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Hi, all.

I realise that all this can be answered with; it scifi, fella. Move on, but we wouldn't be nerds if we didn't think of this stuff, dammit

We all know the fluff about space travel in WH40K, but here's the thing, the whole Eco system thing isn't really talked about.

Bearing in mind that if we travel to different countries we're at risk of catching a foreign disease that our system isn't built to deal with, what do you think would happen if we went to another planet? That's a whole new planet of unknown substances that our bodies don't even know. A plant on another planet would kill us with bacteria. Think War of the Worlds.

Imagine an Army Group of Imperial Guard, thousands and thousands and thousands of men, landing on a planet that they weren't born on. The Eco system would kill them all. Their bodies simply couldn't handle that much alien bacteria, they'd catch a cold and die. The only reason Terra's Eco system doesn't kill us is because we're born here, and we've been here for tens of thousands of years, so we've adapted.

I know that in one Guant's Ghosts novel the men get issued antibiotics to help cope with the new planet's system, but that's all I've found. And even if you dose up on antibiotics your body still would need about 1000 years to adapt to the planet's Eco system.

Any thoughts?

I believe this is covered in one of the Guant's ghosts novels, IIRC the guardsmen get a jab of all the diseases known on the planet before they set foot on it. Sure, its a crap excuse, but it is there. And if you needed that time, then there would never been any imperium, and common sense would prevail.

Is this really a 40k background question, rather than general sci-fi?

That said, I remember that at least in one case GW's fluff mentioned terraforming waaaay back during the Golden Age of Technology - it's archaeotech by now and the Imperium doesn't know how to replicate it, but it has been used on many planets that were rediscovered and reintegrated during the Great Crusade and the following millennia.

Even with terraforming there'd still be local differences. I've no idea how a guard regiment would handle it but remember it making the backdrop for a pretty important event at the beginning of the Enforcer series of books. Calpurnia does an official visit to the Adeptus Mechanicus shrine on Hydraphur to receive the local inoculations and such, making friends with the tech-magos and surviving an attempt on her life afterwards.

Lots and lots of inoculations. Inoculations via pill, dermal patch, injection and foul-tasting substances.

welshhoppo wrote:
I believe this is covered in one of the Guant's ghosts novels, IIRC the guardsmen get a jab of all the diseases known on the planet before they set foot on it. Sure, its a crap excuse, but it is there. And if you needed that time, then there would never been any imperium, and common sense would prevail.

This. I believe it's actually covered in a few of Abnett's books. The Ghosts get inoculations before almost every drop along with a gradual acclimatisation to the planets day/night cycle over many weeks while aboard whatever ship is transporting them. I don't generally see this as a problem anyway. Most human inhabited worlds would have a similar range of human contractible diseases/viruses and while there would be viruses and diseases that were native to only certain worlds or systems, there would be a broad spectrum of common issues that could be treated.

Ghosts Spoiler

this is what respirators are for