: into.

: slipspace.

: Now you can make a convincing argument that ships need shielding to survive
: in slipspace, which makes jorge's survival that much less likely. but he
: certainly did not explode.

Of course not. He was atomized.

Look, what did Kat say? "Half the ship was transported to oblivion." Not "Only half the ship was transported to Cygnus." Not "Half the ship was cleanly torn off and teleported to a distant location and if only we'd gotten there we could have saved seven hundred people." Transported to oblivion. As in a negation of existence. As in a Total Existence Failure. As in... weirdly enough, I just got a sense of Deja Vu.

The Spartans built a weapon with that Slipspace bomb to destroy the Supercarrier. There's no reason for them to go to all the trouble of making sure everything within the blast radius was safely transported into slipspace. Jorge knew that it was a one-way trip, and Noble Six agreed. Kat is the one who would have known if Jorge had a chance of survival and Carter is the one she would have told, and neither of them mentioned the possibility that Jorge might still be alive somewhere out there.

Look at what the slipspace bomb did to the Supercarrier. Look at the ragged edges where sections of the ship were torn away. What reason is there to expect that the matter inside the blast radius fared any better? Remember all the weird stuff that Ghosts of Onyx said happened to slipspace drive technicians? Jorge is atomized. Or spaghettified. Or crushed within the event horizon of a short-lived black hole. Or torn apart by tidal forces. Or any one of a dozen things that could happen near a malfunctioning slipspace drive.

But, since we've never seen Jorge's dead body, that means he might have survived. By that measure, I guess Noble 6 isn't confirmed to be dead either. He was held down by two Elites and another was lining up a killing blow, but we never saw the blow land. The narration that happens directly afterward could be Halsey speaking to Noble 6 after he escaped, survived on Reach for 30 years, and was rescued by the UNSC. Oh, and John Forge is alive as well. Sure, he was in the heart of a sun that imploded and exploded, but we never saw the body. And Graeme Devine meant for him to return in the sequel, so he totally survived. And if he survived, that means that the Arbiter is still alive as well. Getting stabbed in the neck is a bitch, but I didn't see anybody checking for a pulse. After he was kicked over the side of the platform, he could have landed on some Forerunner thingamabob that teleported him to safety.

Who else is alive? Maybe Carter? No body. Miranda Keyes and Johnson are fair game too. They were left behind where Forerunner devices could have retrieved their bodies and healed them. Randal from Nightfall could have figured out how to detonate the nuke remotely. And Kurt may be on a tropical beach somewhere sipping martinis after a bunch of Onyx Sentinels teleported him out at the last nanosecond.