Warhammer 40k Galaxy vs. Flood (Halo)

The Imperium sends a task force to occupy a "uninhabited world" then loses contact with them unbeknownst to them they have become infect by the flood. Does the galaxy survive? The galaxy is in it's current state, if one of the powers falls the galaxy will unite to fight against their common enemy.

Depends on how fast they react to the flood. There are two major concerns, imo, to determine how well they do:

1. How long does it take them to reach critical mass [IE, Silentium]? As they aren't much of a threat until they get massively larger and more intelligent.
2. How long until the Necrons decide to try and purge them?

Until the Flood hit critical mass, there isn't anything they can do to actually threaten the Necrons, so avoiding their wrath for as long as feasibly possible is absolutely necessary [and they need to alpha strike them before the Necrons go War in Heaven on them]

Odds are, the Flood don't get very far. Traveling through the warp is dangerous and until they reach critical mass, they have to use vessels they have taken.. so Imperium ones, however, they lack navigators so they could only make short jumps, and to be blunt, good chance they simply die here as there is a good chance that with so many jumps, something happens with Daemons that leads the ship to never making it to another planet.

So... very good chance the Flood die out without anyone really knowing wth happened to that ship they sent and its just assumed lost in the warp or something bad happened on the planet.. so.. a Tuesday.

Either they die out because if a planet is infected and a distress call is sent out, you can count on the imperium immediately performing exterminatus. Or if the eldar sees the potential threat they pose, they will move to immediately neutralize the flood. The only way I see them actually being a threat is if the planet they infected has an orc population they can infect. Even then it is a big if if they can successfully infect the orc population.

Only flood version that can potentially wipe out the warhammer galaxy is the one that fought the forerunners and brought them to the brink of extinction.

@wut: Isnt it typical for the Imperium not to even notice a planet gone missing in years some times when it happens? Also wouldn't they have all the knowledge of the people from the task force and potential psychic abilities of the Imperial navigator? And if they were attacked by demons in the warp would they be able to harvest there bio mass?

@joshtaku: the only encounter up to this point the powers of the milky way galaxy have had with the flood are the ones from the task force that has been completely infected.

Flood is a bit overrated, they primarily won because of three reasons.

1) The Forerunners weren't taking them seriously at the start like Ancient Humanity if they had then it would have been easy

2) Flood were able to shutdown slip space (Forerunners main method of travel) in various areas which cut them off from fleeing/reinforcements and general troop movement

3) Flood were able to convert their A.I which turned Forerunner forces against each other.

With Imperium all three of those things won't be happening, Imperium will take them seriously from the start and the Flood is likely unable to shut off the Warp that they use for travel and the Imperium doesn't have any droids to logic plague most of their military.

Also due to the inconsistency of warp travel the Flood will have extreme difficulty spreading, Imperium can likely solo tbh since they are willing to sacrifice really will and have excellent weaponry to purge flood bio matter.

@artoreus: Then they spread to a planet at best and fail to completely take over it depending on the inhabitants. They gain the knowledge of the taskforce and maybe some of the abilities but that's pretty much it. A flood infection limited to such a small size would not get the chance to spread given how notoriously detailed the imperium is when it comes to containing infections. Exterminatus is almost always the answer.

@banasura: didn't it take the imperium years to realize something was happening with the tyranids? Would the flood focus on mostly lightly defended worlds in order to build up their biomass?

@artoreus: It took the imperium so long to react to the tyranids because their telepathic messages for distress calls were getting blocked by the hive fleet. If not for that, the imperium would have responded as soon as they got word.

@joshtaku: to be fair the imperium loses planets all the time and it takes them years to even notice it depending on the planet. It's like oh another day in 40k lol. Also given what the galaxy state is and priorities of the current imperium why would they care at this juncture?

@joshtaku: Any planet that's actually worth something will have naval vessels worth noticing, if Flood land on a planet that the Imperium does not notice it'd typically be of very little value and the Flood at best will have access to a dozen or so crappy vessels that would get casually destroyed by any Imperium fleet they come across.

@banasura: it doesn’t matter if the imperium takes them serious or not what matters is how quick the imperial fleet can react to them before the flood spread. They aren’t overrated in the fact that they defeated the forerunners because we get to see first hand how corrupting the flood is hand. We get to see how all their toys came into play once the flood put on their big boy pants on

As per op due to the situation I’m sure the flood lose hard as it takes only but a single fleet or even a ship to one shot said planet

@killerwasp: You're kind of forgetting that Flood is useless with out space ships, the only time they're a threat (To civilizations that are not limited to one planet) is when they get SEVERAL planets worth of infected planets to form Key Minds and even then irc they rely on the naval assets of others to do that.

