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Why there are no Hunter Flood Forms!
Posted By: Havoc_legionnaire<havoc_legionnaire@Yahoo.com>
Date: 26 November 2005, 7:51 am
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Though I am a sci-fi fanatic, I am also a man of cold, hard facts. As a scientist, it is my job to edify people on confusing matters, to show them the facts that they may had missed. Thus, all that I put here is empirical evidence, its logical conclusion, and the rationalized meaning of the conclusion. The key to any argument I make here is that the Halo Universe is based on sound science well within the conceptual realm. Gauss Cannon, Plasma Weaponry, Synaptic Reactive Circuitry, its all being developed right now!
Why are there no Hunter Flood Forms? (Thank God There Isn't)
I answer this question because I had notice endless and pointless arguments over it among friends and members of forums. I am no amateur, for I have play both games and read the entire series. I aim to lay the issue to rest here and now! The answer requires research and deep though, and I have painstakingly done both. Simply put, it is the unique physiology of the hunters that saves our brave Master Chief Spartan John-117 and the Arbiter (I agree with the popular consensus that he was Ship Master Orna Fulsamee) from an "Uber Fryin Gun" wielding flood form.
As stated in the Halo 2 Handbook (thus the data is undisputable) the hunter is not a singular organism, but rather a collective of worm-like organism in a hive mind. Collective beings pool their resources together for mutual benefit. Considering that the average hunter is no more intelligent than the average marine, and I know from the novels and hours of game play, the individual organism is logically not fully conscious. If the individual worms were fully sentient and intelligent, the hunters would be brilliant tacticians and strategists even with accounting for diminishing returns, data degradation, bridging problems, transfer rates, recursive errors, and allocation conundrums. The hunter consciousness is therefore a biological system wide neural network where the net consciousness does not add up to the sum of the collectives ability. The nervous system, I logically concluded as nature runs on logic, is decentralized to serve the both the individual and the collective almost like a LAN system. Taking out one worm will not serious hinder the whole creature. Taking out enough of them would result in a system crash, in context means the death of the collective being.
The flood have several prerequisites regarding its ability to infect a host. The vector must be sentient, have substantial carbon based body mass, and have a well organized and centralized nervous system. The prerequisites of sentience is not understood but significant to the replication process. Having substantial body mass is easy to understand as bigger host means nastier combat form and more infection forms. The need for an organized and centralized nervous system is key to the physical subjugation and immune suppression of host. It allows for the denial of service attack on the brain and hijack all bodily functions to facilitate the transformation process. For those who didn't read the books, this was the important fact that save the ever ass kicking Sergeant AJ Johnson from infection in the containment facility where Captain Jacob Keyes was lost. Johnson had from an injury from earlier battles with the Covenant received Boren Syndrome, a condition where the nervous system develops recursive errors and degradation and yet still functions.
The conclusion of this data is lucid at worst. While the hunter as a whole definitely meet the body mass requirement, we must remember that any infection form trying to subdue a hunter tries to infect one worm at a time. The worms themselves are not sentient and, if one observes, is actually quite small and incapable in hosting any macro-organism, especially one about half a meter in diameter. The nervous system of a hunter is decentralized and cannot be used to control the entire hunter or prevent automatic immune response. Since the individual is not sentient, insufficient in mass, and cannot be suppressed it is immediately passed up.
The rationalization of this data is multi-layered. This is proof of the shear amount of work Jason Jones put into his work not to make any contradictions. It would not be very farfetched if Jones had a footnote in the Halo Bible saying hunters cannot be infected, as it was shown in both games where infection forms left the hunters, dead or alive, alone while infesting everything else. The second rationalization is that biologically, the hunter is the best anti-Flood Species alive as they can shred and vaporize the Flood with shocking efficiency without providing them with possible hosts or more weapons. Though personally, I like everybody else would rather wager on the Spartan Super Soldier armed with a Shotgun, an Assault Rifle, and lots of Grenades. (I Lied. I prefer the Skyhawk Atmospheric Assault Fighter, Otherwise known as the 50 Millimeter Rotary Armor Piercing, High Explosive, and Incendiary Fun times 4)
PS: I am sorry, folks. I didn't intend for this to sound like a Science Class Report
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