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I've read a lot of books and such set in the universe and one thing that keeps coming up is that life extension technologies do exist. Also, that multiple people are perpetuals, perpetuals can have Children, just by dry calculations eventually the human race in 40k will be immortal, even if there are only 100 perpetuals right now in space. Those one hundred, can sire a infinite number of children because they live forever. Those children who are perpetuals can in turn, sire a infinite number of children. Also, Space Marines are in some cases like the blood angels, immortal. Basically. Whats to stop just a normal person albeit a powerful one to take the chance and undergo the treatment?

So eventually the human race will be immortal, theres also the issue of the children of the emperor etc..

So what are peoples thoughts, whats the longest living human being in the universe. Will humans eventually become immortal?

Well, depending on your definition of "living", the Emperor has to be among the longest living humans if not the longest lived human. As for whether humanity could ever reach immortality, it's possible that they could given a few millennia. Assuming, of course, that they aren't killed off by any of the number of galactic threats to their existence. Or their continued superstition and internal persecution doesn't doom them all to another civil war that will inevitably eradicate them.

I'd say it remains to be seen, what with humanity beset on all sides by violent, vengeful alien species.

The Space Marines are selected from the most physically fit and indomitable of spirits. In the fluff they comb through thousands of candidates from feral worlds where every day is a battle for survival. They undergo genetic modification, requiring years of procedures and recovery, a large fraction of even those stellar candidates die in the process. After all that, the Space Marine may live forever, or many centuries, but I don't think they can reproduce, otherwise that'd save the Imperium a lot of resources on gene implantation. Clearly not the route a human noble would want to take.

The Emperor is sustained on the Golden Throne, but that appears to require incredibly vast amounts of resources in energy, chemicals, maintenance, care, not to mention the sacrifice of psykers every day. Granted, the Emperor was immortal before all that. I think some Inquisitors have very long life-spans, I always imagined that was their psyker powers and the warp helping to sustain them, but they seem to sacrifice a great deal of their sanity in the process, letting some Chaos in.

Basically, the Emperor is a special case, and all the other humans are either highly modified or expend vast resources or become slaves to Chaos in exchange for their immortality. Honestly, I would think the Ordo Hereticus would take umbrage with some planetary governor seeking out immortal life, would probably make a good premise for a 40k campaign.

Well excepting perpetuals or just straight up immortals, I'd also think the longer you lived the easier it would be to fall to Chaos or be seduced eventually.

Hollismason wrote:
Well excepting perpetuals or just straight up immortals, I'd also think the longer you lived the easier it would be to fall to Chaos or be seduced eventually.

I think falling to Chaos is more a choice of lifestyle rather than anything to do with age or longevity.

Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

That's actually debatable since there's a lot of references to Space Marines showing signs of physically deteriorating with age. Logically, the next step to physical deterioration would be eventual death by natural causes. These processes could likely be slowed/prevented with medical procedures and would occur at a much slower rate, but it's unlikely that Space Marines can survive indefinitely without some kind of medical support when they get really, really old.

But by the time they get that old and withered, they're probably venerated enough to be shoved in a Dreadnought. In which case they can most certainly live forever.

 Darth Bob wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

That's actually debatable since there's a lot of references to Space Marines showing signs of physically deteriorating with age. Logically, the next step to physical deterioration would be eventual death by natural causes. These processes could likely be slowed/prevented with medical procedures and would occur at a much slower rate, but it's unlikely that Space Marines can survive indefinitely without some kind of medical support when they get really, really old.

But by the time they get that old and withered, they're probably venerated enough to be shoved in a Dreadnought. In which case they can most certainly live forever.

However, there's also plenty of Chaos Space Marines who have literally fought for ten thousand years or even more (Like some Black Legion people I read about in a story some time) and are still fit and capable of battle.

On the other hand we have the 'long-lived' Blood Angels, despite the fact that supposedly no Space Marines die of age!

Chaos might be involved?

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Darth Bob wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

That's actually debatable since there's a lot of references to Space Marines showing signs of physically deteriorating with age. Logically, the next step to physical deterioration would be eventual death by natural causes. These processes could likely be slowed/prevented with medical procedures and would occur at a much slower rate, but it's unlikely that Space Marines can survive indefinitely without some kind of medical support when they get really, really old.

But by the time they get that old and withered, they're probably venerated enough to be shoved in a Dreadnought. In which case they can most certainly live forever.

However, there's also plenty of Chaos Space Marines who have literally fought for ten thousand years or even more (Like some Black Legion people I read about in a story some time) and are still fit and capable of battle.

On the other hand we have the 'long-lived' Blood Angels, despite the fact that supposedly no Space Marines die of age!

Chaos might be involved?

