[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Wolverfrog I don't know, mate. The Halo 3 Bestarium claims only 200 million humans are alive; I can't imagine there being planets full of people with a population like that. [/quote] That was an Earth statistic, and no more applicable to all Human worlds than the Gravity entry above it of 1G. 200 million Humans left alive was a silly number anyway. Bungie handwaved away a lot of stuff here. With half of a continent incinerated and all infrastructure, major cities, communications and all forms of logistics destroyed there's no way Human civilization would survive. Not a chance in hell. Forget all that Reclaimer crap and about recovering and advancing post Halo 3, Humanity's going straight back to the Stone Ages. That 200 million would get smaller and smaller and smaller as the people who don't have any knowledge about surviving in a post apocalyptic scenario, where nothing is available to you like it is just now, die off.

hard to say

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] tjal [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Wolverfrog [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 That isn't true whatsoever they had a hard time finding strategic locations not actual planets.[/quote] [i]Conversations from the Universe[/i] says otherwise; "We do not know where their homeworld is. Their pattern of retreat is either hopelessly random, or brilliantly conceived." It's implied they don't even know our homeworld is called 'Earth,' which attests to the deviousness of the executors of the Cole Protocol. It made more sense when there were only believed to be a handful of human colonies; a thirty-long year game of cat and mouse. With the new canon/preference for an old contradiction that there are hundreds of planets, it means they must have been skipping loads or tearing through them impossibly quickly. I'm not too fond of it, myself. "Earth is all we have left" should mean Earth is all that's left. 343i have really lessened the atmosphere of the original trilogy in that way, and others such as the reveal that [i]Infinity[/i] could have beat down the Covenant if Earth fell or the revelation that 'glassing' is mostly ONI propaganda, rarely being done in truth. Eh, it just feels like they've retroactively tried to preserve a universe we all thought in tatters. I remember before 343i, everyone thought it'd take decades for humans to rebuild and repopulate. Now we're all hunky-dory a few minutes after Truth died. I'm not a fan of that caveat of the new canon.[/quote] Actually that last part isn't entirely true. In one of the books (the fall of reach probably) there was a tracker device attached to a ship and they tracked the ship to reach. They skipped a lot of human-occupied space to get to reach and subsequently to earth. This wasn't conceived by 343i. Bungie already made that canon.[/quote] Well sure, but if I remember right there was once only something like seventeen colonies? It was contradicted a few times in the books and such and then confirmed again in others, but the general consensus was that there weren't many (not positive on that, so don't yell if I'm wrong). Then the Encyclopedia came out and told us there were, indeed, hundreds. [quote]Also the phrase "earth is all that we have left" is not to be taken literally. It was (after reach) one of the last "strongholds". Ofcourse there are other planets, but the fall of earth would have been the end for humanity as they would know it.[/quote] I don't know, mate. The Halo 3 Bestarium claims only 200 million humans are alive; I can't imagine there being planets full of people with a population like that. Comparatively, the Sangheili are 8 billion-strong, and yet in the K5 trilogy they're portrayed as being worse off than we are. I inferred Hood's remark as literal - Earth really was all they had left. [quote]Infinity wasn't about beating down the covenant, it was about flying as far away as possible (at least that's what I thought it was about)[/quote] I'm fairly sure the [i]Glasslands[/i] says it was to 'beat back the Covenant' if Earth was lost. I haven't got a copy to hand so I can't verify it, but as far as I know that's what it says. And it apparently outstrips anything the Covenant had. [Edited on 09.23.2012 2:15 PM PDT]

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Wolverfrog [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 That isn't true whatsoever they had a hard time finding strategic locations not actual planets.[/quote] [i]Conversations from the Universe[/i] says otherwise; "We do not know where their homeworld is. Their pattern of retreat is either hopelessly random, or brilliantly conceived." It's implied they don't even know our homeworld is called 'Earth,' which attests to the deviousness of the executors of the Cole Protocol. It made more sense when there were only believed to be a handful of human colonies; a thirty-long year game of cat and mouse. With the new canon/preference for an old contradiction that there are hundreds of planets, it means they must have been skipping loads or tearing through them impossibly quickly. I'm not too fond of it, myself. "Earth is all we have left" should mean Earth is all that's left. 343i have really lessened the atmosphere of the original trilogy in that way, and others such as the reveal that [i]Infinity[/i] could have beat down the Covenant if Earth fell or the revelation that 'glassing' is mostly ONI propaganda, rarely being done in truth. Eh, it just feels like they've retroactively tried to preserve a universe we all thought in tatters. I remember before 343i, everyone thought it'd take decades for humans to rebuild and repopulate. Now we're all hunky-dory a few minutes after Truth died. I'm not a fan of that caveat of the new canon.[/quote] Actually that last part isn't entirely true. In one of the books (the fall of reach probably) there was a tracker device attached to a ship and they tracked the ship to reach. They skipped a lot of human-occupied space to get to reach and subsequently to earth. This wasn't conceived by 343i. Bungie already made that canon. Also the phrase "earth is all that we have left" is not to be taken literally. It was (after reach) one of the last "strongholds". Ofcourse there are other planets, but the fall of earth would have been the end for humanity as they would know it. Infinity wasn't about beating down the covenant, it was about flying as far away as possible (at least that's what I thought it was about)

