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Also some worlds have space elevators, though they don't seem to be commonplace.

I agree energy required to get into space and move freight around likely makes it viable. Similar to how if you go back 200years on Earth it would be considered utterly impossible to harvest shrimp in Scotland; ship it to China to shell and then ship it back again to sell; but its done regularly in the world today.

It's bonkers but it works. The Imperium is just that but on a galactic scale. Sure they could clean up their industry on Forge Worlds; they could invest into terraforming; they could repair Hive Cities; clean up the pollution and all; rather than shipping in vast amounts of food.

But they don't. Instead they ship food vast distances from worlds dedicated to food production.



Humans are capable of being very selfish, short sighted and set in their ways. When you then build a society that's VERY set in its ways; abhors change or development and put poeple in charge who can extend their life by hundreds of years. You've a system that can stagnate like crazy in certain ways that leads to extremes.

Hive worlds do have local food production: they recycle bodies of the dead, hunt/harvest local hive flora and fauna, and grow things like algae (like the Valhallans do).

The upper classes want natural food shipped in from agri-worlds though. The lower classes may also get processed ration packs from other worlds as I do not think local food production would be enough to feed the hungry billions.

At this point in time, with the devastation to the ecology of hive worlds, it probably is cheaper to ship food in from the stars in the short term rather than do the long term task of trying to do ecological repair (which would also mean some population and industry control). Even if some ecologically minded governor were to plonk down some air or water purifiers with the aid of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they would make little difference so long as the hives keep churning out the pollution which they do because they need to keep manufacturing to meet the tithe. It would mean a big investment of resources for little noticeable practical gain.

At least, little noticeable short-term gain. If it is going to make the planet richer in a millennium, but under strain for the next 500 years? Most planetary govenors are going to opt to keep themselves safe and their pockets well-lined, instead of helping their grandchild or great grandchild out.

 Haighus wrote:
At least, little noticeable short-term gain. If it is going to make the planet richer in a millennium, but under strain for the next 500 years? Most planetary govenors are going to opt to keep themselves safe and their pockets well-lined, instead of helping their grandchild or great grandchild out.

The governor would help his family the most by continuing the rapacious production of the hive world. Any fall in production could lead to a lapse in the tithe and could see the Imperium remove the governor's family from power.

That's the true problem. Repairing the environment of a hive world would require reduction in production and population among other things. The wealth, power, and well being of the governor and the other nobility of a hive world lies in the opposite direction. The Imperium constantly demands more production of goods and bodies for use elsewhere.

Thing is? Recycling the Dead still isn’t going to feed everyone, because of how little energy is passed on eating meat as opposed to veg.

Now I don’t want to ponder particularly deeply the facts and figures because cannibalism isn’t cool. But you’re still talking a consistent turnover of Humans To Dinner.

As a supplement to a wider diet? Possibly sustainable. But with outside produce cut off or greatly reduced, and the sheer, mind bogglingly vast number of inhabitants of a Hive World? I just don’t see Corpse Starch or Soylen Viridians being a suitable staple food.

Not just because you’d need to be serving up a percentage of your population to feed the idiot faces of the remainders, but it also relies on efficient body disposal to make the most of it.

Now your Underhive Dweller is going to be pretty used to subsistence rations. They don’t have much choice. But in the main Hive and upwards? Bellies are likely to be proportionally fuller the higher you go. Which means that’s where your real problems might be rooted, as those used to three square meals a day demand….three square meals a day. Which means the further down the Hive you go, the more squeezed rationing becomes, creating ever greater civil unrest and potentially outright rebellion. The more that spreads, the less control you have. The less control you have, the more it spreads and spreads and spreads and can allow far more nefarious and destructive forces to take root.

Iracundus wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
At least, little noticeable short-term gain. If it is going to make the planet richer in a millennium, but under strain for the next 500 years? Most planetary govenors are going to opt to keep themselves safe and their pockets well-lined, instead of helping their grandchild or great grandchild out.

The governor would help his family the most by continuing the rapacious production of the hive world. Any fall in production could lead to a lapse in the tithe and could see the Imperium remove the governor's family from power.

