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So this has been bothering me for a bit. Assuming you are not a space marine but have the clout to get juve treatments how long can a normal person live?

Eisenhorn is 200+ years old and still capable of kicking the ass of Chaos Marines.

I recall a Magos in the story who was over a thousand years old, but Tech Priests might not be the examples you were looking for.

Inquisitor Voke was seen by Eisenhorn as old when he met him in 240.M41, yet lived for over a hundred years longer.

A few examples that come to mind.

It depends on your station in life, guardsmen dont live long as a rule. While certain ones dose, either due to luck or sheer iron hard will to live. Marines can live for centuries, a good example here is Dante of the blood angels.

Inquisitors can live for a long time already mentioned in this tread.

If poor they shoot you at 40.

If well to do then the sky is the limit.

400 to 500 seems to be the upper limit on juvenant treatments that don't leave you looking like an adeptus mechanicus magos. If you don't care about that, then a thousand years sounds like a good number.

Averge Human life in Imeprium is dividing, it all really depends on the world in question.

Death World - not so much,.
Hive World - it would be like modern day Earth, 70 - 90 years.
Agri World - over 100, because people are living in clean environment and work all their life to grow food.

There are of course worlds with little more advanced technology that allows Humans to live 200 or maybe even 300 years.

Other 'Humans" can live hundreds and some even thousands of years. It all depends on their position.

In the 6E rulebook is one example that is at least 791+ years old.

Without juvenat treatments, however, I would presume anything between 50 and 100 years, depending on where you live and what kind of status you have in society.

I have read somewhere, I forget where, that said if a human being in the 41st Millennium doesn't have any outside disturbances that could kill him early, humans live up to around 120-130 years. Obviously, we have medical treatments that could keep them alive longer, but most will likely never receive them. And the average Hive World human most likely would love to see the age of 50 before getting shot/stabbed/melted/burnt/caught in an explosion/world invasion/etc etc.

For Hive Worlds, I would imagine that heavy industrial pollution would lower life expectancy quite a bit as well - across the board, unless parts of the population are actually living in a shelter. Ironically, I could just as well see some dregs of society actually living longer due to mutation from toxicity, a bit like Ghouls from the FallOut-setting. After all, 40k does not take itself very seriously at times.

Well the emperors about 50 thousand years old.

I'm gonna go the opposite and say even a regular 9 - 5 Hive Worker on a polluted planet is still going to reach 100+ years on average (barring unnatural death). The reason for this is the access to even basic life prolonging medications/therapies in the 41st millenium would have to be far beyond our own. As average life spans are raising even now in our day and age, and even those basic medications/therapies would far surpass what we have now, I don't see it as unreasonable for that to hold true 40,000 years in the future.

In the end, it comes down to interpretation - I suppose the nature of how this IP's fluff is handled would result in a great number of different pictures regarding life on a hive world. In a lesser way, this would even reflect the setting's own in-universe nature on how very different two Imperial worlds can be from one another, not only in tech-level but also society, wealth and well-being.

I guess I have just read a lot more "sinister" descriptions about hive worlds, of excessive pollution, gloomy hab-blocks, long working hours and an impoverished population that is more akin to 18th century Industrial Revolution England than anything resembling our modern world.

Hivers reaching their hundreds? Billions of workers toiling in toxic environments that will probably never so much as see the sun, existing on their own recycled waste? Considering how little the Imperium cares for the individual I'd be surprised if many of them reach 40.

 Lynata wrote:
In the 6E rulebook is one example that is at least 791+ years old.

Without juvenat treatments, however, I would presume anything between 50 and 100 years, depending on where you live and what kind of status you have in society.

I think in my personal fluff there are now two saints named Basilius...

 Lynata wrote:

I guess I have just read a lot more "sinister" descriptions about hive worlds, of excessive pollution, gloomy hab-blocks, long working hours and an impoverished population that is more akin to 18th century Industrial Revolution England than anything resembling our modern world.

with a 40k Jack the Ripper (probably a mutant) stalking the shadows.

Humans still have normal lifespans, unless you are rich or elite enough to receive bionic and drug treatments that can drag out your lifespan to ~400 or so years even. However only the most elite of Imperial society can receive these treatments.

 Crimson wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
In the 6E rulebook is one example that is at least 791+ years old.

Without juvenat treatments, however, I would presume anything between 50 and 100 years, depending on where you live and what kind of status you have in society.

I think in my personal fluff there are now two saints named Basilius...

Thinking this a bit more: considering that there are things like stasis fields and more importantly warp storms that screw time, even if we assume that this was the same St. Basilius at both entries, it does not necessarily mean he is hundreds of years old. He could have takwen a warp trip that lasted only few months from his perspective but centuries from the universe's perspective.