The fluff can't agree with itself on how Space Marine or Eldar aging works so I'd just throw your hands up in the air and say whatever you want to say.

Erebus is still alive...

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

However, there's also plenty of Chaos Space Marines who have literally fought for ten thousand years or even more (Like some Black Legion people I read about in a story some time) and are still fit and capable of battle.

But nothing that happens within the realm of chaos can ever be compared to any actual timeframe in the real world. Chaos Space Marines pop into the warp for 5 minutes and when they pop back out it's 5000 years later...

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Darth Bob wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

That's actually debatable since there's a lot of references to Space Marines showing signs of physically deteriorating with age. Logically, the next step to physical deterioration would be eventual death by natural causes. These processes could likely be slowed/prevented with medical procedures and would occur at a much slower rate, but it's unlikely that Space Marines can survive indefinitely without some kind of medical support when they get really, really old.

But by the time they get that old and withered, they're probably venerated enough to be shoved in a Dreadnought. In which case they can most certainly live forever.

However, there's also plenty of Chaos Space Marines who have literally fought for ten thousand years or even more (Like some Black Legion people I read about in a story some time) and are still fit and capable of battle.

On the other hand we have the 'long-lived' Blood Angels, despite the fact that supposedly no Space Marines die of age!

Chaos might be involved?

As d-usa said, Chaos Space Marines' longevity has nothing to do with them being Space Marines. Rather, it is due to the fact that time passes completely differently in the Warp. For the Imperium it's been 10,000 years, but for them it may have only been a few days/weeks/months; more or less. Chaos Space Marines are unlikely to live forever, at least as they are now, because their continued exposure to the Warp will inevitably mutate them into a Chaos Spawn or they'll die fighting. As for the Blood Angels, they are an exception because their gene-seed has the unique effect of giving them extended lifespans among Space Marines.

But like I said, it's debatable. There's really no definitive answer either way.

 Kain wrote:

The fluff can't agree with itself on how Space Marine or Eldar aging works so I'd just throw your hands up in the air and say whatever you want to say.

Well, it is pretty solidly canon that at least Asdrubael Vect and Eldrad Ulthran have been alive since the fall of the Eldar, so we can conclude that Eldar probably live longer than the longest lived human who isn't a perpetual. Since stories never seem to have anyone dying of old age, the best way to guess is to look at the oldest examples mentioned and assume the lifespan isn't much older than that. Generally speaking, ordinary humans seem to have a lifespan comparable to what you'd expect in an actual human living in similar conditions. Humans who get Juvenat drug treatments seem to be able to last several hundred years or so. Space Marines who don't die in combat seem to live somewhere between 500 and 1000 years. Blood Angels seem to be able to live up to 5000 (cause they're freaking SPACE VAMPIRES!). None of the current batch of loyalists was alive during the Great Crusade or the HH, so we can pretty safely conclude that even the healthiest Blood Angel can't reach a lifespan of 10,000 years without Chaos influence.

As far as perpetuals, I disagree that every human becoming one is inevitable. 100 perpetuals? Pfft. There are quardrazillionplexis of normal humans in 40k (a number I made up because no real number is high enough), and they're having way more babies than the perpetuals are, no matter how much they're dying off along the way. Meanwhile, you could have perpetuals that are celibate, or sterile. Besides, is a perpetual's child necessarily a perpetual? Is this a dominant gene? Recessive? We don't know.

Average humans? No, not even close. Most of them die fairly within what we would expect to be human norms.

Perpetuals making immortal children? Doesn't seem to work that way, as the Emperor's children (not the Legion) certainly weren't all immortal.

Humanity becoming entirely immortal "soon"? Maybe "soon" when compared to the life of a celestial body... but not in anything that would approach the concept as understood by humanity, no.

Also I am pretty sure someone was actually made an immortal perpetual but I forget who.

Humans can also be rejuvenated, however not even this lasts forever. Doesn't Coteaz worry about the fact that he is getting old and has no heir? If an Inquisitor Lord can't find the (non-daemonic) means to living forever, I'm pretty sure that means no one can.

As for Marines eventually dying, I imagine that they slow down over time. I know that Iacton Qruze from the Great Crusade was getting on, and a few other marines were occasionally amazed by how quick he was despite his advanced years.

Hollismason wrote:
Also I am pretty sure someone was actually made an immortal perpetual but I forget who.

Vulkan, despite not being one for the past 20-some years.

 Kain wrote:

The fluff can't agree with itself on how Space Marine or Eldar aging works so I'd just throw your hands up in the air and say whatever you want to say.

Space Marine ageing is pretty clear. They live for few centuries. Some people just have decided that they're immortal (based on some obscure BL reference) and refuse to believe this.

With only 100 perpetuals and untold trillions of trillions of humans it would be nearly impossible for all of humanity to become perpetuals...

