Yet Another Whack Theory

[605Scorpion]

This is all something that adds up in my little crazy head o' mine, but I'll proport it as fact 'cause I don't feel like saying "I think" every other sentence.

Take a look at this pic o' your standard zombie.

http://img111.exs.cx/img111/5756/zombie8xm.jpg

You can see that headcrabs have legs long enough to wrap around your shoulders and to hook right into your armpits, allowing them to snugly stay in place despite your best efforts. Now of course everybody knows they latch onto you head and do nasty things to you, but I got to wondering about the headcrab when Dr. Kleiner said, "She's debeaked and completely harmless."

Basically, I'm not so sure headcrabs have a beak in their little hole that fit on your head. Their... hathole... I guess. What headcrabs do instead is rib open your stomach and use their front legs to scoop up your innards to their chelicarae, much in the same way scorpions and tarantulas do. In other words, they use their big arms to bring the food in and use their mini-mouth-arms to handle and eat the food. You can see in the picture the headcrabs do in fact appear to have chelicarae.

Now how do they control their victims if they have no beak in their hathole you ask? I dunno. Perhaps chemicals or by neuron stimulus thingys. I dunno. I just know you never see a zombie head split open - but their faces are really, really white. Although the same thing happens when you cover your skin for prolonged periods with a band aid or anything else (including a headcrab!).

It just occured to me as well, if by simply removing her beak Lamarr is made harmless, perhaps headcrabs are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. Lamarr certaintly seems to be; she acts like a mischievious, albeit trained, dog at times. I suppose this would imply that headcrabs have enough intellectual capacity to realise that without a beak, it's useless to latch on to someones head, since you couldn't eat anyway.

I don't know how this checks out with the fast and poison zombies. I believe the fast zombies are ripped open as well, but I don't think the poizon zombies are. Perhaps because poizon headcrabs are so husky, they can just chomp in with fangs like a spider. In fact, they could just liquify the innards and drink, like spiders.

Just some brain candy from a crazy theory of mine is all. That just shows Valve's genious if they planned all that, but chances are I just though about something too much. How do y'alll take that one on?:imu:

 

[Foebane]

Sorry Scorpion, I couldn't read your post. Y'see, I have this strange urge to see all MASSIVE BLOCKS OF TEXT reduced to single separate sentence paragraphs. If you've ever seen any of my posts, you'll see I hate huge paragraphs. So there.

 

[605Scorpion]

I shall take action for ye. Can't say I can append any of that for ya, but I did separate it.

 

[Deemo]

its an interesthing theory.

remember in HL2 (dont remmeber which chapter) where you see a guy who has not yet been taken over by a headcrab, but hes yelling for help? if you shoot the headcrab the headcrab falls off and dies, but so does the person. Their face is normal, and no stomach opening. Wouldnt this kind of go against your theory?

 

[605Scorpion]

Not really, it just kinda/sorta supports it. I think I know what your talking about, and it was right before Route Kanal where you first get the airboat. The headcrab there was still trying to gain complete control. You could see the guy was fighting for his life, but then he just suddenly dropped.

I dunno if it was a bone animation error, but I think the headcrab was kind of holding his hands to gether so he couldn't rip him off. Assuming the aforemention neuron stimulus thingy is correct, when the guy just dropped is when the headcrab finally took over the nervous system.

I've seen it suggested here that a single headcrab could never dream of taking over a human 100%, since it doesn't have the energy to power us. So it keeps us alive. While he was kind of subsequently humping the guys head (queue Barney!), I suppose he was picking off the systems he needed one by one. No doubt once he got a bit hungry from all the energy he used up in the fight, he would've gone to work on the guy's guts.:x

 

[gabriel]

wait so.. what exactly is your theory? i couldn't find it in that giant sea of text up there. say it in one sentence so a lazy person like me can see it.

 

[cabbs]

It just occured to me as well, if by simply removing her beak Lamarr is made harmless, perhaps headcrabs are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. Lamarr certaintly seems to be; she acts like a mischievious, albeit trained, dog at times. I suppose this would imply that headcrabs have enough intellectual capacity to realise that without a beak, it's useless to latch on to someones head, since you couldn't eat anyway.

