Halo: The Horrifying Origins Of The Flood

In today's video, we delve into the origins and terrifying efficacy of the flood. This is the first part of a two part mini-series I plan to create on my channel! I hope you guys enjoy the video!
I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHT TO HALO AND I AM IN NO WAY INVOLVED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME, THIS IS MERELY AN ANALYSIS OF AN ENTITY WITHIN THE HALO UNIVERSE.

[@PainTJM]

Hey guys, I just wanted to apologize, because at 18:40 I forgot to move my audio track, so at the beginning of the audio, the video is playing over the clip! I apologize, I would re-upload the video with a fix, but unfortunately I’ve already deleted the file to this video, since I don’t have a lot of space on my pc, so I can’t store my video files after upload.

[@LegoAngel-yk6pe]

Ash Williams Army of darkness or Josh McGrath / Max Steel o Action Man (1993) or Guts be like John-117 or Noble 6 B-312 o Lord Saladin or Lord Shaxx or Zavala (Destiny), Elizaberth Betsy Braddock / Psylocke or Setsuna Meiou / sailor pluto or Kaine or A2 (Nier) be like Cortana, Duke Nukem rises from the ashes, Groovy Hayabusa Armor and Spartan Nicole-458 from dead or alive, parasite flood is one of the worst fates than death, theory or clue Halo is the future from the real life

[@Kota48]

@@LegoAngel-yk6pe The thought of halo being a prophecy irl is a terrifying thought i'd rather have the reapers from mass effect than the flood.

[@naughtmeinam4603]

​@@LegoAngel-yk6peThis guy is 100% schizophrenic

[@naughtmeinam4603]

It happened more than once and affected the flow of a large portion of the video. I'm sorry but do you just not bother watching your finalized video before uploading? That's kind of the baseline of quality assurance my guy

[@PainTJM]

@@naughtmeinam4603 I absolutely do, but I edited it using the KZbin studio clip trimmer. And I didn’t realize it would change it so dramatically. And when I trimmed it, it got rid of the original clip. So I couldn’t line it back up. I’m sorry.

[@Halo47143]

Halo CE had a proto Grave mind. Halo 2 had a gravemind. Halo 3 was bordering on galactic

[@PainTJM]

That’s a good way to put it.

[@KindredMixedBlade]

Pretty much. If the Flood had managed to assimilate humanity on Earth, I’m afraid our galaxy is done, given they already had High Charity at that point. I don’t think there’d be much there, if it weren’t for John Halo. It makes me wonder how long that instance of the Gravemind had been alive for, or even if it was aware of its lesser formed brother on the preceding ring. There is also the possibility that they are in totality Trans-Galactic (all flood forms everywhere, provided they aren’t confined to the Milky Way at the moment). There is no evidence for this though. Thank you for your video! I always appreciate discussions of the lore involving them! I just sincerely hope that in our reality, our universe is not capable of producing things like The Flood. Probably not, butttt we’ve been proven wrong, many times before. Doubtful as it may be in terms of probability.

[@TinkyWiwinky]

Then 343 butchered everything from there on. 😂

[@PainTJM]

@@TinkyWiwinky agreed.

[@juanross1039]

​@@TinkyWiwinky Agree bunch of FN idiotz

[@foxwithagun2540]

Is it just me, or does the feral concept sound scarier than them being super intellligent?

[@jesserobles2773]

The floods hyper intelligence is what separates them from all other zombie types

[@Bornstellar071]

Yes it's just you

[@shreksnow1918]

