Flood Forum History

***The Flood*** was the name of the off-topic forum on bungie.net from 2004-2013. Below is a history of events that took place during that time.

## 2004

### April 15: Hints of an Off-Topic Forum

Discussion of an Off-Topic forum can be traced to as far back as this point. When proposed by a member (now unknown), Stosh informed him that Sketch had begun to think about the creation of an Off-Topic forum. Members had called for it because of the spam and off-topic threads that had become so common in other forums, especially The Underground. Sketch predicted that if this off-topic forum did materialize that it would "turn into a spam pit the likes of which no website has ever seen before." Also, the phrase "spam pit" seems to have originated from this thread. There will never be another thread like Laser Wars.

### May 25: Birth of the Flood

Bungie's first off-topic forum was born and was immediately flooded with all kinds of random threads, such as "Where do babys come from?" and "do fat kids have more fun playing halo?"

### June 30 to June 13, 2006: Laser Wars

The exact start and end points of this even are not known because of how widely spread the phenomenon is. It was at one point a pinned topic, and then it spread into it's own group and countless other threads. Laser wars was simply a forum game based on building armies and fighting other players. It's popularity was massive, greater than any other singular trend in forum history.

## 2005

### June 1 to October 26, 2008: Glory Days of Forum Fiction

During this point in time The Flood experienced a wealth of talented writers, as well as a fanbase that was will to read more than 4 paragraphs in a single post. Among the Floodian writers that it would produce were Douglas Brown, Sniper McGee, bacon greese1521, Mabian, Commander Locks, Tartan 118, GameJunkieJim (Yes, the moderator), Colonel Corbec, and the Laureate of The Flood, Halifax. Multiple members would write for years, and even create fan groups, to themselves which became quite popular. Halifax is easily the most voluminous writer of them all at this point, even after many of his works were lost on Day After Bungie Day.

There was even a point in time where writers were treated like rock stars when they announced that they were going to do a story. However, many like Sniper McGee and squirrel dude only got through the first couple of chapters and then simply didn't have the energy to continue with their work. The Golden Age is marked at ending on 10/26/2008, when Halifax posted his final story, but it had been falling off long before that. Although Mabian was writing a very popular story called The Floodiad, many other authors were no longer receiving the attention they used to, the attention that was often the reason for their writing. This, combined with a resurgence of The Gallery forum has limited Floodian forum fiction since.

### July 1 to May 1, 2006: The Flood-Zanzibar War

In the summer of 2005, the forum Zanzibar tried to blitzkrieg the Flood Forum by flaming and spamming the forum into submission. The resulted in a full-out flame war. Floodians started flaming and spamming the forum Zanzibar in retaliation, until late in 2005. The Flood halted the flaming and spamming, and the Zanzibarians claimed a victory for themselves. However, in the late spring of '06, the Floodians won, as the Zanzibar forum was deleted to make room for the Halo 3 forum, merging with New Mombasa.

### August 14: The Flood Nightbar

bacon greese1521 created The Flood night bar. It is important in that is laid the template down for what every following forum bar. The first few posts are the ordering of drinks, with the OP serving as a bartender. Within a few pages, however, the bar quickly devolves into barfights, card games, and shenanigans of every kind. Flood Bars of this template are now opened on every holiday (that extols drinking) from January 1rst to December 31st.

### 2005, August 16: Shishka is a Pegboy

A spammer named Watermelon King created at least 15 pages of nothing but "Shishka is a Pegboy" as the title and body of each thread. It is believed that it was because Shiska had called him a Pegboy, and that he did not take very kindly to this comment. At this point in Bungie.net's history, there was not post limit or cooldown; so he was able to create that many threads fairly quickly. Floodians, including Shiska, look back and laugh at the event.

### October 1 to October 6, 2006: VII Toast

Still an active member, VII Toast was once a moderator. It was when he was a moderator that he got into trouble with other members of The Flood for allegedly deleting their posts and banning them for no reason. Eventually members started to respond to him in threads about the deleting of their posts, and began to complain to other moderators about his response. Not long after this, he was no longer a moderator. No questions were asked about the incident because everyone knew what had happened, and what brought on the change.

### October 1: Twitch

Twitch did a whole bunch of spamming, trolling, flaming, and beyond, but he was still a major part of the community, and had himself a fanbase. The fanbase would eventually coin the phrase "Twitch for pres." He felt that the "spam was tha -blam!-," and that "it just need to be said." If he hadn't said it he "would be doing the world a disservice fo real."

He would also target a group run by Gold Templar II. He was a character that Twitch found odd so naturally he "-blam!- with him... alot." His fan group launched a spam attack on his group, while Twitch created an alt that looked very similar to Gold Templer ll, and would spam the forums. Gold Templar told the mods that he had been hacked by Twitch, and that was all they needed. He has since been permabanned, but it is rumored he still posts on alts, like almost everyone does. People don't like to talk about Twitch for fear of it still upsetting moderators.

