flood didn’t have direct access to the info yet, but they “already do” because Keyes is already in the Flood’s grasp, meaning that it is a forgone conclusion that the Flood will get the info. Luckily the Master Chief showed up to smash in his brain before it was too late lol.
That was my take on it too, it wasn't a literal past tense phrase indicating that it already happened, but that it might as well have already happened because his brain was their's.
What stopped the Flood from using secondary data to figure out Earth's location tho? Like what kind of a brainlet goes directly for the big boi target instead of pulling up the secondary "insignificant" data to sus out the location via tons of secondary vectors, without the extraction target potentially even figuring it out due to not being hivemind-tier intellect?
Space is big, really big, really fucking incomprehensibly utterly **BIG** I doubt Keys had the coordinates of a ton of different UNSC planets and installations memorized, just a few important ones for an Admiral to know, and even if the gravemind managed to compare them all to maybe figure out where what might be a really important human planet might be, that would still leave them tens of thousands if not over 100,000 cubic light years to comb through an innumerable amount of star systems before it could find the Sol system.
I mean that's a very basic interrogation tactic. Tell them you already have the info or a version of it and ask them to verify or correct it to benefit themself.
You haven't read the book apparently.
RIP Jenkins
That's because Keyes is actually a badass.
They have to “transmit” those memories to a Gravemind for it to join the Flood’s Domain equivalent. Local infestations usually don’t get past the Feral Stage.
Does the UNSC know about the hive mind? Or is that viewer knowledge?
Yes, Cortana gleaned whatever info Halo had on the Flood and contained it in her report I'm sure. Plus the gravemind talks through every form so you could probably figure it out that way if not for the other.
If the infection hasn't formed a hive mind (which canonically as far as we know none exist) then the information is stored within the individual.
You guys need to brush up on your lore
You seem to only say the same thing over and over again, maybe develop an actual response via your brain(whatever is left of it) and stop talking like you know everything when you clearly don't
In the story Saturn Devouring His Son, the spartan specifically has his head detonated. Assuming he was any kind of spartan worth a damn, he likely held out before his brain was *thoroughly* pulped. So, in all likelihood the flood had a *VERY* effective combat form, but very little in the way of high level unsc secrets, plus the chance that the armor itself would shred the body within by overcompensating due to the possibility of damaged neural interface. So, still scary, but not outside the capabilities of the UNSC.
Remember the Mjolnir is still powered by a fusion reactor The Flood *could* detonate it to throw local forces into absolute chaos
Pretty sure Spartans have explosives in their helmets that destroy the brain if they are infected. Source is the Gallows visor from Halo 5
there is a recent canon audiobook released where a fireteam of spartans got infected, the armor measures dont work, the flood uses the spartan neural interface to infect the armor with the logic plague, and the explosives in the helmet dont work to stop the knowledge stealing, since the flood has natural neural physics.
The helmet explosives went off, but exploding the fusion reactor didn’t.
They shouldn't have pre-Keymind tho, no?
sorry to reply way later, but it is implied the place was infested to the brim, there was probably a proto gravemind from the forerunners era inside there
That'd be obvious af from space tho, given a Keymind is a Gravemind the SIZE OF A PLANET (well its surface at least, although I guess it prolly does start to fill subterranean & underwater areas too of course?)
The Flood straight-up wields what is effectively magic, so this new power makes some sense. Not a lot of sense, granted, but *some*.
it never made sense with the precursors tbh
The Gallows visor detonated but didnt work in that Corruptor short story…
The first thing the armor does when it notices a flood related armor breach is explode the head, so intel is probably not a concern.
1. We've seen how greatly Flood Combat Forms enhance the physical abilities of the species they infect (eg: how high they jump and how fast they can swarm enemies). 2. The Flood (even in pre Gravemind states) gain access to the host's knowledge upon infection, thus they'd get access to the amount of combat experience a Spartan would have, along with all Flood counter measures used by Humanity which they could then subvert and the ability to drive most vehicles which they could use to escape the location and spread the outbreak further. 3. If the Mjolnir remains somewhat intact, it becomes much harder to deal with the resulting Combat Form.