Maybe they can build their own ships but that's something we've never seen them do, they typically rely on jacking other ships. Just as we see in Halo Wars 2 because despite having the remains of High Charity and a Grave Mind they couldn't up and out the Ring with a custom made space ship.

@artoreus: Issue isn't the Imperium reacting. Issue is the Flood have only one way to expand.. using the Imperium ships that were sent. However, again, they lack navigators so long jumps are out of the question. So they'd need to do short jumps in order to go anywhere which is extremely dangerous and likely to result in daemons on the ships or the ships being outright lost. They can attempt a long jump but that would be suicidal, so, imo, they die here.

EDIT: To clarify, I am assuming they stole the ships of the task force sent to occupy the planet. IF you are saying there are no ships for the Flood to start with...... then they do nothing? Until someone stumbles onto them and then they get wiped out by whatever finds them since they are too small to be a threat to any of the factions.

There also seems to be some assumptions being made that the flood would stick solely to a singular imperium worlds in the early stages. What if they target lesser factions or remote areas to gather biomas to create a gravemind?

Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong but didn't a Forrunner AI predict it could take a single flood biom to take over a forrunner planet in the early stages of the conflict in a manner of a day to a couple days? He may have said hours? Just a question for thought...

@artoreus: Uh.. no. What people are saying is they hard stop at the first planet. Not that they get anywhere. The problem is not the Flood can't take over a world. The problem is getting to other worlds.

@banasura said:

The Covenant have their own means of transportation via their own FTL travel. Thats why I said it takes the IoM navy coming in with one ship and one shotting the planet. The thing is though their feats done to the forerunners isnt being overrated, they are extremely powerful, just not when they are restricted to a planet is all

@wut: : so if they have access to all the assets of a typical Imperium task force what's preventing them from spreading to other worlds? Wouldn't they have access to the psychers so they can travel to other planets?

@killerwasp: they have access to ALL the assets of a typical imperium task force in the opening of the scenario

@artoreus: I have explained this. Twice. I suggest you try reading.

Its extremely unlikely possessing a psyker would do anything. Psykers are not 'psychic'. Its about their 'soul'. Also, its not just a 'psyker' you need. You need the Navigator which are specially bound to allow them to guide ships through the warp. You are saying, 'Why can't they spread? They have ships!' Yes. They have a ship. In an ocean that is constantly in the middle of a hurricane, they can't see the stars and they have no compass.

They either get lost and eaten, or they keep popping in and out to look at the stars which drastically increases, all but assures really, they get a friendly daemonic visit.

The 'drop one X!' into the universe doesn't work to well in 40k thanks to the means of travel used by most of the species there.

@killerwasp: Really, then why didn't they fly away in Awakening the Nightmare DLC?

They had all the resources of High Charity.

Flood's overrated because they beat the Forerunners for three and three reasons only not because of some dumb wank excuse of infection and hijacking.

1) Forerunners allowed them to snowball (So Character Induced Stupidity)

2) Flood knew Slipspace better and could mess with is so Forerunners couldn't travel in certain areas which cut off reinforcements and relocating. They can't do that with the warp

3) Most of the Forerunner Military was automated, a single A.I alone was logic plagued and stole tens of millions of warships from the Forerunners.They can't do that with any faction here.

The Flood are trash vs competent high fire power people like the Imperium.

Only way Flood win is of they outnumber Imperium ships 100 to 1 or some ridiculous ratio cause they'll never win on the ground vs an important Imperium Planet

The flood isn't weak, it's just that it needs time to grow into the powerful threat that we saw against the forerunners and in the games.

@banasura: because they hadn’t built up that much. It was a prototype gravemind. During the forerunner war the flood used their own ftl

Also how many times do I have to tell you, the flood lose in this situation

@artoreus: wut explained it already the flood can’t win in this situation

@wut: Forgive me I don't claim to be an expert in 40k by any means I do have a base understanding of the universe but my knowledge is lacking in same areas hence why I posted the question to the forum. I do understand the chaotic and unreliable nature of travel that is the warp. Also I have read what everyone has written if there is any misunderstanding it might be from what maybe common knowledge to you might not be to be that is why I ask questions. I have not made any claims so far with 40k save one about reaction time. So I guess I have two questions. First would the flood be able to utilize the navigator from the task force they took over assuming they have one. And the second would they be able to corrupt/take over demons if they ran into them in the warp while traveling?

@killerwasp: I see

@army2442: The Flood is weak, the only reason they're so deadly to various factions is because they can spread their spores through the wind from pretty much any infected body.

