Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Orks reproduce with spores released from thier blood onto fertile soil, and grow like fungi until fully grown.
Only problem is to the world spanning cities that are most Imperial worlds they have no soil to reproduce on.
Then theres the fact you could just use Flamers, Plasma, Lasguns, Laser Weaponry to put them down without them bleeding.
And when the tide is reseeding itself just do a bombing run on the soul if there is any. Boom. They're dead before they reach an age to give off spores.

It is a little dumb. Though I think it isnt entirely through blood propagation. As they are constantly releasing spores while living and they release much when dying.

Its possible many spores wash into the sewers. Sewers probably have quite a build up of sediments in places that a spore can grow. Maybe not into a full ork but maybe a grot or Gretchen.

Or even perhaps after a war in a hive city, pavement is cracked and broken, revealing earth to grow in.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
Only problem is to the world spanning cities that are most Imperial worlds they have no soil to reproduce on.

Only a tiny fraction of Imperial worlds are Hive Worlds and only a tiny fraction of Hive Worlds are composed of world-spanning cities. Many Imperial worlds are less industrialised than modern-day Earth. Even there, you will find plenty of sewers, dumps and sumps for things to grow. Modern cities still have weeds.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
Then theres the fact you could just use Flamers, Plasma, Lasguns, Laser Weaponry to put them down without them bleeding.

Except it's not the blood which generates the spores. Any part of an ork will break down into airborne spores as it rots, unless the entire body is turned to ash. The Imperium does try to contain ork infestations by burning the bodies, but sometimes it just isn't practical to do that to every single one and a few spores slip through the cracks.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
And when the tide is reseeding itself just do a bombing run on the soul if there is any. Boom. They're dead before they reach an age to give off spores.

Again, that's basically what the Imperium try to do whenever they can. Ork infestations typically only thrive in isolated areas where nobody notices them growing. That's why ork spores are generally a nuisance rather than a reason to call Exterminatus on a planet. Orks can be managed if you have the resources to devote to it and you don't get unlucky with spores infesting areas you don't expect them to get to. The issue is that resources are always stretched thin and in an empire of a million worlds, someone is going to get really unlucky sooner or later.

orks give off spores through out their lives, not just from their blood.
Fungus can grow anywhere, walls, rocks.
They use flamers to purge the area of orkoid spores and such so that they can not reproduce in the immediate area, because when orks die, they release huge amounts of their spores into the surrounding area, burning their bodies will reduce later generations.
Bombing when a ork force is retreating is increadible dangerous, for there will be chances that the bombers will be shot down. Just because an ork force is retreating, does not mean that you should send out fliers behind, orks have alot of dakka, and will shoot them down, if the hundreds, if not thousands of ork fliers have not done so already.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
Orks reproduce with spores released from thier blood onto fertile soil, and grow like fungi until fully grown.
Only problem is to the world spanning cities that are most Imperial worlds they have no soil to reproduce on.
Then theres the fact you could just use Flamers, Plasma, Lasguns, Laser Weaponry to put them down without them bleeding.
And when the tide is reseeding itself just do a bombing run on the soul if there is any. Boom. They're dead before they reach an age to give off spores.

Ork skin sheds spores, not blood (as mentioned).

"Most" Imperial worlds aren't world-spanning cities. Even the 'iconic' hive world, Necromunda, actually had multiple hive cities separated by wastelands. Even within hives, you have areas like the 'underhive', which is often quite 'organic', with toxic sumps, sewers, etc. Hive worlds are one categorization of Imperial worlds, and aren't representative of all (or perhaps even a majority) of Imperial worlds. Then, of course, there are all the worlds in the galaxy that aren't Imperial-held, too.

As the blood isn't the source of the spores, weapons that prevent bleeding don't work to prevent spore distribution. Burning the corpses thoroughly (with flamers and the like) can prevent the mass distribution of spores after death, but do nothing to prevent the slow shedding of spores from the entire time the orks enter the atmosphere. Just like you might wash your hands after contact with someone with a cold, but still catch it from the virus in the air or on surfaces you contacted.

If orks grew in large fields of fungi that were easily accessible to bombing runs, then bombing runs might work pretty well. But if orks shed microscopic spores constantly over the time that thousands of them make planetfall, then presumably, millions (or billions, or trillions) of spores are distributed, including ones in remote and inaccessible locations. Those spores generate 'squigs' first (which, while weird, don't presumably trigger the same response as a sudden Green Tide of orks), then snots, then grots, then orks. You don't suddenly get a field of mushrooms which all emerge as orks one day. Even when they emerge, those ork yoofs will scatter (or gather together) to find the snots and squigs for food, and the grots to make them clothes, and to prepare weapons and armor (or to get them from other orks who already have them). It's not like Cadmus sowing dragon's teeth and getting warriors rising from the ground (for a classical allusion).

The Imperium at large doesn't know or understand the "ork spore germination theory". It's not common knowledge, and might not even be common knowledge to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Most Imperials don't know where orks come from. I don't think the ORKS know where the orks come from (dey just wander in from da wastes...weedy yoofs). If your planet is invaded by orks, and then, months or years later, you have reports of orks massing in remote and inaccessible areas, I think that the Imperial Governor might just assume that some orks survived the initial wars and hid in those areas to regroup.

I'm not saying that it's hard science but it's not utterly nonsensical either. It's a pretty clever literary mechanism to allow orks to fight almost anywhere almost any number of times.