Go ahead, start singing the Halo theme, you know you want to.

You can’t mention the influences behind today’s first-person shooter videogames without talking about the Halo series in the same breath. It kicked off the modern era of shooters and came to dominate the discussion on what a multiplayer videogame should play like. You stay for the mechanics and the fun, but the story sticks with you too, like plasma grenade to the face.

Halo is based on a battle between humanity and an alien race known as the Covenant, who worship ancient beings called the Forerunners. The battle quickly becomes a race to stop the Covenant from blindly activating mysterious rings, which turn out to be galaxy-wiping weapons built to destroy a parasitic organism known as The Flood. But how do you even build that kind of infrastructure?

In my latest Because Science, I take a look at Halo‘s life-destroying ringworlds — how they are constructed and what it would take to build one. It turns out that the Forerunner’s rings are a lot more plausible that you may think. If they had the resources, it might be as easy as a shotgun/melee doublekill.

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