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 the shrouded lord wrote:
We ran Into this problem in a certain RPG here on Dakka. The "dungeon master" introduced plague zombies, but they couldn't wound most of us.
So we all just ended up ignoring them.
Zombies just aren't that big a prOblem to anything in power armour or equivelents.
A single tactical marine could (theoretically) kill any number of plague zombies (millions even) because they simply wouldn't be able to hurt him.
Even if he grew tired, he could sit down and sleep and the zombies still wouldn't be able to hurt him. He could just walk through them whacking them once or twice to kill them.

Yeah, exactly. And for the few people who lacked the necessary resilience, staying away would be easy.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Wasn't the attack that cut down Horus and opened him up to Chaos including zombies? Not exactly normal zombies, but intensely Nurgle powered zombies with weapon mutations like sharpened bone shivs and corrosive toxin blades that melted power armor?

Those were Plaguebearers. I distinctly remember mentions of being "Cyclopean" in False Gods, as well as being slightly bloated and strong as Marines.

 Deadshot wrote:

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Wasn't the attack that cut down Horus and opened him up to Chaos including zombies? Not exactly normal zombies, but intensely Nurgle powered zombies with weapon mutations like sharpened bone shivs and corrosive toxin blades that melted power armor?

Those were Plaguebearers. I distinctly remember mentions of being "Cyclopean" in False Gods, as well as being slightly bloated and strong as Marines.

The fight before they reached the ship included zombies. Some kind of super-zombies that were very strong, but it was rather clear they were not daemons.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I seemed to get the impression from books such as 'Flight of the Eisenstein' and other HH novels that the infected, zombie-like individuals were moderately fast and had greater than normal / equivilent strength for a human. I seem to remember the remains of Caleb throwing itself mewling at Garro in a container room.

 Wulfmar wrote:
Perhaps I'm wrong, I seemed to get the impression from books such as 'Flight of the Eisenstein' and other HH novels that the infected, zombie-like individuals were moderately fast and had greater than normal / equivilent strength for a human. I seem to remember the remains of Caleb throwing itself mewling at Garro in a container room.

There were different types.


In False Gods, the Marines encountered first Zombies, then Plaguebearers.

In FOTE, Garro encounters what is essentially Plague Marines.

The book "Blood of Asaheim" shows how big of a pain the plague can be.

 Bulldogging wrote:
The book "Blood of Asaheim" shows how big of a pain the plague can be.

Only if you're incompetent.

Read "World War Z" and then put that on a galactic scale.

Sure the firepower of 40k is an assortment of zombie killing/incapacitating wonders. Especially with super soldiers in basically super steel space suites.
As other have mentioned, there are also hive cities. The plague isn't dangerous to the front lines. The plague is destroying what mankind is trying to protect, and doing it with very little effort.

When mankind has to nuke a planet, and chaos didn't even set foot on it, that is a demoralizing defeat, and that is what nurgle is all about.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Bulldogging wrote:
The book "Blood of Asaheim" shows how big of a pain the plague can be.

Only if you're incompetent.

Or have a rough grasp of kindness. Or no experience fighting Chaos.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
so the imperial guard. (Sorry couldnt resist)

Not quite; note the 'fearless'.

just add commissar or priest.

pm713 wrote:

Or have a rough grasp of kindness. Or no experience fighting Chaos.

What part of "Sister of Battle" implies that said commander has no experience fighting chaos, let alone an over-abundance of the milk of human kindness?

Once the big, manly Space Wolves showed up to point out that she was being a weak-hearted woman, the Canoness jumped to and... put the pre-existing burn team protocols into effect.

Just another reason to hate that book.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Or have a rough grasp of kindness. Or no experience fighting Chaos.

What part of "Sister of Battle" implies that said commander has no experience fighting chaos, let alone an over-abundance of the milk of human kindness?

Once the big, manly Space Wolves showed up to point out that she was being a weak-hearted woman, the Canoness jumped to and... put the pre-existing burn team protocols into effect.

Just another reason to hate that book.

What part of it implies they do have experience fighting Chaos? I see no reason Sisters would be taught how to fight Nurgle and I see no reason for one to want to watch humans suffer needlessly.

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
so the imperial guard. (Sorry couldnt resist)

Not quite; note the 'fearless'.

just add commissar or priest.

At some point the Guardsman are going to turn around and tell the Commissar/Priest to stick his Bolt Pistol/Prayer Book where the sun don't shine and retreat. Zombies do not have the issue.

pm713 wrote:


What part of it implies they do have experience fighting Chaos? I see no reason Sisters would be taught how to fight Nurgle and I see no reason for one to want to watch humans suffer needlessly.

