Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Why do the IG soliders die so easily seriously anytime you read about them in books and gak they get killed like their a cloud of flies being attacked by a kid with a can of hairspray and a lighter why is this? normal humans arnt that bad in combat

Because the IG soldiers are never against a 'normal' adversary, i.e. another human. Against super fast/strong Xenos, against Daemons or genetically engineered Marines or Sororitas (if Traitor Guard), then they don't stand a chance.

The OC-D

oh oh yeah haha that explains everything

compare them to the other races out there. this will require a bit of assumption


Orks: they can survive having their head cut off for a short pieriod and put back on. naturally they are tough. they are plants and plants are extreamly resistant to damage.

Eldar: much deadlier offensivly, but just as fragile.

Space Marines: a human can punch with around 80-110 pounds per square foot. the upper end can break bone. SMs can exhert 2-3 times that force and take much more damage, because their bodies are essentially bullet resistant bones and their flesh is immune to hydrostatic shock.

T'au: same as humans, but with poorer eyesight and no desire for hand to hand.

Chaos marines: same as SMs, but with warp powers.




The main reason humans are "fragile" is the hydrostatic shock.

"It is not generally recognized that when a high velocity missile strikes the body and moves through soft tissues, pressures develop which are measured in thousands of atmospheres. Actually, three different types of pressure change appear: (1) shock wave pressures or sharp, high pressure pulses, formed when the missile hits the body surface; (2) very high pressure regions immediately in front and to each side of the moving missile; (3) relatively slow, low pressure changes connected with the behavior of the large explosive temporary cavity, formed behind the missile. Such pressure changes appear to be responsible for what is known to hunters as hydraulic shock--a hydraulic transmission of energy which is believed to cause instant death of animals hit by high velocity bullets (Powell (1))".Wikkipedia

the transmission of energy through the body can cause trauma in areas that are not even remotly near the point of impact and are fragile(brain, heart, lungs). blood vessels can burst from the shock wave causing bleeding in the areas or the nerves can be snapped. Water is a very good conductor of energy and the body is mostly water. other races (like orks) might have a lower ratio of water to tissue or simply been engeneered to be resistant to it(space marines)

Grey Templar wrote:compare them to the other races out there. this will require a bit of assumption


Orks: they can survive having their head cut off for a short pieriod and put back on. naturally they are tough. they are plants and plants are extreamly resistant to damage.

Eldar: much deadlier offensivly, but just as fragile.

Space Marines: a human can punch with around 80-110 pounds per square foot. the upper end can break bone. SMs can exhert 2-3 times that force and take much more damage, because their bodies are essentially bullet resistant bones and their flesh is immune to hydrostatic shock.

T'au: same as humans, but with poorer eyesight and no desire for hand to hand.

Chaos marines: same as SMs, but with warp powers.




The main reason humans are "fragile" is the hydrostatic shock.

"It is not generally recognized that when a high velocity missile strikes the body and moves through soft tissues, pressures develop which are measured in thousands of atmospheres. Actually, three different types of pressure change appear: (1) shock wave pressures or sharp, high pressure pulses, formed when the missile hits the body surface; (2) very high pressure regions immediately in front and to each side of the moving missile; (3) relatively slow, low pressure changes connected with the behavior of the large explosive temporary cavity, formed behind the missile. Such pressure changes appear to be responsible for what is known to hunters as hydraulic shock--a hydraulic transmission of energy which is believed to cause instant death of animals hit by high velocity bullets (Powell (1))".Wikkipedia

the transmission of energy through the body can cause trauma in areas that are not even remotly near the point of impact and are fragile(brain, heart, lungs). blood vessels can burst from the shock wave causing bleeding in the areas or the nerves can be snapped. Water is a very good conductor of energy and the body is mostly water. other races (like orks) might have a lower ratio of water to tissue or simply been engeneered to be resistant to it(space marines)

Space marines are more in the range of 5 times stronger, due to their armor btw.

Your forgetting Tau firepower.

