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So, the various space marines recruit the strongest/toughest humans to train to be space marines. The best survive, become scouts, and so on. The rest die. According to the fluff, I think something like 1 in 10,000 survive training to become space marines; of course this number gets smaller each edition (with the grey knights we're down to 1 in 1,000,000, not sure on current space marine codices). I understand the need for it to be OOT like that for dramatic effect, but this seems to be incredibly wasteful, and detrimental to humanity's evolution. Why can't the space marines just say, "hey, you're not cut out for this, but you can go be a storm trooper instead"? Similar to real world spec ops training. In effect, they are taking the best of humanity out of military service and the human gene pool as well. Think about what a bunch of of space marine wannabe guardsmen could do...especially the 999,999 psykers per grey knight (that's a lot of psyker battle squads for the IG).

Then again, the Imperium is wasteful and hey, this is grimdark. And Space Marines must be the finest, etc. I feel like there could be some interesting fluff with this though.

The marines usually recruit strong and tough humans, but the real requirement for becoming a marine is compatibility with the implants. Yes, it's a waste. It would be so much more efficient if they could test and detect compatible humans instead of demanding random feats of (often suicidal) strength from prospective recruits. But Grimdark.

 greyknight12 wrote:
In effect, they are taking the best of humanity out of military service and the human gene pool as well.

In an Imperium of a million worlds, there are plenty more to replace them with.

 insaniak wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:
In effect, they are taking the best of humanity out of military service and the human gene pool as well.

In an Imperium of a million worlds, there are plenty more to replace them with.

In that context it's less of a problem, yes - the waste of implants on incompatible recruits that otherwise survived the trials is a bigger problem for the marines. They can grow more but it's slow, so every failure at the implant stage is one less marine for a period of 5-10 years.

"Because Grimdark" - standard 40k fluff answer.

To expound on that a bit:

In most cases, they aren't taking the best of humanity out of military service or any other important venture. Most chapters recruit from death worlds which are under their jurisdiction, so people would not be getting sent to the guard or spending their lives furthering human society. More often than not those people would merely eek out a horrible existence on some nightmarishly grimdark planet.

Could those people be put to some better use though? Sure. Of course it's a waste of resources, but isn't EVERYTHING in the IoM? Guard regiments probably lose an average of at least 10 times as many men on a daily basis, a thousand psykers are sacrificed to the emperor every day, ships carrying thousands of souls are lost/destroyed in warp travel frequently, etc. This is a setting where entire planets, literally billions of lives are exterminated with shocking regularity. I'm having a hard time batting an eyelash at 10,000 people dying trying to become space marines.

What's one million humans compare to one Space Marine? There are 7 billion people just on Earth now. Imagine how many humans there must be in the Imperium. The number would be uncountable. Even the best cogitator on Mars would take a century to work it out.

1,000,000 human lives is a drop in the ocean compare to how many lives are saved by the existence of even a single Space Marine Chapter.

the whole 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 is just grimdark hyperbole to inflate how incredibly precious each marine is.

Most chapters already have some form of organic weeding out process inplace in whatever world they recruit from (as mentioned above) such as the wilds of fenris, or some other form of manhood, ultimate Badass rituals, who then get to go on to the marine screening process, and only those who feel they can step up to it will, (insert heroic music)

I always liked the fluff idea that chaplains watch and appraise from affar before taking the aspirant away to have horrible surgery

They may even do some peliminary scans/tests at that point, since each marine is such a huge investment of resources, it may be only 1 in 10,000 or million can be a marine, but its not like they line them up and kill all that cannnot, its just a cool tagline.

Now maybe my Marines malevolent may be a bit on the harsh side when the implement the dodge a machine gun test but oh well, gotta have standards

Why do you think they slowed the creation of more chapters? They may say it was because of the no legion building policy but it is really due to the low return due to current techniques. Just proves the theory that every action is based on economics.

Seriously though you are correct it is so wasteful it is grimdark in and of itself. but ask yourself this question, if I could create a space marine would I? The answer will always be yes due to the rule of cool.