When you are in Kleiners lab, lamarr tries to latch on to barney (comedy), and kleiner tries to encourage lamarr onto his own head. He/She obvoiusly still attacks in the headcrab way, effective or not, but he/she did seem not that bothered by the opportunity to latch onto kleiner. Perhaps there is an element of learning there.

Nice theory btw

 

[605Scorpion]

wait so.. what exactly is your theory? i couldn't find it in that giant sea of text up there. say it in one sentence so a lazy person like me can see it.

Headcrabs are fuzzy.:imu:

 

[Skaadi]

Headcrabs are fuzzy.:imu:

You must be one of those people who have made their own plush headcrabs.

 

[bam23]

I'm sure they have beaks. I don't think valve would include that into Kleiner's dialogue if they didn't.

 

[605Scorpion]

Actually, I thought about making my own headcrab, but then it dawned on me it wouldn't exactly serve any articular purpose, and it would require work!

Of course they have beaks, what I'm saying is headcrabs have beaks near the front, like a mouth.

 

[BeaverMon]

I'm sure they have beaks. I don't think valve would include that into Kleiner's dialogue if they didn't.

I think what he said about it being "debeaked" is she can't turn someone into a Zombie.
"Never fear, Gordon! She's debeaked, and completly harmless! The worst she might do is to...um... "couple", with your head! Heah. .... Fruitlessly" (or something like that)

 

[gabriel]

i wish i were talented enough to make my own headcrab plush.. *sigh*

 

[CyberPitz]

That theory is well thought out, I like it! Granted I am still trying to FULLY understand it, but from what I can gather, it makes for a good read, and who knows, might come true

It is Mark we are talking about, he is a crazy bastard...

 

[iMMuNiTy]

Nice theory. But it has its gaps, though...

Basically, I'm not so sure headcrabs have a beak in their little hole that fit on your head. Their... hathole... I guess. What headcrabs do instead is rib open your stomach

Actually, their hathole, as you call it, are rather big. It's nearly as big as the victims face. And headcrabs do not rib open your stomach. It's the result of..errh, how to call it. Zombification? Call it a side effect of becoming a zombie. Usual zombies have their chest open, fast zombies only have muscles and skeletons left, what makes them quick. Poison zombies become fat. Well, to be more accurate, poison zombie is being attacked by multiple headcrabs, unleashing poison to their victim, making his body full of poison, actually "fattening" him/her. The proof of this is the fact that the body of the poison zombie wobbles. Like boobies.

What I'm trying to say is, open stomach/chest is mutation, a result of zombifying.

Now how do they control their victims if they have no beak in their hathole you ask?

They feast on the victims' brains, and once they do that, they act as the brains themselves. And the skulls of the victims aren't open because that'd be really gross, if VALVe avoided Barney saying "Feck you" outloud, then surely they wouldn't show the full process of headcrabbing. That'd be disturbing :|

perhaps headcrabs are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.

Actually, no. As I mentioned earlier, headcrabs control their victims. The victims move slowly, carefully. Watch zombies moving step-stop-step. They walk towards you even if you are behind fire, or Father Gregory's "windmill trap". Headcrabs don't have eyes or ears, they move instinctively. Their movement is similar to zombies. So no. Headcrabs are dumb "animals", which are driven purely by instinct.

Lamarr certaintly seems to be; she acts like a mischievious, albeit trained, dog at times

Spoiler

She jumped on Barney, and on Gordon, disrupting the teleport in the beginning.

Oh, and she wasn't hiding because she was planning a mischievious conspiracy plan, because VALVe thought that was funny when an old scientist tries to look for a clumsy dumb headcrab. Sick bastards (sarcasm).

 

[gabriel]

They feast on the victims' brains, and once they do that, they act as the brains themselves. And the skulls of the victims aren't open because that'd be really gross, if VALVe avoided Barney saying "Feck you" outloud, then surely they wouldn't show the full process of headcrabbing. That'd be disturbing :|

How do you know that they eat the brain and act as the brain themselves? it seems to me like they leave the brain intact because i remember on another thread we talked about how the humans with headcrabs attached to them are still alive because they can scream and yell "oh my god!" and stuff like that.