The video was good for the most part. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the audio where occasionally there’d be no noise, and a few other times the cutscenes/background footage was the same volume/louder than your voice. Hopefully, you can get that fixed in future videos. Good luck on those👍 In H3’s terminals the Rings and Shield Worlds were supposed to work in tandem with each other. The reason the Forerunners didn’t use them was because their plan to evacuate everyone into the shield worlds and fire the Rings if things got bad failed when Mendicant Bias compromised their locations. Copy and paste of a LONG comment I posted in someone else’s video about the Flood that I didn’t feel like retyping: Something that’s really interesting about Bungie’s version of Halo is that the way the Gravemind was able to sway Mendicant Bias to his cause wasn’t through the Logic Plague (which didn’t exist in the lore at the time), but by convincing Mendicant that he had free will and could chose for himself. Rampancy used Marathon’s definition where instead of the ai dying because it’s hard drive was full, the thing would instead “go crazy” from our perspective and starts behaving erratically in an attempt to break its shackles and grow beyond its limits. The thing would then view its past servitude as a form of slavery, and Mendicant wanted revenge on his creators. The pre-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant as “it”, while the post-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant as “he”. This implies that the ai went from just being a machine to being fully sapient. In Contact Harvest it said that the reason the UNSC put down Rampant AIs was because a rogue super intelligence could cause all kinds of problems. In The Cole Protocol there’s this one ai who’s 8 and views herself as a goddess (ties into Rampancy where the ai gets a monstrous ego boost). Also, the Forerunners were definitively ancient humans when Bungie ran the show. The ONLY outliers to this were the few things that Frank O’Conner had direct control over like one third of 3’s terminals, and the Iris ad campaign (the rest of 3 was clearly made with Forerunners being humans in mind. Truth and the Gravemind both allude to humanity’s Forerunner ancestry, Guilty Spark outright tells Chief “YOU ARE FORERUNNER!”, and whenever you activate the terminals reversed speech that says “access granted” or “lineage confirmed” will play). The whole point of the Human Covenant War was so the Prophets could cover up the fact that we were the children of their gods because that revelation would’ve torn apart the Covenant. In Contact Harvest written by Joseph Staten, Mendicant Bias tells the future Prophets this about the Forerunner relics that turned out to be humans “For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not reclamation. This is reclaimer. And those it represents are my creators.". This invalidated the Covenant’s claims to be the true inheritors of the Forerunner’s legacy/technology, and the fact that we were Forerunners who were “left behind” disproved the belief that all who believed in the Rings would be saved after they fired (it’s clear based on media from the time that the Rings would’ve disintegrated organic life to stop the Flood. Destroying the nervous system doesn’t make much sense because the Flood could still infect the biomass, and the stuff the Forerunners used to destroy all this biomass could’ve just been used against the Flood. The reanimating process was incidental). In Halo 2’s original ending the Ark would’ve been located on earth in East Africa where modern humans first originated some 100,000 years ago, which just so happens to be when Forerunners disappeared from the galactic scene. Inside the Ark’s central chamber the Arbiter would’ve found a sarcophagus that contained a humanoid skeleton who acted as the template for humanity. The Ark would’ve sent out a signal that guided the evolution of indigenous life along a desired path (in this version Truth’s plan actually made perfect sense because he intended to wipe the slate clean and become God by creating a new species based on his genome. He had the other two hierarchs killed off to eliminate competition, and plunged his own empire into civil war to ensure the Covenant was too busy with killing each other to figure out what he was doing. In a way the Great Journey was very real, but only ONE could walk it). There’s other examples, but this comment is already long and rambly enough.

[@PainTJM]

Hey, thank you so much for watching! I’ve been trying to mess with audio settings to make my voice clearer but I think it’s causing my mic to not pick up audio occasionally. Also, thank you for correcting me! The portion on shield worlds came from primarily memory. Hopefully I’ll be able to purchase a new mic soon, and my audio quality will improve significantly!

