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Ever since Rowboat Girlyman took out his crayons and wrote the Codex Astartes, the Imperium has been on an express train (filled with daemons) to hell.

The next advancement in the story should be the void dragon coming out of hiding and befriending the imperium and giving them amazing tech and complete control of it.

Crantor wrote:If the zombie appocalypse hits we`d lose a lot of our tech. production. Think about it. There would be plenty of guns and bullets lying around but we wouldn`t be producing too many new ones.

Simply reloading cartridges by hand is easy, as long as you have gunpowder, bullets and a few tools for it. Many hunters, sports shooters and others load their own.

But new guns in any amount requires mass production. We can make a stupid amount of stuff but there's also a stupid amount of experts, laborers and many different industries behind it all. A modern assault rifle is leagues ahead of a musket and the tech required to make one is also vastly more complex. A smith could make a musket with time - basic iron and gunpowder is not impossible if you have the knowledge. Assault rifles come out of factories in cities built around military production, full of people directly or indirectly serving the factories. And the raw materials in the inbound trains aren't bog iron and horse manure, they're industrially processed too.

Thing is, nothing like that works on the knowledge of one man anymore. He can't run it all by himself, and no way in hell can he rebuild it from the ground up by himself.

Spetulhu said:

Thing is, nothing like that works on the knowledge of one man anymore. He can't run it all by himself, and no way in hell can he rebuild it from the ground up by himself.

To an extent, yes. The hardest thing about building a rifle without blueprints is a requirement of pretty decent knowledge in mechanical and material engineering.

If you already have the design though, you need a milling machine ($50,000+) which can create the extremely high precision cuts required to make a rifled barrel. A slight imperfection makes the gun's performance useless or dangerous. The parts used to mill the barrels wear themselves over time, and can cost upwards of $5000 in machine parts alone to produce 500 barrels. As the milling parts wear, the quality of manufactured barrels goes down, so your first 50 barrels sell for the highest price, for match-grade or expensive combat weapons, and the last few to pass the grade are sold as cheapie hunting peashooters. As for a bolt amd reciever, it can be done by the same machine and the precision required isn't nearly as high (but quality counts). And all you have left at that point is the stock, which you would need a good wood-crafting setup or the ability to make a plastic mold.

All in all, not impossible for one man to do. But very expensive to buy the machinery to do it. An old college roommate of mine was born into a decent inheritance and manufactures performance assault weapons as a side-job/hobby, so I've heard all of the ins and outs of manufacturing weapons.

As far as lost technology in 40K, I think that it's just a line or two of grimdark thrown in the BHB and not really paid much attention to after that. But from what I can tell fluff-wise, Pre-Heresy technology is lost ala "Roman Empire to Dark Ages," but we're talking a 10,000 span with a million worlds simultaneously lost and gained. The Golden Age of Technology has been lost for a long, long time. Even before the Emporer. An empire that huge is literally impossible to control without some godlike power running the show (I.E., Emperor). So, naturally, there will never be any growth without a true Renaissance. Chances are many forge worlds have no clue how to build a Land Raider, or why is has a machine spirit, but the Templates are as Spetulhu says... you follow the direction written by a guy much smarter than you meant for a guy as dumb as you, and out pops a lascannon. And you have no idea how it works.

But could that old schoolmate build the machines from the ground up? Mine ore and refine it, making the tools needed to create more advanced tools? I kind of sidestepped the point in trying to keep it short... all our tech is dependent on so many different experts and branches of industry that one man can't put it back together.

I guess some IoM STC designs are rare not because the AdMech are incapable of building them but because some link before it is damaged. Rare raw materials that can't be properly prepared, some component that has to be made by hand because the machine that should make it is missing...

Here's the thing. Advanced technologies have disappeared from history for astoundingly long periods of time only to resurface decades or centuries later.

Some of the first batteries we know of were used in ancient persia some two thousand years before Ben Franklin "discovered" electricity.

