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Basically assume some sort of anti-chaos superweapon was developed, and deployed concurrently. And as a result the entire dimension of the warp is destroyed collapsing on itself. No more Warp, no more Immaterium. Assume it would jettison the Chaos Gods permanently to materium as weakened mortal beings along with all other things demonic.

And let's take an alternate route. Assume this leads to all psykers using their powers. How will this affect things?

The Warp seems pretty fundamentally woven into the nature of reality, it isn't an add-on you can just 'remove'. Remove the strong nuclear force, what happens to physics?

Yeah, given its a reflection of living beings in our reality, you'd only be able to take it out if you destroyed all of reality as well. At most, you would try to aim for what the C'tan originally wanted to do which was attempt to permanently separate the warp and the materium.

If the Warp vanished entirely then the Imperium would fragment almost overnight since it would lose its ability to move faster than light. It could take them generations to re-learn that considering their bureaucratic madness that goes against any kind of technological advance.

Tau would likely rise up (in their own corner of space) to become a very powerful force considering that they don't seem to draw any power from the Warp and they don't rely on the warp for faster than light travel.


However Tyranids would likely overrrun most of the Galaxy pretty fast. They too, don't need the warp to travel and with most other races needing it in some form; the Tyranids would swarm like a plague without any massive resistance against them.



Of course one would expect something to arise in the Warp's place as a repository for the souls of the living. What that might be could be a new kind of Warp without the Chaos Gods present - so a more benign reality. It might actually make the Imperium stronger if there were no madness in the "Warp" for phsychers to fear nor to threaten their ships.

I guess the web way becomes fair game. Can we navigate it in time to stop the Tau's ftl?

Warp travel ceases to function. Souls cease to exist, as do all daemons. Beings powered by warp energy crumble and die.

Destroying the Warp would basically annihilate all life in the galaxy/universe except for, possibly, the Necrons.

The imperium would fracture as a semi unified force

Eldar would suffer the same fate being isolated and unable to travel without the webway however this would mean they could colonise a planet and not worry about Slaanesh anymore at least, so maybe a bonus for them.

Dark eldar would die entirely as whatever killed the warp killed the webway within the warp.

Tau would carry on much as they have but at a much much slower pace due to not being about to skim off the warp in short jumps.

Orks would Ork and be limited to very short inter system warfare only.

Tyranids hive mind would cease to exist immediately and likely starve the species to death as they no longer have a guiding mind and have mostly lost th ability to act independently by design, they would consume a few world's and then starve to death.

Necrons would be completely fine as they use inertialess drives to travel at FTL, sure the dolman gates would not longer work but who cares.

Chaos would go "plop"

Chaos as a culture that existed where the eye used to be would carry on in much the same way as the imperium would, fractured small empires... Not much change really.

I'm fairly sure Tyranids would be fine. They don't use the Warp to travel and their influence actually causes a huge shadow effect in the warp itself. Blotting it out and blocking it from coming into its fullest. Even demons suffer weakness when near large enough concentrations of Tyranids.

Orks have shown teleportation technology several times which can cover vast distances. Their mian problem is that they rise to whatever power opposes them externally or internally. With most races shattered except Tyranids and perhaps Necrons - the Orks might end up not being as big a threat at large; however they'd be far harder to contain on a world by world basis as the Imperium wouldn't be able to move forces to tackle them.

The best you could do is seal it off from reality which is what the ctan originally wanted to do.

But it appears to be part of the metaphysics of the 40k universe, like gravity etc. So you can't really remove it.

AnomanderRake wrote:The Warp seems pretty fundamentally woven into the nature of reality, it isn't an add-on you can just 'remove'. Remove the strong nuclear force, what happens to physics?

This. Exactly this.

Overread wrote:
Tau would likely rise up (in their own corner of space) to become a very powerful force considering that they don't seem to draw any power from the Warp and they don't rely on the warp for faster than light travel.

Did they change Tau fluff to not use the warp? My understanding was that they didn't "dive" into the warp, but that they did "skim" along its surface. So they had ftl travel that was dependent on the warp but also less prone to suffering its horrors.

However Tyranids would likely overrrun most of the Galaxy pretty fast. They too, don't need the warp to travel and with most other races needing it in some form; the Tyranids would swarm like a plague without any massive resistance against them.