Because hunting down heretics and chaos cults is why the Sisters exist, and you are failing to understand that Euthanasia is the go-to option for the Imperium when it comes to survivors of horror.

Oh, and how's this for an "implication that they have experience fighting Chaos"? They have pre-established burn team protocols.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

pm713 wrote:


What part of it implies they do have experience fighting Chaos? I see no reason Sisters would be taught how to fight Nurgle and I see no reason for one to want to watch humans suffer needlessly.

Because hunting down heretics and chaos cults is why the Sisters exist, and you are failing to understand that Euthanasia is the go-to option for the Imperium when it comes to survivors of horror.

Oh, and how's this for an "implication that they have experience fighting Chaos"? They have pre-established burn team protocols.

There is a difference between some cultist and an all out invasion. You have people to burn infected.....must be experts at fighting Chaos then no way at all they were made for something else.

Look. It's simple: The Sisters in that book were an atrocious representation of their mindset and abilities. They were made to look weak, soft-hearted, poorly disciplined and, worst of all, lacking in faith.

The fact of the matter is, you do not get to be a Canoness of the Adepta Sororitas without a lot of first-hand battle experience. It just doesn't happen. Zombies are part of the basic armoury of Nurgle, and the Canoness knew that. It said so, right on the page! So why did she then act as if she didn't have the first fricken clue how to deal with them?

Because she didn't have any experience or knowledge of how they spread the plague.

But she does know how plague spreads in general.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The fact of the matter is, you do not get to be a Canoness of the Adepta Sororitas without a lot of first-hand battle experience. It just doesn't happen.

Absolutely right. Note how the SoB codex describes Canonesses:

Each is a veteran warrior of many hundreds of battles who has risen to her position through a combination of strong leadership, shrewd tactical genius and sheer overarching faith in the Emperor.

So, even if this Canoness somehow had limited experience with Nurgle zombies, she still should have known to make basic defensive preparations, or to fight the plague spreading. Because she's meant to be an experienced and skilled military leader. The Canoness in the book was likely only incompetent in order to make the Space Wolves look better in comparison, really.

 gwarsh41 wrote:
Read "World War Z" and then put that on a galactic scale.

Sure the firepower of 40k is an assortment of zombie killing/incapacitating wonders. Especially with super soldiers in basically super steel space suites.
As other have mentioned, there are also hive cities. The plague isn't dangerous to the front lines. The plague is destroying what mankind is trying to protect, and doing it with very little effort.

When mankind has to nuke a planet, and chaos didn't even set foot on it, that is a demoralizing defeat, and that is what nurgle is all about.

Except that World War Z was written by an idiot who didn't know anything about the modern military of the world and had the American army fighting zombies in Napoleonic formation, and not even bothering to properly use tanks or artillery, or carrying any extra ammunition for heavy weapons.

Oh, wait gak, I guess it does mean it applies to 40k then.

I felt that the big threat posed by plague zombies isn't the "zombie" part, but the "plague" part. More people died in WWI of influenza than of enemy bullets. And then there's the black death in medieval Europe. Now, for added fun, imagine that all those people get up and start attacking everyone once they die. Sure, if they're classic zombies who don't use weapons, and you aren't an idiot, killing them isn't a big problem for a trained military force, but it just exacerbates (word of the day!) the real problem of people getting infected left and right. And since the fluff is so inconsistent about how the zombie plague is spread (in some instances it seems to be relatively hard to infect someone, in at least one instance I read about a group of SM's holding off a planet full of zombies by themselves because the entire atmosphere had been infected and everyone who had breathed the air had been turned) we have to assume there are different strains of this stuff. Having to constantly worry about weather people are touching/breathing stuff that is going to turn them into the enemy is a BIG threat, and one definitely worthy of special Inquisitorial attention.

The zombies themselves only really become a military threat when, as mentioned, they're backed by more skilled Chaos troops. Then they can be used as anything from human (zombie) shields to protect the Plague Marines' advance, to bioweapons (chuck them over the walls, as someone has already mentioned), to a ramp of bodies to stroll up to get to the top of the fortress wall. And because a whole planet's population can be infected, creating millions or billions of zombies, denying millions or billions of conscripts to the IG or PDF, they're like an endless renewable resource for the forces of Chaos! The Soviets had pretty decent success hurling tons of bodies at the German forces during WWII, despite being more poorly trained and equipped, and taking many more casualties. A Chaos commander with access to a world's worth of plague zombies would be applying the same principle, on steroids.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

pm713 wrote:


What part of it implies they do have experience fighting Chaos? I see no reason Sisters would be taught how to fight Nurgle and I see no reason for one to want to watch humans suffer needlessly.

