Nothing huge but say half a million of the zoggers, including all the different units a WAGH of that size would contain like mekz, weirdboy's and other things.

I'm not talking about the fact they would always be a menace through spores but the initial attack could we quell it.

Orks might take one good look at Terra and itcs people as they are circa 40,000, see how ugly, desolate and miserable the planet and it's people are and decide to zog straight off back to someplace more cheerful, like Armageddon.

Yes. Only 500,000 orks would be doable. Earth would be infested forever, but we could keep them in check.

Think about the red neck hunters.....oh the tales from a good ork hunting camp. It would be like heaven to some people.

Quotas would be set so that they would not go extinct.
Everyone would plan safari to infested areas....with guides.
Halls and homes would be decorated.
Ork teeth and tusks would find a huge black market niche
Camps and preserves would be in huge demand for the hunters and keep the locals in good economics and safety.

Unfortunately we would have a PETO. People for Ethical Treatment of Orks.

I'm not sure therecs any! Open ground on Terra formwork spores to grow in.

What a testament to the imperium: its holy home world is too foul and vile for orks to live on.

Considering some of the world's leaders at the moment, the orks may be welcomed.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
To answer the actual question 500,000 in an initial assault would not be enough. Most continents have combined armies greater than this. I reckon five million and we quickly get green overlords.

RogalBob SquareFort wrote:
Nothing huge but say half a million of the zoggers, including all the different units a WAGH of that size would contain like mekz, weirdboy's and other things.

I'm not talking about the fact they would always be a menace through spores but the initial attack could we quell it.

Without question, yes, earth could deal with that.

40k is a Tolkien-esque fantasy universe with a scifi skin. Melee combat is emphasized to a far heavier degree than is realistic, and most stuff in 40k doesn't actually do anything that we didnt have fighting machines capable of in the 1940's.

Modern military forces have weapons and capabilities that would make the Eldar blush. I suspect it would not be much of a real fight. 40k doesn't have much in the way of things like cruise missiles, BVR aircraft engagement, radar guided counterbattery artillery fire, etc.

If absolutely nothing else, modern Earth would be much less squeamish about resorting to strategic weapons than factions in 40k tend to be

This actually is an on-topic thread, so I'm moving it to 40K General Discussions.

admironheart wrote:Think about the red neck hunters.....oh the tales from a good ork hunting camp. It would be like heaven to some people.

Quotas would be set so that they would not go extinct.
Everyone would plan safari to infested areas....with guides.
Halls and homes would be decorated.
Ork teeth and tusks would find a huge black market niche
Camps and preserves would be in huge demand for the hunters and keep the locals in good economics and safety.

Unfortunately we would have a PETO. People for Ethical Treatment of Orks.

these people don't actually hunt in a way that puts them in real danger. For every 1000 hunters there might be 1 with the balls to take on an Ork.

Yeah we'd be screwed. All it would take would be 1 ork leader that outsmarts the entirety of conventional military forces. And once they have a wierdboy we are super screwed.

It vastly depend one where and how and where they strike. It also depends at what speed they reproduce and what sort of weapons they are carrying or get their hands on. It also depends on how our very divided planet react to their attack. If we start back stabbing each other for momentary gains we might be in huge trouble.

epronovost wrote:
It vastly depend one where and how and where they strike. It also depends at what speed they reproduce and what sort of weapons they are carrying or get their hands on. It also depends on how our very divided planet react to their attack. If we start back stabbing each other for momentary gains we might be in huge trouble.

We lose if they have mekboys, painboys, or wierd boys, we have nothing our arsenal to deal with psychic threats. We would die simple and easy with our conventional methods.

 Asherian Command wrote:

epronovost wrote:
It vastly depend one where and how and where they strike. It also depends at what speed they reproduce and what sort of weapons they are carrying or get their hands on. It also depends on how our very divided planet react to their attack. If we start back stabbing each other for momentary gains we might be in huge trouble.

We lose if they have mekboys, painboys, or wierd boys, we have nothing our arsenal to deal with psychic threats. We would die simple and easy with our conventional methods.

To be fair, Weirdboyz are about the only thing the modern world doesn't have an equivalent for on some level in large numbers, and they're about as apt to blow themselves up as anything else. I don't see them being more valuable than say, laser guided anti tank missiles, optically assisted assault rifles, precision guided stand off munitions, GPS guided artillery, AA systems that can engage a dozen simultaneous targets from a hundred miles away, integrated control and communications systems that allow any infantry to call in direct artillery support or provide immediate intelligence to any level of command, tanks that can charge over rough ground at highway speeds and hit a moving arget 2km away with a 95% hit rate, etc

I doubt the Orks would not be sneaky if they knew they were outnumbered, they are savage xenos not morons. That job goes to the Adeptus Administratum.

They would probably start small attacking our places with conventional forces, leaving no survivors, entire carvaans go missing in afghanistan, US forces find entire terrorist groups missing or displayed for all to see in city squares.

Orks know how to run terror campaigns and they won't charge willy nilly unless they know they gotz some powerz behind it. Especially with a smart ork or any intelligent one they would begin fightin and growing in size. UN and everyone wouldn't know what to do and we have an awful lot of ground for us to cover, all it takes is one orc group finding a place that no human lives and building up there with stolen tech and wez are screwed.

Considering that the general tactic for Orks invading planets is to ride an asteroid into said planet (more or less) then we might be in a very bad spot to start with. Depending where it hits they could wipe out a huge city; cripple the world with a huge ash cloud; destroy multiple settlments with vast tsunami waves.

That's before we deal with the "what the heck is going on" issue whereby we'd lose important time during which the orks would be reproducing and increasing in number and digging in; during which time we are working out what they are; what to do with them etc....


Technology wise orks are, to my mind, very adaptable. They adapt to their foe in terms of what technology they use. So it wouldn't take them long to advance to deal with the way we conduct war.


I'd say they could be a serious threat, especially if they infest the world to the point where they are hrad to impossible to actually get rid of.

If Earth and its people did win it would be that we barely scraped through and humanity would forever be xenophobic and would always have to deal with some fungal spores. But hey at least we could prove walls don't work if some git has a ladder.

Orks would just build a very complicated structure to knock down anything we would have at that point.

Would be interesting to see how modern militaries would have to deal with orks, or if there would be any humans that would want to join the orks.

I think it's important to remember that while Ork (and other 40K faction) tech looks like it's from WW1/WWII it doesn't perform at that level. Also that the tabletop distorts for gameplay how war is fought in the 41st Millenium.

Orks fight Eldar, Necrons, Tau, Space Marines... I doubt they'd be overly outclassed by anything we could throw at them.

In some areas we'd be totally outclassed. Good luck to any modern day soldier who has to face an Ork in close combat, and with jump backs and teleportas that would not be a rare occurence.

Could 500K Orks conquer Earth? Probably not, but if they landed in a major city we'd not get rid of them without levelling that city to the ground, and even then some of them would survive.

You means Orks landing today right? Imagining humans as still existing in the 41st century is pure fantasy.

Necrons would actually be an improvement to humans unlike Eldar who would think they are an improvement but are really just a bunch of d-bags.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I doubt the Orks would not be sneaky if they knew they were outnumbered, they are savage xenos not morons. That job goes to the Adeptus Administratum.

Ork behavior and cunningness varies....widely.

They would probably start small attacking our places with conventional forces, leaving no survivors, entire carvaans go missing in afghanistan, US forces find entire terrorist groups missing or displayed for all to see in city squares.

Things entering orbit are very easily detected, noticed, and tracked in the modern world. Things going back up even moreso. Particularly in both cases with the typically represented Ork methods (falling in a large rock). Control is typically limited, and often entirely haphazard.

More to the point, how would they know to go to Afghanistan? They wouldn't even know what that is. They wouldnt know what the US is. They wouldn't know the difference between a Pashtun, a Tajik, or an American born in Oakland.

Unless we're assuming a very unorky extended period of anthopological investigation, education, research, etc of modern earth.

