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Say if an ork managed to not get himself killed in battle or by his peers, would they die of natural causes? And if they do die of natural causes how old do they get?

I bring this up because a friend and I were discussing what being part fungus would mean for their biology.

There have been records of Orks growing to be hundreds of years old. The Beast had fought for so long and grown so old that he was 'the size of a hab block'.

I don't think they even die of old age... on top of that... tbey are basically mushroom folm. Normal science doezn't really work out on them to figure it out.

There's never been any evidence of orks degrading with age since their gestalt field makes them bigger the more they fight, and any ork is going to be constantly fighting. That being said, if an ork were to go for years without a proper fight somehow, he probably would appear to age and then die; orks need to fight just like other races need food or water. So I'd say that they are basically ageless, but can die of malnutrition.

 Vitali Advenil wrote:
There's never been any evidence of orks degrading with age since their gestalt field makes them bigger the more they fight, and any ork is going to be constantly fighting. That being said, if an ork were to go for years without a proper fight somehow, he probably would appear to age and then die; orks need to fight just like other races need food or water. So I'd say that they are basically ageless, but can die of malnutrition.

Yeah, I was basically thinking the same. I like the malnutrition from not fighting idea, heck with orks it even sounds sane .

Yep the fluff doesn't really address them dying of old age. Undefeated there will be little stopping an Ork's growth. The only self-limiting factor would be that the greater the size - the greater the power and the more likely to lead a Waaaaagh...which in turn would attract so much attention that the Ork would eventually be killed (even if a titan had to step on him to do it).

An Ork could essentially become too powerful for his own good and get himself killed...eventually.

xenology has an Ork who was trapped in a cell for a long period of time and the ork degraded physically, become sloven, fat and losing most of it's muscle tone. I would think the only way an ork would die of natural causes is if it was denied a fight for so long it just gave up since it has nothing to live for.

Elbows wrote:
Yep the fluff doesn't really address them dying of old age. Undefeated there will be little stopping an Ork's growth. The only self-limiting factor would be that the greater the size - the greater the power and the more likely to lead a Waaaaagh...which in turn would attract so much attention that the Ork would eventually be killed (even if a titan had to step on him to do it).

When your height doubles, your surface area (and therefore strength: a muscle's strength is not based on the length but its cross-section) is quadrupled, but your volume and therefore your weight is increased by a factor of 8.

In simple words, unless the Ork gets denser muscles as they grow, not just bigger, they would get their lungs crushed by their own body weight before they reach any truly excessive sizes... and if the muscles do get denser it only adds to the weight problem since I doubt Orks have inbuilt auto-stabilisers, impact dampeners and weight distributors like Titans do.

The beast was the size of a hab-block, so I assume they were designed with this in mind. Plus, the power of the Waaagh! wouldn't let an ork that killy die in such an anticlimactic matter. The boyz simply do not believe an ork could ever die because he got too big; something bigger and killier would have to do it.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Elbows wrote:
Yep the fluff doesn't really address them dying of old age. Undefeated there will be little stopping an Ork's growth. The only self-limiting factor would be that the greater the size - the greater the power and the more likely to lead a Waaaaagh...which in turn would attract so much attention that the Ork would eventually be killed (even if a titan had to step on him to do it).

When your height doubles, your surface area (and therefore strength: a muscle's strength is not based on the length but its cross-section) is quadrupled, but your volume and therefore your weight is increased by a factor of 8.

In simple words, unless the Ork gets denser muscles as they grow, not just bigger, they would get their lungs crushed by their own body weight before they reach any truly excessive sizes... and if the muscles do get denser it only adds to the weight problem since I doubt Orks have inbuilt auto-stabilisers, impact dampeners and weight distributors like Titans do.

Sorry. This is 40k. If you are looking for physics you are in the wrong universe.

Real answer to question is simple: as old as the plot demands.