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So this came up in the Eldar rumors thread and got me thinking, what do people think is the right (VERY ROUGH) ratio of populations in the Grimdark Galaxy of 40,000 AD?

Say the Imperium's population across a million worlds =1000
(and it's up to you if that 1000 represents billions of people, trillions, quadrillions or some other made up number, remember that on Necromunda each and every hive is supposed to have a population of billions)

What would be the right number of all of humanity (including lost worlds, rebel worlds, etc)?

Orks?

Eldar now (dark, craftworld and outsiders)?

Eldar at their height?


Necrons?

Tyranids?

Tau?

Eye of terror (mortals)?

Daemons in the warp?

I have my thoughts of course but i thought I'd throw the question out here first.

Click the spoilers for my thoughts.

I feel like the methodology is a bit confusing but I suppose you just want a relative comparison.

I think Tau is a bit high-- probably only 5. They only control a few dozen worlds, which are not a densely inhabited as the craftworlds, in general, and they don't have any incredibly dense world/pocket dimension like Commorrogah.

I would put the Ork population as equal to humanity. Aside from them supposedly settling other galaxies, etc, they are the most widespread xeno by far, so much so that annhillating them is never really even considered, just containing them or trying to redirect them into someone you don't like.

I also agree that there are probably not many necrons, but I imagine there are more necrons than eldar, although not all of them are awake. I'd say they are more like 50, with about 5 being awake currently.

Eldar are tricky, but I would bump them up, since commorrogah is in my impression the most populated single place in the galaxy. There are likely a hundred or more craftworlds, with populations generally in the billions. And exodite worlds with populations in the low millions. Harlequins are pretty neglible. 20-25

Tyranids are pretty weird because their total numbers vary dramatically based on the number of hive ships engaged in combat and the number in transit. When they have multiple tendrils engaged, probably as high as 300 or so.

Let me see, I think I did some calculations once for humanity.

Here we are.

Assuming 1,000,000 worlds exactly.

According to http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Hive_World there are 32,380 Hive Worlds.

Civilized Worlds are the most common classification of planet. No official numbers are given. I'll assume there is a large majority. Say 45% of planets qualify. So 450,000 planets.

Dead worlds have negligible population. I imagine that they also account for a fairly sizable chunk of the %. I'll assume 10% of worlds qualify. 100,000 research stations or mining operations.

Death Worlds seem fairly rare, and have populations ranging from as low as 1,000 to 15,000,000. I'll again assume 10% of the total represents worlds that are actively hostile to colonization but are still colonized. 100,000.

Agri-worlds have very low populations and are rarely more than 1,000,000. Lets assume 1 Agri-world can supply 1 Hive World or 5 Civilized worlds. 122,380 Agriworlds.

The remainder of planets will either be Feral or Feudal worlds. 195,240.


Hive World Population: Lets assume that if they were spread out each hive world would have a population density equal to Tokyo over an earth sized planet. 510,072,000 km2 times 6000 people = 3,060,432,000,000

Times 32,380 Hive Worlds = 99,096,788,160,000,000 humans on hive worlds.

Civilized Worlds: Assuming 6 billion people per world = 2,700,000,000,000,000 people on Civilized worlds.

Feudal and Feral Worlds: Assuming an average of 15 million people each, accounting for high population Feudal and low population Feral worlds, = 2,928,600,000,000 people.

The remaining classifications are such low numbers relatively speaking that we can effectively ignore the populations of Agri and Death worlds.

The final number is there are approximately 101,799,716,160,000,000 people in the Imperium. Thats 101 quadrillion, 799 trillion, 716 billion, and 160 million people.

Amateur hour, my turn.


Orks - 1200

Eldar now (dark, craftworld and outsiders) - 1.5

Eldar at their height - 350

Necrons - Not sure at all. 40 max strength?

Tyranids - Not sure at all. 300 - 3000?

Tau - 0.002

Eye of terror (mortals) - 10

Daemons in the warp - Yes. (infinite because screw reality)

Methodology is bloody weird so I'm not going to bother. The Imperium, Orks, and Tyranids have populations well into the tens of quadrillions, with the Tyranids and Orks easily stretching into the multi-quintillions without much fuss. Eldar number in the hundreds of billions, trillions most likely if Dark Eldar are counted. Tau are in the billions (their world and population density is abysmal, so they certainly don't encroach on Hive World population density levels), and active Necrons are probably somewhere in the billions, quadrillions if they all woke up.