Additionally, it's not like disappeard caravans, missing terrorists or gruesomely displayed bodies are exactly anything new or shocking in Afghanistan, that's been par for the course for at least the last 35 years, if not more like 3500

Orks know how to run terror campaigns and they won't charge willy nilly unless they know they gotz some powerz behind it.

On a tactical level? Sure. 100% agreed. If we're talking about fighting over a city or a forest or something, I'm right there with you.

Talking about a strategic invasion of modern earth? This I have trouble following however.

Especially with a smart ork or any intelligent one they would begin fightin and growing in size.

Size on a modern battlefield is a distinct disadvantage. If it can be seen it can be hit, if it can be hit, it can be killed.

While a large monster in 40k is nigh immune to small arms fire, in the real world even multi-ton behemoths of bone and flesh go down quite quickly and easily to modern firearms.

Elephants, Gorillas, Alligators, Bison, Moose, Hippos, etc are all mighty, dangerous creatures. Anyone with an AK47 can relatively easily kill one however.

UN and everyone wouldn't know what to do and we have an awful lot of ground for us to cover, all it takes is one orc group finding a place that no human lives and building up there with stolen tech and wez are screwed.

Well, I'm guessing that the rather unsubtle signals of typical Ork industry would betray such a location in short order. Large weapons factories, mining operations, fuel extraction, etc, all the stuff needed to run a modern war, is not the easiest stuff to build or hide, and isn't usually able to be built just anywhere.

Humans also alread live basically everywhere its possible to do so. If the Orks want to live in the Antarctic, ok, but they'd need to develop an industrial base from scratch capable of matching those of modern developed nations, without anyone finding out, and transport themselves across the seas to attack anyone beyond mcmurdo station

 Jasper wrote:
Considering some of the world's leaders at the moment, the orks may be welcomed.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
To answer the actual question 500,000 in an initial assault would not be enough. Most continents have combined armies greater than this. I reckon five million and we quickly get green overlords.

You may speak in jest, good sir, but I suspect there is much truth in what you say.

I could only imagine the effect on humanity today if a small ork force reached eareth. Proof that alien life exists and [oses a threat. Boy I think we'd see some fences mended quickly and a drive to advance our technology pushed hard.

More to the point, how would they know to go to Afghanistan? They wouldn't even know what that is. They wouldnt know what the US is. They wouldn't know the difference between a Pashtun, a Tajik, or an American born in Oakland.

They wouldn't ork instinict is to go near the biggest baddest fight. Orks as much as 40k art depicts them as fighting in lines don't always fight that way. Skirmishes are far more common than pitched battle lines.

The thing is that the crimson fists have had a very hard time taking out orks across their homeworld, they knew how to detect them but they had ships and transports that outdo everything we currently have. We do not have vast detection systems for asteriods as much as you think, earth is quite defenseless vs the terrestrial.

In terms of terror campaigns i'm not just saying "Oh it will be like humans." No these are aliens that would enslave humanity in a way we've never seen before. Things would be very different and we would know it right away.

Orks would divert from Oakland, CA because of Black Panther.

 Asherian Command wrote:

More to the point, how would they know to go to Afghanistan? They wouldn't even know what that is. They wouldnt know what the US is. They wouldn't know the difference between a Pashtun, a Tajik, or an American born in Oakland.

They wouldn't ork instinict is to go near the biggest baddest fight.

Currently that would be Syria, where the bulk of the worlds intelligence apparati and firepower is already aimed at, and where there arent any good places to hide and build a military war machine (and where all the war materiel present is made elsewhere in the first place to boot).

Orks as much as 40k art depicts them as fighting in lines don't always fight that way. Skirmishes are far more common than pitched battle lines.

Which is fine, but these things are connected. You have a group of Orks show up in Syria, one person with a camera and an internet connection gets them known out to the entire planet. Then this goes from being a tactical engagement and now operational and strategic forces shift into play to address the new threat, and all of a sudden a hit and run BikerBoyz raid gets tracked back to a hideout via satellite and now enough ordnance to flatten a city is dumped on it by cruise missiles, aircraft, GPS guided artillery, and more.

Even if we're talking sneaky git kommandos (far from typical Orks) engagement, travel, and hideout options on a well populated world with globally interconnected communications systems are...limited.

The thing is that the crimson fists have had a very hard time taking out orks across their homeworld, they knew how to detect them but they had ships and transports that outdo everything we currently have. We do not have vast detection systems for asteriods as much as you think, earth is quite defenseless vs the terrestrial.

We dont have defenses against stuff in space really barring nuclear missiles, and we cant see everything floating in the deep void, but we track tens of thousands of pieces or orbiting space debris as small as a few inches across, and damn sure would see anything large entering the atmosphere, or leaving it.

Thats were the transition into the real world falls apart for 40k stuff, because in so many ways we are so much farther ahead technologically, again mainly because 40k is mostly fantasy in a scifi costume.

In terms of terror campaigns i'm not just saying "Oh it will be like humans." No these are aliens that would enslave humanity in a way we've never seen before. Things would be very different and we would know it right away.

I mean, is that really worse than what people faced say, on the Eastern Front in WW2, in the face of the Mongols, or any other number of human conflicts where the outcomes for the losers were mass murder, cultural annihilation, and dismal slavery for the survivors? People stood and fought in those wars on all sides.

Since no one has mentioned it. 500000 orks, that’s 500000 combat troops. Not many militaries in the world can match that. I’d say the orks would fare quite well but in the end would probably loose. But it would be one long war, that may stretch out for many years.

As for the whole fantasy tech thing. 40k tech is superior to our own in every way. Anyone who argues that our tech is somehow better is just wrong. I’m sure the Imperium of man has things like gps, radar, etc, etc. They also have directed energy weapons, space ships, fantastic materials technology.

As for the orks. Their tech may seem primitive but it’s actually quite advanced. They have force fields, tellyportas, genetically ingrained training. The orks themselves are a technological weapon. An organic one, but they bring a whole ecosystem designed for one purpose, war. 500000 orks would be big trouble for earth today.

SpookyRuben wrote:
Since no one has mentioned it. 500000 orks, that’s 500000 combat troops. Not many militaries in the world can match that. I’d say the orks would fare quite well but in the end would probably loose. But it would be one long war, that may stretch out for many years.

As for the whole fantasy tech thing. 40k tech is superior to our own in every way. Anyone who argues that our tech is somehow better is just wrong. I’m sure the Imperium of man has things like gps, radar, etc, etc. They also have directed energy weapons, space ships, fantastic materials technology.

This is a universe where starship turrets are hauled onto target by literal chain-gangs of impressed slave-sailors turning giant gear cogs. Where tanks are deployed as combat assault transports but lack the ground clearance to crest a steep driveway or parking lot speed-bump, and other heavy battle tanks have turrets so small it's anatomically impossible to actually stand in the hatch (much less fit three crew in the turret) as the gun breach takes up the most of the internal turret space, yes, even in a technical Imperial Armour drawing. Where air combat is conducted almost exclusively at dogfighting ranges with visual range weapons. A universe where massed mobs of hatchet wielding people running across an empty field can aren't instantly all massacred in the blink of an eye when faced with automatic weapons fire, and where experienced combat commanders routinely walk about the front under direct fire without head protection and in bright primary colors with heaps of iconography to mark out how special they are. Where a modern every day cellphone has capabilities, information access, and a ubiquity that would be unthinkable. A universe where the primary human fighting force doesn't necessarily even all have radios at the squad level. A universe where, what they do have, they mostly do not understand.


It is a strange place

I’ll admit they take some liberties for storytelling and model design lol. But for all it’s strangeness and quirky qualities the 40k universe is leaps and bounds ahead of us with respect to technology.

A lot of this comes down to how concentrated they are and how quickly humanity figures out how they work. If they invade across the world, many more isolated and less populated regions are going to get hit hard in the initial invasion. Many cities, especially the bigger ones are going to be a mess if commerce/utilities are knocked out for more than a week or two.

