Flood v. Trekkies

[Caiaphas]

The aim here is short and simple. If introduced into the Star Trek universe, who would ultimately triumph: the Flood or the Federation/Romulans/Klingons/Dominion/Borg/a coalition of single goddamn race we've ever encountered over the past four decades of Trek? It goes without saying that an element of "why" is also involved.

Note: NO ONE HAS ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THE FLOOD WHATSOEVER. Just so we don't have any boring arguments like "The Federation/Romulans/Klingons/Dominion/Borg/et cetera will just vaporize the Flood from orbit. Come on, we want some dramatic last stands, here. Oh, and no Q. That jerk would just munch on some popcorn while humanity is decimated.

Personally? It depends. Let's just say that the Flood are discovered by the Federation the same way they originally were in Halo: a survey ship finds a planet with this odd, not quite normal-looking life form. What seems to be standard procedure for Starfleet is to beam down personnel to have them take a close look at it. Remember, no prior knowledge.

It's stated by an Elite Shipmaster (Half-Jaw, I believe?) that a single Flood spore could wipe out species. Using that little hyperbole, I believe it's safe to assume that any sizable mass of Flood would manage to get at least one of the guys down on the planet. One quick morph into combat form later, and voila! You have an away team turned into Flood.

Assuming that the ship overhead beamed them down, the Flood are stuck. We win. Yay.

Assuming they took a shuttle, the Flood win. They take it back up and infect the ship, then take the ship and infect a planet, and yadda yadda. Same as what happened in Halo.

Assuming the captain is stupid enough to send down more people after the first away team "vanishes," then the Flood would probably win. The Flood would attempt to infect the second away team upon contact, and seeing how fast they are, I think that they'd maybe manage to latch onto someone before he or she got beamed up. Even a little Flood biomass leads to takeover, remember, and I think that it's a possibility that the teleporter would snag a bit of Flood when bringing the crew up. Then the ship gets infected, and yadda.

'Course, if it lands somewhere inhabited, everyone's screwed.

[Sheridan]

I really think that it depends on whether the biofilter on the transporter recognizes the Flood as a "disease". If it does, then either the folks being beamed up who are infected are either killed horribly (ala Star Trek: The Motion Picture) or simply get beamed back down to the planet's surface.

We've seen the biofilter work pretty much as the plot requires from episode to episode, so it's really up to author's fiat on this one.

[aieeegrunt]

Wow, author's fiat verses no limits Flood Wank, this should be entertaining.

[DaveJB]

It's stated by an Elite Shipmaster (Half-Jaw, I believe?) that a single Flood spore could wipe out species.

COULD wipe out a species, in what would presumably be a worst-case scenario. Even in the Halo universe, I don't believe there's been any actual incidence of one Flood spore wiping out a whole species, or even a whole planet for that matter.

[Ghost Rider]

The Flood relied on Audrey IV to subvert a race of idiots that made the Borg look intelligent. So by your pathetic wank scenario, they lose.

[Invader Taz]

The Flood relied on Audrey IV to subvert a race of idiots that made the Borg look intelligent. So by your pathetic wank scenario, they lose.

The only reason the Flood was able to grow from a small infection group to a galactic scale threat was because the Forerunners didn't just blow up the planet or star system they first landed in. Consider this, if there was an outbreak of zombies in a large US city like New York would the first military response be to f**king nuke the hell out of it? No, they would quarantine it just like the Forerunner did and evacuate those they could before doing it. The mistake was underestimating the Flood until it was too late to quarantine them to a single star system.

I don’t wank the Flood, but I it hate when people say the Forerunner were idiots for underestimating the Flood at the very start of the war, especially when we have almost no evidence of what forms the Flood had access to at that time and how they compare to the “weak“ Flood of the game. There is not enough evidence until the Forerunner novels come out to decide if the Forerunners were idiots.

*Returns to OID III*

[Ghost Rider]

Right, right, right. Because the US military has nothing to fear from shambling zombies because they have firepower and mobility. Much like anyone that can contain it to a single planet have nothing to fear from the Flood.