On a side note, Hydrostatic shock has zero value in 40K because those weapons have much more lethal effects by themselves.
Las weapons burn wounds into you, there is less actual force behind it compared to balistic weapons.
Bolter rounds explode inside of you ripping humans to shreds.
Eldar weapons use mono-molecular bladed discs in a ballistic weapon which just cut you to ribbons, or energy weapons.
Tau: RailGuns would either pop a neat hole in you, or turn you pretty much inside out from the point where the thing hits you, dead on the mili-second of contact, rest is all energy weapons again(or explosives).
Orks... I want to say that here it comes somewhat into play... but Ork weapons are usually of ungodly calibers where pretty much any after effect of a bullet turns lethal but they rather smash you up so thats the least of your worries.
Nids: Living Ammo, Acids/venoms and the like.
Necrons: Destruction on the molecular level? ooooh yes.

So in the end, while in most of these weapons hydrostatic shot may be a lethal factor, it's never really their main lethal factor. So I think all this real world logic just doesn't apply

Because if you run around using a torch for a weapon you are as vulnerable as a drunk schoolgirl running around a prison in a bikini

The future battlefied is ridiculously lethal. Some armies are ridiculously tough to match, but the Guard are just people.

yeah i forgot about all the enemys the people of the imperium have

Tau are not the same as humans with poorer eyesight. . . They have shorter lifespan & much smaller warp presence lol. Oh and better tech, can't forget our 1 strength.

Also as a note: "poorer eyesight" means their eyes take more time to focus on distant objects, NOT necessarily that they have worse than 20/20. (Just something that bugs me)

I think being armed with laser pointers and wearing cardboard may have something to do with it, you know besides having to face up against Super human warriors (Demonic patronage optional), Psionic elves, Space orks and legions of cybermen.... uh i mean necrons. Yup humanity got screwed over.

why are you taking the races weapons into account?

I belive we were talking about physical durability not weaponry comparing.


Compared to other races IG (normal humans) die relativly easily and this has nothing to do with lasguns(that means they don't kill things easily)

another reason the die easily(both fluff and gamewise) is they have poor armor, their best armor is generally the basic armor of other races (exceptions, orks and guardians)

keep on topic and answer the OPs question


@Shas'o: not being able to focus quickly is bad and therefore "poorer" then other races. and if the object moves they will have to refocus and that means bad reaction times

Grey Templar wrote:why are you taking the races weapons into account?

I belive we were talking about physical durability not weaponry comparing.


Compared to other races IG (normal humans) die relativly easily and this has nothing to do with lasguns(that means they don't kill things easily)

another reason the die easily(both fluff and gamewise) is they have poor armor, their best armor is generally the basic armor of other races (exceptions, orks and guardians)

keep on topic and answer the OPs question


@Shas'o: not being able to focus quickly is bad and therefore "poorer" then other races. and if the object moves they will have to refocus and that means bad reaction times

How are you gonna measure somethings durability in combat if not against the weaponry they will be facing...? Your approach is like fishing with a hammer.

Grey Templar wrote:why are you taking the races weapons into account?
I belive we were talking about physical durability not weaponry comparing.
Compared to other races IG (normal humans) die relativly easily and this has nothing to do with lasguns(that means they don't kill things easily)
another reason the die easily(both fluff and gamewise) is they have poor armor, their best armor is generally the basic armor of other races (exceptions, orks and guardians)
keep on topic and answer the OPs question
@Shas'o: not being able to focus quickly is bad and therefore "poorer" then other races. and if the object moves they will have to refocus and that means bad reaction times

Actually he talking about their lack of survivability. Physical Durability + Killing Power = Chances of not dying. So yeah it has alot to do with Laspointers
If a guardsman can kill whatever is attacking him he's not gonna die until the next time, other then that he just has a thin layer of flak armour (or carapace if he's lucky) between him and the wrong end of a choppa

Because guardsmen are equipped with a flashlight and t-shirt.

Everyone else has power armor, chitinous shells, living metal skin or some other device that saves their bloody hides, as well as godlike firepower (Tau being the champions here, but let's not forget the rapid fire rocket propelled grenade launcher they call a bolter, or the classical More Dakka, or anything that *isn't* a lasgun), and unreasonably sized melee weapons (Orks? Lightning Claws? Chainsaw-swords?)

They don't. It's just Imperial propaganda.

In reality, IG die much more quickly than depicted in the books and stuff, but if the truth got out no-one would enlist for anything.