If the Flood gain knowledge of Mjoilnir, they could more easily infect other Spartans too, exponentially increasing their lethality with every spartan infected
> The Flood (even in pre Gravemind states) gain access to the host's knowledge upon infection, thus they'd get access to the amount of combat experience a Spartan would have, along with all Flood counter measures used by Humanity which they could then subvert and the ability to drive most vehicles which they could use to escape the location and spread the outbreak further. Would destroying the flood infected spartan even prevent this, though? We know the flood is basically psychic. And from this perspective, ONI personal would be even more a risk then Spartans would be if infected. I really have a hard time seeing flood infected spartans being this giant risky thing as more then just cool fanservice/marketing hype
Unless there's is a hive mind formed in either a gravemind or keymind they don't have the ability to transfer information to the species knowledge, it would be stored within the individual so you could still remove it from the flood knowledge. In terms of ONI personnel it's really not a threat. As information is so fractured within ONI (on purpose) that the only worry would be someone high up being infected, which is unlikely. They assimilate an ONI operative and the flood simply learns about the cover mission the operative has been given when in reality they were probably doing something completely different without knowing. >I really have a hard time seeing flood infected spartans being this giant risky thing You've seen how effective Spartans are by the self in terms of infiltration and destructive capability. Imagine if their abilities were multiplied, on top of gaining the ability to create an army using their own genetic augmented biomass to enhance the flood forms around and now you have what would become quickly a planetary threat. Within hours they would be able to capture a ship capable of hyperspace and when that happens there's no telling where they would go or how far the infection would spread, only that it would.
Then you’re not reading your books right, and your lack of faith is disturbing
Because nukes are relatively valuable resources and broadly, it's better to be able to cleanse a Flood infestation with as minimal collateral damage as possible. Spartans have proven themselves to be effective at dealing with local infestations on several occasions, so deploying a Spartan Team to clear out the Flood without leveling the area is usually preferable. Why waste what could be valuable people and assets on the ground that could be realistically recovered? The issue with an infected Spartan is that conventionally clearing the area no longer becomes a viable solution. Flood infection already greatly increases the physical abilities of the infected host. Flood combat forms are strong enough to threaten a Spartan in Mark V Mjolnir with their punches. So take a Spartan, who is already stronger than 99% of people on the battlefield, and then make them even stronger and more resilient (because killing a Flood combat form is broadly more difficult than killing a baseline host). So in a 1 on 1 fight between a regular Spartan and an infected Spartan, you should probably expect the infected Spartan to win presuming equivalent equipment (obviously the calculus is a bit different if we're comparing a Spartan-II in GEN3 Mjolnir to a IV in SPI). Once a Spartan is infected, risk to other Spartans and the likelihood that conventional forces can successfully clears the area effectively drops to zero. And you also need to kill the Infected Spartan because the Flood gains the memories of the host and Spartans have lots of sensitive information that you don't want the Flood to have. So because you can't really expect to be able to defeat an infected Spartan with conventional forces (not without risking other Spartans being infected and making the problem even worse), it's only then that the only option to quell the infection is to level the area. Before the Spartan was infected, there probably was a realistic chance that the infection could be halted without glassing the area.
But isn’t the Spartan’s physical ability limited by the armor as well as enhanced by it? A combat form inside of it wouldn’t be able to make the armor or shields better, or weapons more effective. Strength couldn’t be proportionately boosted. And I figured a lot of the combat forms’ physical prowess came from all the new tissue they grow. There wouldn’t be room for that inside the armor.
>A combat form inside of it wouldn’t be able to make the armor or shields better, or weapons more effective. Strength couldn’t be proportionately boosted. Yes, the Flood wouldn't be able to increase the abilities of the armor itself, but the armor amplifies the base user's abilities. The stronger the base user, the greater the output of the overall armor system. Presumably, the Flood Also again, the boost offered by the Flood infection can be pretty extreme. Flood infection allowed normal humans to harm the Master Chief in his Mark V. It's entirely possible that even if the armor's adding nothing at all, the Flood boosting the base Spartan's strength would still render the infected Spartan as stronger than a Spartan in functional Mjolnir >There wouldn’t be room for that inside the armor. True, which is why the Flood expands to the outside of the armor.
