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How do?

Nice and simple question.

The planet of Sotha is the former home world of the Scythes of the Emperor (or EmperorKs Scythes. I’m certain they’ve been interchangeable over the years). And it got properly scoffed by a Nid fleet.

In the Cawl novel, that is made clear. It’s literallt bedrock, like a skull stripped of all fleshy bits.

My question is, based on current terraforming theory, throwing in 40k handwavium tech....can such a planet, given time and resources, be returned to being able to sustain human life?

Ideally, I’d like citations, though I’m aware if such exist they’re likely to be wildly contradictory. But even so. It’s an interesting topic, no?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

Nice and simple question.

The planet of Sotha is the former home world of the Scythes of the Emperor (or EmperorKs Scythes. I’m certain they’ve been interchangeable over the years). And it got properly scoffed by a Nid fleet.

In the Cawl novel, that is made clear. It’s literallt bedrock, like a skull stripped of all fleshy bits.

My question is, based on current terraforming theory, throwing in 40k handwavium tech....can such a planet, given time and resources, be returned to being able to sustain human life?

Ideally, I’d like citations, though I’m aware if such exist they’re likely to be wildly contradictory. But even so. It’s an interesting topic, no?

I don’t know about anything specific. But, I’m sure there are various Tech Priest Biologus and scribes of the Administratum that have recorded the kinds of life and the geography of Sotha. I imagine that if they wanted to redo Sotha and emulate its old geography, they could. Life and stuff may be a harder depending on rarity of organisms and such, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t samples of Sothan wildlife preserved somewhere, maybe an Ordo Xenos specimen zoo.

Well, is there still water and an atmosphere?

If so, I'd think it's more a question of reintroducing carbon, and related isotopes, back into the system. Once done, repopulating life is the "easy" part, ideally with "simple" parts to allow local evolutionary processes to "guide" life to flourishing on the planet.

In reality, if the goal is just to make the place "habitable" for human life, so long as the atmosphere is breathable and the water cycle intact, it's likely fairly "easy" to import or synthesize the sort of soil needed to grow food. But, since this is sci-fi, all that could probably even be done hydroponically, if need be (although at greater "cost").

Now, if there is no water and/or atmosphere though, that is vastly more difficult and would require the syntheses (or importing) of both before much else could be done.

Or so my initial guess would be.

If it still has a molten core that hasn't been sucked dry by the nids, then eventually volcanic action will spew a range of chemicals back out into a more accessible position. Also dropping lots of comets and asteroids onto the planet would help restock its supplies of minerals and volatile.

If the Nids have swept the whole system clean of useful still and left behind the really common stuff like iron and silicon, then there might nor be much to go with without awaiting billions of years for natural.processes to transmute those materials into other materials.

The terraforming process described in Lim Stanley Robinsons Mars series basically.

At one stage the Earth was a bare rock, but it had a pretty funky atmosphere. All the organic matter on the earth originated in that atmosphere as CO2, H2O and O2. If the Nids took the atmosphere with them (and I believe that is the last phase of total assimilation) then terraforming the planet again would be a massive undertaking, almost certainly not worth the effort. Just find another planet and start again. Even a planet that had experienced Exterminatus would be much easier to terraform that some ball of rock with no atmosphere. Not impossible given the sort of resources the Imperium of Man has, but a massive waste of time and resources.

In theory, it would be possible, but the amount of effort to do it is truly nuts.

Let's suppose this planet is similar to Earth and the tyranids drank every last drop of water on it, so now we have to pour some water back in. To get an idea of the scale: we'd need to dump an ice cube about as massive as the Moon on that planet to restore it back to normal.
If the Imperium can do THAT, everything that comes afterwards (fixing the atmosphere, adjusting the climate and recreating the ecosystem) sounds like child's play.

Tyranids strip the atmosphere, oceans, and the land down to the bedrock, including materials like iron and silicon. Non-organic elements are present in living organisms, just in small amounts. Small amounts for a hive fleet can still mean many hundreds or thousands of tons. We also know from past Tyranid background that Carnifex tusks can incorporate adamantium and Tyranid carapaces can have silicon laced in them.