I'd imagine that once the worlds various armed forces got up to speed, we would win the initial fight. It would be bloody considering some of the more bonkers things orks can pull off and they're near total lack of worry of collateral damage. The big issue is how quick we realize that unless you burn all the bodies, give it a few years and we have the same problem again and again. It's very hard to root out orks once they hit a planet.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
A lot of this comes down to how concentrated they are and how quickly humanity figures out how they work. If they invade across the world, many more isolated and less populated regions are going to get hit hard in the initial invasion. Many cities, especially the bigger ones are going to be a mess if commerce/utilities are knocked out for more than a week or two.

I'd imagine that once the worlds various armed forces got up to speed, we would win the initial fight. It would be bloody considering some of the more bonkers things orks can pull off and they're near total lack of worry of collateral damage. The big issue is how quick we realize that unless you burn all the bodies, give it a few years and we have the same problem again and again. It's very hard to root out orks once they hit a planet.

Plus they multiply like bunnies.

As the first Independence Day has shown us, no alien invasion can stand up to Earth's military power as long as we have Will Smith and a redneck in a jet.

"Welcome to 'urf" alien scum. We are ready.

There are people in some america states that could likely kill an ork just by breathing at him.

And if all else fails we could drive orks to mass suicide by playing disco at them...

 Asherian Command wrote:

epronovost wrote:
It vastly depend one where and how and where they strike. It also depends at what speed they reproduce and what sort of weapons they are carrying or get their hands on. It also depends on how our very divided planet react to their attack. If we start back stabbing each other for momentary gains we might be in huge trouble.

We lose if they have mekboys, painboys, or wierd boys, we have nothing our arsenal to deal with psychic threats. We would die simple and easy with our conventional methods.

Weirdboyz blow themselves up in no time and they have zero defences vs cruise missiles. The moment location of one is known lob in missile. Boom. Done.

Let's be honest, guys. One daisy cutter bomb is gonna exterminate a 2,000 point army in 40k.

500, 000 combat troops. Who cannot be cut off from their logistical support because they sleep anywhere eat anything, don't need resupply because they shoot by making pew pew noises instead of bullets.

They don't need medical teams (but have ones so effective they can get soldiers back into the same fight). They are never scared or intimadated, so they don't panic, run or surrender.

The weekest soldier can shoot, move, and comunicate. Won't wimp out, won't go to sick call, and won't try to stay in the FOB.

The initial city will fall in less than a day. Chaos (descriptor not faction) will spread from there. It won't take long to reach a loose containment less than a week unless they land somewhere that for logistical and geopolitical reasons major militarys can't be deployed. But then in the fallen city wierd things would start to happen as the Mechboys start building. And I have a strong suspicion Wierd boys and the Warp would do a number on all our precision guidence systems.

Previous posters have hit really good points:

1) making groundfall for the orks would be the hardest part; they really aren't very likely to survive this, but many small roks spread out over several continents have a better chance than one large one.

2) if they did successfully land, the internet would identify and sit-rep the planet in a matter of hours; here the effected would be compounded by an ork attack on multiple fronts, not diminshed by it

3) if the attacks were as savage as they would be, and a city was about to fall, I believe that the entire city would be carpet bombed into a radioactive crater that made neighbouring cities unlivable for decade.

Not even the flies and roaches in the vicinity of those blasts would survive. And they don't need precision guidance, because they a designed to annihilate large areas. And there is layered redundancy to compensate for countermeasures.

Depending upon the city or cities under attack, there may be some hand-ringing about using nukes, but once they figure out the disease threat, final quarantine would be deemed an appropriate response.

While the sky is very well covered by long range weapons and rapid response fighters, there probably are some areas on the ground that are outside long range missile capacity, and if the orks got lucky and found one, their survivability would increase.

Civilian panic in dense cities is more of a threat than the orks themselves.

Headlss wrote:
Who cannot be cut off from their logistical support because they sleep anywhere eat anything, don't need resupply because they shoot by making pew pew noises instead of bullets.

That's not how it works

Headlss wrote:
They are never scared or intimadated, so they don't panic, run or surrender.

They do so constantly, I am not sure what books you've been reading

Headlss wrote:
The weekest soldier can shoot, move, and comunicate. Won't wimp out, won't go to sick call, and won't try to stay in the FOB.

Grots won't wimp out? Uh...

As far as the orks 'after' the main force was conquered. There have been numerous pieces of lore of 'feral' orks.

Basically the orks are operating at the fanatasy level unitl they band enough of them together to fight more modern.

So yes those trained local hunters would love to band together in groups of 8 to 12 to hunt one lone ork. Hunters go after Lions and Elephants all the time.....not necessarily legal. They just use bigger guns.

My employee loves shooting his 50 cal thru hardened target steel. I bet the orks get murdered by the thousands after they respawn.

Now the fun begins when more than 1 ork....and even much larger cunning bands kill some hunting parties and lure in a military response to a trap.....then it escalates.

As far as missiles go and such. The space battles and other large stories talk of death strike missiles, exterminatus, etc. There are all sorts of orbital constructs that can defend a 40k imperial planet.
So I think they have far more advanced tech in those areas. WE have very little in the way of orbital defenses.

Agent orange?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Agent orange?

You would kill people much more reliably with that then orks who are immune or extraordinarly resistent to most form of poison, radiation and toxic envirionment. An ork spore can surive for years in the vacuum of space and orks could fight in the radioactive wasteland of Armageddon. If they started to use "dirty" weapons we could face serious problems. Orks don't care about radioactive wasteland, but we do.

Question. Do the orks have any kind of space presence. Cause if they do, our changes get a lot worse. Barring some kind of hidden technology (totally possible) even the most advanced nations don't have tech that could hit a fast moving object in space that can both quickly change it's course and fire back. Even a small ork kruzer would be a massive trump card.

If the orks knock out all of our satellites that's a huge blow to most armies from the bigger/more advanced nations. If they start bombing cities from orbit, civilian panic is going to cause just as many if not more problems then the orks on the ground themselves.

doubt it even if the first several engagements went bad im pretty sure against an alien invasion we would simply nuke the concentrated portion then simply run clean up for the rest of time but no serious threat of the world falling to that number

epronovost wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Agent orange?

You would kill people much more reliably with that then orks who are immune or extraordinarly resistent to most form of poison, radiation and toxic envirionment. An ork spore can surive for years in the vacuum of space and orks could fight in the radioactive wasteland of Armageddon. If they started to use "dirty" weapons we could face serious problems. Orks don't care about radioactive wasteland, but we do.

We could engineer chemicals specifically to be anti fungal agents. Also, if orks are organic, biological beings ionizing radiation will kill their cells and damage their dna no matter how loud they waaauuugh!, so neutron bombs become valid weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb


Areas infested by orks could be patrolled by armed guards for years if need be to kill emerging orks as soon as they stick their heads up from the ground. Also the ground could bge swept with heavy duty microwave emitters to kill gestating orks spores.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
We could engineer chemicals specifically to be anti fungal agents. Also, if orks are organic, biological beings ionizing radiation will kill their cells and damage their dna no matter how loud they waaauuugh!, so neutron bombs become valid weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb


Areas infested by orks could be patrolled by armed guards for years if need be to kill emerging orks as soon as they stick their heads up from the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

We would be armed by those weapons far more then we would hurt them. Orks have survived and even grew stronger after eating kilos of radioactice waste are a thing in the fluff. I doubt a neutron bomb would be an ideal way to get rid of them even though it could kill them. We would suffer from the massive side-effect of these weapons far sooner and more then they would. They, on the other end, will not hesitate to use similar weapons against us.

Could Earth hold out ? Probably, if several countries united their forces. Would they though ? Probably not.

Let's face it : it's been 5 years and ISIS has not yet been defeated, despite being on the same attrocity level as Nazies. Our governments are for the most part composed of people who would see the Earth burn if they could make any profit from it (ans that's actually what they're doing). Orks would destroy us one after the other.

I dunno. Isis has a big support base in the Islamic world and influentinial countries like Saudi Arabia are backing it.

What support base would green man eating monsters from space have?

Also an honest to ghawd alien menace from space is gonna unite a lot of people.

