Does the Flood want to save or kill the galaxy?

The Grave Mind: "You are all in danger, so to save the galaxy we have taken over, our first order of business, you will have your head on that persons body they will have their feet on your neck you 2 will just ooz across the floor I will put your dick on your chin you will have his eyes she will have her hair follicles on your butt.

Second order of business, humans you get to be our pigs because you taste like pigs, unggoy you get to be our seafood because you taste like farts and lobster, sangheili you get to be our cows because you taste like beef.

All your a.i.s will be ^$&##@ that's the 3rd order of business

and the galaxy will be saved. Yaaaah we are the obviously awesome good guuuuys."

perhaps, considering the floods ultimate goal is to consume all sentient life, thus creating a utopian society of assimilated hosts.

That will then starve and die off in a few short months.... then rot..... and leave a forever barren universe.....

the Gravemind does not understand why the living races hate the Flood he thinks that it is only natural to absorb all life in the universe.

That is because the flood still have a will to live, and been alive a long enough time to think they are meant to exist.

Think about a jungle carnivore. (eats meat, natural wild life, wants to live, beautiful animal, no problem.) The jungle carnivore is a inocant and beautiful animal, but in order for it to live, requires the sacrifice of the life of another beautiful and innocent animal.

Then their is the flood, they are sentient life, and their are no inocants among sentient life no matter how hard we wish their could be. Most of us, such as kig-yar and huragoks, are beautiful, how ever the flood is ugly. But like animals sentient life needs to eat, civilized ones eat plants and animals while savages eat sentient life. But the flood, sentient life is the only thing they can eat, their survival depends on things such as, oh say, your first born offspring, to be sacrificed to them that they won't die off.

The Precursors created the Flood.  Naturally at first it lacked a central method of thought.  It "evolved" itself a Gravemind, and thus decreed its right to exist and expand just as any other race.

That, and at least the Grivemind we're introduced to has gone insane in its isolation.

Either way: as far as "comparing it to reality" is concerned, the Flood reflect a socialist utopia in which all things are equal.  Which of course is stagnancy, which of course is what you (the OP) imply with the "they'd eventually die out."

The Precursors (nor the Forerunners) thought that galactic stagnancy was good for business, as evidence in their execution of responsibility for perpetuating life.  Also known as: te Mantle.

The Gravemind's planning of the Flood: Okay, I will make you look repulsive so that way people will scream when they see you, I will cover my stuff in Flood Bio mass to make it stand out, and I will make your AIs pee their pants and make them rampant, I will make little pieces of popcorn grow legs and drill into people's bodies, I will hijack everything, I will try to take the Universe, yet fail ultimately. I will attack Grunts and Jackals, and not infect them, just eat them and stuff, I will make my minions pile up smelly dead corpses that smell like turd to make me into a giant snake-like flytrap, and be ultimately sickening.

We should all become Flood. I became one and it's awesome.

More planning: I will make Tank Forms that look like giant turds, I will make my Combat Forms fall apart like crunched up chips. I will make infection forms break apart into paper and puke, cuz my Flood Blood is probably puke.

The flood are the ideal society. The one problem is that they kill everything in their path 

lol someone revived this thread. Red is going to be so mad.

Uuugh