So again? Are we going to assume that the Trek powers are dumber then usual and achieveing Forerunner stupidity? Maybe they make little enviro suits to go mano a mano against the flood agents! Or wait, they don't use their advantage of any of their technology over zombie plague #7897121465 and just let it run rampant to study! Fuck even the space zombies they have at least have space superiority to make up for their lack of ground capabilities.

Yeah, I love newbies who think that Trek is even this dumb, and think zombie plagues are any threat to anything but the dumbest fucking societies.

[Kuroji]

I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to give it to the Trekkies instead of the Flood. If something comes up in the transporter that isn't the away team, they're probably either going to send them back down or filter it out using Treknobabble. If the shuttle comes up full of Flood, they'll likely pick it up on their scanners and wave them off or shoot them down. Though please note I'm assuming a basic level of competence overall, as opposed to blind idiocy.

Anything else requires that the Flood be left alone on a planet long enough to build up a society, which actually probably would not take too long with the exception of putting FTL drives in a ship.

[Invader Taz]

Right, right, right. Because the US military has nothing to fear from shambling zombies because they have firepower and mobility. Much like anyone that can contain it to a single planet have nothing to fear from the Flood.

And who said these would be your normal shambling zombies? The point is on the ground the Flood were able to strike fast enough and hard enough to steal FTL ships before the Forerunner could stop them from escaping.

So again? Are we going to assume that the Trek powers are dumber then usual and achieveing Forerunner stupidity? Maybe they make little enviro suits to go mano a mano against the flood agents! Or wait, they don't use their advantage of any of their technology over zombie plague #7897121465 and just let it run rampant to study! Fuck even the space zombies they have at least have space superiority to make up for their lack of ground capabilities.

So since you are the one claiming the Forerunners were complete idiots do you have a quote of the first major battle between them to prove the Forerunners were complete idiots? No. Until the Forerunner novels come out it can not yet be said that it was being completely stupid that doomed the Forerunners.

Yeah, I love newbies who think that Trek is even this dumb, and think zombie plagues are any threat to anything but the dumbest fucking societies.

I don't think Trek is "dumb" enough to loss to a small Flood infection. And I still don't see proof beyond saying "they were defeat by space zombies!!!!" from you. The fact is we don't know enough yet about the Flood 100,000 years ago to know how powerful it was and the types of Pure Forms used by the Flood with the biomass of so many worlds. Unless you have proof of the Flood the Forerunners fought with was your run of the mill zombie plague (ha, funny thing is here your run of the mill zombie plague doesn't start using your own technology against you for one) there is no reason to believe the Forerunners were idiots.

Anyways, the Flood are going to lose if the Away Team is sent down by Transporter.

[Ghost Rider]

Right, right, right. Because the US military has nothing to fear from shambling zombies because they have firepower and mobility. Much like anyone that can contain it to a single planet have nothing to fear from the Flood.

And who said these would be your normal shambling zombies? The point is on the ground the Flood were able to strike fast enough and hard enough to steal FTL ships before the Forerunner could stop them from escaping.

So you think apparently that conquering forces on the ground equates to space superiority because.......

No, really, the leap of logic here is fucking astounding given said forces have to not only engage in ground tactics, they have to have ships landing. Remember what universe we are talking about, what is their primary method of ground insertion?

So again? Are we going to assume that the Trek powers are dumber then usual and achieveing Forerunner stupidity? Maybe they make little enviro suits to go mano a mano against the flood agents! Or wait, they don't use their advantage of any of their technology over zombie plague #7897121465 and just let it run rampant to study! Fuck even the space zombies they have at least have space superiority to make up for their lack of ground capabilities.

So since you are the one claiming the Forerunners were complete idiots do you have a quote of the first major battle between them to prove the Forerunners were complete idiots? No. Until the Forerunner novels come out it can not yet be said that it was being completely stupid that doomed the Forerunners.