## 2006

### May 1 to November 1, 2006: The Halo 3 Forum War

Although Floodians had defeated Zanzibar, the wars for supremacy were not over. The attention of the forum shortly turned to a new rival: The Halo 3 forum. As soon as the forum was released, the H3 Fanboys ignorantly started to spam the Flood with their theories and ideas for H3. In response, the Floodians flamed these members who spammed. The Fanboys retreated and started to stop spamming in October, but started back up again in November . This time, Floodians started to spam the H3 Forum with very stupid ideas, to see how the fanboys would act in response. The battles have halted since November, although contempt is still held by The Flood for The Halo 3 forum, and their regulars.

### August 15: One Day War

A thread in late summer reported that the moderators created a thread in HCFS, it was titled "We will attack at dawn, leave no Floodian standing." However, the contents of the thread is unknown, because any non-moderator b.net member who even attempts to join the group will be in some pretty big trouble, or so says the group's motto. Anyway, the Floodians decided to be prepared for an attack from the mods(For mods, forum attacking is the act of locking threads for no apparent reason). Unfortunately, the next day, the thread was locked by a moderator. It is unknown if the moderators really were planning a surprise attack, but stopped because some bold Floodians found out, or if they are still planning for a surprise attack on The Flood to this day.

### August 31: hotpink-gu3do Marriage

Don't let the title fool you, these two aren't married, even though it says in her signature that they were on 12/22/2006. They didn't actually talk online until 8/31/2006, and didn't visit each other until 7/13/2007. They do still have a relationship to this day, and do plan on getting married when the time is right. They are pretty much the only Floodians to form a romantic relationship, and for it to then succeed after they met in real life. The only ones to do the former even, I think.

That said, not every member was happy for them when they were still dating an getting married and having babies and growing old. In fact, quite a few Floodians got damned tired of hearing all about their lives, and how awesome they were, and how great a photographer gu3do was, and how pretty hotpink was. It wasn't that hotpink only wanted to write threads that were gushy blogs about how happy she was, she openly admitted that every thread she made simply became a blog out of habit. Eventually they both stated posting in groups more often so that members and moderators wouldn't get mad that they were posting lovey dubby blogs all the time.

### October 1: The Flood Becomes a Monarchy

There was a poll made about who should become the queen of The Flood. The winner of the poll was Jannelle4Now. It turned out that Jannelle4Now was actually an alternate account of the male member "L8teRunner (or something like that)." Cortana 5 was named Princess of The Flood as the runner up of the election, and with Jannelle/L8te forced to step down on account of not being the necessary amount of female required to be a queen, she took over as Queen of The Flood. Cortana 5 holds onto that title to this day.

## 2007

### January 26: Kitchen 8

A Floodian asked the Flood to help vote in a contest to win a kitchen makeover for his relatives. Huge amounts of Floodians poured in to vote, and it quickly took 2nd or 3rd after a few hours. Soon after that it took first place by over 200 votes. The kitchen became known as Kitchen 8 as it was initially the 8th choice. Kitchen 8 had become a massive phenomenon, with Floodians making groups to worship Kitchen 8 as a national religion. Kitchen 8 was now the Flood's official kitchen.

However, some people were against it. On the contest's comment page, other people voting claimed that The Flood was made up of "hackers" and "12 year olds with no lives." One member set up a group to go against Kitchen 8, and support kitchen 7 (the then 2nd place kitchen). However, the group was a failure, recruiting only 6 members.

The contest closed on January 31st, and as of Feb. 3rd, Kitchen 8 had officially won the contest.

### June 2 to August 14, 2008: The New Flood (noof)

The New Flood was founded by I Will Kill You based on the belief that The Flood and the entirety of the Bungie.net community had been degrading since the release of Halo 3. Many of the Flood's regulars joined the group for at least some point of time. The group had a constantly shifting administration structure, with administrators leaving, stepping down, or becoming deceased, and new ones taking over. On July 19, 2008, X Rampancy X, a New Flood member, created an offsite for the group. The Bungie.net group is now considered dead, as most members, and thus many former Floodians, have moved to the offsite. Through the first half of August of 2008, there was a panic about an attack on the forum. They rumors were "spread by Houston Texan." These rumors spread like wild fire through members on the Bungie.net forums. On August 14th, due to the countless warning threads, the phrase "New Flood" became a bannable term on the Bungie.net forums.

### June 13-August 4: Jetfalcon is Attached Through the Internet

Jetfalcon was a self-proclaimed cool kid at school, but it hadn't always been that way for him. It was only over the last year that he had become popular, and become a shoe in to win Prom King. He was very loud about this, animal cruelty, most people saw him as an annoying douche. Among the most avid of his attackers were Ada Astra and MeechVII. Though this is not to say that everyone hated him, some actually saw him as a member who could be funny at times.

