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@ Lasbolt to the knee: it's never just one lasbolt...

Marines have other perks which can keep them going through Lasgun burn damage.

Essentially, flashburns hurt, a lot. Enough to take someone out of an ongoing battle even if they ultimate survive and recover.

But a Marine has their ludicrous natural pain tolerance, further boosted by their armour automatically dispensing analgesics.

Now, that doesn’t mean and shouldn’t be taken as “therefore a Marine can’t be taken out at least temporarily by flash burns”. Just that it’s going to take a good deal more of such relatively minor injuries to incapacitate one for the short term.

Assuming of course their power armour is in good working order.

I like to think of it like car safety features. Individually, a head rest, seatbelt, ABS, internal roll cage, crumple zone and airbags etc aren’t going to make a huge difference to your survival chances in the event of a crash. But. When taken together? That’s when you get the real benefit.

Sure, some like the traditional three point seatbelt can still injure you, and need to be fitted properly. But as much as some broken ribs from the restraint is going to hurt and suck? It’s almost inevitably going to hurt and suck less than a short high velocity trip through the windscreen, and being buttered up the road. Not to mention being considerably more survivable.

And that’s the secret to a Marine’s ridiculous resilience. Not just one thing, but a hefty combination of factors which all help manage and mitigate risk.

So Marines are obviously going to be very resilient being Marines, this is true for bullets too.

However, you are very much underselling the impact of las shots. They cause a localised steam explosion on flesh, not just a flash burn. That's how they can take an arm off. The immediate damage is mostly caused by this kinetic explosion alongside the more localised cooking.

Plus flash burns over a wide surface area are really nasty, thats why warship crews wear the white masks and gloves when going into action. For a normal human, burns over >25% body surface area are typically lethal without significant medical intervention. Burns less than that are still very nasty but are generally well survivableat <10% body surface area (with medical intervention, a large burn is still a massive infection risk for a human).

I was meaning anything just penetrating the armour. My fault, should’ve been clearer.

Against say, a Sister of Battle or an Inquisitor, a Lasgun is going to have an easier time causing non-fatal but debilitating wounds.

Consider where the bolt has caused an impact crater on the armour, but hasn’t penetrated to the fleshy weakness underneath. There’s still going to be sudden and extreme heat involved, hence the flash burn.

To a Marine? Really nothing too terrible. To a relatively baseline human (unsure if it’s only Astartes armour that dispenses analgesics and combat stims though) that could be enough to degrade their ability to fight enough to take them out the fight, at least temporarily.

Also, I wonder how much difference the Marine’s fused ribcage would make? With no gaps, sudden burns to the surface may not make it to the organs below, where it might on a regular human ribcage?

I vaguely recall some reference to the Black Carapace and fused rib cage being comparable to flak armour, which would suggest significant protection yes.

I suspect you would not get flash burns if the armour retains integrity. Flash burns can be prevented by a thin layer of cloth. Repeated impacts could heat the area enough to cause cooking but that is a slower process.

If the armour lost integrity, then you'd probably also have to deal with fragments causing shrapnel if a steam explosion occurred in any exposed flesh, alongside localised flash burns.

Also, power armour seems to be very good at disipating heat, which is unsurprising given it is a composite of ceramics and metals.

There’s definitely a difference between a Marine surviving a wound, and not being affected by a wound.

As noted on the previous page? Even a relatively humble Laspistol, point blank range, to a Marine’s unarmoured temple is going to mess them up.

But, whilst rare, baseline humans can survive quite nasty brain injuries. A Marine simply has a higher chance of surviving it. How much higher? Hard to say, but it may not be as significantly higher as some novels might have us believe.

The main perk of the Marine’s physiology is avoiding shock, and being able to lapse into a medically induced coma, without needing the medical inducement. So, unless said Laspistol shot, point blank to the temple is immediately fatal (and it most likely would be), if anyone is gonna survive it and recover? It’s a Marine. Might need a bionic bonce and brain like, but survival is survival.

Still takes time though for said recovery to happen. The coma for instance isn’t something the Marine can spontaneously awaken from, even if miraculously the injury isn’t as horrific as it might first appear. But it’s still a Man Down injury.

And we can point to the state of those interred in Dreadnoughts to see just how much damage a Marine can take and still not be quite dead (though the implantation process probably involves removing the limbs and that). And for comparatively lesser wounds, there are bionics to get you back on something’s feet.