I want to know how it can operate the suit, while breaking apart the undersuit. Makes no sense. The armour would be broken, unable to be powered. And how can the flood mutate a Spartan, with carbon fibre nap tubes weaved onto their skeleton? That's inorganic material right there. That would make mutating the bones impossible.
>I want to know how it can operate the suit, while breaking apart the undersuit. Makes no sense. The armour would be broken, unable to be powered. Intuitively, we know that the undersuit can be breached without rendering the entire suit inoperable, as Spartans have been injured via breaches to the undersuit without the entire armor being bricked. And when we look at [Rusalka](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fc4s0xe0di5zb1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D736%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dce93728442c0369c10810e18722eb9a3e76ed935) and [Transgressor](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F453firux97wb1.png), we see that large portions of the undersuit are still intact. No obviously, we can assume that there would be some loss in functionality, but the armor remains intact enough that it would still be providing something. > And how can the flood mutate a Spartan, with carbon fibre nap tubes weaved onto their skeleton? That's inorganic material right there. That would make mutating the bones impossib For starters, the augmentations to the bones of Spartans is never 100%, it's still mostly bone. And even then it's not like the Flood haven't been able to integrate with inorganic materials before. Likewise, it's not like the significantly more augmented Forerunners were immune to infection either. And even if the Flood couldn't integrate the bone themselves, nothing would stop them from successfully infecting the rest of the body.
The only thing that confuses me about this is the fact that the Gravemind left Chief and Arbiter uninfected. If infecting them only enhances their abilities, why wouldn’t he just infect them? They’d be just as capable (except perhaps their proficiency with weapons) if not more so, and they’d be under the Gravemind’s direct control.
Okay so I think I read this in a book or saw a YouTube video about it or something but anyways I believe the reason was that in order to access forerunner tech you can’t be infected and the point was to stop the rings from going off so infecting Chief would’ve given the flood a stronger weapon yes but not the ability to turn off the rings and with Arbiter it’s just that you’re not going to infect him cause Chief would know you’re just using him and when he’s done you’ll just infect him and Chief or Cortona would just self destruct the suit including themselves
Halo 2? Presumably existing Forerunner countermeasures prevented Gravemind from exercising control outside of the quarantine zone and the Arbiter and Chief were able to bypass them (I feel like I've read something about the Forerunner teleportation grid simply preventing the Flood from teleporting which would explain that but IDK if that was real or a fan canon explanation). Also, at least in the Chief's case, if the firing sequence were started, only the Chief would have been able to halt the activation of the rings. Doesn't work for the Arbiter but it works for Chief. By Halo 3, he arguably tried. He did send hordes of Flood after them, but the two fought their way through. Granted, there was the Gravemind's flashy tentacle thing at the end of the Covenant, but that mission has so many plot holes to begin with I honestly would just throw that in the pile of 'stupid things Halo 3's villains did,' because it's a long list.
The only thing I could figure is because then there’s a highly infectious parasitic organism running around in a suit of the single most advanced combat armor made by man, but like the other guy said, we’ve seen Spartans killed before even with MJOLNIR, so really it is pretty questionable why they’d go to such extremes. Unless it’s more because well *the Flood* and making sure the parasite is destroyed than who it infected. Maybe it’s because the Spartans are there in case a lesser human gets infected, they’re the last conventional line of defense and there’s little chance a normal human could kill a Flood Spartan one on one
It is overplayed in my opinion but there is a kinda logic to it that works. There have been examples/rumors of spartans containing minor flood outbreaks before and sometimes you don't want to go scorched earth destroying valuable assets in the process. But if a spartan becomes infected the flood now has a very effective spartan killer and the one unit that could maybe hold back the flood is no longer sufficient. Its not that an infected spartan is that much of a greater threat that WMD's suddenly become reasonable, they always were an allowed option with the flood. However an infected spartan means WMD's are now the only option.