 Nym wrote:
Could Earth hold out ? Probably, if several countries united their forces. Would they though ? Probably not.

Let's face it : it's been 5 years and ISIS has not yet been defeated, despite being on the same attrocity level as Nazies. Our governments are for the most part composed of people who would see the Earth burn if they could make any profit from it (ans that's actually what they're doing). Orks would destroy us one after the other.

The difference is that the Nazis were a governmental, military force. The only way to wipe out ISIS is to exceed even Stalin on the Crimes Against Humanity scale.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Nym wrote:
Could Earth hold out ? Probably, if several countries united their forces. Would they though ? Probably not.

Let's face it : it's been 5 years and ISIS has not yet been defeated, despite being on the same attrocity level as Nazies. Our governments are for the most part composed of people who would see the Earth burn if they could make any profit from it (ans that's actually what they're doing). Orks would destroy us one after the other.

The difference is that the Nazis were a governmental, military force. The only way to wipe out ISIS is to exceed even Stalin on the Crimes Against Humanity scale.

Also the orks are literally not human, and quite self evidently so. There would be no empathy for them, no hesitation, no compassion, no mercy for them and no children to have compunctions for.

Given what humans have done to their own kind thru history I almost pity the orks for what it would do to them....

It would depend entirely on how fast Orks replicate in a given setting. Something which has been retconned, massaged and described in a dozen different ways. If...killing an Ork produces another one or ten in a month - Earth is screwed. Technologically we'd actually be fine, particularly against a number as small as 500,000.

In many ways we have tech that far exceeds that used in the common 40K setting, outside of not having access to silly power weapons for close combat (something we'd more or less ignore as we'd be engaging at BVR-esque levels). Do we have the tech, manpower, and firepower to deal with something like an Ork invasion? Yes. If they reproduce super fast or efficiently - depending on which source of Ork fluff you're reading, then that's a genuine problem, but even then it'd be a life-long task of cleaning up remnants and small groups for the remaining time on Earth.

I think they'd learn to burn ork bodies and possibly sew the ground with a Fungicide to kill spores.

Also killing large swathe of orks with napalm would help with the spore thing.

Just for the record, i'd be vastly more afraid of a single genestealer reaching earth than a ten thousand orks.

I can almost hear inquisitor Kryptman congratulating me on my wisdom...

If they landed in the correct place in the world they may well be a gigantic problem before they were even noticed. It depends on how fast they start reproducing.

Rural parts of the world were they landed would be chaos. You wouldn't even know where to fight them at until they got established enough to be seen by satellite. You might be lucky to guard cities with modern military and play scorched earth with lands that have been infested.

It's also questionable about what could happen once anything claiming to be modern military turned up in Ork hands. Why would an ork hesitate to use a payload on anything? Our largest cities would look like the bigger fight that every ork is drawn to, and they would likely use any devastating weapon they could find without thought to civilian casualties. We'd have our entire way of life to lose.

While we making pretty pictures and good music, orkz are fightin n winnin
While we are playing and watching sports for funsies, orkz are fightn n winnin
While we are having trouble distinguishing what gender we are and in what restroom we use in public places, orkz is fightn n peein.
While our kids are trying to learn about literary elements found in books written two hundred years ago, orkz is fightn n winnin
While we are awkwardly dating one another to carefully select a mate who we might procreate with, orkz is fightn n reproducin

Really, how fast orkz reproduce and where they landed at would be very important.

I reckon the best landing spots for them would be the Rainforests around the equator.
Cover from most satellite detection, plenty of shade for their spores to grow in.
And the Vietnam war shows how difficult fighting in a jungle is. Terrible visual range, tonnes of cover and concealment for the greenskins. And vehicles would be practically useless which is where humans (in theory) would have the largest advantage

Pulsa rokkets ftw

For starters , we’d see them coming because the size of any Roks or hulks would be larger than the usual asteroids etc Ofds that the Orks can even get ground faced with a planet worth of anti air firepower ?

Fluff wise the Orks do best when attacking without warning before superior imperial tech can be brought to bear. They entrench in urban areas and use Slaves to create new weapons.

If they make it onto the ground. Different story because we’ve never faced anything like them and most military forces are trained currently on anti insurgent / peacekeeping missions and not warfare against alien races who shrug off basic weapon hits and are brutal in close quarters.

Any conflict ends up being that familiar curve of any time in history where an enemy has taken the West by surprise- initial victory and consolidates until the inevitable fight back where greater numbers , technology and strategy begin to tell. Air power is the winner because our tech in terms of air to air is beyond that in 40k (leaving aside lascannons). Abilities like stealth and beyond visual range missile , our ability to bomb them into dust from the edge of the atmosphere etc

Hardest part would be that you’d end up with their initial areas of occupation essentially lost - they’d be sacrificed. Best part is the tech bonanza afterwards and you’d probably end up with a relatively unified planet that is going to use that tech.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
For starters , we’d see them coming because the size of any Roks or hulks would be larger than the usual asteroids etc Ofds that the Orks can even get ground faced with a planet worth of anti air firepower ?

Fluff wise the Orks do best when attacking without warning before superior imperial tech can be brought to bear. They entrench in urban areas and use Slaves to create new weapons.

If they make it onto the ground. Different story because we’ve never faced anything like them and most military forces are trained currently on anti insurgent / peacekeeping missions and not warfare against alien races who shrug off basic weapon hits and are brutal in close quarters.

Any conflict ends up being that familiar curve of any time in history where an enemy has taken the West by surprise- initial victory and consolidates until the inevitable fight back where greater numbers , technology and strategy begin to tell. Air power is the winner because our tech in terms of air to air is beyond that in 40k (leaving aside lascannons). Abilities like stealth and beyond visual range missile , our ability to bomb them into dust from the edge of the atmosphere etc



Hardest part would be that you’d end up with their initial areas of occupation essentially lost - they’d be sacrificed. Best part is the tech bonanza afterwards and you’d probably end up with a relatively unified planet that is going to use that tech.

I agree with some of what you said but it's been made pretty clear other races can't use orktech because it relies on orks believing it works.

I like how bad sense of scale of this thread is. Going from 'trashing a city' (which the orks could probably do) to even 'conquering a country' is a huge leap, never mind going on a campaign of a world conquest. 500.000 is really tiny amount, to give you perspective, that wouldn't even man French front in 1914. That is even less than the Brits lost in battle of Somme alone. Never mind fighting something on the scale of WW2, mere half a million is half the troops Napoleon had. And he didn't even have enough to conquer half of Europe...

SpookyRuben wrote:
Since no one has mentioned it. 500000 orks, that’s 500000 combat troops. Not many militaries in the world can match that.

Actually, that is 10x less than Germany alone fielded like 70 years ago. And even with current army cuts, that is like 1/5 of what Europe alone can field without mobilization.

As for the whole fantasy tech thing. 40k tech is superior to our own in every way. Anyone who argues that our tech is somehow better is just wrong. I’m sure the Imperium of man has things like gps, radar, etc, etc. They also have directed energy weapons, space ships, fantastic materials technology.

Wrong. Individually, ork piece of equipment is better. So what? Ork gun might be better than M-16, but it sure as hell isn't better than 30 mm cannon on IFV. Ork rocket might be better than what modern soldiers carry, but it's 1) really inaccurate, 2) we probably have a lot more military vehicles than they do rockets. And once they run out of their magical future materials, they need to build using Earth era scrap. Guess what that will do to quality of their arms? How much ammo orks even carry typically, even not accounting for wasting it randomly all the time?

As for the orks. Their tech may seem primitive but it’s actually quite advanced. They have force fields, tellyportas, genetically ingrained training. The orks themselves are a technological weapon. An organic one, but they bring a whole ecosystem designed for one purpose, war. 500000 orks would be big trouble for earth today.

Eh, if PDF can beat orks, current militaries can do so too. 40K PDF even uses similar stuff to modern equipment, sure, it might be a bit better, but we have tons of it and unlike PDF in IoM our armed forces have integral, massive air support. Orks might be tough, but what can they do against SDB dropped right on their heads? Do they even have anything outside their planes that can shoot down Earth planes and cruise missiles in fluff?