That's the true problem. Repairing the environment of a hive world would require reduction in production and population among other things. The wealth, power, and well being of the governor and the other nobility of a hive world lies in the opposite direction. The Imperium constantly demands more production of goods and bodies for use elsewhere.

There's also a massive social divide - the upper classes generally don't 'care' about the lower ones. Oh sure they care enough that they are alive and working, but they aren't concerned about their quality of life so long as its good enough to not have them rebel. Whilst variation happens, the Hive Worlds very often show this highly segmented element of the upper classes and then everyone else below them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thing is? Recycling the Dead still isn’t going to feed everyone, because of how little energy is passed on eating meat as opposed to veg.

Now I don’t want to ponder particularly deeply the facts and figures because cannibalism isn’t cool. But you’re still talking a consistent turnover of Humans To Dinner.

As a supplement to a wider diet? Possibly sustainable. But with outside produce cut off or greatly reduced, and the sheer, mind bogglingly vast number of inhabitants of a Hive World? I just don’t see Corpse Starch or Soylen Viridians being a suitable staple food.

Not just because you’d need to be serving up a percentage of your population to feed the idiot faces of the remainders, but it also relies on efficient body disposal to make the most of it.

Now your Underhive Dweller is going to be pretty used to subsistence rations. They don’t have much choice. But in the main Hive and upwards? Bellies are likely to be proportionally fuller the higher you go. Which means that’s where your real problems might be rooted, as those used to three square meals a day demand….three square meals a day. Which means the further down the Hive you go, the more squeezed rationing becomes, creating ever greater civil unrest and potentially outright rebellion. The more that spreads, the less control you have. The less control you have, the more it spreads and spreads and spreads and can allow far more nefarious and destructive forces to take root.

Most hive world food is undoubtedly not from corpses, although it all probably contains a little corpse unless you are very wealthy.

We are told worlds like Necromunda recycle more or less everything. That means that most human food is probably made from human waste, with energy added back in.

Gak-starch

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thing is? Recycling the Dead still isn’t going to feed everyone, because of how little energy is passed on eating meat as opposed to veg.

Now I don’t want to ponder particularly deeply the facts and figures because cannibalism isn’t cool. But you’re still talking a consistent turnover of Humans To Dinner.

As a supplement to a wider diet? Possibly sustainable. But with outside produce cut off or greatly reduced, and the sheer, mind bogglingly vast number of inhabitants of a Hive World? I just don’t see Corpse Starch or Soylen Viridians being a suitable staple food.

Not just because you’d need to be serving up a percentage of your population to feed the idiot faces of the remainders, but it also relies on efficient body disposal to make the most of it.

Now your Underhive Dweller is going to be pretty used to subsistence rations. They don’t have much choice. But in the main Hive and upwards? Bellies are likely to be proportionally fuller the higher you go. Which means that’s where your real problems might be rooted, as those used to three square meals a day demand….three square meals a day. Which means the further down the Hive you go, the more squeezed rationing becomes, creating ever greater civil unrest and potentially outright rebellion. The more that spreads, the less control you have. The less control you have, the more it spreads and spreads and spreads and can allow far more nefarious and destructive forces to take root.

Unrest would almost certainly start from further down the hive. If food supplies from offworld are cut off, what I suspect would happen would be the upper classes (with their control of law enforcement) would take control of local food production like corpse recycling and algae vats and any existing stockpiles of ration packs. They might not like this food compared to the usual real food they get, but it beats starving. The problem is the underclasses that now have their food supply cut off entirely and that is what could trigger full scale revolt.

Iracundus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thing is? Recycling the Dead still isn’t going to feed everyone, because of how little energy is passed on eating meat as opposed to veg.

Now I don’t want to ponder particularly deeply the facts and figures because cannibalism isn’t cool. But you’re still talking a consistent turnover of Humans To Dinner.

As a supplement to a wider diet? Possibly sustainable. But with outside produce cut off or greatly reduced, and the sheer, mind bogglingly vast number of inhabitants of a Hive World? I just don’t see Corpse Starch or Soylen Viridians being a suitable staple food.

Not just because you’d need to be serving up a percentage of your population to feed the idiot faces of the remainders, but it also relies on efficient body disposal to make the most of it.