The Ancient Kings of China made use of pots of buried gunpower that would explode with pressure triggers. Literally they were ancient land mines.

How about the assembly line? The Byzantine Empire made use of a sophisticated system of standardized parts for the construction of ships and pottery.

It's not simply possible for advanced technologies to fall into disuse or rumor its common. People guard knowledge jealously to keep it out of the hands of those they don't trust or those who might use it for something they would disapprove of. There are a number of technologies from the ancient world that we still can't replicate like Damascus Steel or Greek Fire. We know they existed, but we haven't got a damned clue how to make them.

I'd wager that if tomorrow a bomb went off at every computer factory and development facility killing off everyone who had knowledge of hot to fabricate them our technology infrastructure would fall into disrepair as well. Sure I can use a computer, sure I can fix a computer, sure I can do a bit of programing, but outside of some vague knowledge I haven't the slightest idea how to create one from raw materials.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

Shenra wrote:

or you'd think with all the battles that you could capture and study enough alien technology to learn something or copy something.

That would certainly be considered Heresy in the 41st Millennium, which is why it doesn't happen.

If you think about it like the Galaxy is Europe during the Dark Ages after the Fall of the Roman Empire then it does make sense. The people of the Imperium look around at all these magnificent relics of a time long gone with no knowledge or comprehending of how Humans could have built them. Much in the same way the people of Europe during the Dark Ages would look at Aqueducts, Bath houses, Coliseums, Bridges, and even roads built by the Romans and wonder how Humans could ever have made them. It wasn't that all the texts and information on Engineering were lost after the Fall of Rome but those texts that survived either couldn't be read by people or they were closely guarded by the Monks and other Church officials who had access to them out of either fear of the heresy the books contained or out of fear they would lose the precious knowledge to fire or duplication by people outside their control. Sound familiar to any 40k plot lines?

this is absolutely right

lion_el_johnson wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:

Shenra wrote:

or you'd think with all the battles that you could capture and study enough alien technology to learn something or copy something.

That would certainly be considered Heresy in the 41st Millennium, which is why it doesn't happen.

If you think about it like the Galaxy is Europe during the Dark Ages after the Fall of the Roman Empire then it does make sense. The people of the Imperium look around at all these magnificent relics of a time long gone with no knowledge or comprehending of how Humans could have built them. Much in the same way the people of Europe during the Dark Ages would look at Aqueducts, Bath houses, Coliseums, Bridges, and even roads built by the Romans and wonder how Humans could ever have made them. It wasn't that all the texts and information on Engineering were lost after the Fall of Rome but those texts that survived either couldn't be read by people or they were closely guarded by the Monks and other Church officials who had access to them out of either fear of the heresy the books contained or out of fear they would lose the precious knowledge to fire or duplication by people outside their control. Sound familiar to any 40k plot lines?

this is absolutely right

Couldn't have been explained better.

one word (or rather, one book)

Foundation


It's a book by Asimov. The concept of a religious way to learn and maintain technology comes from there. Surely, someone at GW look at it, tought to himself "That's cool" and they added it to the game. Like everything else.

Its so in the next edition, they can make Tanks completely crap, meaning everyone has to buy loads of infantry. And then in the edition after that, Tanks will be uber again, and there will be loads of new wonder tanks.

rodgers37 wrote:Its so in the next edition, they can make Tanks completely crap, meaning everyone has to buy loads of infantry. And then in the edition after that, Tanks will be uber again, and there will be loads of new wonder tanks.

Again, a good explanation. Im just lucky I don't care about the IoM losing tech all the easier to be absorbed for the hive mind.

I'm not sure why this is such an unrealistic concept - I mean as humanity we've got quite a habit of doing this!

Classic examples are that hundreds of years before Jesus was even born; Chineese wars were being fought with landmines and missiles (not a thrown rock, a missile, missile); one medateranian kingdom were wiping out opposing navies with some super-advanced nalpalm long range flame thrower, and there are plenty discoveries of ancient artifacts or sciences which are thousands of years ahead of their time.