Actually the real answer is probably that they don't necessarily have the supplies to equip 100,000 more storm troopers per space marine. That is a lot more supplies than that space marine uses and outfitting in less is a huge waste of talented soldiers lives as all flak armor imperial guard die like flies. With hive worlds, etc. the only resource the IoM has in excessive abundance is human lives. I am pretty sure if they could replace bolter rounds with human lives they would, however, the tyranids and chaos gods seem to have a monopoly on that sort of thing so the IoM must use manufactured goods.

Some things I forgot to mention it in my first post:

First off, there is a screening process to make sure that aspirants stand a chance at surviving the training and implants to become a marine. Also, not all aspirants actually die during the weeding out process. Those who survive can go on to serve the chapter in some other capacity, as servitors, thralls, or even disposable warriors.

From the Index Astartes:
"If a Chapter is short on Marines they are often allowed to live, and may be placed within their own special units. Those who display uncontrollable pyschotic tendencies can be recruited into suicide assault squads."

ragingmunkyz wrote:In most cases, they aren't taking the best of humanity out of military service or any other important venture. Most chapters recruit from death worlds which are under their jurisdiction, so people would not be getting sent to the guard or spending their lives furthering human society. More often than not those people would merely eek out a horrible existence on some nightmarishly grimdark planet.

That's a very important point.

Space Marines usually tend to prefer recruiting feral worlders due to their inherent physical traits, violent culture and low intelligence (the latter making it easier to accept the hypno-indoctrination), and whilst a potential regiment from such worlds would certainly have some use (see Rough Riders for example), the Imperial Guard might much prefer people from a civilised world who can be drilled into a disciplined and reliable fighting force.

Besides, whilst I do not think that the Adeptus Astartes are as important for the Imperium's continued existence as some people seem to believe, the Space Marines are a very efficient "force multiplier" in that the specialised shock tactics of just a few souped-up Astartes can have a great effect on a campaign fought by several larger regiments of normal humans. Think of it like a bottleneck where only a few guys at a time fit through. You can of course send wave after wave of your normal grunts, hoping that the enemy will grow weary after some time. Or you send the Marines, who may be crushed in a traditional field battle, but will in this one situation totally be the best weapon humanity could put on the table. It's all about concentrating as much force as possible into a single soldier. And then putting him into as small a room as possible, together with his enemies.

To have such an option available is easily worth the lives of a couple thousand barbarians who would've made lousy soldiers anyways.

Power armour is worth more than human lives. And they only have so much power armour. Might as well put the best human lives in it.

Grimdark.

"After all, they say, everyone knows how to make another human, but the secrets to making a P94 plasma rifle are all but lost. "

Quotes from the Fallout universe but it fits 40k mentality just aswell..

 Paint_To_Redemption wrote:
1,000,000 human lives is a drop in the ocean compare to how many lives are saved by the existence of even a single Space Marine Chapter.

And 1,000,000 human lives is a drop in the ocean compared to how many lives are wasted by spending obscene amounts of resources on screaming idiots with chainswords instead of the IG/Imperial Navy (you know, the people who actually win wars). Once you're stuck with such a useless parasite in the first place sacrificing a few more lives to the religious cult isn't really making much of a difference, especially since the cult tends to harvest new recruits from its own planets.

I forget its name, but one of the Dark Angels books has a Chaplain snap a boy's spine because he shows hesitation when he sees the lad ahead of him undergo transplantation from the apothecary. He was told that the moment of hesitation was unforgivable, yaddy yaddy yadda.

Of course the Dark Angel line was that it was merciful as, were they to send him home, his community would have killed him...

But I agree - do it as the Ultramarines do; have your failed initiates serve as Chapter Serfs.

Probably Asmodai.

Dude has problems

Also while it's true many of the trainees don't make it they do not all die, many are simply rejected as not good enough.

In the McNeil books he mentions that many of the workers/crew of the ultramarines fleet are chapter serf who were potential recruits that didn't make it through the process. Also in those books the captain mentions he was at an elite military academy and he was one of the few selected to continue on the process (the other kids didn't die they just weren't good enough, those kids probably all went into PDF or guard regiments).

In reality the process of recruiting space marines in itself would slowly eliminate the genetic compatible recruits from their recruitment pool, for the aspirants have to be immature. Every boy to be transformed is one individual that won't continue the genetic lineage.

Space Marines, in general, ARE rather wasteful by modern standards.