Things came to a head when Floodians made YTMD's proclaiming his faults. Jetfalcon found out about this because he used Google.com to search his own name. Once he discovered it, he posted on The Flood about how it was a cyber hate crime because attacking a wealthy, popular, prom king is a hate crime. The Flood responded by flaming him, leading to the banning of many members once evilcam showed up to shut it down.

### June 23: The Ghost Bike Takes Flight

A group of Floodians decided to make a team for the Red Bull Flugtag with a ghost built over a bicycle. However, they weren't automatically selected, and instead were put in the wild-card round where they would have to be voted in. Unwilling to let this go down to chance, the Floodians called on the forums to go to the site and vote them in. The response was overwhelming, with The Ghost Bike team getting nearly 30,000 votes. The Ghost Bike team took the stage on the 23rd of June, and did a Halo based skit when they prepared to launch. The Ghost Bike when speeding off the platform and did a nosedive straight into the water.

### July 1: GAMERZ PROPERTY Gets Hacked

On a day in the summer of 2007, Pillage, or an alt of his posted how he had been able to hack into Gamerz Property's/Gamer girl's account by fishing her information. Logical Thinking is also thought to be involved with the hacking. They successfully got her myspace, Bungie.net account, and photobucket account. They were able to get a large amount of personal information from this, and posted some things that Gamerz didn't want anyone to see. Not every member saw Gamerz as the victim in the situation, or at least not a pitiable one. For the, her blogs about her extracurricular activities with friends meant that she warranted the invasion of property. The Flood devolved into people supporting Pillage's actions for whatever inane reason they used to justify it, no one saying anything if they were one Gamerz' side, and Gamerz freaking the -blam!- out about the whole thing.

### July 9: Day After Bungie Day

An unknown hacked into the moderator's, Pezza's, account started locking all threads on the front page of The Flood. All hell broke loose. Several people who started threads about the incident were blacklisted. A few of those blacklisted were some of the Flood's well-known users. In fact, even moderators were being banned. People were making threads asking for their thread to be pinned, some of which ended up being pinned, but were quickly taken down. About 10 or so minutes later, the chaos finally stopped, as administrators and higher ranking forum ninjas blacklisted the moderator's account. Many formerly pinned threads had been deleted, and so new ones were created. Pezza now uses a different account, Pezz.

### December 1 to December 1, 2008: Schwippy Christmas Tree

A family posted a video of their Christmas Tree on the website, and allowed for you to comment in the chat and control the way the lights on the tree changed colors. If someone in the family was by the computer when you were commenting they would put up a whiteboard with what you wrote in front of the camera. It was a sensation the first year, but only lasted a few days. The second year it was brought up by another member, and it was just as popular, and lasted far longer, going all the way past Christmas Day. The last post was Foman thanking the Schwippy family for their participation with The Flood.

## 2008

### April 18 to March 24, 2009: The PIE Thread

A thread was created by bungie employee drabominable, titled DO YOU LIKE PIE? For quite some time it was extremely popular. The thread was more than simple yes and now answers, with some members writing massive philosophical arguments as to why pie was such a wonderful food, and vice versa. Multiple moderators also partook in the discussion, giving the thread validity. However, after 2009, it came under scrutiny as breaking the rules that all other members had to abide by. The topic of whether or not the thread should be locked quickly became a massive and long lasting topic all unto itself with debate raging in both The Flood and The Septagon. At last, the thread was deleted, as was the main discussion thread about whether or not to lock it. This decision did not please many Floodians, who saw it as just further evidence of The Septagon interfering with The Floods good times.

**From Recon Number 54 in this thread:**

The Pie Thread entry is woefully incomplete. Or at least in need of a story from Old Uncle Recon to add some spice to it.

The thread "I like pie" was originally posted in the Halo 3 forum by user account "drabominable". I was a ninja at that time, determined the thread to be "off topic for the Halo 3 forum" so it was locked and the OP banned.

Not long after, I got a PM from the banned account asking "why did you ban me? Don't you know that I work for Bungie?" To which I replied, "Yeah sure kid. I'll tell you what, when you come into work tomorrow morning, swing by Achronos' desk and tell him to unban you, okay?"

Little did I know (and keep in mind, at this time Bungie staff members did not have employee or any other sort of badge to identify them as employees) the person who I had banned was none other than Paul Russel, a long-time Bungie employee from back in the early Chicago days, responsible for much of the art, levels and also credited as the person who suggested the name "Halo" for the game during its initial development.

He had made the post, gotten banned in under a minute, went to sign in and got the message of "something went wrong" and was given the opportunity to file a bug report (which he did). His bug report was (paraphrasing) "I was just trying to make people smile and some jerk blacklisted me!"