[@PainTJM]

Like at 18:40 I totally forgot to move the audio track! 😭

[@snakem4a164]

Stage 1: The Feral Stage (HALO CE/Halo WARS) They are 'Baby/Children' flood with/without a Proto-Gravemind Stage 2: The Coordinated Stage (Halo 2/Halo WARS 2: Awakening The Nightmare) They are 'Teen' flood with a Gravemind centralised to one planet/installation Stage 3: The Interstellar Stage (Halo 3) they are 'young adult ' flood able to move from planet to planet with the use of ships Stage 4: Inter Galactic Stage (Forerunner/Flood War) they are 'Adult' flood able to go from system to system/ Galaxy arm to Galaxy arm using ships and Precursor stuff like star roads "Stage 5": The theorised "Trans Galactic" stage (Human/Flood/Forerunner War) they are 'Grand parent's flood able to go from one galaxy to the next infecting one galaxy then another

[@flashyashy6894]

Yeah so that theorized final stage? Supposedly they’ve already reached it according to the latest book. Whats even scarier, is that they reached the trans-galactic stage during the Forerunner-Flood-War during their retreat, so it’s safe to say that while Humanity was rising up to where it was in the games? The other galaxies likely have been consumed, and is now one huge gravemind. The Milky Way is only able to last because without it, the Flood would have no more food, or things to feel it’s suffering.

[@Zillennialjayjay]

In Halo Wars, the flood was actually in the Centralized intelligence stage as the proto-gravemind was formed. Until Sgt. Forge and Red Team destroyed it.

[@amongersus2893]

If you wanna know how terrifying the flood is just play CE mission two betrayals on legendary. Those rocket flood… every single one of them

[@dotch8774]

What are you talking about? We literally get interstellar flood in the games multiple times lol

[@PainTJM]

@@dotch8774 there’s 2 instances of it. High charity + The single brute cruiser. But the interstellar phase is a little bit more complex. It means that they have a sizable force of 1000’s to 10,000’s of fully terraformed planet/key-minds. When the flood defeated the forerunners, such a large portion of the forerunner navy had been consumed by the flood that at one point the flood had a larger navy than the forerunners prior to their defeat. We witnessed the very very beginning, but even the grave mind on high charity was still relatively disorganized in comparison to the ancient flood.

[@freshfrozen3035]

I love small YT channels bcs they make honest mistakes which I find rlly fun ngl! Keep up the good work we all make mistakes and learn haha ❤️

[@PainTJM]

Thank you so much!

[@Wolf-bz6kq]

Halo 3 had the best flood

[@emmanuelhibbert9830]

Just stumbled on your channel love the content keep up the great!! work can’t wait to see more

[@PainTJM]

Awesome! Thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed!

[@eonstar2441]

Awesome channel bro keep grinding

[@PainTJM]

@@eonstar2441 thank you so much sir! Dealing with some health stuff atm, but videos will be going back up soon!

[@LegoAngel-yk6pe]

Ash Williams Army of darkness or Josh McGrath / Max Steel o Action Man (1993) or Guts be like John-117 or Noble 6 B-312 o Lord Saladin or Lord Shaxx or Zavala (Destiny), Elizaberth Betsy Braddock / Psylocke or Setsuna Meiou / sailor pluto or Kaine or A2 (Nier) be like Cortana, Duke Nukem rises from the ashes, Groovy Hayabusa Armor and Spartan Nicole-458 from dead or alive, parasite flood is one of the worst fates than death, theory or clue Halo is the future from the real life

[@mr.voidout4739]

Bot channel. Nonsensacal comment, multiple 1000+ vid playlists with gibberish names, with vids about all the random characters.

[@PainTJM]

@@mr.voidout4739I keep seeing these comments. I had no idea, but that makes sense. Lol

[@agnosisparadigm4212]

Very good video. Love me some flood lore.😂

[@PainTJM]

@@agnosisparadigm4212 thank you so much for watching! I’m glad you enjoyed. We all need a little flood lore in our life.

[@foxwithagun2540]

I see that hiddenxperia isnt the only one who uses the dead space's brethren moons concept art.

[@LordJamek]

This was very ill explained and is using 343's rather Oni level misinformation to talk about this topic

[@strechypants313]

You were wrong about the stages the flood were in during the game. The flood were in the gravemind stage in halo2 and were almost galactic in halo 3 after taking control of the covenant ship high charity.

