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That's not how Evolution works. It's not a positive or negative. It's also not focused or targeted like you seem to suggest. It's random, chaotic, and unfathomably minute in it's possible chances for beneficial by product. Not to get outside my own depth here, but minor mutations occur without ever causing any benefit/negative consequence. We have adapted enough in our environment to not worry about Red hair, or Green eyes, purple eyes, or even physically prohibitive things such as shortness, obesity, brittle bones, Sickle Cell, etc.

By your logic, if I follow it correctly, they would kill any deformity not directly beneficial. Thus making "Evolution" not really a thing.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That's not how Evolution works. It's not a positive or negative. It's also not focused or targeted like you seem to suggest. It's random, chaotic, and unfathomably minute in it's possible chances for beneficial by product. Not to get outside my own depth here, but minor mutations occur without ever causing any benefit/negative consequence. We have adapted enough in our environment to not worry about Red hair, or Green eyes, purple eyes, or even physically prohibitive things such as shortness, obesity, brittle bones, Sickle Cell, etc.

By your logic, if I follow it correctly, they would kill any deformity not directly beneficial. Thus making "Evolution" not really a thing.

Mutation and evolution are not the same thing. Mutation is one of the mechanisms that allows evolution.

Evolution by natural selection is about the selective pressures on gene frequencies. If a gene has no negative or positive impact on an organism's survival, no selective pressure is applied. You are now talking about the phenomenon of genetic drift, which is the frequency of genes in a population due to random chance (ie due to reproductive probabilities or unlikely events that are not selective pressures - being struck by lightning for example).

Genes that have no impact on survival and reproduction can passively accumulate, mutate or disappear due to genetic drift. They will continue to do this until they mutate into something that does have an impact on survival, and then selection will act on them.


Your examples of human traits that don't affect our survival include some that do, but which have been offset by other traits (the plasticity genes of our neurons that allow us to think up artificial compensations for sickle cell or brittle bones). So long as our mental genetics allows us to solve failings of our physical genetics, we will continue to consider those traits benign. If at any point we develop mutations that are beyond our mental capabilities, they will have direct selective pressure on our gene frequencies through attrition.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That's not how Evolution works. It's not a positive or negative. It's also not focused or targeted like you seem to suggest. It's random, chaotic, and unfathomably minute in it's possible chances for beneficial by product. Not to get outside my own depth here, but minor mutations occur without ever causing any benefit/negative consequence.

Well, most mutations don't become heritable and many are no-goes from the start. The mutations have to be in gametes (sperm and eggs in mammals) to be passed on, and the mutation has to not affect the chance of the gamete actually undergoing fertilisation. If a sperm is physically defective, for example, it is unlikely to ever reach an egg.

We have adapted enough in our environment to not worry about Red hair, or Green eyes, purple eyes, or even physically prohibitive things such as shortness, obesity, brittle bones, Sickle Cell, etc.

Wut? Those are some odd examples there. Short people actually have longer life expectancy unless it is associated with a significant genetic disorder. Obesity is largely an environmental disease not genetic (although it does have some heritability) and being able to store energy in times of surplus is an advantage outside of the current era of plentiful energy-rich food for many. Brittle bones are not typically a genetic condition in humans- diet, age, sex, and hormonal causes are by far the commonest causes. Sickle cell anaemia is genetic, but the regions it is common have endemic malaria- sickle cell protects against malaria. So there is a positive pressure that outweighs the negative pressure in parts of Africa.

By your logic, if I follow it correctly, they would kill any deformity not directly beneficial. Thus making "Evolution" not really a thing.

You are speeding up the timeframe too much. Most traits that have negative selection pressures will take a very long time to be eliminated. Many generations. In that timeframe, it is also possible for the environment to change and start selecting for the trait again too.

 Hellebore wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That's not how Evolution works. It's not a positive or negative. It's also not focused or targeted like you seem to suggest. It's random, chaotic, and unfathomably minute in it's possible chances for beneficial by product. Not to get outside my own depth here, but minor mutations occur without ever causing any benefit/negative consequence. We have adapted enough in our environment to not worry about Red hair, or Green eyes, purple eyes, or even physically prohibitive things such as shortness, obesity, brittle bones, Sickle Cell, etc.

By your logic, if I follow it correctly, they would kill any deformity not directly beneficial. Thus making "Evolution" not really a thing.

