Snooze Drifting

"Snooze Drifting" is a term used to describe a last-resort tactic utilised by crippled and heavily damaged space vessels that allows their surviving crew to enter cryosleep while the ship itself drifts aimlessly in the hope that they will eventually be rescued. The practice only became frequent during the, where it became commonplace for nearly entire human fleets to be wiped out, leaving any damaged ships with little choice but to put themselves into cryosleep and hope for rescue. Snooze drifting became almost unheard of in the UNSC after the establishment of the, but would still be seen with some Insurrectionist vessels that engaged the Covenant. There were also some cases of snooze drifting prior to the Human-Covenant War, but they were few and far between, with most of these cases occurring after a small number of engagements during the era.

Examples

 * - Possibly the most famous example of snooze drifting, the Forward Unto Dawn was a fairly extreme case. The ship had been split in half after the, with the aft section left drifting for nearly five years.
 * - After giving up its slipspace drive in order to destroy, the UNSC Spirit of Fire was forced to drift in unknown space for a little over 28 years before ending up at in 2559.
 * UNSC Resolute - After the in 2526, the engines of the UNSC Resolute were crippled and its bridge destroyed, forcing the remaining crew to enter cryosleep. Rediscovered by the ONI Prowler UNSC Terminal Frost in 2550, most of the crew was rescued; however, some of the ship's cryopods had failed over the 24-year-long ordeal, killing the crew members inside.
 * URF Flying Dutchman - The URF Flying Dutchman was heavily damaged during an engagement with Covenant picket ships in 2545, forcing its crew to enter cryosleep. They were eventually discovered by Kig-Yar scavengers in 2551, and the crew were taken as slaves, only being freed after the Valhallan Defence Forces launched a major raid against the Kig-Yar group in late 2555. Ultimately, of the ship's approximately 500 original crew members, only 23 survived the entire ordeal. The accounts of the survivors were compiled into a bestselling book that was released in 2557.