So we need novels to show us that a civilization with space superiority being defeated by zombies with no such way of escaping terrestrial boundaries is not the height of stupidity?

Yeah, I love newbies who think that Trek is even this dumb, and think zombie plagues are any threat to anything but the dumbest fucking societies.

I don't think Trek is "dumb" enough to loss to a small Flood infection. And I still don't see proof beyond saying "they were defeat by space zombies!!!!" from you. The fact is we don't know enough yet about the Flood 100,000 years ago to know how powerful it was and the types of Pure Forms used by the Flood with the biomass of so many worlds. Unless you have proof of the Flood the Forerunners fought with was your run of the mill zombie plague (ha, funny thing is here your run of the mill zombie plague doesn't start using your own technology against you for one) there is no reason to believe the Forerunners were idiots.

Anyways, the Flood are going to lose if the Away Team is sent down by Transporter.

So you cry, crow, and bitch that we must have all the data to make a conclusion that a space superior civilization losing to zombie horde is not complete stupidity of said superior civilization? And then you end it with the very reason why this entire exercise is farce and mediocre way of raising post count.

Bravo. So are we going to have another five round that we have to read novels of some silly wankage to realize if one society has the high ground, the other side is fucked unless we invoke writer's fiat?

[Invader Taz]

So you think apparently that conquering forces on the ground equates to space superiority because.......

No. The Flood were able to steal ships and escape before the Forerunners could stop them.

No, really, the leap of logic here is fucking astounding given said forces have to not only engage in ground tactics, they have to have ships landing. Remember what universe we are talking about, what is their primary method of ground insertion?

No, it does not require ships to land, it only requires there to already be FTL ships on the ground. A good example of these would be SW were FTL is cheap and found in the hands of nearly everyone.

So we need novels to show us that a civilization with space superiority being defeated by zombies with no such way of escaping terrestrial boundaries is not the height of stupidity?

The Flood stole ships and escape terrestrial boundaries that way. The fact is the Forerunner did not think the Flood were a threat until it was to late and they had spread beyond the first star system.

So you cry, crow, and bitch that we must have all the data to make a conclusion that a space superior civilization losing to zombie horde is not complete stupidity of said superior civilization?

Said superior civilization could have easily wiped out the Flood if they had know the threat if it spread beyond a single world. Small groups of Flood defeat civilizations like the Forerunners by suprise and taking over worlds before the enemy can arrive.

And then you end it with the very reason why this entire exercise is farce and mediocre way of raising post count.

No, I am arguing why we can not yet assume the Forerunners were idiots because the Flood defeated them. The fact is without all the data possibly on the Flood and how the Forerunners responded to the first few attacks we can not say they were idiots. It all depends on the Forerunners responded to the first Flood attacks which we have almost NO information on.

1. How many forces did the Forerunners have at the first world to be attacked and of what type? Did they have warships in orbit? Did they have a large or small number of troops ready for combat on the ground?

2. After the Flood crashed the captured Forerunner survey ship into the planet how did the Forerunner forces respond to it? How long did it take for Naval reinforcements to arrive to quarantine the planet if there were none in orbit? Did they arrive fast enough to stop capture FTL vessels from escaping to other star systems or was there to many to stop before they jumped?

3. How did the Forerunner respond as the Flood reached other nearby worlds? What forces were station to defend these worlds? How fast did reinforcements reach these worlds once the Forerunner’s military command knew of what happen and how poweful the Flood were?

4. Once the Flood had spread too far to contain how did the Forerunners react? Did they continue the same things that were failing them during the first few fights or did they begin to chance tactics and strategy to counter the Flood? DId the Flood have forms more powerful than the ones seen in the games?

Without knowing the above about how the Forerunners responded to the first few attacks and what they had to repel them with we can not know if it was idiocy that truly lead to the Forerunners being defeated or simply being taken by surprise and the Flood spreading to fast for them to contain it to the first planet.

