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how much of a typical life can a human expect to live in the 40k universe?

are there different classes of people?

are their shopping centres and recreational facilities?

or does every man women and child go to war!

This should go to background...

But yeah, life for your average human is going to be harsh. They will most likely find themselves working at some menial job at some nasty factory somewhere, with no breaks and minimal wage.

Some worlds do practice wide spread conscription; the Vostroyans, iirc, force every first born citizen to join the IG.

Life among humans varies vastly. Most just work in factories to fuel the Imperial war effort. Some are in the military (PDF, Imperial Guard, Inquisition, extremely few Space Marines). Some are farmworkers on agriworlds, some are rich and prosperous, some are unaware of the Imperium and lives on worlds still in the Stone Age or Medieval Age.

It's extremely varied, but most are oppressed slaves working in Industrial Revolution-esque conditions for their Imperial overlords.

oh i see, so there is rich a prosperous people?!

ive always hoped there was for some reaosn hahaha because if life is all war then what are they even fighting for?

and also marzillius how are their humans living in stone age? i thought humans all came from earth? so that would mean that had to be in a spaceship to get to their "stoneage world"?

spaceXjam wrote:oh i see, so there is rich a prosperous people?!

ive always hoped there was for some reaosn hahaha because if life is all war then what are they even fighting for?

and also marzillius how are their humans living in stone age? i thought humans all came from earth? so that would mean that had to be in a spaceship to get to their "stoneage world"?

Fringe planets, mate.
There are some worlds that went feral or lost contact with the IoM shortly after getting settled, and to them the IoM is just a myth.
Sometimes they do make contact with the IoM, but they usually end up thinking them as gods or something.

There is one comic I read, for example, where this sort of medieval-style agriworld came under attack from Orks, and they thought the BT who came to help them were angels, cause of some stain-glass window in some church that had depictions of space marines.
Also, they called the Orks demons.

Edited for stupid typos.

haha that is really cool thanks for letting me know!


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also after looking at some planets in the 40k universe... how come planets like cadia and macragee only have like ... 20-200 million people living on them? surley 38 thousand years from now you would expect like billions and billions of people living on planets


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terra does have hundreds of billions which is good to hear

Good depends on your perspective.
Many of these overpopulated worlds thoroughly depend on agriworlds for food. Agriwrlds typically do not have large communities since their entire purpose is exporting food stuff, not eating it. There are also other conditions, primarily that if a planet's polar caps have the same climate as Earth's equator, it's not going to be a nice place to found a large population.

Remember that terra-type worlds are extremely rare. With "extremely rare" I mean on a universal perspective. And by that I mean even the literal hell holes of planets are precious gems worth defending.

spaceXjam wrote:haha that is really cool thanks for letting me know!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
also after looking at some planets in the 40k universe... how come planets like cadia and macragee only have like ... 20-200 million people living on them? surley 38 thousand years from now you would expect like billions and billions of people living on planets

A constant life of warfare and recruitment tends to do that.

It depends upon the world and their station. Most low born on most worlds be lucky to see 60 I would guess while nobles can reach a few hundred with enough cash maybe longer.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:A constant life of warfare and recruitment tends to do that.

Cadia's close enough to dangerous space that it suffers from raids, evidently. One asteriod strike can do wonders for population control. If you look at it logically, there's no way recruitment can really impact population for most planets, especially hive world planets. The logistics just don't work out. We have to sorta take the whole 40K universe on faith, and not apply logic too much.

Example: Says there's some 30 thousand or so hive worlds in the 40K universe. There's also huge starships that can carry a milliion (!!) Imperial Guard troops at a time, but really - so what? You pile millions of IG into starships, then sail through the Warp for weeks or months to deliver them to a war zone. Just in the time it takes the fleet to arrive at the war zone, the source planet will have over-replenished the population depleted by conscription by orders of magnitudes.

(Assume some 100 Billions on a medium sized hive world, at current birth rates that's about five million births a day. Can't ship that many, can't really even get that many killed in anything but a planetary disaster. Sorry, logistics just don't work out.)

The whole 40K universe is some odd mix of Victorian steam punk and a futuristic semi-religious technology base. (jyeah, like faith and scientific method mix well irl.)

Everything here depends on where you're talking about. The Imperium doesn't exactly have anything resembling a unified culture, every single planet works very differently. Think about the cultural differences between, say, China and England in the 16th century. Magnify that for much more significant geographical differences. What do you suppose you'd end up with?

Make up whatever you feel like, make up planetary conditions that'd justify it, and you've got something that may exist somewhere in the galaxy.

i find all of this so intresting ahah i have never thought that the impirium is like nazi germany before i thought it was a free society :S so the emperor has slaves? are the IG just slave soilders? if so what is the difference between them and concspricts ahah

spaceXjam wrote:i find all of this so intresting ahah i have never thought that the impirium is like nazi germany before i thought it was a free society :S so the emperor has slaves? are the IG just slave soilders? if so what is the difference between them and concspricts ahah

Some IG regiments could justifiably be called "slave soldiers" but just as many would volunteer simply for the chance to serve and die for their God-Emperor. Most Guardsmen are conscripts but a cut above regular conscripts. Most Guard regiments are regiments that are given to the Imperium by an individual planet's military, as a payment for the larger Imperium's protection. The Imperium definitely isn't a free society, as was said the Imperium's worlds have vastly different cultures but "Imperial" culture, is a brutally dictatorial, genocidal, feudal theocracy where individual human life is worth almost nothing.

spaceXjam wrote:how much of a typical life can a human expect to live in the 40k universe?

are there different classes of people?

are their shopping centres and recreational facilities?

or does every man women and child go to war!

1. Yes. From the indentured slaves and serfs to the ultra-rich and privileged. Even in 40k, life is still like a crap sandwich. The more bread you have, the less crap you have to eat.
2. Yes, at least in some of the "uphive" areas in terms of "modern day" shopping areas, but even slums have swill houses and brothels.
3. On CADIA, EVERY citizen is part of the militia, whether they are in the local Planetary Defence Forces, Interior Guard (local Inquisition forces) - including kasrkin or Imperial Guard. On other worlds, things may be different. With the million worlds, all variations on human society can be found (except for the Utopian Star trek future ones, who took a look at the imperium, decided they wanted nothing to do with it and said "no thanks". The Imperium sent in the marines and then they were no more. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is no room for sparkly, shiny white utopias. They get splattered and despoiled and become greyish or gone).