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 That isn't true whatsoever they had a hard time finding strategic locations not actual planets.[/quote] [i]Conversations from the Universe[/i] says otherwise; "We do not know where their homeworld is. Their pattern of retreat is either hopelessly random, or brilliantly conceived." It's implied they don't even know our homeworld is called 'Earth,' which attests to the deviousness of the executors of the Cole Protocol. It made more sense when there were only believed to be a handful of human colonies; a thirty-long year game of cat and mouse. With the new canon/preference for an old contradiction that there are hundreds of planets, it means they must have been skipping loads or tearing through them impossibly quickly. I'm not too fond of it, myself. "Earth is all we have left" should mean Earth is all that's left. 343i have really lessened the atmosphere of the original trilogy in that way, and others such as the reveal that [i]Infinity[/i] could have beat down the Covenant if Earth fell or the revelation that 'glassing' is mostly ONI propaganda, rarely being done in truth. Eh, it just feels like they've retroactively tried to preserve a universe we all thought in tatters. I remember before 343i, everyone thought it'd take decades for humans to rebuild and repopulate. Now we're all hunky-dory a few minutes after Truth died. I'm not a fan of that caveat of the new canon.

ONI probably didn't want to break the imiage they had built up with porpagnda. Your Army is pushing the aliens off every world but we need more people so we are going o force you in. The United Earth Governmet probably couldn't deal with the blow back from the colonies when it was all over.

That isn't true whatsoever they had a hard time finding strategic locations not actual planets.

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] HipiO7 [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sandtrap [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 Our population was more than enough for the war we just didn't have the ships.[/quote] Well I imagine at some point they had to break out conscription, considering that the covenant plowed a path to Earth through all of it's other colonies.[/quote] You make it sound like it was easy for the Covenant. The war lasted 27 years for a reason until it hit Reach and Earth.[/quote] Hm, I think that had more to do with the fact that you know... a lot of the space is kina empty. The covenant had a rather hard time finding planets. And with the cole protocol it became quite impossible for the covenant to find human-occupied planets.

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sandtrap [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 Our population was more than enough for the war we just didn't have the ships.[/quote] Well I imagine at some point they had to break out conscription, considering that the covenant plowed a path to Earth through all of it's other colonies.[/quote] You make it sound like it was easy for the Covenant. The war lasted 27 years for a reason until it hit Reach and Earth.

Conscription wasn't in effect during the Great War. To be honest, I don't think humanity was so doing so bad as it seemed; the outer colonies were falling rapidly of course (deals with the rebel problem nicely) and so did some of the inner colonies, but there was never any blind panic amongst the upper echelons of HIGHCOM and especially ONI. But there was always Infinity in the event that the Covenant won. It takes some of the tension and desperation out of the trilogy to be honest.

Didn't Reach have like 350 million military personnel?

I get what you mean OP. A collective of aliens with superior technology and weaponry who are hellbent on exterminating humanity completely and have even destroyed entire planets to do so are simply not enough of a threat for conscription. Human's are recruiting like they are in peacetime with propaganda to fill the void. Hell this war should be more significant than any, humanity's survival depends on it. As Lord hood said [i]"We risk everything. Every last man, woman, and child."[/i] But yeah, "Human's have enough people in their armies, ONI has very good propaganda to how the war is portrayed to average citizens etc." This is simply one element of science-[u]fiction[/u] that gets overlooked. Edit- When you're facing such threat, you can never have too many people on your side. I think it's absurd to say that X is enough people to hold off a alien extermination whose numbers and technology outnumbers yours by so and so. Well in Halo, I guess X would be Master Chief. [Edited on 09.18.2012 2:48 PM PDT]

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] TedToaster22 ONI Section II was doing a good enough job at propaganda that they didn't really require conscription to keep the ranks full, I'd imagine.[/quote] This. And it's very likely that many families had branches on Earth and those that moved to other planets to start new lives. A young kid will definately join the UNSCMC to avenge the death of his uncle and cousins on Harvest when he's on Earth and doesn't know anything about how deadly the Covenant are.

ONI Section II was doing a good enough job at propaganda that they didn't really require conscription to keep the ranks full, I'd imagine.

I had a similar question many months back. We had more than enough Humans to keep our army strong. However the UNSC WAS actively recruiting. I don't know if that means they were lacking troops or not. In Sadie's story she mentions the UNSC is taking anyone they can get. Doesn't sound too good, but perhaps they just want a constant flow of people. However if they HAD conscripted massive amounts of humans they would more resources to build armour, ships, gun, etc. It would put a larger strain on resources. So more humans would have meant more supplies needed which would have meant more money needed.

They didn't; nothing was ever stated about them having an issue with recruitment. There were over 30 billion humans.

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] grey101 Our population was more than enough for the war we just didn't have the ships.[/quote] Well I imagine at some point they had to break out conscription, considering that the covenant plowed a path to Earth through all of it's other colonies.

Our population was more than enough for the war we just didn't have the ships.