Now your Underhive Dweller is going to be pretty used to subsistence rations. They don’t have much choice. But in the main Hive and upwards? Bellies are likely to be proportionally fuller the higher you go. Which means that’s where your real problems might be rooted, as those used to three square meals a day demand….three square meals a day. Which means the further down the Hive you go, the more squeezed rationing becomes, creating ever greater civil unrest and potentially outright rebellion. The more that spreads, the less control you have. The less control you have, the more it spreads and spreads and spreads and can allow far more nefarious and destructive forces to take root.

Unrest would almost certainly start from further down the hive. If food supplies from offworld are cut off, what I suspect would happen would be the upper classes (with their control of law enforcement) would take control of local food production like corpse recycling and algae vats and any existing stockpiles of ration packs. They might not like this food compared to the usual real food they get, but it beats starving. The problem is the underclasses that now have their food supply cut off entirely and that is what could trigger full scale revolt.

This is supported by multiple sources stating food riots are an issue for hives, with the corpse grinder cults on Necromunda being a particularly nasty example (the latter doesn't just happen when food is scarce, but gets more support when it is).

 Haighus wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I’m with MDG in the more cynical answer that they just let the population starve to death until there are just a few left and then rush in to “save” the survivors. In a hive world, most of the hivers will have no idea what’s going on outside their immediate vicinity, let alone who is sitting in spaceships above the surface. I don’t see how the Tau could effectively run an advertising campaign in a hive.

It's worth noting that as late as the 20th century the British would allow famines to occur and do nothing to help the colonists, I know it happened in both India and Ireland. It was also a weapon in the Ethiopian civil war in the 80s.

I've not done a deep dive but I would imagine that other colonial powers have used famine as well.

Point being, I have no trouble believing Tau doctrine is to starve any unsustainable hive worlds until the population is more 'manageable'. And as others said, who's to know? Who is going to tell them the Tau had supply ships in orbit but decided to wait a month or two?

I think that historic examples of deliberate starvation from times of war are a better analogy, there are plenty of those including in a colonial context. The above are well after the affected populations were under colonial administration by the occupier, where it is much harder to lay the blame elsewhere. They are also moreso examples of massive incompetence and criminal negligence than an overt strategy to depopulate, unlike many actions during wars which were intended to do just that.

the famine in Ireland under British rule, for example, was not an intentional action that the British used to enact genocide upon the Irish (although the British certainly didn't mind that being a side effect); it was a side effect of policies relating to all Irish crops being imported to Britain, leaving the island with nothing but a fraught number of staple crops which were relied upon more than was safe, leaving them open to disease among the crops, as is what happened— in the thinly veiled metaphor which is 40k, the genocidal colonialist empire is not the British, but the T'au, and in this case, it would be more like the T'au imposing strict limits on what can be produced and what must be exported off-world, and being uncaring when such rules lead the poor humans to starve and die; something which can only happen when they already control the world

I can just imagine the Tau providing soup to hungry humans. Convert to the greater good!

You need to watch underhive revolts though. Based on my “extensive” experience, all denizens of the hive bottom are armed with plasma pistols and needle rifles, where they aren’t toting souped up HMGs.

I do get a bit sad at how tooled up Necro is today. Not least because half of the club can't help but min max.

We gave to keep in mind that the Imperium is at war with the whole galaxy. There is no time fixing the planet in hope they are to produce better in 500 years : they need the ammo and the food and they need it yesterday. It's some kind of Tetris effect : it's not the best solution, but it's one that works and works now.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

the famine in Ireland under British rule, for example, was not an intentional action that the British used to enact genocide upon the Irish (although the British certainly didn't mind that being a side effect); it was a side effect of policies relating to all Irish crops being imported to Britain, leaving the island with nothing but a fraught number of staple crops which were relied upon more than was safe, leaving them open to disease among the crops, as is what happened— in the thinly veiled metaphor which is 40k, the genocidal colonialist empire is not the British, but the T'au, and in this case, it would be more like the T'au imposing strict limits on what can be produced and what must be exported off-world, and being uncaring when such rules lead the poor humans to starve and die; something which can only happen when they already control the world

In a sense this might be the most straightforward path if you want to read the Tau as also fully grimdark; their best bet is to just replace Imperial authorities with Empire authorities and call it a day. Neither party, in this view, cares about the wellbeing of any individual person, and the upper classes of the hive world will know that they're just as disposable as they were under the previous regime so they'll continue the same extractive policies, all the way down.

