Optimized message flooding is provided for time sensitive or real-time contacting of nodes across a distributed platform. The propagation of messaging across the distributed platform is accelerated based on a parallel fan-out distribution of the flood messaging from increasing numbers of nodes with the distribution occurring over existing connections maintained between different sets of nodes. Responses are propagated via a reverse traversal of the nodes. The reverse traversal is optimized by merging responses at different tiers. A set of triggers set at the different nodes specify conditions with which to identify and preempt the slowest nodes of a lower tier from withholding message flooding completion. As such, desired messaging and responses can be collected from across the distributed platform in a determinate amount of time with minimal overhead.