Perhaps we'll have time to see them later." Initially, the Forerunners severely underestimated the potential threat that this parasitic lifeform posed, and used tactics more suited to disease control than actual warfare. Have the Elites learned to speak English (without any automatic translators) by the time of Halo 5? The Incendiary grenade instantly destroys all Flood Pure forms and is the one true weakness of all pure Flood forms, as well as its Support Weapon counterpart the Flamethrower. After the Flood began to ravage the Forerunners' ecumene, Forerunner scientists led by Master Builder Faber tried in vain to extract information on the cure from humans' ancestral memories, imprinted as part of their geas by the Librarian, unaware that the cure never really existed. In order to give themselves ideal living conditions, the Flood will transform the environment to better suit their needs, altering the atmosphere and covering solid surfaces with Flood biomass. However, the reason that the Forerunners preserved some of the Flood for research on the Halo rings instead of destroying them all was that they knew that the Flood would return sooner or later, and it would be better to fight a researched enemy rather than a foreign one. During Thel 'Vadamee's pursuit of Sesa 'Refumee, the strike team entered a laboratory,[9] in which they were locked into while the Flood was released in an attempt to quell the attackers. However, the Boren's Syndrome was a story invented to cover his past in the ORION Project and the side-effects of his (experimental) enhancements, so the validity of each as a countermeasure against Flood infection is questionable. [15] At least one Flood Research Facility used low temperatures to keep its specimens inactive and dormant as it studied them. Furthermore, when the Flood assimilated the Prophet legate, the Minister of Etiology, the Flood reflected the high-level knowledge of the Legate through its individual organisms to Special Operations Commander Rtas 'Vadumee, mocking him with the words, "the Forerunner could not defeat us...what chance you?". A Flood infestation goes through four distinct developmental stages: There is no confirmed way to effectively stop a Flood infection once Flood Super Cells have entered a host. During their expansion throughout the Orion Arm, the Covenant would find and occaisionaly release the Flood, employing Zealots and their Temple Wraiths to contain the outbreaks.[27]. Although it is unknown whether he had the ability to do this previously but just didn't choose to. However, during Flood infection, the Pod infector is unable to tap into the host's nervous system, rendering it incapable of proceeding to large-scale physiological mutation. In the novel Halo: The Flood, Cortana uses an electrical charge which she generates from John-117's suit to destroy an infection form that was attempting to infect him.