Longstrider wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

the famine in Ireland under British rule, for example, was not an intentional action that the British used to enact genocide upon the Irish (although the British certainly didn't mind that being a side effect); it was a side effect of policies relating to all Irish crops being imported to Britain, leaving the island with nothing but a fraught number of staple crops which were relied upon more than was safe, leaving them open to disease among the crops, as is what happened— in the thinly veiled metaphor which is 40k, the genocidal colonialist empire is not the British, but the T'au, and in this case, it would be more like the T'au imposing strict limits on what can be produced and what must be exported off-world, and being uncaring when such rules lead the poor humans to starve and die; something which can only happen when they already control the world

In a sense this might be the most straightforward path if you want to read the Tau as also fully grimdark; their best bet is to just replace Imperial authorities with Empire authorities and call it a day. Neither party, in this view, cares about the wellbeing of any individual person, and the upper classes of the hive world will know that they're just as disposable as they were under the previous regime so they'll continue the same extractive policies, all the way down.

Except this does not seem to be true universally, as I cited the story Broken Sword by Guy Haley in the Damocles anthology. At least for some, the Tau do seem to have made good on their propaganda promises and these humans are resettled in a planned settlement with clean air, food, water, education, and even widow pensions. The human defector partly suspects something nefarious is happening and keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop....year after year and nothing ever happens.

There is even a Gue'vesa'O (Inquisitor) that has defected from the Imperium, saying that his oath was to protect humanity and that the Greater Good is the best way to do that.

The Tau's threat is ideological. They are not going to do anything overt like concentration camps or mass genocide. That's far too clumsy and it's what the humans suspect will happen...so it doesn't. Sure, the Tau are colonialist and imperialist, and certainly the Tau seem to be first among equals so it's not entirely altruistic, but for the average human, it is a far better deal and quality of life than anything they got while under the Imperium. The Tau are winning hearts and minds from those humans they assimilate into their empire and that temptation of a better quality of life is what the Imperium fears.

Also think of examples of Empire like the British in India. 10,000 Europeans ruling and controlling a nation of hundreds of millions. Their issue would be expanding too fast and spreading themselves too thin like the old Spartan empire (though it had demographic problems as well).

Iracundus wrote:

Except this does not seem to be true universally, as I cited the story Broken Sword by Guy Haley in the Damocles anthology. At least for some, the Tau do seem to have made good on their propaganda promises and these humans are resettled in a planned settlement with clean air, food, water, education, and even widow pensions. The human defector partly suspects something nefarious is happening and keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop....year after year and nothing ever happens.

There is even a Gue'vesa'O (Inquisitor) that has defected from the Imperium, saying that his oath was to protect humanity and that the Greater Good is the best way to do that.

The Tau's threat is ideological. They are not going to do anything overt like concentration camps or mass genocide. That's far too clumsy and it's what the humans suspect will happen...so it doesn't. Sure, the Tau are colonialist and imperialist, and certainly the Tau seem to be first among equals so it's not entirely altruistic, but for the average human, it is a far better deal and quality of life than anything they got while under the Imperium. The Tau are winning hearts and minds from those humans they assimilate into their empire and that temptation of a better quality of life is what the Imperium fears.

I tend to agree. To me it's more interesting if the Imperium hangs itself by its own doings, but I can see how, for some set of the audience, tragedy is is tragic because it's metaphysically unavoidable, while for me it's tragic because it's avoidable but culturally we don't do the things needed. On the first view, the sad part for the Tau is that it's going to happen to them too. On the second view, the sad part for the Tau is that the Imperium looks at something better and is structurally set up to double down rather than improve.

That's leaving aside entirely the number of people who think 40k is uncritically pro-Imperium, but I don't think we need to get into that here.

KInda dodging around the main discussion for a different take on the original question.

