Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn: Lecture

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Lecture is a short promotional piece for the Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn webseries. It depicts a lecture by General Black to a class of CAMS cadets. It was released on September 21, 2012 on Halo Waypoint and on YouTube by MachinimaPrime.

Transcript
''Opens to cadets walking up and down the stairs of the Corbulo Academy of Military Science. Cuts to a statue of General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo on the courtyard of the school.''


 * Black (voiceover): "A show of hands..."

Cuts to General Black inside a lecture hall.


 * Black: "How many of you are or know someone who is from Earth?"

''Black raises his hand and looks around the room. Only one of the cadets can be seen with a raised hand. The cadets look at each other.''


 * Black: "Okay, so not a lot of us."

Black lowers his hands and continues.


 * Black: "The insurrectionists say that the people of one planet owe nothing to the people of another planet. The insurrectionists say the Earth is in the past, and the past is dead. Well, not so long ago, all of humanity lived on a single planet. Hard to imagine isn't it? But try to think of what it must have been like to be a human back then — to know only one world. Each and every one of us here contributes to the health and well-being of a Unified Earth Government. How is that fair? 'Why should I give anything to Earth if I don't even live there?' Well, without us, without the UNSC, colonies starve, planets die. And for what? Now, the insurrectionists, they say they'd rather risk the lives of millions of colonists than do their duty to ensure the continued survival of the trillions of humans spread throughout this galaxy. But not me. No. Me, I say we're all in this together."

Cuts to black.

HALO 4 FORWARD UNTO DAWN

Trivia
General Black states that trillions of humans were spread throughout UEG space in 2526. Before the Covenant's invasion, Earth's population numbered in the billions, while Reach, the largest colony, had a population of just 703,314,500 prior to its glassing. As Earth and Reach were the most populous of the UEG's worlds, none of the other colonies could have had populations exceeding a few hundred million. Thus, even with over 800 colony worlds, the entire human population would have numbered at most somewhere in the tens of billions. While this was no doubt an error in the trailer's script, one may assume that Black was speaking hyperbolically or that he unintentionally misspoke.