One thing that needs to be understood is that while mankind is at it's technological and scientific peak; it's not a mere innevetability like so many people think - it's because we have governments that open up education to all, and have educational institutions which foster and support the constant expansion of our knowledge.

One of the reasons for the fall of the Roman civisilation was that the empire adopted a really sh*tty schooling system which essentially focused on a simple and grinding course of reiteration ad nauseum; meaning they could read off great works or convey all manor of impressive concepts etc. but the trick is that they only remembered it, and never understood it. Which is quite a lovely segway to the Adaptus Mechanicus, who can create all manor of impressive constructs and wargear - not because they understand the all concepts, technologies and physics; but because like the Romans, their institution knows only repetition, not understanding.

Which is exactly why the technology is in decline, and STCs (new instructions they can read and repeat) are so valued...

Still sounds irrealistic to me.

I'm actually working in the robotics, and there are really crazy things done here. And if we go the the furthest trace of civilization, it's about 7,000 years ago, 7k. And well, they were just creating a way to write

In 7,000 years we went from trying to write to designing robots with atomic acurracy.

Now, if suddenly, all computers in the whole world went off, internet disappeared, all that: we'd be screwed, yes. But still, we would know stuff. I mean, my brain would still be there, and everyone's too.

So it would take time, but we would build everything again. Maybe it would take 10 years, maybe 50, maybe more, but not millenia

And we are juste ONE planet

Here, you have a whole universe of people, and suddenly, everyone forget how to design anything? And they don't care, they don't even try?

As you said, science disappearing is common, but what is common too is people trying to discover. Ok, there is all the "we kill you if you study too much" thingy, might complicate things.. Wait, no: Galilee.

I agree that a religion preventing research would lead to decay, that a sudden loss of knowledge would be a problem, etc.. But for 10 friggin millenia? For more than our own civilization? Without anything changing? Well, don't buy it, sorry.

(still, love the universe but GW have real problems with numbers)

You've made one basic assumption in your post there. Yes, the knowledge of Robotics is held within your brain there, but you're assuming that civisilation will have picked itself off where it left off in time for you to carry on your research and allowing people to continue where you left off.

Case in point; travel to somewhere like Somalia - a place which is as close to a collapse of civilisation as we can get to, then see how easy to teach and how revelant advanced robotics are. You know, you might be able to teach someone in this generation advanced robotics - but think about all the pre-requisite curriculum you needed to understand before you got to that: Maths (from pre-school to advanced), English, physics, materials science, Engineering etc. And thats just for you minute area - mankind will have bigger things to worry about retaining and building apparratus for passing down to the younger generations: agriculture, english, geography, history, logistics, irrigation, construction, mining, logistics, governance, law, etc. etc.

Regretfully, if a pre-herasy 40k style cataclysmic event did occur; the best you could hope for is that your mystical designs, code and formula are recognised as important enough to recorded and copy until either civisilation eventually evolves and catches back up, or they find how to repeat your work like something from the film 'Contact'.

Still, the sheer number of people would make for it. i wouldn't have to care for agriculture, history, that kind of stuff, there are so much people who are better than me in these fields, they would take care of it

or should we suppose that in the IoM, suddenly all non-somalia planets disappeared? And I'm not even sure somalia is a good example. Yes, as a whole they have lot of problems, but still, there must be some guys who search. I'm working with nigerians who learned robotics during a civil war, and they are better than me

Seriously, you would be amazed by what the number of people, and amount of time, can achieve; seeing what our small planet is capable of, I just find strange that in 10 millenia (which is, again, a freakin' amount of time), a whole universe couldn't progress at all

But again, GW (and a lot of fantasy/sci-fi universes) have quite a problem with numbers :p I mean, civilization are thousand of years old, wars last for hundreds of years, temples are several miles long, cities have billions of people.. they like to make it big ^^

Soe people o understand some of it, but only a few.