 

[AudioStar]

wait so.. what exactly is your theory? i couldn't find it in that giant sea of text up there. say it in one sentence so a lazy person like me can see it.

You read forums and you call that a sea of texts? Wow...

 

[gabriel]

You read forums and you call that a sea of texts? Wow...

haha i was just being dumb.

 

[605Scorpion]

How do you know that they eat the brain and act as the brain themselves? it seems to me like they leave the brain intact because i remember on another thread we talked about how the humans with headcrabs attached to them are still alive because they can scream and yell "oh my god!" and stuff like that.

That's what I think. Headcrabs are lazy little creatures, so they just hijack systems they want. A bit like the leech thingys in the Animorphs (for those of us who read in elementary ;E) series.

I think if you compare headcrabs to spiders instead of crabs, they make more sense. Especially my aforementioned poizon zombie theory. The poison zombie is the huskiest because he carries venom glands in him, which he/she (along with his other 5 buddies) uses to liquify his (their) victim's innards, and suck 'em up like soda through a straw, just like spiders do with insects.

I'd have to think about fast zombies a bit more. All I can reason, is they combine both types. They introduce a virus to their host, which continually eats him away, and they do a bit of the classic zombie stomach-rippin' stuff. The virus wouldn't be as potent or as targeted as the poizon headcrabs, because then he'd have to be just as husky. You can see in this picture that the fast zombie has considerably more decay in the abdominal region than other regions, supporting classical zombie behaviour.

http://www.hlportal.de/images/content/hl2/enemies/zombie-fast.jpg

Warning: Weak theory follows!

If all these three behaviours are correct, it might add a bit more meat as to why Ravenholm was shelled and put under seige instead of just wiped out. While common sense tells us the Combine just wanted to eradicate and be rid of Ravenholm, perhaps they used relatively few headcrab-shells and the headcrabs progressively worked the population down.

This would mean headcrabs are very cost effective, as when they exauhst one human's (they seem to be custom tailored for us) body, food-wise, they can then move on to another; they are not limited to one host body. When they leave their previous host, the host would die as he was being kept artificially alive from so much attrition and the systems the headcrab hijacked cannot simply be given back.

This would allow the Combine to deploy enough headcrab to, say, hijack 66% of the Ravenholm population. Allowing for a margin of wastage from the ensuing war between zombies and humans, let's say that 66% is now down to 50%, and the humans are down from 33% to 25%. (humans get less wastage because they're smarter, and would fight better, of course) 50% to 25%, 40% to 20% and so on untill finally zombies are victorious. Of course, headcrabs being cost effecient, the Combine is only going to deploy as much as they need, and the humans could very well win if there were no threat of further headcrab deployments.

More craziness, but keep in mind I don't believe in the headcrab strategy as much as I believe in the headcrab anatomy. :rolling: Again, I reiterate this is just my little theory, and I don't proclaim it as fact, as there is very little "fact", per se, in the Half Life series.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

I think if you compare headcrabs to spiders instead of crabs, they make more sense. Especially my aforementioned poizon zombie theory. The poison zombie is the huskiest because he carries venom glands in him, which he/she (along with his other 5 buddies) uses to liquify his (their) victim's innards, and suck 'em up like soda through a straw, just like spiders do with insects.

Wrong. The only thing poison headcrabs have something in common with spiders is their looks. The poison zombie would look all sucked up and looking like G-Man. But instead, he wobbles around with his body full of poison. Furthermore, p. headcrabs have simply a big round mouth-like hole, with that I doubt they could suck anything.

I'd have to think about fast zombies a bit more. All I can reason, is they combine both types. They introduce a virus to their host, which continually eats him away, and they do a bit of the classic zombie stomach-rippin' stuff. The virus wouldn't be as potent or as targeted as the poizon headcrabs, because then he'd have to be just as husky. You can see in this picture that the fast zombie has considerably more decay in the abdominal region than other regions, supporting classical zombie behaviour.

