So last night my roomate and I came up with an interesting theory. The reason as to the deaths of the marines after the landing on Halo. What say you? (We already posted this on Waypoint so I apologize if I've wasted your time with a re-read) [quote]I have a theory as to how the Marines died in Master Chief's escape pod. I first noticed that everyone in the pod is strapped down, as one should be in an escape pod, except for Chief. But something wasn't right, why would everyone aside from Chief be dead when they landed? I've concluded that it wasn't the crash landing that killed all the Marines, oh nay nay. This was the doing of a half-ton super soldier flailing about the cabin upon impact. What else would it be? When you begin the mission "Halo" Master Chief is a little bit on the light-headed side, obviously from the flailing. And as you exit the craft, one will notice Cortana say "The others...the impact...there's nothing we can do". This is in fact an attempt by the AI to relieve Chief of the guilt he is feeling from unintentionally slaughtering his comrades. If a crash had in fact killed the soldiers, the bodies inside the pod would have been horribly mangled from the impact. This is not the case. The scene observed is every individual resting uniformly in their seats, lending credence to the hypothesis that they died from more subtle injuries like severed spines, massive cranial trauma, or heavy internal bleeding from contact with half a ton of projectile Spartan. As for the bodies outside the craft? If they were ejected from an impact, their bodies would have been spread across the ditch carved by the escape pod. But instead we find them right outside the entrance. This leads me to believe that they were trying desperately to escape the horrors that were within the craft, but were instead forcibly expelled by our beloved hero. The pilot died from malaria.[/quote]