Bravo. So are we going to have another five round that we have to read novels of some silly wankage to realize if one society has the high ground, the other side is fucked unless we invoke writer's fiat?

Problem is they BOTH had the high ground after the Flood escape the first system. Until we know the above that I have listed we do not have enough data to say if the Forerunners were idiots.

[adam_grif]

To be honest, if the scenario was "flood vs covenant" or "flood vs UNSC", I would not even consider the flood winning if not for the games shoving it down my throat that, despite being huge pushovers with nothing overtly threatening, they are huge intergalactic problems and that the primary method of containment is destroying all life in the galaxy to kill their food. As opposed to blowing up the rings themselves to stop them escaping, or having a huge beam weapon to shoot outgoing flood ships. It's not like they're impervious to to harm, you know?

The Forerunner loosing to the flood is the only war I can think of that had a more pathetic outcome than Wraith vs Lantean.

[Balrog]

The Forerunner loosing to the flood is the only war I can think of that had a more pathetic outcome than Wraith vs Lantean.

*Hears the vague angry rumblings of NecronLord, on hearing you badmouthing the Lanteans, coming to beat you up*

And for what it's worth we did actually see the Forerunners fighting the Flood in the new anime; their idea of fighting a rather large infection is to send a squad of five dudes whose weapons fire combine to make a laser-axe-thing, and subsequently get overwhelmed by spores. So even when they did become aware (and you have to be pretty fucking asleep at the wheel for the Flood to become a galactic threat), they didn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their competence. Plus the extra fun time they had designing an AI that could be talked into switching sides, never mind (according IIRC to the new encyclopedia) actually recording these conversations and not doing a damn thing about it.

[Invader Taz]

And for what it's worth we did actually see the Forerunners fighting the Flood in the new anime; their idea of fighting a rather large infection is to send a squad of five dudes whose weapons fire combine to make a laser-axe-thing, and subsequently get overwhelmed by spores. So even when they did become aware (and you have to be pretty fucking asleep at the wheel for the Flood to become a galactic threat), they didn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their competence.

IIRC was Cortana just putting small pieces pf the whole picture together and said she wasn't sure how much of this was correct. Plus we do not know why these five were sent in. We don't even really have an idea of what point in the war this takes place at either. There is still to little data to make a final judgment.

Plus the extra fun time they had designing an AI that could be talked into switching sides, never mind (according IIRC to the new encyclopedia) actually recording these conversations and not doing a damn thing about it.

IIRC it was corrupted by the Gravemind through other means also. We don't know what it really did to MB. And they learn from the mistake of having given MB so much freewell when they built Offensive Bias.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Anyways, the Flood are going to lose if the Away Team is sent down by Transporter.

Chances are they will lose even if they can take a shuttle. Once they have the shuttle then they will need to either take or out run the starship. If that's not the scenario and they manage to steal a shuttle that doesn't have a starship in orbit then they will need to be able to reach a planet that they will be able to secure more ships and do so fast enough that a distress signal won't be sent.

Even if things go great for the Flood and they manage to take a planet that has more ships that have the range to get to other planets eventually they will have to deal with warships. The ST universe has a distinct advantage over the Halo universe; ships in FTL can be tracked and in some cases engaged in combat.

[Rossum]

I'm not a big expert on the Flood (never played the games, but I did read the novelized version of the first game).

Way I see it going down:

1. A ship like Voyager discovers a planet and beams down. They come across a sealed room somewhere and open it up. Then, either a redshirt or Harry Kim gets infected with the flood.

2. They may lose one or two more redshirts (either they actually die or just get dragged into the tunnels while the rest of the awayteam escape).

3. They try beaming up but the biofilter detects that the infected one has alien DNA mixing into his system and they send him to the medical bay or someplace where they keep him contained by a force field.

4. The resident doctor pokes at their infected redshirt/Harry Kim and examined the strange transformation in order to better devise a risky experimental cure for it. Eventually, they discover that the infection isn't a regular disease and that its actually a sapient and semi-intelligent life form.