But the Imperium's resources are vast. By its standards, the resources put in to making Space Marines is practically nil. This is the same Imperium that equips, feeds, and ships out to warzones trillions of Imperial Guard soldiers on a yearly basis.

Approximately a million Space Marines is basically nothing compared to the resources, firepower, and manpower of the Imperial Guard.

The Space Puppies also have a good argument as well. As far as they see it, the initiates they pick are effectively already dead.

In my mind, all the trials that then happen are more of a result of the canis helix implantation needing to be 'stress tested' as opposed to any mundane 'are you worthy?' thing.

the human population is in the countless Trillions.

Marine recruitment is not even a rounding error on that sort of scale.



If we were to put the Imperium's population at around 300 trillion, which is low balling it IMO, with a growth rate of 1%(which is well below what the rate is now) that puts the Imperium at 3 billion new people each year.

We have roughly 1000 chapters. if each needed to get 5000 initates a year to counter losses that would only be 5 million humans removed from the base population.

Which still leaves 2,995,000,000 people a year to replenish the population and provide recruits for the IG. Thats 2 billion 995 million a year.



Of course, the Imperium is in the countless trillions for population. So I would feel better putting the actual population in the 900 trillion range.

Which with a 1% pop growth rate would give you 9 trillion people a year to recruit from. 5-10 million people for marine recruitment is barely a rounding error with a number that obscenely large.

funny I was just hinking about this,

since the marines take only the best,

then the best genes get taken out of the gene pool,

they should really be getting sucessful candidates to breed,

and produce more of there genetically superior offspring

but I think space marines banging made for bad fluff...

or too good fluff, depending on how you look at it

I've played a homebrew WH40k RPG where our "Chapter" (there were 4 of us) the Astromarines were initially recruits for the Novamarine chapter, but one or more of our genetic implants failed to integrate with our bodies. The Novamarines then left us on some backwater planet to protect it from random evils. I'm not sure if there is anything like that in the Fluff, I'll have to check with my old GM.

Well this "waste" of an incredibly violent and somewhat stupid death world barbarian's genes is probably countered by the food and resources provided to the family which would allow for the family genes to pass on.

When talking evolution passing the close family members genes is nearly the same as the individual themselves.

Wow, if you think about it, creating space marines is like a service to the galaxy by removing the most brutal and merciless individuals from worlds where brutality is considered a plus. Before the training, hypnosis, and engineering space marines are not particularly useful nor "good" individuals.

Remember that Marines are usually recruiting from Feral or Death Worlds, places where humanity is pretty much isolated anyway.

They also only come every so often to the world, and the parents of these offspring are still reproducing.


This will result in some individuals that were eligible not being selected because of timing, and more with their same genes will be born from the same parents.

And the numbers taken are so low anyway that they couldn't have any appreciable effect on the genepool.


The final thing to remember is that the best candidate crossed with the best candidate doesn't always equal more of the same.

If you are into breeding any kind of animal you will know that a good animal and another good animal don't always give you more good animals.


Usually, you breed animals with different strengths and different weaknesses to get what you want.

Take Pigs for example,

You have a pig that has good muscle quality and is fast growing, but it has poor nursing qualities and bone structure. You would breed that pig with another one that has good nursing qualities and good bone structure. This will give you a mixture of offspring that have mixes of the good and bad. You will then continue to breed the offspring that inherited mostly the good traits.

However, the offspring arn't necessarily going to keep giving you only those with good traits. They will keep throwing babies with bad traits. its just how genetics works.


So taking away the best individuals from a genepool is not going to cripple it, because the genes that created those good individuals are still there.

easysauce wrote:
since the marines take only the best,

Well, no. They don't. They take the most precocious of children, but not necessarily those who would develop to become the best otherwise. Especially since they ignore half of the population as a starting point, and then AFTER taking half of the population away as an option to recruit, they narrow the selection process down even further from there due to genetic incompatibility-- and that's not even considering that they choose from amongst the notoriously malnourished and ill-developed populaces of a feral or death world.