Individually Brutes can slaughter them in mass and even Jerome and Johnson can slaughter their way through them with 7.62 nato ammo, the issue is lack of area of effect weaponry to stop the spore production.

Which isn't an issue for any 40k faction

@killerwasp: Yeah that's a lie, with just a proto grave mind in Halo CE they were able to fix the slip space engine of a Carrier.

The Flood are either incapable of building space craft of their own or are unwilling to, them lacking the resources or not being old enough is just a cop out excuse

@artoreus: short answer is no, because the flood can’t access souls as far as I know

For the second question also no, as daemons and the warp are not bound by laws, physics, or characteristics that are like that of our universe or heck even the warhammer universe. To put it simply, daemons can do whatever they want in the warp it’s their playing field, but if they were to die so to speak they just get reabsorbed by their god and created again

@banasura: you do realize in halo Ce it had access to memories of both humans and covenant and how to operate ships right? It’s why if you even bothered to study the lore more in monta Lisa the UNSC there was trying to destroy said ship before the proto gravemind could gather not only enough biomass to begin thinking on its own in the ability to absorb the memories of its crew in order to use said ship to attack the newest planet in order to spread. It’s how the flood were not only able to travel to earth but also HC despite never being in either one....

so the next time you say that’s a lie you might want to ask first, I have no problem being wrong and accepting it, but when you fail to look at the lore and say I’m lying that’s where we will have an issue

@killerwasp: would the scenario change if they took over an Eldar or Tau taks force/fleetinstead of an Imperium fleet?

@killerwasp: You do realize that has nothing to do with what was said right?

You do know that in Nightmare the Awakening DLC they had the Biomass of all the people that were on High Charity right?

You know High Charity had more people aboard it than a Carrier right?

You know you said that they didn't leave because they "hadn't built up much" when they actually built up a lot.

Love to see you changing the subject to completely unrelated, nice to see you don't know jack about the Flood and are just paraphrasing what all the Halo wankers do.

XD

Yeah "I don't know anything about Halo lore" it's not like I mentioned in #29 that they can fix a carrier with a Proto Gravemind, they clearly know how to operate space ships at a low level but building space ships is beyond what has been shown even with substantial biomass and resources.

The Flood aren't as "smart" as you think they are, they only get as far as the incompetence and lack of resources of their opponents let them go.

@artoreus: No, because it has nothing to do about memories or their physical bodies. Psykers is all about the 'Warp', their soul presence within it. So the Flood wouldn't be able to tap into that power, or at least, have never shown any reason why they would be able to, so a Navigator would just be a weird three eyed human to take over, but wouldn't function as anything more for them.

Daemons are beings made up of raw warp energy, so the laws of physics don't apply to them [which is why they disappear back into the warp and struggle to maintain themselves outside of it as the longer they stay the more reality tries to enforce its rules on them], so the Flood couldn't do much to them.

@killerwasp: You do realize you wank them over the top right?

Not to mention you use outliers and faulty logic, never proving me just spamming a whole wall of irrelevant red herring text that has no basis to the argument on hand via Gish Gallop.

@banasura: you do realize I have my own halo books right? You do realize this includes the various quotes that I’ve proven you wrong on in the other debate despite what you’ve tried to lowball/say right? You do realized ive found quotes already for another debate because i spent time searching right? But by all means lets just keep assuming that idk wtf im talking about

Lets quote halo waypoint,

FUTURE GROWTH

After a Gravemind has been fully established, the local Flood infestation will make efforts to leverage any technology and knowledge available to leave their current domain in search of others to infect. This is referred to as the interstellar stage and is only superseded by the Transgalactic stage, when the Flood collective is unified and large enough to move from one galaxy to the next. Effectively, this can only occur when thousands of individual, interstellar stage collectives have uniformly coalesced, spiraling toward the galaxy’s center in a harmonized pattern that ensures no population centers go uninfected.

Lets quote Cortana,

"It fed on intelligent life and in doing so, became ever more intelligent itself. The Flood was unique; it used their very strength against them."

— Cortana

Let's quote mona lisa,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36hTq2soGDE <---41:30 explains it retains some of their memories

theres another part where they talk about the engine room but i gotta go for now and ill be back later

What do they all have in common? The fact the flood needs to absorb and understand the memories of whom it fed on in order to operate whatever they are using. In case you didn't notice what happened in "the awakening?" The proto gravemind sat there and did what exactly? Nothing, we don't know what happened, but what do we do know? We know the Gravemind in halo 2, not only operated HC, but also managed to hack its teleporation device and teleport both the arbiter and MC to two different locations and with pin point accuracy. Once more this is the difference between a proto gravemind and a gravemind.