5. Depending on who their captain is (worst case scenario: its Janeway) and who the infected is (Harry Kim has a better chance of having them risk an experimental cure to save him and kill the Flood. Standard Redshirt would get a lengthy debate on if curing him and killing the infected would count as murder). Eventually, the Captain would try diplomacy with the infected mass of disease tissue growing out of the flesh of their subordinate and learn that the Flood just want to infect the universe.

6. At some point the Flood is going to break out and start causig problems. Either the infected guy in sickbay manages to disable the forcefield and run loose, or the infected guys on the surface somehow hijack the transporters with their commlinks and get beamed up.

7. Stuff happens, redshirts get punched in the face and infected, main characters get horribly mutated and turned into Flood... meanwhile the Doctor is working on DNA strands while Nelix bugs him and some poor fool next to him tells how Nelixes cooking had caused all of his vital organs to suffer major damage and how he has explosive diarheaa now.

8. This revolting turn of events inspires the Doctor to develop a cure for the Flood infection that somehow incorporates proteins extracted from Nelixes cooking and someone mistakenly declares Nelix to be a genius.

9. The Doctor loads several hyposprays full of Flood Cure and they manage to take out the flood by jamming the medicine into the infected peoples necks. Despite having 40% of their body mass converted into pulsing sacs of black disease-ridden pus, the infected people make a full recovery due to Starfleets awesome redshirt-reanimation technology and Main Character facial resetting cream.

10. The starship beams the black bags of slime they extracted from the former infected down onto the planet, fires several photon torpedoes into the sealed area effectively wiping it off the map. Then they put a beacon in orbit around the planet that warns people that the Flood is down there and it might infect the hell out of anyone who goes down there.

11. The ship flies off into the sunset and next week completely forgets this whole thing ever happened.

[adam_grif]

Or at the step where they learn it just wants to infect the universe, they blow it up straight away and skip to the end half of step 10.

[Rossum]

Or at the step where they learn it just wants to infect the universe, they blow it up straight away and skip to the end half of step 10.

Well yeah. But like I said it depends on the captain. Also depends on how much time left they need to bring the episode up to a full hour or if they want to do a two parter with this storyline.

But aside from that, I'm thinking Starfleet being who they are would try examining the Flood more before they nuke the site from orbit. At the very least finding a cure for it while they still have a sample. Plus, for all they know, the Flood could house the cure to immortality or all kinds of medical applications (from what I've read, the Flood infects people, reanimates their corpses, and the infected creatures have a telepathic link to the collective Gravemind or whatever it is). So they would treat it with curiosity and examine it until it actually proves itself to be a danger to the ship.

The Galactic Empire? They would nuke it from orbit no doubt (unless they take some for study to turn it into a weapon for their side). Starfleet would examine it until it turns into a threat and then nuke it maybe. I mean, Picard tried negotiating with the crystaline entity after it ate all the organic material on a planet down to the bacteria in the soil. It took an angry scientist remodulating the technobabble beam to shake it apart to kill the thing and she got charged with murder or something.

So yeah, a Starfleet ship could easily nuke the Flood from space as soon as they took a look at them. A decently paranoid and cautious military person would probably do the same. But Starfleet prides itself on having a fleet of heavily armed science and exploration vessels so they would rather hold off on wiping out an entire potentially intelligent species with potentially medical applications until they are sure there are alternatives to doing so.

Regardless, Federation ships run into weirder things than the Flood on a regular basis and don't get taken over. Even they aren't stupid enough to get taken over by zombies who can't hack into the computer, teleport, or magically make themselves resistant to phaser fire with personal force fields.

[Teleros]

Chances are they will lose even if they can take a shuttle. Once they have the shuttle then they will need to either take or out run the starship. If that's not the scenario and they manage to steal a shuttle that doesn't have a starship in orbit then they will need to be able to reach a planet that they will be able to secure more ships and do so fast enough that a distress signal won't be sent.

