[quote]If you hadn't read the book before that, you have NO idea how Chief got back to Earth[/quote] Are you talking about the events between CE and H2? Because you do need to read the book to get the whole story on how cheif ended up at earth. [quote]how the hell Johnson is even alive[/quote] In the book it tells you how johnson is still alive from getting off the ring and surviving "the Flood", its quite the story, Johnson in his past grabbed a covnant crate of plasma grenades and killed a bunch of covnant and stuff like that, and from that many grenades he got this special kind of radiation that pretty much killed his knerves, and would shorten his life span. And from this special kind of radiation he is immune to getting infected by the flood, (explains a bunch of science stuff in the books) and then theres the whole story of how he made it off the ring, I'm not going to take the time to explain all that though.