Like Killcrazy said they don't die so easly,that's just a Spess Muhreen propaganda to make them appear weak,but the IG are the best soldiers of their world with training(or in the case of the hive worlds they already have training).Lasgun is a good weapon,ammunition is easy to find,it's reliable and sturdy.
Flak armor offer some protection against conventional we weapons like auto,stub and las weapons.While las weapons will have no difficulty penetrating it with two shots,auto and stub small arms will need let's says about 10 shots.

can i just ask? what is better in the 40k universe? laser pointing torches or autoguns. i think autoguns more as semi-automatic 7.62 mil weopons, like an m1 garand. because lasers just burn a hole into you, while solid rifle rounds do have some damage besides the wound they make. if autogun, why the hell are IG still using lasguns when they do F*** all!

The same reason I love guard, they're just human. Everyone else in some way are more capable. But they are just ordinary people trying to survive.

and failing at it...

dark6spectre wrote:can i just ask? what is better in the 40k universe? laser pointing torches or autoguns. i think autoguns more as semi-automatic 7.62 mil weopons, like an m1 garand. because lasers just burn a hole into you, while solid rifle rounds do have some damage besides the wound they make. if autogun, why the hell are IG still using lasguns when they do F*** all!

Lasgun is a better weapon when set on maximun setting when we compare it to auto weapons.They don't just burn a hole in you,they also stagger you a little.

well solid ammunition will do some damage to you though. 7.62 could rip your arm off at the shoulder. so it can do that to Tau or eldar, or renegade guard

dark6spectre wrote:well solid ammunition will do some damage to you though. 7.62 could rip your arm off at the shoulder. so it can do that to Tau or eldar, or renegade guard

You got that right.
IG veterans are awesome.It would be funny to see a lone guardsman surviving hundreds of bolts and dozens of earthshaker rounds which were fired at the position of his squad.

dark6spectre wrote:can i just ask? what is better in the 40k universe? laser pointing torches or autoguns. i think autoguns more as semi-automatic 7.62 mil weopons, like an m1 garand. because lasers just burn a hole into you, while solid rifle rounds do have some damage besides the wound they make. if autogun, why the hell are IG still using lasguns when they do F*** all!

Las gun's have better penetration then a stubber in 40k. Easier to replenish ammo (can be recharged). And I'm guessing flak/carapace armor stops bullets better then lasers.

And because its grimdark to have crap weapons.

dark6spectre wrote:can i just ask? what is better in the 40k universe? laser pointing torches or autoguns. i think autoguns more as semi-automatic 7.62 mil weopons, like an m1 garand. because lasers just burn a hole into you, while solid rifle rounds do have some damage besides the wound they make. if autogun, why the hell are IG still using lasguns when they do F*** all!

Because lasguns are solid state (no moving parts) and you can recharge the batteries by sitting on them.

The reason why the imperial guards are so easy to kill? Well if humanity has colonized tons of worlds with billions of people each, and one human=1 of anything else... See the math flaw? In the 40k humans are one of the broadest and most populated of all races excluding perhaps the orcs and the tyranids. If every human was as tough as a space marine the entire playing field would have to be leveled out much more than it is to make the story more interesting. That would be why the Imperial guards were designed to die so frequently. The excuse would be that xeno species are inherently tougher than humans, so humans have to use a limited amount of gene-seed to surpass an average alien, and limited power armor to match alien technology. This evens out the sides to make the story more intense. To make the story even better, we sometimes get to see the toil of the Imperial Guard and their personal fears, where Astartes are not supposed to have any fear.

Is it becouse Humans are soft and not ment to be hit by anything harder than a punch from another soft Human?

Most IG armies don't always get the "best of the best" in weapons, armor, ect like the SM does. So that's also a factor in why IG die so easily, and the fact that they are just orindary humans.

As others have stated, its because they are just human, and we are really fragile beings (it only takes a pound of pressure to cut skin)

Slarg232 wrote:As others have stated, its because they are just human, and we are really fragile beings (it only takes a pound of pressure to cut skin)

Dude....I think you mean only a few pounds to sever the body in half......The archenemy that I usually read about have sharp weapons...I don't know about your archenemy though.

From the movie "Zulu"

Soldier: Why does it have to be us sir? Why do we have to die.

Color Sgt: Because we are here son.


Understand?