Marines do not take only from the best. Their recruiting is extremely limited. "The best" oftentimes simply don't qualify to be a Space Marine for reasons entirely beyond their control. Oftentimes they're not born to the right place at the right time; other times they're simply not the right gender. Other times, they just don't have the right genetic compatibility with the gene-seed. Or any combination of the above. The NICEST thing you can say about the recruitment policy of Space Marines is that they take "The Best" of a very tiny and otherwise underutilized fraction of Imperial society.

Another point is that a lot of Chapters do not take recruits constantly, they take a chunk at a time, leaving the remaining portion to age and breed, some ideal candidates will be missed, but they may go on to have 4 sons who are also candidates.

 greyknight12 wrote:
So, the various space marines recruit the strongest/toughest humans to train to be space marines. The best survive, become scouts, and so on. The rest die. According to the fluff, I think something like 1 in 10,000 survive training to become space marines; of course this number gets smaller each edition (with the grey knights we're down to 1 in 1,000,000, not sure on current space marine codices). I understand the need for it to be OOT like that for dramatic effect, but this seems to be incredibly wasteful, and detrimental to humanity's evolution. Why can't the space marines just say, "hey, you're not cut out for this, but you can go be a storm trooper instead"? Similar to real world spec ops training. In effect, they are taking the best of humanity out of military service and the human gene pool as well. Think about what a bunch of of space marine wannabe guardsmen could do...especially the 999,999 psykers per grey knight (that's a lot of psyker battle squads for the IG).

Then again, the Imperium is wasteful and hey, this is grimdark. And Space Marines must be the finest, etc. I feel like there could be some interesting fluff with this though.

because, on being rejected the would be space marines will feel rejected and unloved by the emperor. They will feel the rejection and failure and search out somewhere their talent are appreciated.

Remember the last time hundreds of thousands of super humans felt unappreciated, rejected, and unloved by the emperor? That turned out SOOO well for the empire.


best to just kill them off before they can cause any trouble

Melissia wrote:Marines do not take only from the best. Their recruiting is extremely limited. "The best" oftentimes simply don't qualify to be a Space Marine for reasons entirely beyond their control. Oftentimes they're not born to the right place at the right time; other times they're simply not the right gender. Other times, they just don't have the right genetic compatibility with the gene-seed. Or any combination of the above. The NICEST thing you can say about the recruitment policy of Space Marines is that they take "The Best" of a very tiny and otherwise underutilized fraction of Imperial society.

That reminds me of some Chapters limiting themselves further due to weird traditions.
The Salamanders, for example, only let those of their recruits who excel at at the craft of blacksmithing proceed to implantation.

 Lynata wrote:

Melissia wrote:Marines do not take only from the best. Their recruiting is extremely limited. "The best" oftentimes simply don't qualify to be a Space Marine for reasons entirely beyond their control. Oftentimes they're not born to the right place at the right time; other times they're simply not the right gender. Other times, they just don't have the right genetic compatibility with the gene-seed. Or any combination of the above. The NICEST thing you can say about the recruitment policy of Space Marines is that they take "The Best" of a very tiny and otherwise underutilized fraction of Imperial society.

That reminds me of some Chapters limiting themselves further due to weird traditions.
The Salamanders, for example, only let those of their recruits who excel at at the craft of blacksmithing proceed to implantation.

"Ah, initiate Aramis, you have indeed excelled in all the major areas of the combat trials, your skill with sword and gun are second to none... but I feel you could perhaps do with some more... flare in your smithing, if you ever hope to make a marine!"

meh,

the limiting resource in the imperium sure isnt people,

so its really not a waste,

I see it as a brutal mix of necessity due to the 40k scenario of the IoM basically fighting for its very existence,

ten thousand years worth of religious revolution, civil war, and xeno's incursion's have likely changed the methodology somewhat as well.

like the first generation of thunder warriors,

Im pretty sure the empreror didnt have the 1000 to one ratio of people needed to make the proto marine force to take over terra with.

same with the first founding, before all these numerous planets are sending billions of dregs to the yet formed empire,

it seems like they kinda screwed them all up a bit too though, so many legions and primarchs had various flaws and such... even aside from chaos ness...


and what the heck is the selection from cruize's (?) planet its a bunch of criminals that he terrorized into docileness...

all the recruits from that world they are either criminals or cowards... guess which die in training first?

and the emperor saw no problems with turning that world into a super human breeding ground....