It's not even that a infected Spartan is that dangerous on its own, imo it's mainly that Spartans usually have a lot of knowledge about UNSC, their structure, weapons etc. Combining Spartan physical abilities with their knowledge makes them a gigantic threat if they reunite with a gravemind
I think there are two "reasonable" reasons for this: 1. If a Spartan falls, then containing a Flood infestation has likely exceeded what ground forces are able to fight against. A fully armored individual with failsafes in play is the sort of tipping point. If the Flood bypass all of that, then there isn't much else the UNSC can reasonably deploy to handle it. On top of that, the Spartan can likely snowball infection since they are likely a bit more durable than other forms, and can eat up focus for individuals opening them up to other Flood attacks. 2. Spartans have a lot of knowledge and training. Nothing to the level of "They know the launch codes of every nuke in the system", but enough to make a local Flood group and their Hive Mind a bit more difficult to contain. How all weapons work, how to operate various vehicles, protocols, etc etc. I think once a Gravemind is in play, this is fairly trivial, but it's again one of those things that tip the scales a little too much. Ultimately, the risk of any Flood unit getting away is present, and a Spartan presents a nice option of a durable escape unit that knows how to operate and navigate things a bit better than the average Marine. But I think the first point is the stronger one. Spartans have been able to combat Flood infestations successfully. But if they fall, then what else is there really to do? I also think it's important to point out that I think Spartans are deployed because what they want is to minimize collateral damage. Captain Alvarez sent Spartans because he didn't want to lose out on the resources available. They should have nuked it from orbit from the jump, but Alvarez thought it could be sidestepped and contained. It's more of an "obvious move" in that nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure, but sometimes fighting for a particular resources may be worth it. But if Spartans fall, then go back to what should have been the case in the first place instead of committing more resources to the loss.
Honestly it’s to artificially inflate the drama. You’re right that Flood-infected Spartans may be more dangerous than most other infected combatants, but probably not “nuke the whole site” dangerous. But I can’t complain about it too much, because I feel like it sort of evokes Bungie’s old rule of cool. Like, why do we have to nuke the entire planet if a Spartan gets captured? Uh, because it sounds *totally badass* and adds a ton of stakes to Spartan missions in Flood-infected areas! Duhhhhh!
An infected Spartan will be more effective at killing/infecting other Spartans than Flood Combat Form.
Certainly, but I still don’t see how that makes them a “nuke it from orbit” type of threat any more than the Flood already are that type of threat.
What's a more effective way to fight against an infected Spartan?
That’s not really an argument. A nuke is one of the most effective ways to fight *anything*, but that doesn’t make it logical to resort to that immediately. It’s more a question of how much of a threat an infected Spartan would pose. I don’t think they pose a big enough threat to warrant a nuke regardless of circumstance or strategy. The biggest threat an infected Spartan may pose would be that the Flood could potentially brute force their way through enemy lines and infect people more rapidly, but the Flood already basically do this. In fact, the traditional way to deal with the Flood is to nuke everything already. The Forerunners nuked all life in the galaxy 100,000 in the past to deal with the Flood. Master Chief used the Pillar of Autumn to basically nuke Alpha Halo to deal with the Flood. The Sangheili basically glassed “half a continent” to deal with the Flood on Earth in Halo 3. And then John and Cortana’s best strategy to deal with the Gravemind was basically to use Installation 08 to nuke the Flood and GTFO. The only time I can recall in the setting where this type of strategy was not used was in Halo Wars 2’s Awakening the Nightmare, where the Banished forces basically managed to push back the Flood and contain them at the High Charity wreckage. Other than that one time, the standard strategy for dealing with the Flood has basically always been to get the hell away from them and use overwhelming force at a distance to contain them. I just don’t personally think an infected Spartan changes that standard too much. Especially since Spartans are not as durable as most people think they are. They can be downed with enough plasma and lead like any other infantry target.