This creates the misconception that Marines are therefore near invincible, when they’re not. Surviving a wound is simply not the same as shrugging off a wound with no ill effects.

The cool mental image of a Marine using his detached arm to bear his foes to death with is more than just wishful thinking. But that’s done to automatically dispensed analgesics and combat stims from the Power Armour, and unless his Larraman’s Organ kicks in to staunch the bleeding, it can still prove fatal.

And it’s kind of the same with Orks. Flesh wounds barely bother them, that much is true. But being able to survive your limbs being blown off (quite common) isn’t the same as still being able to fight after horrific injuries.

Remember. ‘Eavy Armour and Mega Armour isn’t worn through fear of injury. It’s worn so you can enjoy a longer fight against even ded ‘ard opponents.

A guardsman wouldn't even be able to hit a joint because the space marine would be moving faster than their eye can follow and they'd be paralysed with transhuman dread, that's what the books tell us.

I mean a squad of them running at you across the battlefield, it's gonna break morale before they even get to you. No one is even gonna be shooting at them, and if they are they won't hit a joint anyway, and if they do, it's not like it can hurt a marine.

Do….do you feel like contributing anything if worth to the thread?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do….do you feel like contributing anything if worth to the thread?

I think Da Boss is being sarcastic, or at least poking fun at the lore.

Because, sure, a Marine is scary. So is an Ork. And a Warrior (Nid or Cron). And a Daemon. And an Aspect Warrior.

A decent guardsman will resort to their training and still shoot-a conscript, though, might well break at first trouble, if they think they can avoid the Commisar.

Which we’ve covered?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s definitely a difference between a Marine surviving a wound, and not being affected by a wound.

...

But being able to survive your limbs being blown off (quite common) isn’t the same as still being able to fight after horrific injuries.

...

I think part of the issue is that in some of the materials that difference isn't very apparent due to plot armors, etc.... My memory isn't what it used to be, I'm fairly certain that there are a number of examples of marines in the lore continuing to fight despite horrific injury/missing limbs (even if it's in a limited fashion - like the black knight in Monty Python). The only one that jumps right to mind is the marine in the Astartes short that loses his lower arm to the self-induced plasma pistol blast before being teleported across space and only takes a knee for like two seconds before he "alerts", stands up, and starts assessing his predicament.

I think some of the authors tend to treat it not so much as a superhuman tolerance for pain but as an absolute absence of pain. Sort of like a "pain editor" implant in Shadowrun RPG where, once switched on, your brain no longer gets any pain signals and you basically can fight until you lose consciousness from blood loss or your limbs are too damaged/missing to use.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do….do you feel like contributing anything if worth to the thread?

Absolutely nothing of worth, of course!

 Da Boss wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Do….do you feel like contributing anything if worth to the thread?

Absolutely nothing of worth, of course!

Made me laugh, thinking back on some previous threads on here where people posted like yours almost deadly seriously so worthwhile to me

 Emperors Grace wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s definitely a difference between a Marine surviving a wound, and not being affected by a wound.

...

But being able to survive your limbs being blown off (quite common) isn’t the same as still being able to fight after horrific injuries.

...

I think part of the issue is that in some of the materials that difference isn't very apparent due to plot armors, etc.... My memory isn't what it used to be, I'm fairly certain that there are a number of examples of marines in the lore continuing to fight despite horrific injury/missing limbs (even if it's in a limited fashion - like the black knight in Monty Python). The only one that jumps right to mind is the marine in the Astartes short that loses his lower arm to the self-induced plasma pistol blast before being teleported across space and only takes a knee for like two seconds before he "alerts", stands up, and starts assessing his predicament.

I think some of the authors tend to treat it not so much as a superhuman tolerance for pain but as an absolute absence of pain. Sort of like a "pain editor" implant in Shadowrun RPG where, once switched on, your brain no longer gets any pain signals and you basically can fight until you lose consciousness from blood loss or your limbs are too damaged/missing to use.

The other aspect is that adrenaline* (and whatever turbo-adrenaline Astartes produce) is one hell of a drug. Humans can and do operate through horrific injuries for a brief period when it is a life-or-death situation (this isn't universal or guaranteed, but it is common). Marines can do that even better, and then sustain it for longer.

There is a reason adrenaline is the drug of choice for cardiac arrests- it really gives the body a survival kick up the proverbial.


*Epinephrine to Americans, for some reason.