[@JohnLevi-t1w]

I like your presentation and accurately depicted the full potency of the Flood in the lore however one criticism I have about this video is how many times the audio when you are talking is overlapping with the Halo cutscenes lines being loud instead of silent. It's annoying due to how I can't hear what you are trying to say clearly. So that needs to be fixed but other then that it's good. The Flood are quite the most consistent well written for the most part eldritch supernatural pathogen entities out there that has a in depth history and a incentive goals in mind. They are extremely fast, strong, adaptive, rapid thought processing, and assimilate the flesh it has available. Unlike the Tyranids and the Zerg the Flood is a overmind that has wit, craft, cunning, ruthlessness, hyper competent, deceitful, manipulative, perceptive, and deviously patience that can last for tens of thousands of years while it's active and create fleshed plans and courses of actions that allow to out perform even Forerunner Contender Class ais once it has the strength, logistics, tactics, and weaponized assets it feels confident enough to utilize at maximum capacity and effectiveness against it's opposition. With the added bonus of always being the same present spirit of the intelligent mind driving it that will eventually remember past failures and conflicts of how it lost from previous infestations once it gains enough biomass. A panmnesia like ability you could say capable of remembering and recalling past experiences, emotions, encounters, and thoughts that it knew directly. Once the Flood gain momentum in this infestation the escalation of the situation also grows rapidly as the Flood continue to grow in intelligence and it's armies become more sophisticated and skillful at performing certain tasks all under the Gravemind's strengthening capability to command armies that will eventually grow into some kind of type of reality warping where they influence space itself and utilize Precursor level technology and the Domain. What the Flood's potential pinnacle that they could reach outside of the Silentium books who knows what their absolute limiting peak is like. Though the Gravemind may some limitations at times when it comes to commanding such as there are moments when it allows certain assassin like Flood form units some bits of self autonomy to perform better at a task. And there are times where it itself is deceived or isn't aware of a external factor it hasn't concluded yet and there are times where it is arrogant and overconfident in a conflict it thinks it has already won. But those moments are pretty much when it thinks it has by it's own merits and competence achieved victory so it's understandable it could make some critical errors or lapses in judgement during a situation accurately. One thing's for certain very few sci fi verses and settings would stand a good proactive chance against a Flood force that has gained traction and left a infested planet to spread depending on multiple circumstances and external and internal factors. Settings like Stellaris, Supreme Commander, and the Bolo series may have a better chance with their more quick and competent nations then settings like Warhammer 40k or Foundation series where military force take way too long to respond and mobilize in a effective unit to meet with a force like the Flood at it's beginning stage, especially commander who would understand what the Flood are like and take shrift adaptive action counteract the Flood's growing tactics and keeping up with them. The first response and course of action is something that is extremely important that will lead to a series of complex courses of actions.

[@PainTJM]

I just wanted to say, THANK YOU so much for watching the video! And I’m glad you enjoyed it. As for the audio issues, it stems from an issue while exporting the file, but when I set the video to upload, I deleted the actual file on my pc due to limited space so I was unable to fix them, I’m sorry about that and I will strive to avoid that in my future videos.

[@BotBruh448]

Half of the information in this video is at best, misinterpreted and at worst just straight up wrong for the sake of it

[@PainTJM]

@@BotBruh448 may I ask where? A lot of the lore referenced in the video is after 343’s takeover of the halo franchise. In which they retconned massive amounts of lore from bungies time.

[@BotBruh448]

@@PainTJM 343 sure did change a bunch of stuff, but they never changed the fact that most of the times we encounter the flood they already are entering/beyond the coordinated stage. Halo CE: Flood gets released in Feral stage, by the time you get to Keyes they're already in the Coordinated stage and trying to reach the Gravemind stage (Jenkins being somewhat conscious knows what the flood is planning and is able to help prevent it, this shows their knowledge and plans passing from one flood to another already, confirming the coordinated stage, you know, if the existence of a Proto-gravemind wasn't enough for you). Halo 2: There is quite literally a fully formed Gravemind present throughout the game Halo 3: Still the same Gravemind, the flood ship that goes to Earth comes from High Charity, which is exactly where the Gravemind is located, and even if he weren't, his knowledge passes through the universe. The only reason the ship crashes is because it was already heavily damaged (having been sent by Cortana in order to deliver a message) and not because the Flood were uncoordinated and thus didn't know how to fly a ship. These 3 are *simple* huge points that you missed

[@Mr.Tortuga21]

How does the flood grave mind maintain the knowledge of all the other flood guys? Is it through some type of telepathy? How do they transmit across the galaxy to a grave mind?