Mutation and evolution are not the same thing. Mutation is one of the mechanisms that allows evolution.

Evolution by natural selection is about the selective pressures on gene frequencies. If a gene has no negative or positive impact on an organism's survival, no selective pressure is applied. You are now talking about the phenomenon of genetic drift, which is the frequency of genes in a population due to random chance (ie due to reproductive probabilities or unlikely events that are not selective pressures - being struck by lightning for example).

Genes that have no impact on survival and reproduction can passively accumulate, mutate or disappear due to genetic drift. They will continue to do this until they mutate into something that does have an impact on survival, and then selection will act on them.


Your examples of human traits that don't affect our survival include some that do, but which have been offset by other traits (the plasticity genes of our neurons that allow us to think up artificial compensations for sickle cell or brittle bones). So long as our mental genetics allows us to solve failings of our physical genetics, we will continue to consider those traits benign. If at any point we develop mutations that are beyond our mental capabilities, they will have direct selective pressure on our gene frequencies through attrition.

Another layer of complexity is that a single property we have might be the result of several genes working together. Those genes might have beneficial and negative traits attached to them. As a result an overall beneficial property that is preserved generation to generation might well come with negative elements attached to it which don't get selected out because they have less impact than the benefits of those genes. It's the whole "You don't have a gene for a big nose, you have a multitude that result in the promotion and growth of a large nasal system"

And as noted, environment has a huge impact on what we perceive as beneficial and detrimental properties. What can be a benefit in modern life in one culture can be a negative in another. This is even more true when some are totally neutral elements (as we see them) such as eye or hair colour.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
There is no "naturally evolved Species" like the Nids. It would be impossible by the laws of evolution. It would be like saying a "Dark Sun" or a "Dry Puddle". Nothing would "Evolve to naturally destroy itself. It's fairly clear the nids are a weapon gone amuck. The End state of evolution is the best possible off spring, while co-existing in the natural order of it's ecosystem. The end state of the hive mind fleets is the total destruction of all not life not part of itself, as food. It's kind of a mockery of the Necrons. Nids are to Necrons what Dark Eldar are to Eldar. A Pervsion of the same idea, dialed to 11, in the complete opposite direction.

As has been posited above, if a species evolves a natural ability to alter itself, then as soon as it becomes sentient in some way, then it can learn to direct that ability. The natural/undirected bit only needs to take them so far along the process, then they can start altering themselves consciously.

There is no end state to evolution, as the universe is not a static system. Something will always be changing somewhere that will lead to new pressures. Its not so much that the 'nids view everything as food. They are not about destruction, but about assimilation.

While a bio-weapon gone wrong is the easiest answer, I do quite like the idea of them basically as a disaster coming from a natural source.

I like the Eldar comparison. Elegant.

Hellebore put it pretty well. I can only add, as I'm too lazy right now to write a book, is that the Tyranids have a 100% scientific probability of being from the Milky Way Galaxy.

This is a hill I will die on.

 NorthernXY wrote:


This is a hill I will die on.

Worry not, when you die the Tyranids will come and consume you like all others and then return to the dark void of space.


Honestly one of the few things all the lore (character driven and narrator driven) about Tyranids agrees on is that they are from outside of our Galaxy. They don't come from the Milky Way, though there are rumours and hints that some "native" life forms might once have been various advanced scout strains that were so far in advance of the Swarm, that they lost contact, lost aspects of themsleves and became naturalised. At least I recall more than one little snippet of lore saying such might be the case for a few species like the Catachan Devil.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which worked well until the creators were in turn wiped out (by the creatures or their foes or some other catastrophe) and so the secret of the off-switch was lost. Leaving their biological factories to run riot and hyper evolve, eventually becoming the Hive Fleets as we know them.

Doesn't even have to be that. If your idea were true, one possibility could be that a group of them (including the mechanisms needed to reproduce) somehow drifted outside of their creators' galaxy. They could have continued on through the void until they found a new galaxy rich in biomass, taken root, and built up their strength before wreaking havoc on anything and everything within that galaxy.

And their creators could still be back in the original galaxy, completely oblivious to the mess that they accidentally unleashed on the universe.

I dislike any origin for the Tyranids that links them to our galaxy. I think it's much scarier to think they've been drifting through the intergalactic void for untold eons and finally woke up as they approached the edge of our galaxy. I really dislike that they've been linked to the Horus Heresy now as well, awful.

