In the novel Dune Messiah, protagonist and Emperor of the Known Universe Paul Atreides estimates that 60 billion souls have perished as a result of his interstellar jihad.

　　This week, developer Bungie announced that players of its game sci-fi epic, Halo 3, had reached a genocidal milestone of their own. As of Monday, some 10 billion members of the Covenant had been killed in the course of single-player campaigns since the critically hailed quintuple platinum shooter launched in September 2007.

　　"For those in the same camp we count ourselves in, folks baffled by talk of billions, let's take a look at the tally from a more down-to-Earth perspective," mused the Bungie.net community manager known as "Urk." "Crude math places the estimate of daily Halo 3 Covenant kills, launch-to-date, at over 17,500,000. That's 730,000 killed per hour or 12,000 Covenant troops killed per minute." No mention is made of the Flood, the parasitic mutant race that players also face in Halo 3.

　　The Bungie rep then said that an average of 650 Covenant had been killed for each Halo 3 player--meaning that there are nearly 15,385,000 people who have scored a kill in the game's single-player campaign. The figure accounts for multiple players per copy of the game, which had sold 8.1 million units worldwide as of January 2008.