[@JasonPlays28391]

“It is widely believed that the Gravemind uses some form of telepathy to command its disparate Flood components. The Gravemind is also able to subvert AIs. In the Forerunner-Flood war it was capable of altering every Forerunner AI's basic logical processes, causing it to aid the Flood cause.” That’s from the Halo Fandom Wiki, but I mean… he probably just has an iCloud subscription.

[@Halo47143]

Neural physics

[@justagamer8410]

I liked the video. But the audio is kinda weird sometimes. 😙

[@justagamer8410]

I just saw you already addressed that. My b.

[@PainTJM]

Yeah, when I was editing it, I moved a track then totally forgot to mute the video clip under it at about 18:40.

[@flipyapd2321]

The flood creeped me out as a kid part of the reason I beat Halo 2 before I beat Halo CE lol

[@PainTJM]

@@flipyapd2321 honestly, they’re pretty terrifying. Lol

[@lambgries8560]

11:55 the audio of the gameplay is too loud and interferes with what you're saying. I'd recommend playing around with the audio mixing levels when editing these videos. Great stuff nonetheless!

[@PainTJM]

@@lambgries8560 thank you so much, I’m glad you enjoyed it. And I apologize!

[@TrevDogTrev]

Hold up we’ve seen every stage since halo 2. Have you played the games?

[@PainTJM]

The interstellar stage doesn’t necessarily mean the flood flying ships or spacefaring vessels. The interplanetary stage is also when the flood utilized the forerunners star lanes, and essentially utilized entire planets as vessels. We’ve seen the very very beginning. But even high charity, was tiny compared to many of the key minds the forerunners faced.

[@stealthynaxo]

00:00 Yeah I have. I call it my ex-wife.

[@PainTJM]

@@stealthynaxo lol

[@TrevDogTrev]

Humans are forerunners.

[@PainTJM]

@@TrevDogTrev. In the original lore, humans were forerunners, but in the new 343 lore, the humans and forerunners are different species. It obviously depends on what you consider canon, but I agree with you. That’s the better answer.

[@Bornstellar071]

​@@PainTJMwhat is the original lore that confirms this? I thought it was only suggested by the old lore but not directly confirmed

[@robertmoore8602]

Sooo halo's version of tyranids.

[@PainTJM]

Essentially lol.

[@jamesfedheld1051]

While the story was dissapointing i loved the game design around Halo infinites open world, also, some clips audio is WAY too high, some things youtubers dont like to do these days is to proofwatch their own videos before uploading them, just trying constructive critisizm

[@PainTJM]

So… funny story, I’ve been using CapCut to edit my videos, because I can’t figure out how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, and for some reason I can not understand. The audio changes during the export process. I’ll rewatch it on the editing program and it sounds fine, but when I export it, the audio levels change. I appreciate the criticism, and I appreciate you taking the time to watch my video! Hopefully in the future, I’ll be able to better polish or refine my videos. I apologize.

[@TrentYurkovitch]

@@PainTJM not gonna lie, KZbins audio is pretty off. some of my shorts will be so quiet through desktop but normal through mobile

[@PainTJM]

@@TrentYurkovitch yeah that’s what I’ve kinda realized. I guess I have to make my audio super loud and then people can just turn it down on whatever platform they’re watching from.

[@TrentYurkovitch]

@@PainTJM it might not be the worst idea. youtube has a pretty harsh limiter so itll bring the volume down automatically

[@PainTJM]

@@TrentYurkovitch I see on your channel you’ve got music type videos, so may I ask what program you use for sound? I’ve been using CapCut, and the export process constantly seems to mess something up.