Incidentally, I have seen calculations done by bored soldiers on how to deal with (not orks, but quite similar race) alien horde. Solution is actually very simple and cheap - dust off plans for M270 MLRS (or Soviet equivalent), and start pumping out missiles by the thousands. If orks disperse, they can be picked off by tanks and IFVs. If they mass, dozen M270s can blanket a square kilometre of land with enough shrapnel to tear everything to ribbons, from 40 km away. Then reload and repeat it after 5 minutes. And these things can be made by hundreds if USA or Russia actually got serious and went on war footing. How would orks even counter that?

 Irbis wrote:
I like how bad sense of scale of this thread is. Going from 'trashing a city' (which the orks could probably do) to even 'conquering a country' is a huge leap, never mind going on a campaign of a world conquest. 500.000 is really tiny amount, to give you perspective, that wouldn't even man French front in 1914. That is even less than the Brits lost in battle of Somme alone. Never mind fighting something on the scale of WW2, mere half a million is half the troops Napoleon had. And he didn't even have enough to conquer half of Europe...

SpookyRuben wrote:
Since no one has mentioned it. 500000 orks, that’s 500000 combat troops. Not many militaries in the world can match that.

Actually, that is 10x less than Germany alone fielded like 70 years ago. And even with current army cuts, that is like 1/5 of what Europe alone can field without mobilization.

As for the whole fantasy tech thing. 40k tech is superior to our own in every way. Anyone who argues that our tech is somehow better is just wrong. I’m sure the Imperium of man has things like gps, radar, etc, etc. They also have directed energy weapons, space ships, fantastic materials technology.

Wrong. Individually, ork piece of equipment is better. So what? Ork gun might be better than M-16, but it sure as hell isn't better than 30 mm cannon on IFV. Ork rocket might be better than what modern soldiers carry, but it's 1) really inaccurate, 2) we probably have a lot more military vehicles than they do rockets. And once they run out of their magical future materials, they need to build using Earth era scrap. Guess what that will do to quality of their arms? How much ammo orks even carry typically, even not accounting for wasting it randomly all the time?

As for the orks. Their tech may seem primitive but it’s actually quite advanced. They have force fields, tellyportas, genetically ingrained training. The orks themselves are a technological weapon. An organic one, but they bring a whole ecosystem designed for one purpose, war. 500000 orks would be big trouble for earth today.

Eh, if PDF can beat orks, current militaries can do so too. 40K PDF even uses similar stuff to modern equipment, sure, it might be a bit better, but we have tons of it and unlike PDF in IoM our armed forces have integral, massive air support. Orks might be tough, but what can they do against SDB dropped right on their heads? Do they even have anything outside their planes that can shoot down Earth planes and cruise missiles in fluff?

Incidentally, I have seen calculations done by bored soldiers on how to deal with (not orks, but quite similar race) alien horde. Solution is actually very simple and cheap - dust off plans for M270 MLRS (or Soviet equivalent), and start pumping out missiles by the thousands. If orks disperse, they can be picked off by tanks and IFVs. If they mass, dozen M270s can blanket a square kilometre of land with enough shrapnel to tear everything to ribbons, from 40 km away. Then reload and repeat it after 5 minutes. And these things can be made by hundreds if USA or Russia actually got serious and went on war footing. How would orks even counter that?

Hell, even the classic soviet Katyusha rocket batteries could play merry hell with orks. Also as I said earlier good old fashioned daisy cutters would make a mess of a lot of orks in one go.

I would just hope to all hell the orks didn't have themselves any blood axes with them or, ghawd forbid!, the force was mostly blood axes. Those bastards would be the most dangerous ones of all. They've be willing to make deals with humans willing to sell out their own kind for their own sake and we all knowmtherecs be plenty of them. Plus they get strategy, tactics, organization, etc.

Depends on where they landed. If they landed in a third world country, they'd take over rather quickly, and spread like the plague, multiplying long before we could manage to put them down, possibly causing us to lose an entire continent or two before we contained them and putting us in a constant state of war.

Then again, I honestly can't see humanity uniting fast enough to deal with it, even if they landed in a first world country, as divided as we are right now. It'd probably trigger world war 3, with countries opportunistically taking advantage of the conflict to do some land grabs, giving the Orks a chance to become entrenched.

Thing is, sure, if we were prepared for war RIGHT NOW, we could easily handle that. But an army of 500,000 killing machines far more durable than humanity, that reproduce by dying and fighting, just suddenly appearing out of nowhere without warning or preparation, with the objective of conquest? That would very likely allow them to take over entire countries or even continents before we really reacted in today's politics.

Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

 Jasper wrote:
Considering some of the world's leaders at the moment, the orks may be welcomed.

Maybe I won't throw out my boys milk teeth yet, just in case...

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

I commend your faith in humanity. But I gotta disagree. They'd see Orks as a tool to accomplish their own geopolitical objectives. Humans are complete bastards.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Question. Do the orks have any kind of space presence. Cause if they do, our changes get a lot worse. Barring some kind of hidden technology (totally possible) even the most advanced nations don't have tech that could hit a fast moving object in space that can both quickly change it's course and fire back. Even a small ork kruzer would be a massive trump card.

If the orks knock out all of our satellites that's a huge blow to most armies from the bigger/more advanced nations. If they start bombing cities from orbit, civilian panic is going to cause just as many if not more problems then the orks on the ground themselves.

Indeed. Humanity today would have serious trouble engaging any 40k-era starship, especially a capital ship. Proper saturation orbital fire can make a real mess of planned modern warfare.

Other than that, have a look at John Ringo's Posleen saga. It's a pretty good idea of what a massed ork invasion would be like.

500,000 orks the world could handle. It'd be sucky to be wherever they landed, but they're not going to conquer the world.
5,000,000 orks? That's more of a problem, because you're not going to wipe them out before they get their feet under them, and spores, looted assets and crude industry starts supporting the initial 'drop'

To put it into scale, the rough estimate of the armageddon invasion based on the old campaign codex was about 4,000,000 ork boyz, 100,000 artillery gunboyz, 300,000 speed freaks, about 100 gargants and 200 battle fortresses.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Nym wrote:
Could Earth hold out ? Probably, if several countries united their forces. Would they though ? Probably not.

Let's face it : it's been 5 years and ISIS has not yet been defeated, despite being on the same attrocity level as Nazies. Our governments are for the most part composed of people who would see the Earth burn if they could make any profit from it (ans that's actually what they're doing). Orks would destroy us one after the other.

The difference is that the Nazis were a governmental, military force. The only way to wipe out ISIS is to exceed even Stalin on the Crimes Against Humanity scale.

Also the orks are literally not human, and quite self evidently so. There would be no empathy for them, no hesitation, no compassion, no mercy for them and no children to have compunctions for.

Given what humans have done to their own kind thru history I almost pity the orks for what it would do to them....

Unless you get people worshipping the Orks.

We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

locarno24 wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Question. Do the orks have any kind of space presence. Cause if they do, our changes get a lot worse. Barring some kind of hidden technology (totally possible) even the most advanced nations don't have tech that could hit a fast moving object in space that can both quickly change it's course and fire back. Even a small ork kruzer would be a massive trump card.

If the orks knock out all of our satellites that's a huge blow to most armies from the bigger/more advanced nations. If they start bombing cities from orbit, civilian panic is going to cause just as many if not more problems then the orks on the ground themselves.

Indeed. Humanity today would have serious trouble engaging any 40k-era starship, especially a capital ship. Proper saturation orbital fire can make a real mess of planned modern warfare.

Other than that, have a look at John Ringo's Posleen saga. It's a pretty good idea of what a massed ork invasion would be like.