I don't like to be a pain in the arse, but whatever fast headcrab unleashes into its victim (with that I fully agree), kind of actually eats away everything but bones and muscles, making the zombie fast, flexible and strong. His stomach isn't ripped away! Remember what I said. Muscles and bones. Do we have muscles in our stomach? We do, actually, a bit on the sides, here and there... But roughly, we don't have muscles in our stomach, and so does the fast zombie. I'd disagree with the fast headcrab being the mix of the two headcrabs. Each of them are as much as simila as different.

And another thing: headcrabs actually do reach our brain, and even if they don't eat it (can't prove that, lack of arguments), they actually use their secondary mouth to control the victim, and when the body dies at the process, side effects take place and the headcrab begins controlling the victim, because a dead man can't complain nor struggle. We move with the help of brains, and without breaching our skull and reaching the brain, headcrabs couldn't possibly control us. And they don't have a straw-like organ to go into tick mode. So there.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

It's a cool little detail they added that Lamarr doesn't have beaks on his model like the other headcrabs. First time I saw that it was kinda neat.

 

[HeadCrabMolester]

What, no head with my zombie?...nuts to that!

Not to change the subject...but I was recently rewatching the old bink movies, mostly for nostalgic reasons...and saw something interesting:...in the one dubbed "traptown" (my freakin favorite!), towards the end...(the part where gordon discovers what I like to call the "upturned-V8-engine-improvised-blade-o-death")...after Mr F caps him a zombie, its host crab pops off and goes all kamikaze after his nerdy ass...well the interesting part is the body it leaves behind...cus if you look, you can see that half the poor bastards head has been eaten off...to, say, the chin...-shrugs-....just thought that was strange...seems Valve prefers a more shriveled up, pasty white, shrunken-head typa zombie...as opposed to a headless one...or maybe they just needed a reason to add all those moaning zombie noises they had laying about...(if you have no head...it's kinda hard to moan and what not)...just thought id share...

 

[iMMuNiTy]

Not to change the subject...but I was recently rewatching the old bink movies, mostly for nostalgic reasons...and saw something interesting:...in the one dubbed "traptown" (my freakin favorite!), towards the end...(the part where gordon discovers what I like to call the "upturned-V8-engine-improvised-blade-o-death")...after Mr F caps him a zombie, its host crab pops off and goes all kamikaze after his nerdy ass...well the interesting part is the body it leaves behind...cus if you look, you can see that half the poor bastards head has been eaten off...to, say, the chin...-shrugs-....just thought that was strange...seems Valve prefers a more shriveled up, pasty white, shrunken-head typa zombie...as opposed to a headless one...or maybe they just needed a reason to add all those moaning zombie noises they had laying about...(if you have no head...it's kinda hard to moan and what not)...just thought id share...

Could you rephrase that? I didn't quite get the point... Something about a zombie's head. I found nothing wrong with it, though. The head, that is.

 

[HeadCrabMolester]

*sigh*

In the bink movie entitled "traptown, theres a part where Gordon gets to see a zombie without a headcrab attatched...the part where he finds the motor and blade trap...anywho...after Freeman shoots the first zombie he encounters...the crab jumps off...and if one were to look close...one might just see that, that particular zombie is absent the top of his head...thats all...just figured that was kinda neat...it seems the developers decided against a headless flesh eater...

is that better immunity?

 

[iMMuNiTy]

Actually the headcrab jumps off in-game, too. :|

 

[the_rebel_medic]

All right the debeaked thing is easy, refer to the white circles now if you kill lamaar (GO FREEMAN says barney) then you will notice that they are gone

 

[DoctorWeeTodd]

Yeah what the_rebel_medic said. If you compare her model to other Headcrabs in Model Viewer you would see that the "fangs" are gone.

 

[DoctorWeeTodd]

Actually the headcrab jumps off in-game, too. :|

That's not his point. The point is that in Traptown the zombies are missing part of their head.

I rewatched and noticed it as well. Also their clothes are that of normal citizens instead of white.

 

[iMMuNiTy]

That's not his point. The point is that in Traptown the zombies are missing part of their head.

I rewatched and noticed it as well. Also their clothes are that of normal citizens instead of white.

Ah, thanks for the translation! Well it proves my part of theory that headcrabs crack their victims' skulls open

Oh and er, that content's been cut.