Tangentially related: I like to think that Commander Dante, the oldest person alive* in the setting is actually a horrible wizened mummy under his golden mask.

(*without assistance of stasis, warp/gods or huge life-support machine fuelled by thousands of souls.)

 Paint_To_Redemption wrote:
I'm gonna go the opposite and say even a regular 9 - 5 Hive Worker on a polluted planet is still going to reach 100+ years on average (barring unnatural death). The reason for this is the access to even basic life prolonging medications/therapies in the 41st millenium would have to be far beyond our own. As average life spans are raising even now in our day and age, and even those basic medications/therapies would far surpass what we have now, I don't see it as unreasonable for that to hold true 40,000 years in the future.

I'm no fluff expert but I imagine a typical Hive Worker pulling 12, 16, 20 hour shifts every day from an early age til death. I also don't see said Hive Worker getting any medication or therapy even to prolong life or increase efficiency as there is plenty of young hive scum waiting in the wings to take the job of pulling levers and cleaning gears.

I agree some of the above statements. I would gather that the general lifespan and health of a normal everyday human in 40 is like that of the turn of the 20th century, or the latter part of the 1800's.

Crimson wrote:I think in my personal fluff there are now two saints named Basilius...

You know, whilst personally I'm fine with some people reaching that high an age (I like to theorise that Marine longevity is just a form of "built-in juvenate" as well, and since there is Dante it could just be a matter of "quality"), I will add that it would be hilariously grimdark if the returning Space Marines just killed the wrong guy.

"Are you Basilius?"
"Yes, what do you want, my-"
*BLAM*

 Crimson wrote:
Thinking this a bit more: considering that there are things like stasis fields and more importantly warp storms that screw time, even if we assume that this was the same St. Basilius at both entries, it does not necessarily mean he is hundreds of years old. He could have takwen a warp trip that lasted only few months from his perspective but centuries from the universe's perspective.

Tangentially related: I like to think that Commander Dante, the oldest person alive* in the setting is actually a horrible wizened mummy under his golden mask.

(*without assistance of stasis, warp/gods or huge life-support machine fuelled by thousands of souls.)

Isn't Luther older than Dante by a pretty large margin?

 Kingsley wrote:



Isn't Luther older than Dante by a pretty large margin?

Well, he is in some sort of lifesupport thingy probably.

Actulaly it is bajorn the fell handed or bryath'ashmantle or gravius
I would say about 150 if medicens get better if not about 80

That's a short life-span. I suspect in fifty years that can be reached IRL. And in a Ciaphas Cain an Imperial Planetary Governor is at least 200 years old when passing away without notes on him being very old for such a guy. I assume it to be much more. You can see a High Lord f.ex. hanging around for a full millennia, but of course that's just speculation.

Depends if you're an important enough character in the wh40k fluff.

I imagine a human's natural lifespan isn't much different to what it's always been, and the proportion of people actually reaching that limit would be a whole lot lower. It would depend on the world though; since they're left pretty much to their own devices, the governor would determine how pleasant a place is to live. Something like a shrine world or garden world may have a high income and little pressure to meet industrial tithes. A hive world, however, would probably be completely built on heavy industry, have an extremely high population and be quite unable to worry about the welfare of individuals. That kind of world is unlikely to spend its money on a public healthcare service, so whatever medical advances may be available to the rich wouldn't be greatly relevant to the lifespans of the poor.

The point about time dilation due to warp storms and stasis is relevant too. I'm not sure that 'time since birth' is a terribly meaningful statistic in 40k (at least not for anyone who engages in space travel), since unified timekeeping in a pan-galactic empire must be close to impossible.

For an example of timekeeping what don't make a lick of sense, look at the Night of a Thousand Rebellions. A thousand planets across the Segmentum Pacificus rose up and rebelled against the Imperium, in a single night. What does that even mean?

ntw3001 wrote:

For an example of timekeeping what don't make a lick of sense, look at the Night of a Thousand Rebellions. A thousand planets across the Segmentum Pacificus rose up and rebelled against the Imperium, in a single night. What does that even mean?

I'm going to guess that a night probably means according to the time of Terra, so an 'Imperial Day' is probably around 30-36 hours (due to the slowing down of the Earth's rotation). This type of timekeeping is probably used for interstellar communication so that everyone has a unified time.
Of course time is going to vary from planet to planet. In Salvation's Reach (Gaunt's Ghosts) SPOILER WARNING:

You are way off with how much the rotation is slowing down. It takes millions of years to achieve that, not 40.000. Heck in 40.000 years, the moon would hardly have moved at all, the day will only be lengthened by maybe a second. And the continents would be at the exact same positions as today.