The recent audio book does a good job at showing why it's a big deal. A single Spartan gets infected, and the fusion generator doesn't detonate, allowing the brainless body to be reanimated. The now infected Spartan proceeds to wipe out the rest of its former team, and the outbreak which was starting to be contained, immediately counters helljumpers and Cyclops and nearly escapes. It's such a momentum changer that you don't even try to risk further containment, you just wipe out everything.
Omg what audio book was this. That sounds so bad ass!
Halo:Saturn Devouring His Son. It's on Halo Waypoint and YouTube, about 30 mins long.
Thank you MVP!
When someone is infected by the flood everything they know is also assimilated. Mjolnir armor is stupid powerful but they also get the knowledge of that Spartan. Everything the Spartan knows including the knowledge of how to operate the weapon systems, the location of classified UNSC crap, all of it. Imagine learning all the knowledge of your teenage child. A bunch of basic human survival stuff and useless crap you already know. Then after that you receive all the knowledge of the President of the United States. It's insanely valuable information
Read/listen to [Halo: Saturn Devouring His Son](https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-saturn-devouring-his-son), a story containing the first ever account of a spartan being assimilated into the Flood. If you want the TL;DR: [Watch this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb6Ni3dMwLw).
That Captain is *not* going to have a good time explaining that shitshow to his bosses
fuck court martial. Alvarez is going to the midnight facility for gifting a spartan squad to the flood.
Because now you've got a combat form thats highly resistant to everything short of direct hits from weapons that can kill an IFV. If theres anyone else in the general area thats a fucking *problem*. Even sending in Spartan teams with heavy weapons is risky so the safest way to handle the infected Spartan is just delete the area from orbit.
I feel like a lot of it has to do with the growing importance of Spartans, both in the narrative and from, like, a meta franchise perspective? Since we play as Spartans, they want to make sure we continue to feel that power fantasy dynamic, to the point that even a single Spartan getting infected is a cataclysmic event. That being said there are also plenty of 'real' reasons why a Flood Spartan warrants even more action than a 'normal' infection. For one, MJOLNIR is probably the single most powerful piece of infantry equipment that the UNSC has, and an enemy getting their hands on it means dealing with that threat instantly becomes much, much harder. If a Flood gets it, not only are they now much more difficult to kill (remember, the UNSC primarily uses ballistic weapons, and the Flood are already sort of resistant to ballistics seeing as they're really just big bloated bags of gas and melted organs; that's why weapons like the sniper do barely any damage whereas the shotgun and assault rifle do better, since they're better at doing generalized structural damage instead of the accurate *brain destruction* the sniper excels at, but if you add energy shields and titanium plating on top of that it gets even worse), but MJOLNIR has a suite of advanced military hardware that, at a bare minimum, allows the wearer to access a ton of valuable information about UNSC operations in the area. A good example of this is the defiled FARNDALE attachment. It lets the wearer tap into ONI intelligence, and the 'defiled' variant specifically mentions that it can now be used to feed that ONI intelligence right into the Flood hivemind. And that's just a single attachment, too. A HAZMAT Spartan? Boy, it would suck if the Flood learned the specific quarantine routines they use to take care of Flood samples. I bet they could even turn into a pretty good cross between a combat and carrier form; attachments like the sample pack and biolocker shoulders are already designed to store samples, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to adapt them to be nice vulnerable bubbles, ready to explode and scatter spores everywhere while leaving the Floodified Spartan inside nice and safe. MIRAGE? I'm not sure if it maintains the active camo capabilities of the original SPI armor, but if it does... Invisible Flood forms sounds like hell. Rakshasa is designed to be maintained on the field, which means you sacrifice a lot of the nicer features of core MJOLNIR for the sake of being easier to keep at 100% (or close to, at least) functionality for longer. We can see from the Flood cosmetics that they seem to prefer wrapping their own warped flesh around armor when something gets damaged, but surely making it easier to do both would keep that combat form active for even longer, and that's not even touching on some of the worrying attachments they could take advantage of from that core. Like the coolpack torso piece and the coolshot shoulder pieces, which are both used to keep heat signatures down, making it that much easier for the Flood form to sneak up on its prey, or the fox 2449 wrist attachment, which is yet another method for the Flood hivemind to suck up as much of that tasty, tasty data from UNSC intelligence. Hell, if we wanna dip into the Firewall fracture stuff (which isn't canon but is a theoretical plan that COULD have become canon so I think it's more worthwhile to examine than, like, Yoroi or Eaglestrike), could you imagine a Flood CHIMERA Spartan? CHIMERA Spartans are piloted by an artificial intelligence, but they're artificial intelligences piloting a (mostly) inert meat puppet, so they're still very much vulnerable to Flood infection. Something like the defiance protocol torso piece have built-in nukes so they can self-destruct, and while normal MJOLNIR have self-destruct routines as well they're primarily designed to ensure the armor isn't captured. As far as I know, that doesn't mean a nuke, that means smaller explosive charges set around the neck and head to destroy the human inside, but a nuke could do quite a bit more damage if need be. Anyway, TL;DR, but generally speaking while I think a lot of it can just be chalked up to '343 wants Spartans to feel unique and special compared to other units because we play as Spartans and they want us to feel that power fantasy so we feel good while playing Halo', there are plenty of super valid reasons why I would NOT want Papa Plant Zombie from getting ahold of a Spartan for longer than is absolutely necessary.