Well, the next morning I was chatting with Shishka and told him the "some kid I banned says that he is an employee". I was then informed who I had banned and that the office was in an uproar. Of laughter. Realizing that I had made a mistake, I unlocked the thread, moved it to The Flood, and requested that the OP be unbanned. That is how the thread got there, and from there it garnered the attention of employees, moderators, and Floodians alike.

That year at PAX, I was told "there's someone who wants to meet you". It was Paul. He wanted to meet the person who banned him. I was stunned, he was more gracious and kind than I deserved. He had a printout of his original bug report which he signed and gave to me, a VERY rare ODST action figure signed by him, and we took a photo (yes, I am the fat bald one, he's the gentleman with hair who looks like I just grabbed his ass).

Since then he has left Bungie and we have stayed in touch online, mostly over social media. He is a wonderful, thoughtful and creative person and I consider him to be one of the most exceptional people I have had the good fortune to meet and a friend.

The timeline entry doesn't include this insider perspective, but I thought that I would share it.

### June 1: Forum Games Become Considered Spam

For quite some time it was only the dumb forum games that were considered spam, but a shift in policy would occur. Serious discussions about this did not happen until much later, with members questioning the reasoning for the change in policy in 2009.

### July 30 to July 29, 2009: The Flood v2

Created by DoJoe89, The Flood V2 is made up of members that claim to be devil spawn. The group was much more aggressive than the New Flood, and was proud of it. They often spammed, trolled and raided The Flood. They would edit pages on Bungiepedia, to a point where it quickly got far out of hand. On November 15th of 2008, The Flood V2 would create an offsite, and it would then fail on the 21rst. A second offsite of The Flood was created by Tom. Most of the group has either moved to the offsite, or at least participates in it in some way. However, the group does not raid The Flood as much, if at all anymore as moderation has stepped up since the implementation of the Play Nice Rules. The Last major event was a group attack in February of 2009.

### August 13: 7777 Pages

On this day at approximately 8:45 The Flood reached 7777 pages of content

### September 24 to January 2, 2009: Attacking the PETA Boards

On September 24th, a member reported how PETA had asked the Ben and Jerry's Ice cream company to use human breast milk instead of cow's milk. Floodians were appalled at the idea. Shortly afterward, a member found that PETA had an online site that include forums where the nuts talked about saving chickens from the evil Colonel Sanders. Floodians organized themselves and created accounts on the PETA boards to harass the members. However, the moderators couldn't allow this to continue happening once they found out. on January 2nd, 2009, Duardo issued a message on the issue. Any Floodian "proclaiming to have spammed the PETA website, or any other, will be permanently banned from Bungie.net without exception." The reasoning for this was on the interpretation that by spamming PETA's website you were hampering their use of the Bungie.net website. Spamming has openly stopped since this announcement.

### September 24: The Play Nice Rules

Probably the most important rule change, or revamped enforcement in Flood history. The play nice rules drastically effected the culture of The Flood culture. It is seen as both the moment that the administration finally began to crack down on misbehaving Floodians, and as a motion to make The Flood conform by an oppressive administration. Many members felt that the rules went to far, leading to a increase in membership for Flood V2, and other groups of it's ilk. The New Flood and Flood V2 are both often included in the discussion as to why the Play Nice rules were enacted. This is supported by some members of the groups, as well Achronos' statement that the problem mostly seemed "to be due to a specific subculture of those that frequent this forum." However, members of the group will say that it was specifically The Flood's culture that lead to the rules, and the subculture was only being copied by The Flood.

### September 28 to April 22, 2009: Hancock's Death

Hancock was a popular member, who gained popularity after he announced that he had been diagnosed with "Perihilar cholangiocarcinoma" on September 28th of 2008. He explained that by the time it had been diagnosed, it had "metastasized, spread to the rest of his liver and small intestine," so it was now inoperable. Most members believed what he said, and shared their condolences with him, though there were some doubters. Most expressed their disbelief that if he truly had been diagnosed with cancer, then why was he spending time on an internet forum? Hancock posted no specific date of death, but did say that he had less than a year to live Hancock posted an update on March 17, 2009. He explained that he had undergone surgery in October which had removed many affected organs. He talked about how he gone to Greece and seen the world. His post was notably more depressed, and how he was looking forward to death at this point. His last post was on 4/22/2009, but that does not mean for many members that he is dead. Some have questioned his threads as simply very clever trolling, and said that he had simply stopped using that account, and switched to using an alternate. Using an alt is such a common practice when someone is banned, that it is not unlikely.