500,000 orks the world could handle. It'd be sucky to be wherever they landed, but they're not going to conquer the world.
5,000,000 orks? That's more of a problem, because you're not going to wipe them out before they get their feet under them, and spores, looted assets and crude industry starts supporting the initial 'drop'

To put it into scale, the rough estimate of the armageddon invasion based on the old campaign codex was about 4,000,000 ork boyz, 100,000 artillery gunboyz, 300,000 speed freaks, about 100 gargants and 200 battle fortresses.

but Armageddon is largely inhospitible to humans but inhabitable to orks. There are swaves of land and sea for the orks to hide, multiply and asset strip in.

Orks would never be defeated proper on Earth. Someone is bound to try farm them for the oddboyz. If you could RND from Ork level technology you'd be bound to make some very profitable discoveries.

Coastal deserts, Antarctica and rain forests could all culture some mean orks.

There are also lots of subterranean environments on Earth that are barely explored.

 Melissia wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

I commend your faith in humanity. But I gotta disagree. They'd see Orks as a tool to accomplish their own geopolitical objectives. Humans are complete bastards.

I understand your cynical view of humanity and generally agree with it. Still being eaten is a primal fear in humans and once it was made clear orks ate humans that would trigger a primordial fear response.

Also xenophobia would be a factor.

I think people also overlook The Big Picture here. Orks reaching earth would be a paradigm shift in history. We would finally know baying a doubt we are not the only technological society in the universe, there is at least one other sentient species and they are HOSTILE.

The human race would not be the same again.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

I commend your faith in humanity. But I gotta disagree. They'd see Orks as a tool to accomplish their own geopolitical objectives. Humans are complete bastards.

I understand your cynical view of humanity and generally agree with it. Still being eaten is a primal fear in humans and once it was made clear orks ate humans that would trigger a primordial fear response.

Also xenophobia would be a factor.

I think people also overlook The Big Picture here. Orks reaching earth would be a paradigm shift in history. We would finally know baying a doubt we are not the only technological society in the universe, there is at least one other sentient species and they are HOSTILE.

The human race would not be the same again.

The downside that even if we were to exterminate them completely, just having that knowledge would do little to help us. If it was Tau or Imperium, we'd at least have a chance at reproducing the tech and moving on from there to be better prepared to face the next Big Bad to come our way. Ork tech, rather like Eldar and Necron tech, relies too much on the possessor to create, be created, or even simply use, and the less said about a Tyranid invasion, the better.

We'd still be stuck on this rock with our same tech level, no advent of Psykers, Emperor, or Dark Age Technology to recover to bolster our defenses, combined with a retained massive level of political distrust between major planetary powers. We'd be scrambling to build our tech base up to try and reach out to the rest of the galaxy before they could shut our planet down. The competition between the nations would either accelerate this development, if kept 'friendly', or destroy us if kept adversarial.

The real question is, are Orks a vegetable or a meat?

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

We don't.

The whole point is that once orks are introduced they would stay in our ecosystem or fauna would morph or world would be doomed. They will return bigger badder than ever.

All it takes is one ork to lead the horde, and we are done.

We have to remember that we wouldn't know they reproduced and spread by spores. And that we have to hit them hard and fast with overwhelming firepower. We would underestimate their ability to withstand damage and be mindful of causing collateral damage. By the time we realise what to do they would be so wide spread that we would not be able to eliminate them spore and all. Thoroughly burning a few square kilometres is one thing but thoroughly burning a few thousand square kilometres is another.

We'd find out how they bred when someone saw an ork emerging, and started digging up emboyonic orks.

We would totally know, there are quite a lot of 40k nerds in the military.

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

Yes we can and we have in several cases. It's just expensive to do and the cost-benefit is not always perceived to be worth it by the people with the money.

 Flinty wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

Yes we can and we have in several cases. It's just expensive to do and the cost-benefit is not always perceived to be worth it by the people with the money.

There is also a huge difference between combating a bark beetle and something much larger and aggressive. The beetles are difficult to spot and you cannot be sure you got them all. The orks aren't going to be hiding.

The thing about 40K armies is they’re ridiculously tiny. For example, Earth today (one of its more peaceful eras) has more than 27 million people serving in various militaries. During wartime (e.g., U.S. during WW II), you’ll have 10% or more of your population in service. With the world’s current population of 7.6 billion, that’s 760+ million people in military service once we’re mobilized.

The idea that 500k orks would even remotely resemble a serious threat is ridiculous. Even the 4 million mentioned for Armageddon is ridiculously small.

Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

Modern militaries rely very heavily on information, on knowing where their opponent is and predicting their actions and reacting accordingly. Surprise attacks are the surest way to throw a modern military off. As most modern militaries have mostly been dealing with "over there" wars rather htan defensive ones, I actually can see something like Orks conquering part of the US, Russia, China, or EU before being stopped and held at bay, and becoming a permanent fixture on our planet.

And if they landed in a third world region like sub-Saharan Africa or South America, I find it unlikely we'd respond in time before they, again, became a permanent fixture, and a much larger one than the previous scenario, at that.

Unlike with modern militaries, 500k orks is literally 500k fighters, not 100k fighters and 400k support staff (taken as a whole, 1 in five soldiers being frontline fighters is actually quite generous to a modern army; the US air force has one in twenty, while the US navy has one in ten, and the US army tries to boast somewhere between one in five and one in four).

It's unlikely they'd quickly conquer the planet. But a part of it? Definitely. And from there, it all depends on way too many factors to guess. Can think of numerous scenarios where we win, and where we don't, and where we end up having a permanent stalemate.

 Melissia wrote:
Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

That's the biggest issue actually. They can deploy anywhere at any time. If they want to teleport and take the pentagon, the kremlin and two nuclear silos at the same time before we even know we are at war, they can. Then they can launch the missiles wherever they want and while the world most powerful army has lost its strategic center, its commanding officers and some of its most powerful weapons. That's the first six hours of hte war btw, a few cities are destroyed in nuclear blast as orks turn our weapons against us and kill our biggest concentration of troops. Half our best military assets are deployed around the world in peace and counter terrorist mission. The orks either dig into those fortresses and take over important urban center nearby that are now completely defenceless when faced by an army of this size or simply teleport away to another bigger fight. If you want some real world number, the city of Aleppo, a city of 4.5 million people was wrestled away from the Syrian goverment control by a militia with little military equipment and training numbering at around 20 000 and was reconquered four years later by an army of around 30 000 soldiers. If a city gets attacked by surprise, people don't rise as a militia and are ready to fight. It's total Chaos and people try to flee as fast as possible creating even more panic and Chaos.

epronovost wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

That's the biggest issue actually. They can deploy anywhere at any time. If they want to teleport and take the pentagon, the kremlin and two nuclear silos at the same time before we even know we are at war, they can. Then they can launch the missiles wherever they want and while the world most powerful army has lost its strategic center, its commanding officers and some of its most powerful weapons. That's the first six hours of hte war btw, a few cities are destroyed in nuclear blast as orks turn our weapons against us and kill our biggest concentration of troops. Half our best military assets are deployed around the world in peace and counter terrorist mission. The orks either dig into those fortresses and take over important urban center nearby that are now completely defenceless when faced by an army of this size or simply teleport away to another bigger fight. If you want some real world number, the city of Aleppo, a city of 4.5 million people was wrestled away from the Syrian goverment control by a militia with little military equipment and training numbering at around 20 000 and was reconquered four years later by an army of around 30 000 soldiers. If a city gets attacked by surprise, people don't rise as a militia and are ready to fight. It's total Chaos and people try to flee as fast as possible creating even more panic and Chaos.

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation. They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

The bombs launched by the bombers, though, are a different story. The only other question is if they would consider the positive ramifications of nuclear strikes (enemy dead with a big boomy) as well as the negative ones (such as not having anyone to fight in the area).

If this was a Chaos Marine force, you bring up very valid points, but not necessarily one I would consider for Orks who tend to fight just to fight and only escalate to what they are fighting.

 Charistoph wrote:

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation.

They did used it on several planets with great efficency even back when this was supposed to be a new technology for the Orks.

They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

In a half a million horde of Orks, there will be several meks, docs and weirdboys. Plus ballistic missiles of that sort are far from unknown to orks. Deathstrikes missiles are supposed to be long range missiles with some powerful enough to destroy entire continents. Orks also have similar tech themselves.

epronovost wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation.