They also have a better, but never 100%, chance of surviving such an injury, again due to adrenaline, rapid clotting and other perks of their physiology and armour, compared to a regular human.

I’m not going to put a percentage on it, because we don’t have anything like enough information for that. But, I can raise an argument from the importance of First Aid.

At the age of 14, I was involved an accident where my left arm went through a window, lacerating the wrist area down to the bone.

There was of course a lot of blood. Certainly it could’ve proven a fatal wound.

But thankfully? It happened at Scouts, where the leaders and many of my Troop Mates were trained in First Aid. And so arm was wrapped in a wet tea towel, a tourniquet was applied further up, and my arm was kept elevated.

The hospital was in the next town over, which Google Maps confirms to have been a 6.2 mile driver, taking around 22 minutes. Whilst an ambulance was called, I ended up being driven to A&E by the Scout Leaders.

That swift action quite possibly saved my life. Had it happened at school, say whilst mucking about during lunch, where there wouldn’t necessarily be a responsible adult immediately on hand, let alone one with good First Aid knowledge? It could’ve turned out very differently. If say, I’d been out and about with friends down the woods, and I’d gashed my arm on a broken bottle? Chances of surviving the wound I suffered would again drop, possibly quite drastically.

And I dare say there’ll have been others in similar circumstances who didn’t survive that sort of injury, even when First Aid was immediately available.

Here, the Marine has such First Aid built in. If his Larraman’s Organ can halt the bleeding on a detached limb? The Marine’s chances of survival are pretty good, provided he can then get proper medical care fairly soon after. And from a Lasgun specifically? The nature of the injury is going to actively aid in stopping the bleeding, as they tend to cauterise. Hence the pretty decent chances of survival.

The whole “and he’ll keep on fighting” is as covered kinda true. At least in the short term, the various stimulants created by his body and armour will keep him going, hopefully (presumably?) long enough to finish that engagement and fall back from the combat area. But I very much doubt he’d still be good for a protracted engagement at that point.

So a Lasgun can deal debilitating wounds to a Marine, but the chances of a fatal wound are reduced.

On top of adrenaline and whatever other drugs and pain inhibitor machines/devices the Imperium has; there's also pain tolerance.
Which is my observation often comes hand in hand with pain experience. People who lead a rough life (often outdoors based work) can display a much higher tolerance for long term pain than those who might lead a softer life.

Marines clearly endure a lot of harsh life just through training alone and then combat experience after that. So there's a good chance that they sustain injuries over and over and that they end up with a high tolerance to pain. Allowing them to function even after an adrenaline surge is passed.


So the main limiting factor for them isn't pain from an injury; its what the injury physically does to them. If they lose an arm they lose functionality; they gain a chance at infection*; bloodloss; other major injuries might shatter ribs and make them unable to move etc...


*again they'll have good antibodies and chemical support, but when you've the likes of Nurgle running around, infection is still a risk

I don't think Marines have a unique survival advantage against lasguns though. Autoguns and stub guns fire bullets but are generally just as likely to cause an incapacitating or fatal wound.

It’s not the force of the hit, but the nature.

If you shoot someone with a handgun, and the wound isn’t immediately fatal (so not straight through the heart, or in the head), the resulting loss of blood might finish them off later.

But, a Lasgun tends to cauterise any wounds it causes, making bleeding out less of a worry.

Add the cauterisation to the effect of Larraman’s Organ, and a Marine must have a drastically lower chance of bleeding out from a Lasgun wound, even where the damage (limb blown off) might normally be outside of the Larraman’s usual capacity to heal, compared to a similar wound caused by regular, bog standard bullets, where the wound wouldn’t start off at least partially cauterised.

 Overread wrote:
On top of adrenaline and whatever other drugs and pain inhibitor machines/devices the Imperium has; there's also pain tolerance.
Which is my observation often comes hand in hand with pain experience. People who lead a rough life (often outdoors based work) can display a much higher tolerance for long term pain than those who might lead a softer life.

Marines clearly endure a lot of harsh life just through training alone and then combat experience after that. So there's a good chance that they sustain injuries over and over and that they end up with a high tolerance to pain. Allowing them to function even after an adrenaline surge is passed.


So the main limiting factor for them isn't pain from an injury; its what the injury physically does to them. If they lose an arm they lose functionality; they gain a chance at infection*; bloodloss; other major injuries might shatter ribs and make them unable to move etc...


