[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] annoyinginge [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Commando Santos I'm going to put this as simple as I can for EVERYONE. [b]Warning, text wall[/b]. The first official encounter with the flood was on instalation 04 (A.K.A. Halo), even though the flood has been previously encountered by Spirit of Fire's crew, they never return for de-briefing. The Covenant, after the event's on the shield world were more aware about the flood, and so were more prepared to stop an infestation. Humanity however still remained in the dark about this threat. The flood, after the Halo array, started to lose their "food" and as such decayed and died, leaving no traces of their existance on the planets, but the Forerunners, even though they believed It would do everything all over again, programmed that the monitors of each Ring and Shield world contained samples of the flood, it self to survive and (ultimatly) reproduce. With the flood contained and after the destruction of the Shield world where Spirit of Fire was, the threat was virtualy non-existant 'till after the events of Reach on instalation 04. In short: They were secured in instalations and any other "straggler" of the species outside of them died due to lack of "food". Clear enough?[/quote] No. Many of the points you make are debatable, not least that the SoF never made it back and that the Flood were only kept on Forerunner installations.[/quote] How is it debatable? On Halo CE(for anyone who was paying attention) in the library level mentioned this very thing I put and Serena in Halo wars cleary said they had no way home without the Core. But please do elaborate.