### October 9 to April 7, 2009: Draw-Ball

A Floodian by the name of Knightmare01 petitioned the Flood to go draw on the Draw-ball. Floodians flooded in to flood draw-ball with the colors of The Flood. This would continue for months, with multiple invasions planned by The Flood in private groups and The Flood forum. Floodians saw it as a way to compete with /b/ and 4chan in general without actually attacking or provoking their website. As with the PETA incident, however, moderators couldn't have The Flood using sites where you draw in coordinated ways. On 4/7/2009 the thread was locked, though many members had started to grow tired of all the draw-ball threads.

### November 21: Try Xbox.com

The origin of "try xbox.com". Find out more.

## 2009

### January 29: 10000 Pages

On this day, at around 6:40 PM The Flood reached 10,000 pages of content. The Flood has since passed 20,000 days of content.

### May 24: Porch Day

It all started with a post talking about how a pet recently died on a members porch. From there Floodians created multiple parody threads. From there, Floodians created multiple parody threads of parody threads. From there, Floodians created parody threads, of parody threads, of parody threads. It spiraled wildly out of control, to the point that over 4 pages were covered with parody threads, all of which had something to do with a porch.

### August 31 to September 1: All Wings Reporting In

In the middle of a crisis of some sort, the Flood quickly organized itself into squadrons. From red wing to redrum, the Flood prepared to fight an enemy of some sort, for over 24 hours. Of course they never actually fought an enemy, they just reported in, and reported on the situation of each others toilets.

### September 3: Flood School

Founded by The Flood Sniper, The Flood School was initially a a thread with a great number of hyperlinks to other threads which claimed to have an educational purpose. Everything from Dance, to Philosophy to Martyrdom was taught at The Flood's New School. There was even a teachers lounge, though that department was still in need of more education professionals. In case you failed, there is always Flood Summer School.

### September 17: Element War

An alternate, now identified as belonging to Pieman191, named Bronze created a thread titled "I'm issuing a treaty. The thread entailed characters proclaiming an element, and then forming alliances against the other elements. The action quickly escalated, with members creating alternate accounts in order to participate the fullest. It was no longer a member representing the element gold, but the member gold that engaged in the combat. The war lasted 4 hours until a moderator locked the thread.

### September 21 to November 30: The Harlow, Rhea, NAKED N00B 14 Popularity War

Floodians have always been easily rallied up behind the cause of a popularity war behind specific members, and this case was no different. It started with HarlowOO197 attacking Chris Lyonz because he betrayed The Flood by supporting /b/ in a hypothetical war. He coupled this with declaring himself the emperor of The Flood. Harlow already had a group dedicated to himself called Harlow's Royal Guard which helped to spread and defend his empire. He would eventually expand into a second group. Meanwhile, Naked N00B 14 was constantly creating threads that either broke, or barely stayed within the rules of the forum. Most of his threads became hot topics and he quickly became a popular Floodian, know for his willingness to debate the issues of the day. He declared his bid for President of The World on October 12, 2009. Rhea on the other hand had been working the popularity game for over a year at this point. She is a chick, and talked about sex, and college, so she was instantly popular. The Flood is still part of the internet, after all. She had created a group Take Over Teh World in 9/29/2008. Multiple polls were created in order to accomodate the need of The Flood to discuss the topic. Eventually some of the candidates used alts to create polls that eliminated a candidate that did better than them. Ultimately HarlowOO197 stepped down as emperor, and Naked N00B 14 was banned because of the threads he made. Harlow eventually left HRG because he felt it had become too militant, and started another group, Sapphire, in hope that it would be more laid back. In most cases this would make Rhea the winner. However, during the campaign Naked Noob had called her a man, and the insult stuck, as well as the title of "The Flood's Attention Whore" by Elite Mouse. Floodians have since jumped on the bandwagon, and she was never able to claim victory.

## 2010

### January 3: Porch Day 2010

Porch Day 2 was started when a thread was created asking what porch day was. Other members took this as a call to make tons of threads about porches. Some talked about how porches were needed to fend of alien invasions, or "PORCHES!" Once again, people seemed to be worried about spam.

### February 8: POKEALTS Day

On this day many members created specifically Pokemon named accounts and started posting on the forums. However, almost all of these accounts have been since banned, so the only evidence that it happened are large numbers of Pokemon related threads that have hardly any posts in them at all, all of which occurred on a specific date, and the testimony of Floodians.

### April 2: The Flood Saves a Life

Rampant Tragedy created a thread asking if he should help someone. Not help someone as in terms of whether or not to carry her groceries, but whether or not he should get help to prevent her from committing suicide. The Flood responded with an overwhelming response asking Rampant Tragedy to try and help his bipolar friend. The Flood can do good work, when it is pushed in the right direction.

### May 17: Injury Day

Starting with a thread asking how people are injured with a grenade, members took it as a stupid questions and began making parody threads. Multiple how to questions covered a couple pages of The Flood forum.

