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Which do you think, in the grand scheme of things is more of a threat. And what makes you think so?

Nids easy. Without any other races beside Necrons, Chaos stops existing or at least goes dormant.

The tyranids are single minded, United, endless in number, and truly alien in a way nothing else in 40k is.

The nids annihilate the deamons when they fight them. Both because of the shadow and because they have no souls for chaos to corrupt.

Everyone underestimates the nids. They underestimate how intelligent they are. They underestimate their scope. They underestimate the threat.

If chaos wins chaos stops existing since they need living beings to exist. If the nids win they move on to the next Galaxy.

It would take everyone together to really stop the nids. It won't happen. And when the nids win chaos dies with everyone else.

I would note that what happens after one side 'wins' does not have any bearing on how much threat they pose right now.

Tyranids aren't actually limitless in number, that's why they need biomass, to replenish their numbers as well as just survive (tyranids need food just like any living organism).

Daemons, however can never actually die. If you "kill" them you're really just banishing them back to the warp. Daemons are truly limitless.

Grand scheme? Nids. They have a unity or purpose, and are not as prone to the petty backstabbing and infighting as chaos. They are more of a slow burn threat though. An implacable wave of darkness and hunger rolling up the universe.

Chaos is a raging wildfire, powerful but erratic. Nids are a crushing trap, slowly grinding all. Both are lethal, but one is assured.

Neither, as the nids are running away from something, whahahaha

Chaos, and by far. They literally created the setting we are playing in and chaos is the antagonist (the Imperium being the protagonist). Every single human being (and arguably living being) is threatened by Chaos at each passing moment. Every single one of them is fighting Chaos in his own soul, and is at risk of loosing it.

The 40K setting is Imperium vs Chaos, with everything else various shades of sideshow.

The Tyranids are only as powerful as they need to be to act as an occasional palate cleanser, but they suffer from (with the exception of GSCs) being a very uninteresting antagonists.

 harlokin wrote:
The 40K setting is Imperium vs Chaos, with everything else various shades of sideshow.

The Tyranids are only as powerful as they need to be to act as an occasional palate cleanser, but they suffer from (with the exception of GSCs) being a very uninteresting antagonists.

This would by my answer. The Tyranids can also be stopped through conventional military force if enough can be brought to bear. Between the Tyranids, Orks, and Necrons, they've all been variously described as unfathomably potentially infinite threats in their own ways (with GW fluff having previously stated that the Orks would have trivially achieved galactic domination if they'd ever united for example) and all fundamentally rely on physical presence to present a threat, while Chaos can exist everywhere and anywhere.

It's also worth noting that time and space mean little to the Warp, with all the weirdness that goes with that, and that's just not the kind of threat the Tyranids pose.

Chaos is limited in the amount of followers available in the galaxy. The nids, we don't have a clue how many more of them there are, and every time they eat a planet, they get more. When chaos destroys a planet, there are less followers due to casualties, and there are less emotional beings in the galaxy, so theoretically the power of chaos will also go down.

Makes you wonder, if it all boiled down to one last fight on the last planet in the galaxy, would chaos have any power at all? or would it all have drained away when all of the other solar systems went dark? what about the nids? they would still be a nigh-unstoppable world-devouring hive fleet.

Chaos is a joke in comparison. Maybe a joke period.

 some bloke wrote:
Chaos is limited in the amount of followers available in the galaxy. The nids, we don't have a clue how many more of them there are, and every time they eat a planet, they get more. When chaos destroys a planet, there are less followers due to casualties, and there are less emotional beings in the galaxy, so theoretically the power of chaos will also go down.

Makes you wonder, if it all boiled down to one last fight on the last planet in the galaxy, would chaos have any power at all? or would it all have drained away when all of the other solar systems went dark? what about the nids? they would still be a nigh-unstoppable world-devouring hive fleet.

On this particular point, there are other galaxies, just as the Tyranids came from another, and it's not like the Warp is tied intrinsically to just the Milky Way. Likewise stuff can travel through time in the Warp, a desolate galaxy isn't necessarily one where the Warp wouldn't have any power, it may just not be particularly interesting or relevant to the powers that dwell there.

The milky way isn't the nids first rodeo, they have extinguished many galaxies, and it seems unlikely that the local brand of warp entities is exceptional enough to cause the nids any great problems. The hive fleets we've seen are a tiny fraction of their total strength, and when the bulk of their forces arrive the IoM doesn't stand a chance.

Chaos isn't constrained by the laws of reality, but has much more crippling constraints placed on it by it's nature. First it needs mortals to fuel it, if the nids kill everyone no chaos powers. Second chaos spends much more time fighting itself than any external enemy, and as a whole lacks any kind of focus. That makes it impossible for them to stop the nids, they chaos powers might vanish a whole hive fleet like they did on baal, but those events would be the exception.

As for who is a threat right now, chaos is farming the IoM, all of the misery caused by the IoM to fight chaos only makes chaos stronger. So chaos benefits from the IoMs continued survival, so I don't think chaos is an existential threat to the IoM. Chaos won the HH, and the 10k years since have been their victory lap.

Tyranids are more unknown than Chaos. Whilst Chaos is, well, chaos, it is still roughly bound by rules of its own which can be studied and understood; indeed by the time we get to the 40K time period Chaos is decently understood on quite a few levels. Furthermore its clear that whilst Demons can't "die" their numbers can be reduced and Chaos warriors and the like can be driven back.

Essentially they have a finite value based on how much the chaos gods can consume.


Tyranids are unknown. We've no idea if the fleets seen thus far are the main bulk of their numbers; a single tendril of many hitting multiple galaxies at once; the first edge of a vast fleet approaching. We don't even know if what has been encountered even represents a faction of the forces approaching in terms of variety. Tyranids have already thrown up a huge surprise in building and defending a huge planet sized construct that projects a vast Shadow in the Warp around starsectors.

Before it was built other races had no concept that such was even possible by the Tyranids or that they'd ever think of it.



Tyranids are generally the greater thread; even Space Marines are willing to put down their differences and Necrons to abandon their extermination of life in order to stand agaisnt the Tyranids.



Of all the other races only Necrons have the same level of destructive capability and will to wipe clean the Galaxy of all other races save themselves. Necrons also want to stay; Tyranids are passing through and will consume all, even the bare minerals and elements required to start life anew.

Voted tyranids but really they're an unknown factor, but if the Silent King thinks they're the biggest threat to the galaxy then he's probably right.

The thing about Choas Vs Nids is that for every victory the nids win, Chaos will get weaker while the nids would snowball. You can say stuff lile "oh, but daemons are immortal amd nids can't feed off them", but daemons are extensions of the gods. The gods feed off the emotions of mortals. No mortals means no power means no daemons and with the recent fluff retconning the Hive Mind into a warp entity that could eat the gods if it got stronger enough even if you argue the daemon/nid attrition angle eventually the gods will weaken just enough that the Hive Mind will get an advantage in warp space.