Yeah. Tyranids would become an even bigger issue as no one except maybe the necrons could mobilize and coordinate well enough to deal with them. But even the 'crons would have to go without Dolmen Gates (maybe). So a dynasty might be able to defend its own borders for a while, but that only helps for so long.

lifeafter wrote:I guess the web way becomes fair game. Can we navigate it in time to stop the Tau's ftl?

I feel like there's a good chance the webway would be destroyed if the warp went away. It seems to be sort of... half-material-half-warp-stuff. What does it mean to be a tunnel halfway between thing A and thing B when thing B no longer exists?

I am going to ignore the largescale breakdown caused by the loss of warp travel and communication, and focus on the personal level.

I think latently psychic races, like orks and humans, would become very lonely and feel very isolated as individuals. There is a certain connectedness to comrades and peers granted to the warp. I suspect crisis of faith would happen more often, and people would become less trusting and empathetic.

Other everyday items would lose their feeling of personal importance. Your car would no longer feel special to you, it would be like any other vehicle. Historical artefacts, like weapons wielded by great heroes would loose their ‘oomph’. Tools of torture would be perceived as less intimidating.

Dreams would be mundane.

 Overread wrote:
I'm fairly sure Tyranids would be fine. They don't use the Warp to travel and their influence actually causes a huge shadow effect in the warp itself. Blotting it out and blocking it from coming into its fullest. Even demons suffer weakness when near large enough concentrations of Tyranids.

Orks have shown teleportation technology several times which can cover vast distances. Their mian problem is that they rise to whatever power opposes them externally or internally. With most races shattered except Tyranids and perhaps Necrons - the Orks might end up not being as big a threat at large; however they'd be far harder to contain on a world by world basis as the Imperium wouldn't be able to move forces to tackle them.

The Tyranids as a race would cease to exist as the overarching gestalt mind would die instantly, the last time we saw this happen in fluff was when the Citrix Maledictum opened and wounded the hive mind enough for it to lose control of the forces attacking Baal, these Tyranids fell upon each other, died instantly or sat around doing nothing, the Tyranids are intrinsically linked to the warp as much as the Orks are which reminds me of my next point, the Orks are a psychic race and rely on the "waaagh" energy to power several key parts of their tech but this is not exclusively the case, so I am unsure if their teleport tech is powered by "waagh" energy, the best description we have seen of it is from the battle of Picena IV and the Beast series, one has Tellyporta tech powered by "waagh" energy and the other we are not told.

Either way due to both the Ork and Tyranid reliance on the warp through background psychic fields and overt control from the hive mind respectively, they are both boned in the warp ceases to exist.

If we removed access to the Warp instead of destroying it the scenario would be very interesting.

All psykers would lose access to their powers.

The Eldar Webway would likely collapse. Though it’s kind of separate from the Warp so this may be up for debate. Farseers and Warlocks would be unable to steer the ship for Eldar, but Slaanesh wouldn’t get their souls.

Any race with a presence in the warp would be fine; Eldar, Humans, Orks, to a lesser extent Tau.

Humanity would lose their Navigators and Astropaths. Resorting to primitive vox transmissions.

Space Hulks would lose all warp capability and cause Orks and Genestealers to be unable to spread fast.

Necrons and Tau would likely have a stronger hold of their individual sections of space.

Ultramarines would likely have Imperium Secundus again.

Fun thought experiment. I think I’m done now.

 Formosa wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I'm fairly sure Tyranids would be fine. They don't use the Warp to travel and their influence actually causes a huge shadow effect in the warp itself. Blotting it out and blocking it from coming into its fullest. Even demons suffer weakness when near large enough concentrations of Tyranids.

Orks have shown teleportation technology several times which can cover vast distances. Their mian problem is that they rise to whatever power opposes them externally or internally. With most races shattered except Tyranids and perhaps Necrons - the Orks might end up not being as big a threat at large; however they'd be far harder to contain on a world by world basis as the Imperium wouldn't be able to move forces to tackle them.