They did used it on several planets with great efficency even back when this was supposed to be a new technology for the Orks.

For the ones that made it, yes.

epronovost wrote:

They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

In a half a million horde of Orks, there will be several meks, docs and weirdboys. Plus ballistic missiles of that sort are far from unknown to orks. Deathstrikes missiles are supposed to be long range missiles with some powerful enough to destroy entire continents. Orks also have similar tech themselves.

The first part was all the traps set up to ensure against an accidental firing. Wierd boyz would probably be able to figure out, but they'd actually have to be at the firing location. They may not be in time to figure it out and fire it.

The use factor was being based more on desirability than actual capability. A lot depends on who is at the button at the time, and if they have a commander savvy enough to take advantage of using such strategic weapons. Just because you're the Boss of 500,000 Orks doesn't make you Gorgutz, after all.

 Melissia wrote:
I actually can see something like Orks conquering part of the US, Russia, China, or EU before being stopped and held at bay, and becoming a permanent fixture on our planet.

They would definitely become a permanent feature of the planet, but 500,000 would not be enough to take over unless they had some space ships with them. If they literally just crash landed on a couple Roks we could survive.

The likely end result is the Orks are eventually relegated to a few occupied zones that periodically launch raids into human territory, and we just have to continuously cull them with large attacks to keep the population down. Which is how Ork invasions are usually portrayed in 40k. The Orks attack and are eventually defeated, but the planet will forever have a population of orks that has to be dealt with on a regular basis. Earth would gain some new species as orkoid fungus, Squigs, and Squiggoths became part of the environment.

I would think to teleport 'anywhere at any time' you would need real time intel of the landing sites and about perfect geo-int of the locations as well. Not sure how they infiltrate the sensors/observers to gather that intel to enable the teleport 'anywhere at any time'.

And frankly taking the Pentagon (or even destroying it) doesn't really hurt the field commanders fighting the invasion. The Pentagon is not the HQ that is responsible for active campaigning at all. Pretty sure the same holds true for the Kremlin.

You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

Teleporting into empty desert/middle of the ocean/amazon jungle and so on would wear thin quickly. Teleporting and ending up in a block of granite would be pretty crappy too. I know we're talking sic-fi 'magic' versus real world. If they really are just teleporting around willy-nilly they won't be too hard to handle, and they wouldn't do too much damage all that quickly at all, so I have to assume there is SOME basic targeting going on and some level of organization. Otherwise they would spend all their time teleporting through the emptiness of space and statistically never hit populated planets.

 CptJake wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

Teleporting into empty desert/middle of the ocean/amazon jungle and so on would wear thin quickly. Teleporting and ending up in a block of granite would be pretty crappy too. I know we're talking sic-fi 'magic' versus real world. If they really are just teleporting around willy-nilly they won't be too hard to handle, and they wouldn't do too much damage all that quickly at all, so I have to assume there is SOME basic targeting going on and some level of organization. Otherwise they would spend all their time teleporting through the emptiness of space and statistically never hit populated planets.

The Gestalt Psychic Field orks generate probably helps them a lot. It makes the Tellyporta take them to a good fight... most of the time. The Orks aren't going to have some big cunnin plan about where they're gonna be teleporting most of the time. Most of the time they're just jumping in the tellyporta and hitting the big red button!

But that doesn't mean the orks have plans most of the time. There was a Warboss who famously made a warp jump with his fleet and ended up going back in time. So he attacked his own Waaaagh and killed himself to get a 2nd copy of his favorite shoota. Nobody could have planned that, and Ork Teleportation attacks would be just as crazy.

Orks are actually relatively easy to handle for a modern army so long as it isn't a "tech'd up" Ork WAAAGH!. The main concern when fighting Orks is when they reach a technological point where they start fielding energy shields which means you can't just nuke the Warboss and disable the Orkish horde, or even fielding Titans en masse. Up until that point we should be able to take them out so long as the Warboss is spotted and turned into a red smear. Along with every other Ork who tries to rise up to the position of Warboss, leading to the horde degenerating into civil war which would allow a coalition force to sweep it away.

Of course this is assuming the Orks don't have orbital support. If Orks have spacecraft we automatically lose the conflict as we have zero means with which to contest anything floating in orbit as even our nuclear arsenal pales in comparison to Orkish and Imperial broadsides. Or if they construct Tellyportas which allows Orks to deploy everything up to bloody titans at a whim anywhere on the planet.

While orks appear stupid individually it seems they have a collective consciousness that is quite intelligent. Whole small you its of orks may make idiotic deciscions that lead to their destruction the orks as a species is quite successful, arguably the most successful species in the galaxy at least until the 'nids came. So while small groups of orks may do things that look stupider than a sharknado fan convention their collective efforts result in a very successful species.

Also, don't forget Grots
,

Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

 Melissia wrote:
Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year and it takes decades for Orks to "orkify" an environment to start pumping out hordes of Boyz to replenish losses. They aren't going to suddenly turn all of Africa or South America into an Ork biosphere no more than how they don't instantly Orkify worlds in 40k when conducting their invasions. And even if they build a couple gargants, we do have the nuclear firepower to completely overwhelm their void shields; we just couldn't deal with a full gargant invasion.

I think a few things need to be put into scale first. Using both ingame stats and fluff to try and give the insane, over the top goodness of 40K some real world context.

Take a gaurdsmen as a trained solider with an automatic weapon and body armor. An ork boy is in almost every way several steps above that to terrifying levels. A heavy stubber is the equivalent to guns you see mounted on the cupola of modern day tanks. Even one of which can indeed cause havoc within well spaced infantry and that's the kind of weapon an Ork can pick up after a quick visit to some low level Mekboy.

We can also assume that the various infantry portable missile launchers are equivalent to the 40K versions. Can take out an ork tank with a well placed hit, or bounce off if it hits the armor incorrectly so neither races armored forces are invincible. As for aiming, the average grot is equivalent to a trained solider with BS3/hitting on 4+ (A space marine having super human accuracy at BS4/hitting on 3) to say nothing of the Orks willingness to just use grotguided missiles and the like which could be said to compare to all our technology assisted aiming.

Take into consideration how durable and utterly unstoppable a unit of nobs or, God-forbid, Meganobs would be. Able to stride through most of the conventional firepower we could put at them that isn't tank or aircraft mounted, hell they've been known to shrug off antitank weapons with nothing but irritation.

Those who mentioned long ranged missiles or even nukes. Orks have literal force field technology, not reliable but still nothing we can hope to replicate in terms of personal or area protection. And if we can shoot down missiles via CIWS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS) or counter missiles I would imagine orks can do it better. Then you have the possibility of those 500 000 orks rapidly spreading throughout populated areas with their fast moving ourtiders such as Kopters, Bikers, Jets and all the other stuff we've yet to see on the table top but have in the fluff.

Throw in the regenerative power of orks, fighting on through bullet wounds, lost limbs and even decapitation if the old painboy is hanging round. Verses when a person catches a lasgun equivalent bullet they're often down and out till they spend weeks of medical attention and rest to recuperate.

It's worth thinking about which clan hits earth, each wages war in very, very different ways. Goffs are brute force incarnate, they'd hit an area, level it and keep moving, over and over. It may be possible to set traps or ambushes to whittle them down for instance, where as evil suns would scatter out in all directions making unified counter-attack very difficult. Would there be Meks with their tellyporta tech, dropping Meganobs into military bases? Or Shokk attack guns infesting areas with Squigs. Would entire continents simply be set on fire and or bombarded from orbit via Freebooter ships.

And then, you have the be all and end all of orkisness. The warboss. Able to rip a tank to pieces, tear through fortifications and take more punishment than a light military vehicle. If he got anywhere near anything valuable you can be pretty sure it'll be either destroyed, stolen or thrown at something else valuable.