Replacing the oceans is going to be the hard part. Are there icy moons or enough comets in the same star system? If so, more importantly is it worth the effort? Vigilus as a hive world had water being shipped in from space for the thirsty noble classes ( which still numbered in the billions probably). The Imperium might consider using the water in comets similarly rather than just dumping it onto a dead planet to recreate an ocean.

Lots of things might technically be possible if you have unlimited resources and political willpower to carry through the project, but in an Imperium beset with enemies and with so many other priorities competing for attention, such a terraforming project might seem a colossal waste of time and resources.

In the book Cawl states that the world is still volcanically active and would have restored its atmosphere in time anyway. Vulcanism would slowly spill more gasses out and the the molten core would create a magnetic field that would protect the atmosphere as it renewed. Cawl also states that tyranids only take surface life and that bacterial would still be present in the rocks, eventually life would remerge. Cawl is basically just setting up to speed it up he sent a mining fleet to the get water from the systems comets and had samples of the planets plant life that he could replant, so all he would really need to do is create topsoil or even ship it in which doesn't seem beyond his capabilities. Its all easy technologies for the imperium its just that the imperium doesn't think like that

only taking surface life makes some sense, pushing deep into the bedrock proably takes more energy then they'd get from it.

goundry wrote:
In the book Cawl states that the world is still volcanically active and would have restored its atmosphere in time anyway. Vulcanism would slowly spill more gasses out and the the molten core would create a magnetic field that would protect the atmosphere as it renewed. Cawl also states that tyranids only take surface life and that bacterial would still be present in the rocks, eventually life would remerge. Cawl is basically just setting up to speed it up he sent a mining fleet to the get water from the systems comets and had samples of the planets plant life that he could replant, so all he would really need to do is create topsoil or even ship it in which doesn't seem beyond his capabilities. Its all easy technologies for the imperium its just that the imperium doesn't think like that

Didnt Tyranid Capillary Towers reach really far down into the earth? If so, then that is a huge retcon, as every world Tyranids eat will eventually grow back life.

I guess it makes sense though. By the time the Nids come back, dinner will be ready again

123ply wrote:

goundry wrote:
In the book Cawl states that the world is still volcanically active and would have restored its atmosphere in time anyway. Vulcanism would slowly spill more gasses out and the the molten core would create a magnetic field that would protect the atmosphere as it renewed. Cawl also states that tyranids only take surface life and that bacterial would still be present in the rocks, eventually life would remerge. Cawl is basically just setting up to speed it up he sent a mining fleet to the get water from the systems comets and had samples of the planets plant life that he could replant, so all he would really need to do is create topsoil or even ship it in which doesn't seem beyond his capabilities. Its all easy technologies for the imperium its just that the imperium doesn't think like that

Didnt Tyranid Capillary Towers reach really far down into the earth? If so, then that is a huge retcon, as every world Tyranids eat will eventually grow back life.

I guess it makes sense though. By the time the Nids come back, dinner will be ready again

I imagine they reach far down but not "all the way" when Cawl talks about more resources being formed and brought up he's refering to the process of minerals from deep deep under ground and in the core being brought up by Volcanic activity. I don't recall ever hearing that Tyranids ate the planetary core of a planet. and getting super deep gets pretty hard. the deepest hole ever dug is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia which goes down 12 Kilometers. the earth's crust however is 35 kilometers, with the mantle being 2855 kilometers. So yeah chances are the Tyranids mostly just skim the top kilometer or 2 off a planet. this would be devestating of course, but over time the planet could conceviably recover. Cawl notes that recovery would be a matter of hundreds of years in a "best case scenerio"

Where "over time" probably equates to hundreds of millions of years.

 Flinty wrote:
Where "over time" probably equates to hundreds of millions of years.

yeah Cawl IIRC indicated 500 years in a best case scenerio using advanced tech to expediate the process.

For those that haven't played the later entries in the CnC series;



You could steal this or a similar concept on Sotha. Maybe the Imperium deploy some dangerous and untested method to accelerate terraforming which has unintended consequences like turning Sotha into a horrific death world, acting as a beacon to some despicable Xenos or releasing some chemical that drives anyone who sets foot onto the planet to have paranoid delusions!