The Tyranids as a race would cease to exist as the overarching gestalt mind would die instantly, the last time we saw this happen in fluff was when the Citrix Maledictum opened and wounded the hive mind enough for it to lose control of the forces attacking Baal, these Tyranids fell upon each other, died instantly or sat around doing nothing, the Tyranids are intrinsically linked to the warp as much as the Orks are which reminds me of my next point, the Orks are a psychic race and rely on the "waaagh" energy to power several key parts of their tech but this is not exclusively the case, so I am unsure if their teleport tech is powered by "waagh" energy, the best description we have seen of it is from the battle of Picena IV and the Beast series, one has Tellyporta tech powered by "waagh" energy and the other we are not told.

Either way due to both the Ork and Tyranid reliance on the warp through background psychic fields and overt control from the hive mind respectively, they are both boned in the warp ceases to exist.

I guess it depends if the Hive Mind is actually “in” the Warp, or what is actually in the Warp is literally just a shadow of what is in the materium, and it exists in some other way (which might explain why it cannot be corrupted in the same way normal souls can). Empathic non-Warp stuff does exist in the setting, like the Pharos, after all, and there is Tyranid fluff that states that they don’t use the Warp.

It probably is in the Warp as a shared... something, but well, interesting thought I guess.

I think its safe to say since the Devestation of Baal the Hive Mind is in the warp as it was wounded by the opening of the Citrix however its route source is from outside the warp, oddly it is a mirror of the Tyranids gestalt mind as much as the Chaos gods are of other races, wipe out all nids and the Hive mind dies, wipe out all humans and the chaos gods possibly die, wipe out the gods and the races live, wipe out the hive mind and the nids become animals again but are alive albeit a shadow of their former power.

Tyranids could potentially survive without the Hive Mind existing - though their social structure would likely go through pure chaos and confusion. Provided Norn Queens remained alive they could make new tyranids and redesign their genetics to be "smarter" on their own.

It might shift them to new tactical approaches; it could fragment them into separate fleets that fight each other; or they might even birth a brand new Hive Mind.

Their greatest power is that they retain powerful faster than light travel even with the Warp gone. They also lose their greatest foe - the Imperium. By crushing the Warp and shutting down faster than light travel it basically leaves the Galaxy fully open to Tyranid invasion.

 Overread wrote:
Tyranids could potentially survive without the Hive Mind existing - though their social structure would likely go through pure chaos and confusion. Provided Norn Queens remained alive they could make new tyranids and redesign their genetics to be "smarter" on their own.

It might shift them to new tactical approaches; it could fragment them into separate fleets that fight each other; or they might even birth a brand new Hive Mind.

Their greatest power is that they retain powerful faster than light travel even with the Warp gone. They also lose their greatest foe - the Imperium. By crushing the Warp and shutting down faster than light travel it basically leaves the Galaxy fully open to Tyranid invasion.

See I am not sure about that, the Norn Queens need the hive mind to function like the Hive Tyrants etc, the psychic backlash would likely kill them or render them useless as how will they control the other "species" of Tyranids, the Hive Mind is the thing that keeps them as a cohesive force, a Termagant and a Carnifex are not the same species, hell Carnifex do not even have stomachs so will starve in short order.

Without the warp that means no psychic control of the diverse species of Tyranids, no Psychic anything at all, hence no Hive Mind, so this is not a case of creating a new one over time but a case of once its gone its gone forever as all psychic power/abilities are derived from the warp.

What the likely result is this, Gaunts can breed so you will have worlds where they become part of the eco system or take it over as the apex predators, the larger creatures likely starve to death within a few months or are predated on by the much more aggressive and common Gaunts species, the "synapse" creature are likely the first to die out as they are the least common but now have no way to control the other species, all the hive ships in space likely fall upon each other in the need to find food and then starve to death and that is even if they are able to wake up from stasis between stars, the Narwhals zip off to random planets to find food and have no way of letting any other hive ship know what they have found if they even care or are aware of that, hell for all we know the bio weapons symbiotes would be rejected by their hosts or vice versa and the Tyranids would die from infections because of this.

Actually the more I think about this the more I think Tyranids would be one of the worst affected factions next to chaos deamons

The norn queens may have devised failsafes for a ‘drop in connection’ and the minor bugs instinctive behaviour/turning on each other could feasibly be an example of that.

Don't forget the Hive Mind itself isn't fully understood as to what it is. We only have guesswork, mostly from Imperial scientists and they don't even get allowed to do real technological advance/science anyway.