The only humans approaching immortality save the Emperor are the Adeptus Mechanicus, and it's debatable whether transhumans still count.

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

A Salamander lived for ten thousand years, spending a good thousand (at least) of those years not moving. While his muscles suffered from atrophy due to the lack of action, Astartes are indeed biologically immortal.

 Crimson wrote:

 Kain wrote:

The fluff can't agree with itself on how Space Marine or Eldar aging works so I'd just throw your hands up in the air and say whatever you want to say.

Space Marine ageing is pretty clear. They live for few centuries. Some people just have decided that they're immortal (based on some obscure BL reference) and refuse to believe this.

Say hello to the veterans of the long war, mate. The idea that

But nothing that happens within the realm of chaos can ever be compared to any actual timeframe in the real world. Chaos Space Marines pop into the warp for 5 minutes and when they pop back out it's 5000 years later...

is only part of the truth. Time in the warp is entirely unpredictable. It is not always shorter. For every time someone spends 1K years in there and comes out after 10K years have passed in the materium, someone else spends 100k (Or 11k?) years in there but exits at the same time.

Implying that time always was shorter for the CSM is only looking at half the story, and is probably a misconception rising from the popularity of the Night Lords series.

Chaos Marines are different, Chaos keeps them alive. Regular Marines are not immortal, it is even said in 6E BRB: "Space Marines live extended life times - if they do not fall in battle, they can easily live two to three times longer than a normal man, and sometimes far longer."
That is pretty damn clear. Chaplain Cassius is oldest living Ultramarine, and is about four centuries old. Not to mention that for Blood Angels to have longer lifespans than other Marines, Astartes lifespans have to be limited. Space Marines are not immortal, not even close, their natural lifespan is few centuries.

Space Marines are not immortal, I believe this train of thought started or at least gained speed with the Horus Heresy series wherein they think of themselves as immortal despite only being around for a few hundred years.
But despite that we've seen Marines degenerated by age like Qruze, and in Angel Exterminatus old Fabulous has this to say:

‘Because I don’t want to die,’ said Fabius, opening his robes to reveal two suppurating wounds crusted with tarry deposits. Sword wounds, but ones that hadn’t healed. ‘The Emperor’s soldiers who came before us, the Thunder Warriors, their gene-code carried the seeds of their own destruction. And the gene-boosted savages before them? They were fortunate to live as long as they did before their hyper-metabolism consumed them. The primarchs think their warriors are immortal, but they are wrong. We are as mortal as any living thing, we just take longer to die. I would not have it so.’

So hat off to the Horus Heresy series for that at least.

Hollismason wrote:
Also I am pretty sure someone was actually made an immortal perpetual but I forget who.

If memory serves me, John Grammaticus was made into a Perpetual by the Cabal.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

A Salamander lived for ten thousand years, spending a good thousand (at least) of those years not moving. While his muscles suffered from atrophy due to the lack of action, Astartes are indeed biologically immortal.

Do the different factions really have different gene pools? So...incest?

 poppa G wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Apparently Space marines are immortal...they just don't live long so no one knows...

A Salamander lived for ten thousand years, spending a good thousand (at least) of those years not moving. While his muscles suffered from atrophy due to the lack of action, Astartes are indeed biologically immortal.

Do the different factions really have different gene pools? So...incest?

...where the heck do you get incest from that?

 Crimson wrote:
Chaos Marines are different, Chaos keeps them alive. Regular Marines are not immortal, it is even said in 6E BRB: "Space Marines live extended life times - if they do not fall in battle, they can easily live two to three times longer than a normal man, and sometimes far longer."
That is pretty damn clear. Chaplain Cassius is oldest living Ultramarine, and is about four centuries old. Not to mention that for Blood Angels to have longer lifespans than other Marines, Astartes lifespans have to be limited. Space Marines are not immortal, not even close, their natural lifespan is few centuries.

Except this is blatantly false, as we know a Salamander survived from the Horus Heresy for ten thousand years, and before his comrades fell in battle on the planet, also lived for several thousand years. Then there's the constant description of them as immortal demigod.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Except this is blatantly false, as we know a Salamander survived from the Horus Heresy for ten thousand years, and before his comrades fell in battle on the planet, also lived for several thousand years. Then there's the constant description of them as immortal demigod.

But that's BL, right? BL authors crap on the fluff all the time.

 Crimson wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Except this is blatantly false, as we know a Salamander survived from the Horus Heresy for ten thousand years, and before his comrades fell in battle on the planet, also lived for several thousand years. Then there's the constant description of them as immortal demigod.

But that's BL, right? BL authors crap on the fluff all the time.

Who hire these guys? I think their books should be approved by a lot of people before being released as actual fluff.