While Tau do seem to reproduce similar to humans, their shortened lifespan likely means their reproduction cycle is about half the time it takes humans to as well. This means that we can estimate that since Tau only live to about 50 or so, they are likely capable of having children at around the age of 6-7 and would reach our definition of adult at around age 9. It's also reasonable to assume that Tau women would only be pregnant for about 4-5 months. Taking all this into consideration, the Tau's population would increase at nearly double the rate of human populations.

On top of all that, Tau care a lot more about the lives of their soldiers than the Imperium does leading to less overall losses in frontline engagements, even if their overall victories in individual battles may be lesser for it. The Tau Empire may be small at the moment, but I think it's population is still quite large considering the race's relative youth. All we know about the Tau's homeworld population is that it is somewhere in the billions, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the first and second sphere worlds are the same. It's not super big on a galactic scale, but it's a lot for any small region of space, which is all the Tau really have to worry about.

While I think it's safe to say that Tau have the highest population of the races in their empire, I don't think they carry a majority, depending on how you look at it. If you're talking about active members of the empire itself and active members of their military, then yeah sure, they still dominate that, but if you are talking about population sizes of all their allied races, I don't think so.

The Kroot have been around for a long time and while their colonization efforts are centered around Pech, they do traverse the wider galaxy and can be found all over the place. Each of their Warshpere's has a crew of about 300,000, and that's not counting any armies / colonists they are often ferrying around. Also, if you're talking about how many Kroot are part of their population, on Pech, I'd assume it's something similar to Catachan at 10-20 million, though if you count all the Kroot subspecies and variants, you can count most of the creatures on the planet, then you are likely well into the billions. On top of that the Kroot do have many other colonized worlds in their little part of the galaxy adjacent to the Tau empire too, so their population isn't exactly low. Kroot do seem to be much longer lived, but it's unclear as to how long, or how often they reproduce either.

We knew even less about the Vespid, but since they are insectoid, I'd assume that their rates of reproduction are incredibly fast and their lifespan even shorter than the Tau. Make of this what you will with the same logic I used for the Tau's population.

We know there are dozens of other allied races, but how many of them are actually fully part of the empire and how much are just adjacent allies, we just don't know.

So, to answer your original question without really answering it. Yes and no, depending on how you look at it.

This is of course why we need Waaaargh! The Orks type books for every race.

In or out of universe would do for me.

Heck, just resurrect the Xenology title, and do one dedicated to each race and culture.

We know next to nothing about how Tau reproduce, including if they get pregnant at all. For all we know, Tau lay one batch of eggs at around age 10 (unlikely but possible). We don't know how quickly they reach sexual maturity, we don't know about litter size, we don't know if they have a menopause equivalent (rare on Earth). They are alien, so biological trends in Earth creatures are broadly irrelevant.

Socially, there are some indications that Tau are encouraged (mandated?) to have a period of national service before setting down to breed, but this might only apply to the Fire caste who have a much higher risk of death than the others. This was mentioned upthread.

So all we have to go off is that they have a lower life expectancy than humans, and may only typically breed when a bit older. How much older? No idea, we don't know how long Tau childhood is.

Edit: MDG mentioned Xenology. This does say that Tau are oddly similar to humans overall, but does not comment on the reproductive system. The Tau specimen also raises serious questions given it has feet not hooves.

We don’t even know if they rely on whatever passes as standard biological reproduction as a society.

They could have cloning facilities. They could have a scientific artificial womb type thing.

If cloning and vat grown are indeed a thing? Does that speed up gestation any?

We know both exist in varying levels and usage across The Imperium. House Goliath is our best detailed, where we know they are predominantly vat grown, and achieve rapid gestation through science and chemicals and that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We don’t even know if they rely on whatever passes as standard biological reproduction as a society.

They could have cloning facilities. They could have a scientific artificial womb type thing.

If cloning and vat grown are indeed a thing? Does that speed up gestation any?

We know both exist in varying levels and usage across The Imperium. House Goliath is our best detailed, where we know they are predominantly vat grown, and achieve rapid gestation through science and chemicals and that.

Very good point. It is certainly highly plausible the Tau could do something like this.