There is at least there's one confirmed canon executor running around in the Chimera suit. Was confirmed a week or two after it's last Intel drop however long ago. So the Windgo kit is even more frightening, should it ever be canonically confirmed. What's worse than a rampant ai. Shedding info to infect other Chimera executors similar to the flood, literally transforming the suit into something else? It now getting infected by the flood, or having it going wild due to logic plague *if* the flood couldn't infect it. I think the pressing issue with Spartans falling to flood is the vast stores of knowledge that the spartan has access too. Sure a flood spartan requires nukes and the like to ensure it doesn't spread, but if the flood ever gains enough biomass to have a gravemind form, all of the UNSC info the spartan has access to, the flood will too. Im pretty sure there was a flood infected spartan that survived from being nuked in one of the short stories 343 posted a while back.
Spartans are cool and marketable, so a flood infected spartan also needs to be cool, marketable, and hyped up
Spartans often have top secret clearance to UNSC secrets as they are the ones trusted to carry out top secret missions and what not. Since the flood essentially absorbs the memory of those they infect, these top secrets can be exposed and used against the UNSC. Plus given how powerful MJOLNIR can be it would mean that one of the UNSC's most powerful assets can be used against them. For example, if a Spartan IV fireteam was ordered to carry and arm a tactical nuke on a banished controlled planet. The S-IVs would have the code memorized to arm the tactical nuke. They deploy on their mission but halfway through the flood shows up and managed to infect the S-IV fireteam. The flood would not only have possession of a nuke but would also know the code for arming it.
Spartans know a lot of ONI stuff.
If one single infection form can decimate an entire planet we can only imagine what a combat form made from a super soldier with inhuman strength, speed, agility and itelligence can do. And it is also clad in the best armor humanity can produce, with personal shields and possibly carrying weapons of mass destruction
The Flood is just too inconsistent in its Memory-acquisition. On the one hand we have Keyes who put up a fight for each scrap of Intel where somehow the Flood would avoid his death before complete assimilation and then we have Regret who got his skull caved in like a tin can and the Gravemind only goes: Abra Kadabra and he's perfectly alive and in character while the Gravemind had access to all the necessary Intel. I think the extermination protocol is just for drama because the Flood Combat Forms can already run faster, jump higher and hit harder than any other biological or enhanced being. I don't think Mjolnir would give them much aside for the shielding. Also the mutation process would break the armor anyway. The only question is how fast the memory is transferred and secured and what Intel, aside from the current mission, the Spartans would provide that the UNSC and the Flood would deem absolutely critical.
Eh, honestly it sounds to me like a meme that got out of hand and entered canon. A Spartan flood would obviously be much tougher than a normal one to kill, but spartans have been killed loads of times and individual toughness is not what makes the flood dangerous.