I'm not going off on some rant for your entertainment. I'm simply saying the gravemind has to absorb and understand from the memories it is given in order to operate said ships, vehicles, etc. Now what I was wrong about was the fact the flood so far as I know can't indeed make ships. I thought they could make these right here,

and use them for interstellar travel and so on, but however I was wrong as that was simply not the case, but by all means keep it up champ.

You do know that in Nightmare the Awakening DLC they had the Biomass of all the people that were on High Charity right?

You know High Charity had more people aboard it than a Carrier right?

You know you said that they didn't leave because they "hadn't built up much" when they actually built up a lot.

Right but you are aware that the gravemind..... from halo 2 and 3 was killed right? Meaning all info is gone.... why the flood didnt make another is beyond me and is as you would say.... PIS

Love to see you changing the subject to completely unrelated, nice to see you don't know jack about the Flood and are just paraphrasing what all the Halo wankers do.

Paraphrasing? lol oh boy the joy you bring, unlike you i read my lore, which is why i pointed out several times that they need feed on intelligence of people and try to use the technology around them the best they can. Check halo 2 and 3 in how the flood managed to make good use of HC

@killerwasp:

Gish gallop

Flood have FAILED to show the ability to create spacecraft of their own, even when the Gravemind existed and had access to High Charity it still FAILED to created ships and instead relied on what it had subverted and took. It having the knowledge of those it has possessed/killed is irrelevant because time and time again we've seen that on the intellectual level that Flood forms are still inferior to non-infected.

The Gravemind from Halo 2/3 is incompetent, dispatching all it's "free" Flood to one area just to get them blown up twice. (One from High Charity reactors going off and the other from the Halo Ring going off) when all it could have done is send ships to various other planets that the Covenant held (Since you know they had knowledge on the location of all the Covenant planets due to full access of High Charity data banks and the Prophet of Mercy)

If that's the basis of how the Gravemind operates he's going to send all the infected ships and every flood form he has to Holy Terra and then get blow out of the sky like the incompetent parasite it is.

@killerwasp: @wut: would the results of the scenario be different if instead of currupting and taking over an Imperium fleet they took over a Eldar or Tau task force?

@artoreus: Tau have the same issue as the Imperium. Due to lack of navigators, Tau have to make numerous short ranged jumps, its not as bad for the Tau as Daemons ignore the Tau. No reason they would ignore the Flood. [Tau have a tiny Empire due to FTL restrictions].

Eldar is rough to decide. All Eldar tech is psyker based. Their guns don't even have triggers. So, if the flood could even make use of Eldar tech is questionable, you would need to handwave that.

Although, at this point, are you going to keep attempting to change the OP to get the answer you want?

@wut: No I was just curious if the flood were able to spread via taking over a group of ships what that would look like in the 40k galaxy, if it was possible, and if it was dependent on what race it was they first had contact with and would they be able to overwhelm the galaxy or would the galaxy be able to beat them.

@artoreus: Then the answer is.. no. Dropping the Flood on a single world in the 40k is not going to lead to the end of the 40k universe regardless of who they bump into first. Flood are extremely weak until they hit critical mass.

@wut: so you don't think they would be able to reach critical mass in the 40k galaxy, I am guessing it would be the ftl hm...

@artoreus: Yes. FTL is the issue. Only race with an FTL fast enough is the Necrons, the exact race the Flood couldn't hope to beat until they hit critical mass and only if the Necrons ignored them until the, literal, last minute.

This is a very accurate rundown of what happens.

Odds, are, that they become a plaything for Nurgle long before they reach any scary levels

First encounter is also big. Big money starting zone would be Tau space. Instadeath starting world would be a Necron Overlord's front lawn

@artoreus: No. It would not be different. The hard facts are that the flood is not that big of a threat when compared to the other factions in 40k. The flood must first build momentum in order to be any sort of a threat; which will only be achieved if they have already infected a dozen or so planets. And even then, the imperium is a hard counter to them since they can literally destroy planets with a pushnof a button. The eldar will eradicate them. The tau, even when taken over by flood, are already a somewhat insignificabt factor in current 40k.

@decaf_wizard: would the Chaos god use them?

Why would the chaos god of disease and stagnation have any interest in the flood you ask? Its almost like that question kinda answers itself.......

@wut: Actually, the Flood do have a few avenues to some level of success here. For example, if they wormed their way into someplace like Commorragh

@decaf_wizard: doesn't that also mean the Chaos god would help them spread and cause chaos in his type of fashion?