To summarize, hell no we'd be destroyed by what would amount to a average sized warband. If a Rok dropped in, became a massive fortress and base we'd try to adapt and counterattack, probably fail then be gradually overrun on the orks terms as they rapidly reproduce and scavenge literally any sheet of steel or raw resource. The fact of the matter is Orks are designed to go head to head with Space Marines, who in turn can take out entire planets with just a couple of squads. Us regular old Humans are meant to be laughably weak by comparison. Not that it isn't fun as hell to imagine the scenario.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year

By whom? If the Orks landed in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa, or South America, I can't see any of the local militaries being capable of repelling that kind of force effectively. And I can't see first world countries committing to their aid fast enough to make a difference. There's no way a petty warlord could pull off that kind of a defense.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year and it takes decades for Orks to "orkify" an environment to start pumping out hordes of Boyz to replenish losses. They aren't going to suddenly turn all of Africa or South America into an Ork biosphere no more than how they don't instantly Orkify worlds in 40k when conducting their invasions. And even if they build a couple gargants, we do have the nuclear firepower to completely overwhelm their void shields; we just couldn't deal with a full gargant invasion.

Question how long did it take the US to respond to vietnam and to win in vietnam? Oh wait we didn't... It took us what 8 years? Oh the iraq war? 6? Oh afghistan 20 years...

Yeah we would be able to get there but we wouldn't be able to deal with it reasonably quick. We would be stuck there hunting them for decades maybe even centuries, and all it takes is a couple orks getting wise, and our first battles will be disasterous leading us to learn rather quickly but it could also create situations that no one here has thought of, what if we sent the military in and we lose? What if we are facing a normal ork warlord, and not only would we be on the backfoot but regions would be lost completely.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year and it takes decades for Orks to "orkify" an environment to start pumping out hordes of Boyz to replenish losses. They aren't going to suddenly turn all of Africa or South America into an Ork biosphere no more than how they don't instantly Orkify worlds in 40k when conducting their invasions. And even if they build a couple gargants, we do have the nuclear firepower to completely overwhelm their void shields; we just couldn't deal with a full gargant invasion.

Question how long did it take the US to respond to vietnam and to win in vietnam? Oh wait we didn't... It took us what 8 years? Oh the iraq war? 6? Oh afghistan 20 years...

Yeah we would be able to get there but we wouldn't be able to deal with it reasonably quick. We would be stuck there hunting them for decades maybe even centuries, and all it takes is a couple orks getting wise, and our first battles will be disasterous leading us to learn rather quickly but it could also create situations that no one here has thought of, what if we sent the military in and we lose? What if we are facing a normal ork warlord, and not only would we be on the backfoot but regions would be lost completely.

Orks are a literal alien invasion and American soldiers are one of GW's largest playerbases. A response won't take longer than a year on account of the entire damn planet being horrified at livestream footage from Africa of horrifying 6'6" alien beasts stomping across the land. And all it takes to initially devastate the Orkoid force is a barrage of cruise missiles the Navy can unleash with utter abandon thanks to the Orks lacking any sort of ABM's. The only defense Orks have at all against the modern world's adoration of rockets is energy shields, something quite rare and only in possession of the largest WHAAAGHS!, which this isn't.

And said US soldiers are also under the command of US politicians, whom are a cowardly, manipulative lot, many of whom are also focused exclusively on isolationism. That's "their" problem, not ours. Etc.

 Melissia wrote:
And said US soldiers are also under the command of US politicians, whom are a cowardly, manipulative lot, many of whom are also focused exclusively on isolationism. That's "their" problem, not ours. Etc.

Because Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Iraq again, and Syria all scream "isolationist".

The initial response may be small, but considering how brutal and savage orks are, it wouldn't take long before governments realized that it's not something that can be safely ignored. If orks land in Africa and start taking over, that means Europe is threatened in the short term. Even if the rest of the world doesn't care, there's no way European countries would let that happen. Same thing with the US and central or south America, or China/Russia/India in Asia. And as the orkuppied territory gets bigger, more countries would realize that they have to do something about it, even if it's only preparing their own defenses.

If necessary, threatened countried would get into total war: millions of troops conscripted into the army and all industry dedicated to military production. With the development of third-world countries in recent times, the world's military potential now is pretty insane when you think about it. I could definitely see armies totalling millions of troops, all with good or at least decent equipment, being raised to face the threat of crazy aliens who kill and destroy stuff for fun and never want to stop.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And said US soldiers are also under the command of US politicians, whom are a cowardly, manipulative lot, many of whom are also focused exclusively on isolationism. That's "their" problem, not ours. Etc.

Because Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Iraq again, and Syria all scream "isolationist".

And going in, then pulling out based on who went in defines a lot of American politics. "Isolationism" is usually put out by the party who opposes the president who went in.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And said US soldiers are also under the command of US politicians, whom are a cowardly, manipulative lot, many of whom are also focused exclusively on isolationism. That's "their" problem, not ours. Etc.

Because Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Iraq again, and Syria all scream "isolationist".

And? In none of those cases were forces deployed that would be capable of even putting a dent in a half-million strong army of rampaging Orks led by a cunning warboss. The US forces in each of those wars fought a force far smaller and far less dangerous, and frequently lost or were fought to what was at best a stalemate before pulling out early and declaring victory for political reasons. I'd bring up more modern examples of this "send a token force, then pull out early and declare victory", but that would involve talking US politics which is forbidden. Not since WW2 have we seen the kinds of force necessary to bring down a large warband of Orks, and even then it almost didn't happen.

No, no Earth could not. That small ork invasion would quickly become a large ork infestation. We can barely deal with infestations of mold and vermin, and those don't even have guns.

WE have a hard enough time dealing with terrorist cells :/

 Asherian Command wrote:
WE have a hard enough time dealing with terrorist cells :/

There is a difference between a terrorist cell who have some concern for their life and a lifeform that literally considers combat as sex.

WE have a hard enough time dealing with terrorist cells :/

That's because of two reasons. 1) they're probably incapable of murdering us all, so not all that important in the big picture and 2) to root them out finally and completely we'd have to do stuff that would make the leadership of middle and eastern Europe in the 40s blush. So we don't. Might be different when you're facing a bunch of hostile aliens that actually will eat your face.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And said US soldiers are also under the command of US politicians, whom are a cowardly, manipulative lot, many of whom are also focused exclusively on isolationism. That's "their" problem, not ours. Etc.

Because Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Iraq again, and Syria all scream "isolationist".

Also, all of which, except Korea, ended up as insurgencies. In Iraq, the conventional warfare lasted only days. Orks are not going to be able.to.hide in the population and gradually whittle away at morale, funding and domestic resolve, while civilian casualties rack up and harden the heart of the population against the foreign troops.


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 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
No, no Earth could not. That small ork invasion would quickly become a large ork infestation. We can barely deal with infestations of mold and vermin, and those don't even have guns.

We can deal.with infestations of mould and vermin. Humanity has deliberately eradicated whole species because they were dangerous or inconvenient. Messenger pigeons, myximatosis, etc.

Outside of the battlefleets. The US army would literally obliterate all ground forces in 40k. Orks would be one of the easiest. 40k is basically WW2 tech in 38k years in the future.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Asherian Command wrote:
WE have a hard enough time dealing with terrorist cells :/

Enemies you can't see are much more dangerous than enemies that specifically try hard to be seen and show off their cool new Shootaz.

 Asherian Command wrote:
WE have a hard enough time dealing with terrorist cells :/

No we don't. If America or Russia wanted to you could easily deal with a terror cell by simply opening a book on Middle Eastern history, and solving the problem by engaging in excessive and brutal slaughter and suppression of the "problem" area and coming down with an iron fist. We obviously don't because even Russia is more ethical than the Golden Horde. But Insurgencies are not a problem because of technological or military incapability; they persist due to morality directing us away from excessive harm to innocents which forces us to use a scalpel to not violate our ethics.

This isn't the case with Orks, Orks get wiped out frequently by Guardsmen using forces mostly absent of weapons such as cruise missiles and guided bombs. Dealing with an Ork horde is only a problem if they arrive tech'd up severely. Otherwise they will be swiftly dealt with as a missile barrage can nail the Warboss with ease.