Also, during the height of the Eldar Empire, there was possibly as much as a tredecillion Eldar alive. Even the Orks have nothing on that, although it probably helped that the Eldar reincarnate while also increasing in number.


In addition, this is if the Imperium only has a million worlds. Depending on the sources, they have billions. So yay, quintillions for humanity too!

Here's my crude draft on size of different galactic populations, out of 1000 planets:
Orks=500
Imperium/Humanity=300
Tyranids(Nommed)=75
Necrons=75
Eldars(All of them)=20
Tau=10
All other minor Xenos=20

Eldar Empire at it's height would propably be about 200. Their Empire located in the area that is currently known as Eye of Terror.

NOTE: This is crude draft based on what I currently know.

My thoughts:

Imperium: 1000

Non-imperium non-Chaos humans: 1

Eldar: .001

Dark Eldar: .0015

Orks: Varies between 400 and 600 due to extreme mortality and reproduction rates

Eldar at their height: 800

Necrons: 1250

Tyranids: 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Daemons: DATA CORRUPT

Chaos humans: 100

You've forgotten matines!
So, the imperium is now mighty 1000.0000000000001

My estimate of the Imperium's population is (very roughly) 10^15 humans. That's a pretty conservative estimate; lots of people think it's tens or hundreds of times more.

I'm fairly sure it has been explicitly stated that the ork population of the galaxy is greater than the human population. The big questions are; does that include runts and, if so, what portion of the population are runts? I'm inclined to say 'yes' and 'about 90%'. That still means there are billions of ork warriors, far outnumbering the Astra Militarum. At least one proper ork for every ten humans, probably more, maybe a lot more.

Tyranids are impossible to measure, because not only do we not know how many hive fleets there are, there isn't really a good definition of what counts as an individual. Best estimate: several hundred billion tons of biomass per fleet.

According to Gav Thorpe, a large craftworld carries a few million Eldar. Even if there are thousands of craftworlds and millions of smaller vessels with significant populations, the Craftworld Eldar would only have a few billion living individuals, or less than 0.001% of the Imperium's population. Dark Eldar have more than that, but probably not several orders of magnitude more. Other Eldar (Exodites, Harlequins, etc.) probably have only a small fraction of the Craftworlders' population. Even at their height, I don't think the Eldar population matched that of humanity, probably a few trillion at most (the Eye of Terror covered the majority of their worlds, and is only a tiny fraction of the Imperium's size).

Tau seem fairly simple; a handful of major population centres with several billion Tau each and dozens of minor colonies with millions of Tau each. Total, probably around a few hundred billion.

Chaos is difficult. Chaos Marines seem to be at least as common as loyalist marines, so maybe a few million of them. Chaos seems to have more marines per human than the Imperium, so chaos humans are probably only a fraction of the Imperium's numbers. Maybe 5% of the Imperium's population? Daemons in the materium probably number only a few billion at most. Daemons in the warp are literally uncountable.

Necrons are surely only a tiny fraction of the Imperium's size. Given their technology and the fact that they are all soldiers, even a billion active necrons would be a significant threat. If there were trillions of them, the galaxy would already be under their control.

EDIT: slightly more solid calculations on the Imperium's population; we know there are about 30,000 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. We also have population figures for some of them, varying from 13 Billion to 500 billion with averages being roughly in the 120 billion range for the ones which give population figures. Assuming that the date we have is representative of the Imperium as a whole, that's 3.6x10^15 just in Hive worlds. If civilised worlds have populations similar to modern Earth (~7 billion) and make up the vast majority of Imperial worlds, the total Imperial population might be as much as 10^16. I see absolutely no support for Grey Templar's estimate that an average Hive World has a population six times larger than the largest example in the books.

The Tyranids are the least numerous organism in the galaxy. The Tyranids are one single organism.

 Perfect Organism wrote:


EDIT: slightly more solid calculations on the Imperium's population; we know there are about 30,000 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. We also have population figures for some of them, varying from 13 Billion to 500 billion with averages being roughly in the 120 billion range for the ones which give population figures. Assuming that the date we have is representative of the Imperium as a whole, that's 3.6x10^15 just in Hive worlds. If civilised worlds have populations similar to modern Earth (~7 billion) and make up the vast majority of Imperial worlds, the total Imperial population might be as much as 10^16. I see absolutely no support for Grey Templar's estimate that an average Hive World has a population six times larger than the largest example in the books.