The issue is that the UNSC needs to get as close to a 100% anti-Flood success rate as possible. If the Flood escape Forerunner containment than the UNSC can manage them. If they ever break UNSC containment and escape into space, then stopping them is practically impossible. They can travel to any planet they like, steal more ships, travel to more planets, rinse and repeat. The UNSC are spread too thin to stop the Flood, and it won't take long at all for a Gravemind to form. At that point the only realistic option is to fire the Halos. That's what makes Flood Spartans so dangerous. Spartans dealing with regular Flood have a great chance to succeed, but even they are at serious risk if they have to deal with a Flood Spartan as well. At that point, playing around with any non-guaranteed options is too risky. Nukes and MACs are 100%, so that's the next step.
Honestly to me an infected Spartan is just another combat form it's no different than an elite form and elites have already been proven to be a lot stronger than Spartans let alone the average human especially bigger in size the only reason I would consider of why the UNSC treats flood infected Spartans a bigger threat than any other form is probably because of their years of service and due to the how much knowledge they know that's about it.
Infected super solider trained in all forms of warfare and in uber-powered armour…nope sounds safe as houses.
If a Spartan is deployed to an existing blightland, it’s probably because something there is important enough that it’s worth the risk to try and recover rather than destroy it in orbital bombardment. Be it surviving personal that need to be evacuated, or intelligence/technology that is particularly valuable. If there was nothing valuable in a flood-infested area, they would probably open with orbital bombardment and quarantine. Spartans would also be assigned to security around a quarantine zone or flood research facility, to make sure nothing gets in or out that isn’t supposed to. It seems there maybe have been a few minor outbreaks which have been contained by Spartan quarantine units, but no major outbreaks or infected Spartans yet.
>no infected spartans yet oh boy i have news for you
Because a Spartan is considered hardware, so is Moljnir. As a general rule you don't let hardware/software fall into enemy hands. SOP in Afghanistan was to destroy any equipment you couldn't recover
Because of their training and they're read on to some top secret shit and they can operate everything from a cruiser to a bicycle.
Biker forms incoming
>spartans have a fuckton of combat experience, and knowledge on both alien and human technology >the flood makes the things it infects way more stronger, an spartan is already a monster with its augments, add to it the flood supercell >add to the last point that spartan 4s armor is their main source of power, most of the inhuman shit they do is thanks to MJOLNIR infecting a spartan doesnt only gave the gravemind cataclysmic amounts of knowledge to evolve, its the equivalent of making an alex mercer in the halo universe
Human cyborg zombie sounds pretty major!
As others have said Spartans are extremely powerful soldiers, they are a biological journal of UNSC secrets and there is a propaganda angle. Spartans don't die but they can be infected with terrifying parasites.
It’s because the only thing The Floods all deserve is a Keyes ending.
Because they’re super soldiers.
POV a 7'6 giant in full power armor and a working shield system. That uninffected could bench press an elite is charging at you full kilter with a assault rifle in hand unloading in your general direction. You have .2 seconds to live.
And those .2 seconds are spent questionsing, "Wha-"
Cuz now the flood ok now all the containment protocols and all of their weaknesses so that gets tossed out of the window. They know strategies, now and also the training they get. As well as you know having a super soldier combat form
Flood Spartans would be incredibly powerful, and the flood would get all of the Spartans knowledge which is incredibly dangerous. Not to mention they also need to destroy the mjolnir which is why they nuke the whole area.
because john halo killed the covenant all by himself, now imagine if he was a zombie coming for the UNSC
I think the simplest answer is if the situation is dire enough that a Spartan has fallen to it and been infected, it's been FUBAR'd a *LONG* while. At that point the ONLY option is to just glass the area, be it the general Halo glassing or just carpet bombing the area with Nukes till there's nothing left.
I think it’s more of an issue of how much technical and sensitive knowledge that Spartans have. If it makes its way to a gravemind, that’s a major strategic risk.
The abilitys of a spartan without pain.
Flood increases a natural human’s strength to that of a spartan without mjolnir. Imagine what it will do to someone fully augumented in a mjolnir suit.