*again they'll have good antibodies and chemical support, but when you've the likes of Nurgle running around, infection is still a risk

So... pain is complex. From what I recall (I don't currently work in that part of healthcare but have had a recent lecture touching on this) repeated exposure to pain can lead to tolerance, but it can also lead to sensitisation. The latter is especially likely to happen if it was associated with a bad experience, as your body can learn that that type of pain leads to a bad time (like sharp pains if you get a toxic snake bite). The issue is that pain is not specific, so being sensitised to sharp pain in case it is another life-threatening snake bite means being sensitive to ALL sharp pain, like splinters or thorns or vaccine jabs.

Pain tolerance can also vary by location (I have much more pain tolerance on my hands and feet than my torso, for example, despite the hands and feet having a much greater nerve density and nociception sensory capacity). There are also differences between acute pain (short term, generally useful) and chronic pain (long term, generally unhelpful).

The main reason pain is so variable and complex and changes throughout life is that pain is not a physical thing. If you get a papercut, your finger doesn't send a pain signal to your brain, it sends a nociceptive signal. Pain is a subjective feeling that is usually based on physical stimuli like nociception, but isn't always. It is inherently affected by psychological factors. This is why psychotherapies like cognitive behavioural therapy can be an effective treatment for reducing chronic pain, because how we interpret the pain is important.

With that said, I heavily suspect the Marine response to pain is not driven primarily by exposure- that can be counterproductive- but by hypnoindoctrination and psychological and cultural factors found in Marine brotherhoods. We know a lack of susceptibility to hypnoindoctrination is a failure criteria for Marine aspirants, it is a core feature of their creation and training. It is probably responsible for the bulk of the Marine pain response baseline, with stress hormone and administered analgesics augmenting this in combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s not the force of the hit, but the nature.

If you shoot someone with a handgun, and the wound isn’t immediately fatal (so not straight through the heart, or in the head), the resulting loss of blood might finish them off later.

But, a Lasgun tends to cauterise any wounds it causes, making bleeding out less of a worry.

Add the cauterisation to the effect of Larraman’s Organ, and a Marine must have a drastically lower chance of bleeding out from a Lasgun wound, even where the damage (limb blown off) might normally be outside of the Larraman’s usual capacity to heal, compared to a similar wound caused by regular, bog standard bullets, where the wound wouldn’t start off at least partially cauterised.

Sure, in theory, but lasguns kill Marines just as good as autoguns*. So the immediate damage is enough to offset the reduced risk of catastrophic blood loss, or some other process causes similar effects, or the Marine clotting is so good wounds from normal bullets don't bleed significantly either. Thinking about it a bit, blood loss is not the only mechanism by which fatal shock** can occur. Burns are very inflammatory and can lead to distributive shock***, which could be an alternate mechanism by which lasguns can kill those surviving the kinetic impact. Similar to massive bleeding, this is something that can sometimes be temporarily ignored through adrenaline.

*Broadly speaking.
**Shock in the medical understanding, which are processes leading to blood perfusion failure in life-sustaining end organs (blood pressure drops too low for kidneys, heart, liver, brain to get enough oxygen to survive), rather than shock in the colloquial sense.
***Anaphylactic shock is the classic distributive shock caused by systemic inflammation, but other causes of massive inflammation can do it. The other notable example is septic shock, although sepsis has more than one process going on.

I don’t disagree. Whether a Lasgun or Auto Gun Round to the noggin, an unhelmeted Marine has an equal chance of death.

But, the Larraman’s Organ has its limits, working best on lesser wounds. This keeps a Marine going, shrugging off flesh wounds which might, however temporarily, incapacitate a regular human.

It can work its magic on more severe wounds, but takes time to do so. Hence, on a delimbing blast? If the wound is already at least partially cauterised, the Larraman’s Organ has less heavy lifting to do.

The Marine absolutely could still die from that injury, but I’m arguing it’s a lower chance from a cauterised wound than ballistic wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And we’re told the overall Marine physiology is highly resistant to the shock issue, and the armour pumping stimulants in when injured is a further safeguard.

Again, not foolproof and 100% effective, but a capability well beyond that of regular humans, making Marine’s far harder to kill or incapacitate.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don’t disagree. Whether a Lasgun or Auto Gun Round to the noggin, an unhelmeted Marine has an equal chance of death.