### July 12: The Flood Conquers Antarctica

A member (whose name, due to the .Nextopocalypse has been lost) created a thread about how the members of the Flood needed to invade Antarctica and prevent the Militant Penguins, led by infamous troll Cleopatra, from taking over the continent. The entire original thread was devoted to what species and people would help the cause, leading to multiple pages of preparation and training needed to win over the penguins. These preparations then led to a thread made by Comrade Napoleon where the battle officially began. At launch hour, airborne units dropped in on the Palmer Land peninsula and encountered heavy fighting, while naval units provided support and launched the amphibious beach assault from the Weddell Sea. After intense inch-by-inch fighting, the Flood Coalition pushed to the South Pole, stopped Cleopatra from using nuclear weapons, and successfully wiped out the Penguin forces. Joyous celebrations were had, and the names of all the fighters went down in history as war heroes.

Find out more.

### November 13: Challenge Accepted

In a thread created my Bosnian101Fish entitled "When your teacher tells you.." the question is asked "'You can't finish this homework the night before, so use your time wisely.' Do you take it as a challenge?". The thread resulted in pages of replies stating "Challenge Accepted". Because of this thread, many members of the Flood now claim to have created the challenge accepted meme (Completely ignoring the fact that the phrase came from the popular television show How I Met Your Mother, years prior).

Find out more.

### November 15: Invading Bungie Studios

The idea was simple, for The Flood to make a plan to invade Bungie studios. At a rate of about 10 pages of posts every hour, the idea gained massive interest from Floodians. The Flood came up with many plans of attack, and strategies to get through the "positronic energy shields" that surround Bungie studios, and who was going to bring the snacks. The targets of the raid included Ling Ling's head and Sergeant Johnson. The Flood was never able to materialize the plan of attack, and eventually the thread was locked.

### December 17: 20,000 Pages

On this day, around 7:35 PM The Flood reached 20,000 pages of content. The Flood had also reached over 500,000 topics by this point.

## 2011

### January 28: The Day the Flood Ran Away

It all started early that night (Around 8:00 Pacific Time) when a troubled young boy posted a thread titled "I'm Running Away." In his post, this user ranted about his depressing life, his plan to run away, and his notable effort to keep us updated via internet cafés. Ater a few pages of ridicule, the Flood quickly took hold of this opportunity and launched the most massive parody flood(no pun intended) since Porch Day, spanning back 4 pages. The threads ranged from basic "I'm running away" threads, to the more creative additions, such as, "My Porch Ran Away"(A notable nod to the famous day), "I'm fapping away," "Amber Alert!" (Which was a parody thread in disguise), and "The mods ran away." Order was in tatters and lols were had. Though it only lasted a span of about 10 minutes, and all those involved were banned(largely thanks to True Underdog), it is still commendable for being one of the largest and most successful parody waves in Flood history.

Find out more.

### April 27 to August 24: The New Librarian

Squirrel dude steps down, and the panzie man becomes the new flood librarian.

### June 22-28: Heather's Camp

Between the 22nd and 28th of June 2011, AmX15 and elmicker made a thread asking for everyone to vote every day for Heather's Camp so it can get in the Top 15 of Pepsi's competition for $25,000. If they get into the Top 5, the Camp would make a plaque dedicated to The Flood. Heather's Camp was able to go from 15th to 1st in just a few days thanks to The Flood.

### June 26: The Flood Becomes Immortal

A Floodian claims he is immortal and many attempt to find ways to get him to die.

Find out more.

### July 21: The Flood Raids Reach Forums

Floodians invade the Reach forums telling users to get Coup.

Find out more.

### August 1-December 11: JOHN CENA

Starting on August first, one of the most infamous trolls of recent Flood memory appeared. His name was John Cena. Immediately, he went into The Flood and started posting a link that said "CLICK ME!" It led to shock porn website. The Flood started to go crazy because of the "pr0nz" Cena had posted. Cena quickly started to chain troll other threads as well. It quickly evolved into the infamous wall of "JOHN CENA" linking to the website. Of course, the Banhammer was dropped on Cena, but he was able to avoid permanent death by creating alts. His trolling continued for over three months. The last post by Cena was on 11/12/11, and can be found here. Since then, John Cena has become an urban legend to Flood dwellers and is widely considered to be one of the greatest Flood Trolls Of All Time.

### August 2: Changeover Day

Pretty much as soon as this day began hundreds of new threads appeared relating to the update of the forums and the handover of the control of Halo as a franchise to 343. Before this date many members posted that the flood would be removed as a forum, renamed, or that the Halo: Reach forums would be shut down and there would be a subsequent rush of 'Reachtards' (Floodian name for Reach forum goers due to the fact that many floodians believe everyone who is in the Reach forum is a mindless troll) would destroy the 'good' community the flood has. Thankfully, all the forums barring the 'Optimatch' forum remained and no 'Reachtards' ruined the flood. What did happen was a giant sweep of the moderator 'x Foman123 x' who locked and banned all threads about the Changeover.