Spartans have bombs in their helmets that explode their head incase they're infected by the flood (presumably to deny them any knowledge), no clue why they don't just put some bombs in the chest too and blow up the infection form, would be way easier than a nuke
One reason why it's also a big deal, aside from the potential threat a Flood infected Spartan could pose, is the *propaganda* impact. Imagine, word spreading of one of the UNSC'S greatest weapons, now turned against Humanity. Not great for morale.
Spartans are THE most deadly and important asset in the entire UNSC. Honestly, they are like Jedi. A single one could win a war.
An incredibly strong, highly trained super soldier with armour that can survive a fall from space is now part of the zombie hivemind, I wonder why that’s bad
Imagine if Russia obtained a US Gerald R Ford Class aircraft carrier. In 1875.
They’d just get drunk and sink it if they didn’t blow it up themselves first.
Honestly, not sure why it's a thing. The Flood took out warror servants and pre-Spartan human warriors alike and that alone wasn't game ending despite both of those being far more capable than Spartans. Spartans have already trained against simulated Combat forms, and they're far rarer than elites, so they don't stand to be a major occurance. Biggest issue, IMHO, is not the combat form, but the Flood potentially gaining insight into how to defeat Mjolnir armor security systems as well as Spartan psychology. That being said,>! the only instance it happened literally had to be contrived out of numerous redundant failures and coincidences to make it work. Pure forms that survived the Halo ring's purging blast? A captain that prioritized a salvage wreck over a HYDRA level existential threat, which already was a massive discovery that probably would have gotten him promoted? Who then sent infantry to kill an infantry devouring threat despite complete air control and access to armored vehicles? Who then apparently then ran to hide and get drunk in his room while on duty? Yeah, I don't buy how it happened. !<
It’s because the Flood when infecting you it’s not just your standard zombie infection where you die and the virus uses you to infect others where as the flood not only do that but get full access to your memories and anything else so say a scorpion operator gets infected well the infected tank operator knows how to use tanks because it’s a memory. The second reason why an infected spartan is so dangerous is because the Mjolnir armor is so advanced to where the Flood can use the armor to be effective and agile in combat because once again it’s in the infected spartan’s memory on how to use the armor. Reason 3 is the final reason on why not just send people after them well the risk is your average marines and ODSTs aren’t as highly combat effective against spartans and sending more Spartans risks the Spartans getting infected and it just adds a threat. There’s your reason
How many have been infected? Only one as of now correct? And he/she was killed before full transformation happened?
From what we know just one, and presumably so but that’s not confirmed
an entire fireteam of 4 spartans was infected, the stupid captain decided to nuke it all too late and it is implied that the first infected spartan used its knowledge to pilot a condor and escape....so there is a 50/50 possibility that maybe, that flood spartan used the condor slip space drive to escape.
It looks like the only one is Fireteam Leviathan. One S4 was infected and started to turn but the entire team and area was nuked into oblivion. So none of the flood made it out
thats not what happened, the spartan got infected and started massacring and infecting everyone including the other spartans, but while the massacre happened, alvarez launched the nukes, while the nukes reached and killed the other spartans, the first spartan ran to the condor and is implied it piloted it, but by then the saturn was in full alert of any escaping vehicle, its ambigious if it escaped or not, since condors have integrated slip space.
Where all these questions coming from? Is there a book or some content where this is happening?
There was a short story released called “Saturn Devouring his Son” on Halo Waypoint. Highly recommend reading it, it’s a short read but pretty cool.
Well, considering what we know of a Spartans and how powerful they are and infected one with their abilities then the added abilities of the flood would be an absolute nightmare that probably doesn’t even cut it close to describing it
It's definitely blown out of proportion.I don't see an infected spartan being that much more dangerous than an infected elite or brute. I bet the flood could even create pure forms that are about as effective or even better anyways. And assuming there is a gravemind present, it would already have access to all the knowledge that the previous gravemind accumulated from contact with modern humans, so any additional Intel an infected spartan could provide would probably be insignificant.
Realistically, it’s because 343 thought it sounded cool. There isn’t any in universe excuse that makes it make any sense. Sure, Spartans are tough, but the flood are already super human. Some of them are even capable of greater feats than Spartans are.