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I'm sure this thread has been created before, but I've never seen one that postulated my particular theory, oddly, as it seems rather obvious to me.

Chaos is the ultimate threat to any intelligent life in the universe, an evil that will consume any civilization sooner or later, as psychic energies build up and periodically explode. Perhaps someone somewhere has learned all its tricks, but even the god-like Old Ones were brought low by the treacherous Archenemy.

The Tyrannids seems like a solution, similar to the solution advocated by the Cabal (allow the Galaxy to fall to chaos so that everything will die so that chaos will die). Instead of letting chaos win, however, some intelligence or group in another galaxy pushed the emergency destruction button, releasing a bioswarm capable of purging all life from its host galaxy and marching outward in an expanding protective, if barren, sphere.

Within that sphere, the higher intelligences who birthed the Nids would be able to crawl from their holes. The Tyrannids, along with all bio-matter, having long ago departed. They could then, with their uber-technology, begin to build a society of a handful of immortal individuals, who would not generate sufficient energy to allow chaos to manifest, and would be able to eventually defeat the archenemy and allow the galaxies to bloom eternally, without the repeated crash-and-burn of Chaos.

So in theory there is something nasty behind the Tyranids. But the Tyrannids aren't fleeing them, they're paving the way (more literally than usual for that phrase) for some civilization of likely few individuals who are eternally long-lived, and themselves alone would not generate sufficient chaotic power for chaos to manifest within the universe.

What are your theories? Or why is my theory stupid/ingenoius? Where has something exactly like this been posted and answered thoughtfully and thoroughly? Anyway, thanks for reading.

Truth be told, the theory of the Tyranids as a biological, engineered weapon is pretty popular. Some people think about the few, scattered Old Ones that eventually got away from the Necrons as the hands behind them, as they would need a way to purge the galaxy clean.

Time ago I remember reading about another interesting and a bit crazy theory that I liked a lot, from LordLucan, the guy who wrote WH50K/60K. Here it is:

Tyranids are not creatures of pure impulse. They are cells in a being of impossible scale, which a mind to vast to contemplate, with thoughts as alien and unknowable as it is possible to get.

Imagine a tiny race of single celled organisms looking upon a human being. They would see this vast and terrible thing, destroying all as it passes. Its cells do nothing but eat and divide, it has white blood cells whose only purpose is to devour and destroy any foreign cells. The great human organism, to this cellular race, does nothing but eat other cell civilisations, breaking down those cells into their amino acid components, before remaking them as more voracious human cells to add to their mindless hordes of organised death.

No race in 40K truly understands the Tyranids, as they treat them as a race. The creatures that escape the hive mind are Tyranid warrior constructs, but they cease to be Tyranids when they break the connection to the hive mind. The Doom would be an interesting case, as it would be like growing a new human brain from some cells in a petree dish.

The 'Tyranids as a macro-organism' concept could also hint at things to come.For instance, consider why the Tyranids seemed to retreat from the galaxy with an analogy. Imagine a human reaching for something to eat, and their hand touches strong acid. The human would recoil pretty sharpish, as the vitriol scorches their flesh. Now, either the human decides not to touch the acid again. Or, he comes back later with protective gloves...

^ I like that Macro-organism theory

I thought the Old Ones died way before Chaos?

I like the idea that they started as some faraway races bio army which was used to wipe out their enemies but it went wrong and the Tyranids killed them too.

Bio weapon gone wrong, a super weapon of insane power got out of hand and started to rampage and grow. Eventually it evolved beyond there control and killed all life not just a signed targets by there now eaten masters.

Few galexys later you have the swarm.

Box of donuts was dropped on the office floor. No one cleaned it up. This is how you get ants.

 Psienesis wrote:
Box of donuts was dropped on the office floor. No one cleaned it up. This is how you get ants.

Now THIS I like.

But, allow me to jump back to my original scenario for a bit: the Tyrannids' creators perhaps would've never even needed to hide. See, their philosophy is that of the 'Sphere of Order,' an expanding region of space cleansed of all life by the Tyrannids, waiting, primed, for the mighty Nid'gineers, a group much like the Cabal of the Milky Way, the Nid-gineer Cabal being the only intellects, organic or artificial, within the Sphere of Order. They made the Nids to purge all other life, a last-resort, but themselves of course were spared by their creations.

THROUGH DEATH THERE WILL BE ORDER
LIFE MUST BE PURGED
SO THAT LIFE CAN RISE AGAIN
IMMUNE TO THE ARCHENEMY

These mighty beings could be a sort of 2nd wave of the Tyrannid invasion, attracted by the light of the astronomicon, detectable at immense distances thanks to the Nid'gineersCabalists super-tech. The Nid'Gineer's have been in transit, then, for at least ten-thousand years. Meaning that they could be close, if not imminently arriving... A handful of god-like beings, or their god-like servants, immune to the Nids, possibly able to control them. Perhaps even representing rival factions and ideologies, such as one faction that wants to eliminate all life outside the NidginnerCabal, and another that wants to finish a redesign of life to make it inherently immune to Chaos, allowing the Sphere of Order to blossom. Course they'd all have to be fething doomed for some Chaosey reason or other, no matter how mighty/innocent/good/evil any of them may temporarily appear to be...

Considering tyranids as they are - it's not terribly difficult. They expend the least amount of energy possible for the highest returns. That is, it's evidently easy for them to make gaunts which are effective warriors and cheap biologically to produce. That is to say, they have low brain function. This is why humans take so long to gestate and further develop and become self-sufficient (versus an animal like a gazelle that is born able to walk and is more intelligent than your average gaunt).

In this context, the energy output into making these warriors is less so than a planets worth of resources.

How a gestalt hive-mind formed is more interesting. In reproduction, you want your genetic material to succeed after all. There are cases of animals without offspring helping known genetic relatives, but for the most part they only help themselves and close offspring (Hamilton's Rule). So what prompted the original tyranid warrior ancestors to stop their competition and work under a single entity?

Perhaps it's similar to ants or other insects. In this context, development probably makes most sense to us 40k players anyway. If ants were able to assimilate other insects and utilize them in the way tyranids make new strains, and had some sort of latent psychic ability, they'd be our (tiny) tyranids.

The C'tans' second attempt at omniscient. This time without any of that pesky free-will.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Damn autocorrect. Omnicide.