But, the Larraman’s Organ has its limits, working best on lesser wounds. This keeps a Marine going, shrugging off flesh wounds which might, however temporarily, incapacitate a regular human.

It can work its magic on more severe wounds, but takes time to do so. Hence, on a delimbing blast? If the wound is already at least partially cauterised, the Larraman’s Organ has less heavy lifting to do.

The Marine absolutely could still die from that injury, but I’m arguing it’s a lower chance from a cauterised wound than ballistic wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And we’re told the overall Marine physiology is highly resistant to the shock issue, and the armour pumping stimulants in when injured is a further safeguard.

Again, not foolproof and 100% effective, but a capability well beyond that of regular humans, making Marine’s far harder to kill or incapacitate.

We don't have any evidence that lasguns cause less shock to Marines than autoguns, is my point. I think they are probably comprable (both fairly low chance without several impacts overwhelming the Marine physiology).

To be fair, I wasn’t arguing that? Just that the resultant wounds have different traits, with the Lasgun being noted for it cauterisation, meaning provided one survives the wound, and the medical shock? You’ve a higher chance of living on, Marine or not.

And for getting through armour? I think there’s an argument that as each hit will vaporise part of the target, Lasguns could do a quicker job of degrading even Terminator armour. I mean, dented, buckled and pockmarked is one thing. A little (relatively speaking, I’m not suggesting Las hits are teeny tiny) of your armour Just Not Being There Anymore is quite another.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And for getting through armour? I think there’s an argument that as each hit will vaporise part of the target, Lasguns could do a quicker job of degrading even Terminator armour. I mean, dented, buckled and pockmarked is one thing. A little (relatively speaking, I’m not suggesting Las hits are teeny tiny) of your armour Just Not Being There Anymore is quite another.

Theoretically yes. But will it happen in a relevant amount of time before the terminators have closed to melee range and the guardsmen break. Almost certainly no.

an M2 50cal could eventually degrade the armor of a T72, but in any sort of real combat scenario its not doing anything other than maybe taking out the tracks.

For something like Terminator armor you wind up with new sorts of vulnerabilities I think if you manage to break a knee joint in Terminator armor that Marine isn't going to be very combat capable for a while. It's going to be so heavy that the user can't move at all without functioning actuators, and if a Marine has to start taking that load on his joints it's going to be a rough tine.

I’m now wondering whether Las weapons, as seen in 40K (so not actually Lasers) are affected by armour contouring?

A bullet is of course a solid object, with a fine tip. So cunningly curved and angled armour can prevent such a round hitting true.

But a Lasbolt? I dunno if we’ve ever had a description of its shape, or indeed whether that shape makes a difference, when the bolt isn’t a solid physical thing in the way a bullet is?

I appreciate this might be all too hypothetical to discuss, but I know we’ve proper brainy scientists in play here, so maybe,

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m now wondering whether Las weapons, as seen in 40K (so not actually Lasers) are affected by armour contouring?

A bullet is of course a solid object, with a fine tip. So cunningly curved and angled armour can prevent such a round hitting true.

But a Lasbolt? I dunno if we’ve ever had a description of its shape, or indeed whether that shape makes a difference, when the bolt isn’t a solid physical thing in the way a bullet is?

I appreciate this might be all too hypothetical to discuss, but I know we’ve proper brainy scientists in play here, so maybe,

So, if we assume they are a stream of particles hitting with a beam width (the variance as a result of output diameter of the weapon as not all the particles are going to be emitted from the exact same place, and assuming no further dissipation of the beam over travel), sloped armour would still grant more protection for the same reason that it would against a laser.

That is, if you have a circle with diameter of 1 unit, all the energy when it hits a flat surface perpendicular to the direction of travel is imparted to a surface area equal to a circle with a diameter of 1. If you angle that surface, however, the area that beam is affecting increases, and hence the energy is spread over a larger area. Same amount of energy, over a larger area means less energy per unit area. You can test this at home with some paper and a torch (flashlight) that can be focused suitably. Have someone hold the torch steady and trace the area that the beam covers when the paper is standing straight up, then angle the paper away and do the same, and compare the resultant areas.

Exact same reason it gets colder and gives us winter when our particular hemisphere of the earth is angled away from the sun. The energy per surface area of the suns light is spread over a greater area than during the summer when the earth is angled towards the sun.

Last bit makes sense. Who knew laughing at Flat Earther’s would come to have 40K applicable knowledge!