Starfleet's internal forcefields would also be a bummer to the Flood if they do actually manage to board a proper ship. At which point of course the captain beams the captured Flood into space / back to the planet and introduces the facility they were on to photon torpedoes.

[NecronLord]

The Forerunner loosing to the flood is the only war I can think of that had a more pathetic outcome than Wraith vs Lantean.

*Hears the vague angry rumblings of NecronLord, on hearing you badmouthing the Lanteans, coming to beat you up*

RAWRG!

*Beats Adam Grif senseless with his Staff of Light.*

All I have to say, is; there are more pathetic examples. There are even more pathetic examples in Real Life. Say, WW2 France.

[Shroom Man 777]

Can't the Star Trek guys just engineer some gnarly nanoes, like what they used to kill Species 8472? Star Trek's tech can potentially be used for nasty biochemical warfare applications.

[Srelex]

Can't the Star Trek guys just engineer some gnarly nanoes, like what they used to kill Species 8472? Star Trek's tech can potentially be used for nasty biochemical warfare applications.

Hmm. Faced with this, the hippie Feds might start to take the kid gloves off when it comes to something like this. On the other hand, has mention ever been made of how successful biowar has been against the Flood?

[adam_grif]

*Beats Adam Grif senseless with his Staff of Light.*

All I have to say, is; there are more pathetic examples. There are even more pathetic examples in Real Life. Say, WW2 France.

Pssshhhh.

At least France didn't control the whole world and have a gargantuan technological advantage over them, with Germany starting as nothing more than a small village of wild animals that got out of control.

[Balrog]

And for what it's worth we did actually see the Forerunners fighting the Flood in the new anime; their idea of fighting a rather large infection is to send a squad of five dudes whose weapons fire combine to make a laser-axe-thing, and subsequently get overwhelmed by spores. So even when they did become aware (and you have to be pretty fucking asleep at the wheel for the Flood to become a galactic threat), they didn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in their competence.

IIRC was Cortana just putting small pieces pf the whole picture together and said she wasn't sure how much of this was correct. Plus we do not know why these five were sent in. We don't even really have an idea of what point in the war this takes place at either. There is still to little data to make a final judgment.

The fact that they lost to Space Zombies to begin with has always been damning, the Origins anime is just icing on the cake. There really is no excuse for sending down five biological soldiers with silly weapons to combat any amount of Flood, or whatever it is they were doing down there.

Plus the extra fun time they had designing an AI that could be talked into switching sides, never mind (according IIRC to the new encyclopedia) actually recording these conversations and not doing a damn thing about it.

IIRC it was corrupted by the Gravemind through other means also. We don't know what it really did to MB. And they learn from the mistake of having given MB so much freewell when they built Offensive Bias.

Nope, just read the encyclopedia. No mention of any sort of computer virus or such, for forty-three years (!) they had a conversation, the result of which caused Mendicant Bias to betray his creators. And the entire time their conversation was monitored by the Forerunners, who did nothing to stop it or contradict the arguments the Gravemind was making to convince Mendicant. That's one of those mistakes that you should be intelligent enough to not make in the first place.

[NecronLord]

*Beats Adam Grif senseless with his Staff of Light.*

All I have to say, is; there are more pathetic examples. There are even more pathetic examples in Real Life. Say, WW2 France.

Pssshhhh.

At least France didn't control the whole world and have a gargantuan technological advantage over them, with Germany starting as nothing more than a small village of wild animals that got out of control.

This overstates the power difference. And yes, in the Rhineland invasion they did have overwhelming power.

At least the Lanteans didn't build a massive defence that relied on the enemy not going round like they did last time. Or hell, build all their heavy guns facing one way (Brits at Singapore) or build their giant fotress in a valley on the assumption that the 'natives' couldn't get guns up on the surrounding highlands (French in Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam). The idea that the Lanteans were drastically more incompetent than real militarise underestimates how stupid real militaries can be, especially if you've the luxury of 20/20 hindsight.