Because hunting down heretics and chaos cults is why the Sisters exist, and you are failing to understand that Euthanasia is the go-to option for the Imperium when it comes to survivors of horror.

Oh, and how's this for an "implication that they have experience fighting Chaos"? They have pre-established burn team protocols.

Oh snap.

pm713 wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Or have a rough grasp of kindness. Or no experience fighting Chaos.

What part of "Sister of Battle" implies that said commander has no experience fighting chaos, let alone an over-abundance of the milk of human kindness?

Once the big, manly Space Wolves showed up to point out that she was being a weak-hearted woman, the Canoness jumped to and... put the pre-existing burn team protocols into effect.

Just another reason to hate that book.

What part of it implies they do have experience fighting Chaos? I see no reason Sisters would be taught how to fight Nurgle and I see no reason for one to want to watch humans suffer needlessly.

Because they're better at it than the Space Marines are and were (before Edition change) the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus, which is tasked with fighting Chaos Cults.

But Blood of Asaheim is an objectively terrible book.

Well, I read an excerpt of Death of Antagonis in the back of a Black Library book of mine. Apparently this plague doesn't have to even spread through air. Like it's psychic or something. Maybe someone with spoilers can help me out here. I don't really plan on reading that book.

Also, it's more dangerous because with a plague, especially one like that, you really can't trust anyone. If there's someone behind a gun odds are just as likely he's going to catch it and turn on you, so not only are you losing men and firepower, you're having it turned against you.

 Quarterdime wrote:
Well, I read an excerpt of Death of Antagonis in the back of a Black Library book of mine. Apparently this plague doesn't have to even spread through air. Like it's psychic or something. Maybe someone with spoilers can help me out here. I don't really plan on reading that book.

Also, it's more dangerous because with a plague, especially one like that, you really can't trust anyone. If there's someone behind a gun odds are just as likely he's going to catch it and turn on you, so not only are you losing men and firepower, you're having it turned against you.

It's a plague of unbelief, and it infects the victim's soul first. It's not just warp-borne, the plague is in the warp, and after reaching a person's soul it can escape into reality.
Rendering quarantine measures rather moot if anyone has been near a weak soul.

In the 6E CSM codex's timeline, it also states that an instance of the plague occurred (probably for the first time) as Typhus waged war on an imperial world. As his forces slaughtered the people, they rose back up to join his fight, and ended with 23 billion people under imperial quarantine, with an uncountable number of these zombies. Later on in the codex, in Typhus' profile, it states that the plague follows him as he travels across the universe, seeding planets as he goes by. Which kinda goes to show that you don;t need to be anywhere near the infection in reality, just be somewhere in Typhus' wake through the warp.

Spoilers

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Spoilers

Spoiler:

The plague in Death of Antagonis is trasmitted via eye contact, and apparently the only things that render you immune to it are True Faith (like Stheno's) or the undeniable knowledge that the Emperor is not a god, but a really powerful man (like the Marines). Since the Marines 'know' the Emperor's true nature, they're immune to the Plague (because while knowledge denies belief, it also denies doubt, and the plague only infects those with the capacity for doubt).

Its also not a normal zombie plague, because the 'zombie' state is temporary and the sufferers aren't dead. The zombie-like moaning and shuffling is the body working on automatic while the mind/soul fight the plague. When the plague wins, the body becomes capable of passing for uninfected again... until the daemon bursts out of its skin to attack something.

6E CSM Codex, Page 24:

"As the living begin to fall prey to the painful disease, its true horror is revealed; the dead victims begin to rise up and attack the living."


6E CSM Codex, Page 61:

"In the fleet's wake, a new plague has been spreading - one from which even death is no release - for it seems that even the change between life and death can be reversed by Nurgle's gift. The unfortunate victims of the contagion suffer a long, agonizing demise, but those who fall to this Warp disease do not stay dead. Their bodies are soon reanimated by the chaos infection, creating Plague Zombies whose bites carry the disease to new victims."

That's all well and good, Selym, but it doesn't apply to the specific zombies in Death of Antagonis, which were outright stated not to be the normal sort after things went haywire.

The Black Dragons thought they were the normal sort, which is why they , but were proved wrong.

The only way for a zombie plague to be truly effective is that the disease to have some other vector than just bites. Be this warp born/air born or whatever.

Biting is a truly stupidly bad way for a plague to spread.

 Mythantor wrote:
The only way for a zombie plague to be truly effective is that the disease to have some other vector than just bites. Be this warp born/air born or whatever.

Biting is a truly stupidly bad way for a plague to spread.

Biting from humans? Or things like Mosquitoes and yellow fever.