I much prefer them as an inexplicable, lovecraftian force that is totally external to the Milky Way. Making them "All Part Of Da Plan" of the Old Ones is tying everything in the setting up in too nice a bow and makes things too small imo.

As to evolution, the way GW uses the words "gene" "genetic" "evolve" and "mutant" should be punishable in some sort of tribunal!
Way too much fixation on DNA and genes. And an extremely poor understanding of evolution, not quite as bad as Pokemon but getting close to it.

I've not read the HH stuff but I hope its just a "hey what the heck is this xeno thing?" Tyranids appeared in Rogue Trader and they've had hints that they've had agents in the Galaxy for millennia before the main Hive Fleets arrived.


I'm totally ok with them having had agents/scouts appear as tiny seeds.



As for DNA GW goes for the fantasy trope style that basically anyone with a basic school grasp of DNA can understand. Sure they could go further, but they might trip themselves up getting too specific and there's the issue that a lot of people causally really don't understand more than "DNA is the code of life" stuff. Jurassic Park style DNA understanding.

There’s also the competing theory that nasties such as the Catachan Devil are remnants of a previous Hive Fleet.

Now commonly, that’s put down to “Nids are cyclical, and once life has recovered they come back through”.

But…there’s a lot of unknown history in play. Not just 29,000 years of largely unknown human history, but everything before and immediately after The War In Heaven, when the Old Ones went extinct or were driven out of the Galaxy by the newly minted Necrons.

At both those points? The civilisations had ridiculous technology. Like being able to create and destroy Suns, seemingly on a whim.

And whilst it by no means answers “where did Nids come from”? It at the very least presents the argument they have tried to invade our Galaxy before, and just got the absolute snot kicked out of them. So hard and so fast the wider Hive Mind realised to press the attack then risked outright extinction.

So instead, it leaves it be for now. After all, there’s no point trying to gather that biomass if you’re looking, at best, at a pyrrhic victory.

But the location is now known. And marked. And monitored in some fashion. Which could be as simple as constantly seeding Genestealers via whichever mechanism first got them to Ymgarl.

And when the time is right? Start ringing that dinner bell. From there, post-Heresy would seem to be the best opportunity.

The Imperium, Orks and Eldar are all greatly reduced, meaning it’s probably the softest a target the Galaxy has ever really been.

I'm absolutely fine with the idea of vanguard fleets that were there a long time before the main fleets were detected. It's really good background imo.

I believe part of the Heresy plot has the Superfriends of Guilleman, Sanguinius and the Lion trying to light a psychic beacon on Sotha to replace the lost Astronomicon and give them something to steer by.

That's what "woke" the hive fleets up and drew them to our galaxy (this is at least, heavily implied in the book) and why Behemoth attacked Sotha and wiped out the Scythes of the Emperor.

I really dislike this background, as linking everything in the damn game back to the Horus Heresy is NOT a trend that I enjoy.

Not meaning to dispute your opinion, but I kind of like it. It fits the Heresy message of “stop bloody fiddling with things!”, of unintended and unforeseen consequences caused by ignorance.

Yeah, it's fine everyone can like what they like for sure.

But it can read a bit like "Oh hey Tyranids? Your faction is only here because of a side note in this story about Space Marines!"

See also Ullanor being Armageddon (another bit of background I really do not like).

Actually that bit of lore works. It's for a long long time been thought that Astronomicon has an attractive element to the Tyranids like a moth to the Flame*

So the idea that a secondary one that was trying to replace it would have a similar effect, fits really well with the lore.

I do get the desire to not link all the lore to one event/story element (heck see my views on Tyranids and Old Ones earlier); but at the same time the Astronomicon attractive element on Tyranids has been a part of the lore for a good while.


Also note we don't even formally know if it really does attract them; nor what kind of attraction it is. It might just be that they were heading this way anyway and they head in toward it because their first instinct is to pacify and the Astronomicon is a huge "I'm a big powerful target - kill me first"

Heck if Tyranids take it out that messes up Warp travel for a LOT of factions, esp the most wide spread with the Imperium. Shatter that and Tyranids would be free to consume a lot of worlds that suddenly wouldn't have any reinforcements turning up.



*Only Tyranids are more like the flame than the moth and the flame moves and its attracted to the tasty moth!

It's not that it doesn't make sense, as written it does make sense. It's just that I don't like that the Tyranids coming to our galaxy is caused by an argument between Space Marines.