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Okay, this just came into my head when talking of replenishment rates etc when comparing the loss of a space marine to that of an Eldar in another thread.

Considering that there are only 1,000,000 marines* (maybe closer to 2,000,000 taking into account scouts and auxiliary marines with roles outside of battle and reserve companies).

How many in total have lived and died since their implementation. It depends on your own philosophy of fluff marines, whether it is propaganda and/or their attrition rates are higher or lower than actually stated.

This is only taking into account fluff, not tabletop rules or experiences.

I haven't sat down and tried to come up with a number myself yet, but it may as well be open to the masses to come up with a number from now.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Okay, this just came into my head when talking of replenishment rates etc when comparing the loss of a space marine to that of an Eldar in another thread.

Considering that there are only 1,000,000 marines* (maybe closer to 2,000,000 taking into account scouts and auxiliary marines with roles outside of battle and reserve companies).

How many in total have lived and died since their implementation. It depends on your own philosophy of fluff marines, whether it is propaganda and/or their attrition rates are higher or lower than actually stated.

This is only taking into account fluff, not tabletop rules or experiences.

I haven't sat down and tried to come up with a number myself yet, but it may as well be open to the masses to come up with a number from now.

Why do you think there are only 1-2mm Marines? There are likely more than that. Some Chapters have FAR more than 1,000 Marines, with even the Codex Astartes compliant Chapters potentially having more than 1,000. Space Wolves and Black Templars come to mind as examples of Chapters with far more than 1,000 Marines.

Although, to play along...

Assuming there are 1,000 Chapters of 1,000 maximum Marines each and that each Marine has a 25 year training period from recruitment to full instatement, you'd have a range from ZERO Marines dying (they're kind of functionally immortal assuming they don't die in combat) to 400,000,000 (every Chapter being fully replaced every 25 years for 10,000 years and never going above 1,000 Marines per Chapter). I think there are probably more than 1,000 Chapters AND that there are more than 1,000 Marines per Chapter (including recruits/reserves), so I think it's fair to say the total number of Marine deaths would be in the billions.

Didn't Templars get retconned in some ebook last year?

Calculating the casualties to anything more accurate than billions seems a bit ridiculous considering you have to find standard deaths per battle, major battles, weird accidents etc.

I’m going to extrapolate a lot from one datapoint.

In a bit of fluff about the Banner of Macragge, it states that it bears the names of all 77 Chapter Masters of the Ultramarines. If we assume that every position in the chapter has a similar turnover, that makes for roughly 77,000 Ultramarines who have existed over the ~10,000 years of their service as a chapter. If we extrapolate to the “thousand chapters” we get 77,000,000 marines.

Now, there are a ton of flaws here. The Ultras are a first founding chapter, not every one of the thousand is going to have that history. Extrapolating from one point is also problematic. We don’t know what the average lifespan of a marine is, turnover, etc. This also doesn’t cover the time of legions, before the split. Numbers were a lot different back then.

This also assumes the strict 1,000 marines in a chapter number. Depending if you count drivers, command, etc, that can be closer to 1,500 - 2,000 marines.

 Nevelon wrote:


This also assumes the strict 1,000 marines in a chapter number. Depending if you count drivers, command, etc, that can be closer to 1,500 - 2,000 marines.

This. For all the Imperium knows, chapters like the Carcharodons that mostly exist beyond Imperial space could be at legion strength and no one would ever know.

Why do you think there are only 1-2mm Marines? There are likely more than that. Some Chapters have FAR more than 1,000 Marines, with even the Codex Astartes compliant Chapters potentially having more than 1,000. Space Wolves and Black Templars come to mind as examples of Chapters with far more than 1,000 Marines.

The Space Wolves have, at best, around 1500-1600 Marines, in total. We know this because we're provided the head-count of the two largest Great Companies, and we know how many Great Companies there are. From that point, it's simple math.

By the fluff, there's a thousand loyalist Chapters of a thousand Marines each. That's one million Space Marines at any given time. As to how many have died in the last ten thousand years? Many, many thousands... which, in the end of it all, is negligible.

dont forget that those thousand chapters have not all existed for 10,000 years. There have been a number of foundings over the years.

straight after the heresy I would suggest there was many less than there is now.

There was a joke that if the Bell of Heroes (or something like that) rang every time a hero died, and all space marines are considered heroes, then that bell is ringing non-stop for the past 10 milleniums and possibly at the speed of sound.

42 is the answer.

A metric Butt ton.....its an industry term.