### August 16: Spongebob Day

Spongebob day spawned over 9 pages, all containing threads about spongebob. It is rumored to be started with 4 Floodians in an XBL party on August 16, 2011. The main contributors were Ceasers Legion, hispanicman15, and SpazticWonder. The Flood shortly followed, resulting in numerous perma bans and bans all together.

### August 25: Sangheili Academy

Vien Quitonm joins the community, giving lessons on Sangheili anatomy. Vein made an alt named "Vien Quiitonmee" on 9/10/2011.

### August 25: Halo Reach-Flood Forum Wars

During the end of the summer of 2011, the Halo Reach forums began to attack the flood posting halo Reach related topics in the Flood forums. The Flood organized and retaliated against them, posting troll threads on the Halo Reach forums. At one point the entire first page of the Halo Reach threads was all locked for what the ninjas called, "organized spam". Many Floodians were banned.

### September 6: Recon Number 54 Bans Himself

On this day, Recon Number 54 created a thread entitled "Teacher fired for being a former pr0nz star" in which he presented a news article about how a teacher was fired from his job for being a porn star years earlier. It was on only the second page that one member by the alias "william ian" stated that Recon Number 54 should be banned for bypassing the profanity filter. Not long after, a handful of other members joined forces with william ian and Recon Number 54 subsequently left the following post: Fine. I'll ban myself for a week (in a couple of minutes so someone can see/quote this). Just for the sake of integrity. Happy? That fact that Recon Number 54 banned himself caused worry, fear, lulz, and WTFs for many members.

### October 3: Bobcast Becomes a Meme

Well, sort of. Bungie.net users started to occasionally post meme pics of Bobcast paired with a comical quote.

Find out more.

### October 8: How the -blam-Day

*On this day, users started posting threads asking "How the -blam!- do I\_\_\_\_\_\_?" and parodies of such.*

### December 1: Boobs Day

This day there was an unusual amount of topics containing boobs. Many bans followed.

## 2012

### January 12: Clockman

Commander Santa on the 12th of January (or the 1st of December, can't tell with British/US dates) at a quarter to nine posted a thread that lasted 74 pages and even became a pinned topic (top poster as evidence) that involved hundreds of members, several Universities and other outside sources searching for a character in an animation that scared him as a child, who he could remember as "clockman" that turned out to be a troll thread. He last edited it nine days later, and never returned to the thread to see the result of one of the best (if not the best) troll threads of 2012.

Find out more.

On December 14, 2017, tuckers baby finally found the Clockman video that Commander Santa had been searching for, putting to rest what was once believed to be the greatest troll post to come out of the Flood.

## 2013

### January 8: The Three-Day Read-Only

Almost immediately after Simse11 posted his thread on Battlefield 3, the Bungie Web Team set the entire site to Read-Only Mode for almost three days as they prepared the site for the Bungie.net Beta. While this affected they entire site and not just The Flood, The Flood were most affected by the downtime as they are the most active members on the forums.

### January 8: The Last of the Old Flood

The user Simse11 creates the last thread on the old bungie.net. It was titled "Has below radar been changed in BF3?". The world will never know.

Find out more.

### January 10: The .Nextopolypse and Mass Exodus

This day the entirety of Bungie.net was redesigned with a new look and tons of new features. Along with the update, all of the forums were merged, thus beginning the Flood Crisis of 2013. Many groups were created in attempt to emulate the Old Flood, and are still battling for superiority to this day. The Flood has become somewhat similar to Japan during the Boshin War, when the entire country was divided and battling for control.

Upset with the new layout and tagging system that came with the new website update, the Flood saw its largest rage-quit in the site's history. Though the exact number of people are unknown to anyone but Bungie themselves, seemingly hundreds of people stormed off the site stating that the new layout destroyed the natural flow of conversation, and that many of the types of threads people used to enjoy would no longer be possible. Since this event, some people began returning with the revamp of the forum structure, only to see that groups are dead and use that as an excuse to storm off again.

### January 11: The Reunification of the Flood

After a brief conflict between the newly created bungie.next groups "The Flood: Off Topic" and "The Flood Reincarnated", the Flood was reunified under the renamed group, "The Flood". In just a little more than a day, the Flood managed to do two things it has never done: avoid an all-out Civil War, and compromise. Members who played major roles in this include: MyNameIsCharlie and Aeia.

Find out more.

### January 12: A Tribal Flood

With the advent of the Nextocolypse, the Floodian Monarchy collapsed with the death of the old forum. As a result of this, The Flood retrogressed to it's tribal ways. To take control of the situation, user Iberian Husky officially declared himself Chieftain of The Flood!