This is how they reproduce, I'm certain of it, just as I am certain about how tasty they would be:

The biggest constraint on their empire is still slow warp travel. We can liken that to an empire with a great land army but never able to rule the oceans/seas.

To truly create something even close to approaching the Imperium they will need to find a way to overcome that constraint.

Could be good fodder for a Black Library novel.

I’m not sure it is that much of a problem.

A disadvantage and a limiting factor? Yes.

But, the Imperium is comprised of far flung world, with an awful lot of “who knows” in between its domains.

The Tau by comparison have a pretty dense area of population. Sure, The Imperium could get from one side to the other faster, no argument there. But the relative density of their spheres of expansion means fast warp travel just isn’t the necessity for them that it is everyone else.

They’re also a young, dynamic race, expanding in a pretty well organised manner. Which means as a new world is settled, the overall planning behind it will have naval and mercantile assets assigned in advance, as well as “we’ll be supporting so many million initial colonists, and with a population growth rate of X, we expect that world to require Y resources over the next Z years/decades” all being factored in, with the imported resource level likely varying as a colony grows and beds in, eventually, in theory, becoming largely self sufficient for most day to day needs.

From there, overproduction and stockpiling, ready for the next sphere of expansion.

Considering their rapid advance and willingness to absorb other races into their culture, the Tau likely can overcome many of the limits like slower warp travel.

Their biggest limit is speed and pacing. Whilst the Imperium and other greater powers are focused on each other, the Tau have some breathing room to expand and tech-up. The risk is that they don't manage to do so fast enough and one of the other major powers comes for them in a big way.

Any concentrated attention from any major power would likely see the Tau fall or at the very least be pushed back to just their core worlds and cripple their expansion.


On the flipside they are also perfectly poised to steal the advantage in their sectors of space whenever the Imperium or other major powers falters and leaves a gap.

 Haighus wrote:


Edit: MDG mentioned Xenology. This does say that Tau are oddly similar to humans overall, but does not comment on the reproductive system. The Tau specimen also raises serious questions given it has feet not hooves.

Yeah, I was going off that same statement from Xenology as that's basically all the information we have on the subject and just doing some best guesswork from there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


They could have cloning facilities.

.

I think we can rule out cloning, there's a lot of instances of them being very concerned about loosing key figures in their hierarchy, which I don't think they'd be too worried about if they could just clone them. Why put Shadowsun into cryosleep if they can just make more Shadowsun's

Also, someone mentioned a story I've never ready about her refusing the call to return home and make a bunch of kids to carry on her family line. If that's the case, it would lead us to infer a more natural system of birth for the Tau.

Cloning doesn't recreate people though, only their genetics. Identical twins are not actually two versions of the same person, for example.

 Overread wrote:
Considering their rapid advance and willingness to absorb other races into their culture, the Tau likely can overcome many of the limits like slower warp travel.

This is where their faster birth cycle would play a key factor. Assuming that it is approximately half the time of a humans as I think it the best guess at the moment, that means that a newly colonized world can start pushing out new Fire Warriors to defend it's territory in at most 10 years time after colonization. On a galactic scale, that's next to nothing. Sometimes the Imperium won't even realize a world has fallen in that amount of time, let alone create a response.

Even if their expansion speed is slow due to the lack of warp travel, methodically moving along, conquering, colonizing, integrating and fortifying means that once a retaliation happens, they are well dug in to defend their territory, and as are any neighboring systems that they've also conquered who can lend their support. Even with the slower travel, having resources so close and clustered together gives them a better response time against anything outside of massive scale invasion forces.

While still relatively small, I think people underestimate the level of inevitability that the Tau possess with their combination of warfare style, science, culture, government, and life cycle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:
Cloning doesn't recreate people though, only their genetics. Identical twins are not actually two versions of the same person, for example.

True to a point, they are different people, but there are many cases of identical twins living apart and still leading nearly identical lifestyles. There was even this one story I remember from a while back, where these two twins that lived apart, met to other identical twins that also lived apart and each married around the same time, not finding out about each other until they'd been dating for a while.

Obviously that's not the case with every set of twins, but cloning is theoretically even more exact than that. Still, law of averages, even if you only pump out a handful of Shadowsun clones, chances are you get at least one great leader out of it.