The Hive Mind is often described as the driving force behind the Tyranids, however its also a thinking system made up of the vast span of minds linked to it. We've already seen that many Tyranids can operate well beyond its typical reach - Genestealer Cults; Hive Tyrants, Old One Eye etc...

In theory the Tyranids at the top end - the Synapse Creatures - would be harmed, but able to function. They'd also be able to still influence the lesser minds under them.


The real impact might be on a break up of their communication over long distances. Fragmenting the hive fleets into fully separate entities.

This might well be something the Swarm is prepared for; they might start to retreat for a while to combine into a single hive force for a time. Or perhaps a new Hive Mind will be born the instant the old is destroyed etc...



Their greatest gain is that they retain all their current physical mobility. They can still travel at faster than light speeds.

I think in world, it would be impossible..its a manifestation of the emotions of living things or at least those with intelligence and sentience, so you'd have to exterminate every living thing, or lobotomise everyone... either way, couldnt really happen.

nareik wrote:
The norn queens may have devised failsafes for a ‘drop in connection’ and the minor bugs instinctive behaviour/turning on each other could feasibly be an example of that.

True but it could also be an example of there being no fail safe too


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Don't forget the Hive Mind itself isn't fully understood as to what it is. We only have guesswork, mostly from Imperial scientists and they don't even get allowed to do real technological advance/science anyway

We have several examples of the Hive Mind from "its" perspective now and even the 40k universe has rules, cause and effect etc. so a small amount of supposition is needed true.

The Hive Mind is often described as the driving force behind the Tyranids, however its also a thinking system made up of the vast span of minds linked to it. We've already seen that many Tyranids can operate well beyond its typical reach - Genestealer Cults; Hive Tyrants, Old One Eye etc...

Genestealers Cults are controlled psychically by their Broodlord which in turn is linked to the hive mind, true genestealers are able to operate independently as are Lictors, but these are individual species within the overarching Tyranid race, for example it can be assumed that a Gaunt would instinctively know to follow a Lictors Pheromone trail but it cannot be assumed they will not attack a Lictor should they find it as a rival apex predator, however it can be assumed a Lictor has sufficient intelligence to not attack other Tyranid creatures on sight, same goes for Genestealers. As for other Tyranid creatures, again being alive and being part of the Hive Mind are not the same thing, Old One Eye was cut off from the Hive Mind on Macragge and basically just rampaged mindlessly, a Hive Tyrant has never operated without the Hive Mind to my Knowledge as it is a conduit, it is more likely the loss of the Hive Mind would affect those most dependent upon it the most, do Hive Tyrants even have a mind without the Hive Mind?

in theory the Tyranids at the top end - the Synapse Creatures - would be harmed, but able to function. They'd also be able to still influence the lesser minds under them.

I can only go on the somewhat random effects from Devestation of Baal here and it seems that the Brain bugs either died instantly or totally lost control of everything around them, including the hive ships that were falling out of the atmosphere and the loss only lasted a couple of hours at most.

The real impact might be on a break up of their communication over long distances. Fragmenting the hive fleets into fully separate entities.

It would fragment the entire race into separate entities, each and every species controlled by the Hive Mind now has complete autonomy.

This might well be something the Swarm is prepared for; they might start to retreat for a while to combine into a single hive force for a time. Or perhaps a new Hive Mind will be born the instant the old is destroyed etc...

Without the warp there is no Hive Mind as it is a psychic representation of the Tyranid Gestalt conciousness, as soon as the warp goes every single thing linked to any kind of psychic phenomena stops too, that is all Tyranid communication and control other than mundane means.

Their greatest gain is that they retain all their current physical mobility. They can still travel at faster than light speeds.

They retain mobility but now totally lack the ability to use that mobility, a Nawhal can find a random planet possibly but once it does how does it tell its fleet fast enough so as to not starve to death in the void, I refer back to the point that even the 40k universe has rules and one of them is that space is big and things take time, the Hive ships would not be able to evolve fast enough to overcome this problem if they even know how.

If the Webway doesn't collapse, the Drukhari would be in absolute clover. She Who Thirsts off their case, pesky psykers no longer cluttering up the psychic phase, and lots of newly isolated mon-keigh worlds just dying to be visited.