### January 24: #Offtopic

After close to two weeks, Forums returned, now called "Categories," and with them came a change: instead of "The Flood" returning, "Offtopic" was created instead to get away from anything Halo-related. This change was met with vitriol from the Floodians.

### January 2013-2014: The Flood Enters the Wild-Wild-West

With the new website update came a near complete freedom in regards to rules. The old moderation system was scrapped for a new "create your own experience" filtering system. As a result, moderators became more "members of the community" than the scary ninjas of years past. The members chose to exercise that new-found freedom by creating one of the darkest periods in Flood history. Threads that incited hate among other members and outright bigotry began popping up all over the forum. It became common to openly call out other members of the community, bash other people's religious, political, or sexual preferences all with little consequence. During this time, it was far more common to find an argument than a discussion on this forum and many of the older members of the community began begging for a tighter rule set.

### March 19 - ??: Last to Post

In April of 2014, a member by the name of Plasma Eagle creates a thread titled “First to post wins”. Little did he know that his simple thread would create a monster so big and popular, people are still posting in it to this day. For, in retaliation to Eagle’s thread, a member named Mr Comics would make a thread of his own titled “Last to post wins”. Primarily fueled by Plasma Eagle’s refusal to “lose”, this thread will go on to exceed 5, 300 posts at the time of this writing and shows no sign of slowing any time soon.

What can I say? Sometimes the flood enjoys a challenge.

### April 11: Floof/Offtopite

Shortly after Bungie’s latest site update, some people began to search for names to call the shitty new “Offtopic” community. While many felt that, despite the name change, this community will always be the Flood.. some of the newer members began to seek out their own names and do away with the “floodian” tradition. In response, the term “floof” began to circle through the community. Earliest found use of this term comes from user Ch33zyburrito on April 11, 2013. Soon after, another group of people decided to start using the term “offtopite”. This is believed to be more of a troll than anything because of the massive push used to try to get the community to adopt it. Ultimately, both terms faded after a while and the tradition of the “floodian” returned.

### December 19: Lonepaul’s Fishy Tale

In December of 2013, the member lonepaul2441 spins a tale of young love. More than happy to brag about having a pair of young teenage girls wanting his affections, lonepaul quickly finds himself in damage control mode as the flood begins to question his own age. And like a truly gullible fellow.. he informs the flood that he is in his mid-twenties. It’s at this point that the flood begins to turn his tale of boastful conquest into a fight to convince everyone he’s not actually a pedophile. But have you ever tried to convince the flood of anything? Didn’t turn out too well, did it?

Soon, lonepaul was forced to edit the OP of the thread resulting in several of the members trying to recreate it as best they could. More accusations of pedophilia ensued, and eventually, lonepaul disappeared into the internet for several months before returning.

So what’s the moral of this story, kids? If you’re gonna brag on the flood.. make sure it doesn’t involve under age girls.

## 2014

### January 15: The Return of the Ninjas

In January of 2014, Deej posted a new code of conduct for the site. The CoC brought a tighter rule set to the forums, yet still allowed for more freedom than B.old ever saw. Moderators are now back in their rightful place are the authoritarian overlords they were intended to be. The Flood saw a near overnight change in quality as a result.

### February-July: The Brief Floodfic Revival

Beginning with an epic tale of flood shenanigans, the member exploding piglets created a multi-part story called “The PAX Disaster” which spanned 20 posts and garnered hundreds of replies. Shortly after The PAX Disaster begins, the member Officer Nasty adds his hilarious offering titled “Attack of the Alts”. This sparks a brief, yet glorious couple of months where floodfics once again fill our bellies with laughter.

## 2013-2018

As things often do, members of the Flood began to slowly move away. Some remained and stayed in the OffTopic Forum, but many members left due to how the new version of Bungie.net functioned.

## 2018

### June 21: Announcement that Halo.Bungie.Net will Go Offline

In Bungie's "This Week at Bungie" blog post, they announced that they would be retiring the old read-only forums and Bungie Pro Videos on halo.bungie.net. The announcement was met was dread and sadness.

### June 28, 10 A.M. PDT: The Flood Goes Offline

On this day, the old Flood forum on halo.bungie.net went offline, never to be seen again on Bungie.net.

## 2018-Present

Nowadays, there are only a select few of Floodians left who still frequent Bungie's off-topic forum. They are now regarded as the "old heads."

While some say the Flood Forum should have never existed, it spawned a community like no other before or since its inception, and that made it important. While the community has evolved, the community spirit of the Flood still lives on in the OffTopic forum.

## Previous Timelines

1. The Flood History Collection
2. The History of the Flood Forum 2nd Edition
3. History of the Flood Forum: 3rd Edition
4. History of the Flood Forum: 4th Edition
5. History of the Flood interactive timeline (thread)