GW writers have no sense of scale and proper population density. A population of 500 billion for a large Hive World would lead to very empty Hives, considering that they are often described as covering an entire planet, reaching into the clouds and digging very deep under ground.
13 billion is just laughable. Modern Earth already has 7 billion people.
Unlike GW's writers, who just seem to make up a random number, Grey Templar's calculations are based on logic. He assumes that the population density of a Hive World would be comparable to that of Tokyo.

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. If all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population because we know that not all worlds are maximum population hive worlds.

Minea from that page in the 5th edition rulebook is described as a typical example of a hive world, and it has 154 billion population, well under the 500 billion maximum. Assume we are still generous and give all hive worlds a population of 250 billion to account for less populated worlds elsewhere in the Imperium. 32,380 hive worlds of 250 billion population each is 8.095 * 10^15.

The thing is Hive Worlds do not mean every single last inhabitable scrap of space on the planet is inhabited. Necromunda for example has large termite mound like hives with vast stretches of sparsely populated wasteland in between. The other type of Hive World described is the "solar" hive, characterized by it seems total urbanization of the entire planetary surface, and often resulting from the outward radiation and then merging of cities (hence the term "solar", or perhaps because this pattern is characteristic of the Segmentum Solar). However, Hive Worlds also have sections that on Necromunda are called the Underhive. This is essentially abandoned post-industrial wasteland and relatively sparsely populated by the outcasts from the main hive above or by native inhabitants (such as the Ratskin tribes described for Necromunda). Lower still would be actual abandoned areas, where nothing human lives. The upper levels for the nobles and the rich also seem to be more spacious so again the overall planetary population density would drop. Finally, there will undoubtedly be non-inhabitable spaces given over to vital machinery such as air purifiers, water purifiers, recyclers, and power generation. Hive worlds have to have machinery for these to maintain life, as there is no natural eco-system left on many hive worlds to do so. Hive worlds are also highly dependent on imports of basic consumables in order to survive as any local production is nowhere near enough to meet demand. So a limiting factor to hive world population may be the availability of ships and other nearby worlds or star systems with enough exports to meet the needs of the hive world. Ultimately an equilibrium may be reached, with any excess population either then starving or having to be taken off-world as part of the tithe or Imperial Guard levy.


So with all these other reasons, I do not think it a valid assumption that the entire surface of a hive world can be assumed to be of a given density.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So this came up in the Eldar rumors thread and got me thinking, what do people think is the right (VERY ROUGH) ratio of populations in the Grimdark Galaxy of 40,000 AD?

Say the Imperium's population across a million worlds =1000
(and it's up to you if that 1000 represents billions of people, trillions, quadrillions or some other made up number, remember that on Necromunda each and every hive is supposed to have a population of billions)

What would be the right number of all of humanity (including lost worlds, rebel worlds, etc)?
Orks?
Eldar now (dark, craftworld and outsiders)?
Eldar at their height?
Necrons?
Tyranids?
Tau?
Eye of terror (mortals)?
Daemons in the warp?
I have my thoughts of course but i thought I'd throw the question out here first.
Click the spoilers for my thoughts.

I thought Orks were the most populace race in the galaxy, just crammed onto some huge hivelike ork planets

Dark Eldar are the most common type of eldar
Exodities are the second
Craftwarod the third
Harlequins the least, wouldnt even show up on this scale

Eldar at peak, perhaps 100 times what there is now.

Depending on what you consider a 'nid, tyrandis will be different. The number of synapse creaters is probably rather low.

There are not that many necrons, but every necron is a warrior

There are probably 10% of humans in the galaxy that the IoM does not control
There are probably another 5% in the EoT

Tau numbers are going to be very low. Particularly the number of actual Tau, not kroot etc.

My density calculations were just to put it in equivalent terms.

In my calculations people are still living in the super mega dense hives not all over the planet. Its just equivalent to Tokyo's density across the whole planet.

I disregard GWs population metrics for hive worlds because GW is stupid and has no sense of scale.

If hive cities are about as common on a hive world as cities on Earth are now, you would have 40 times the population living in each with 'only' 140 billion people on the world. Most cities have quite a few buildings over 100 metres tall. If a hive is basically 40 cities built on top of each other, that would give you spires that reach miles into the sky.

With three trillion people on a Hive World, you would need truly insane logistics to support them. Even if interplanetary supplies only provide a tiny fraction of their food demands, you are talking about billions of tons being moved through the warp on a monthly basis. That's thousands of the Imperium's massive bulk carrier spacecraft dedicated to shuttling food to hive worlds, each agri-world not only growing billions of tons of food, but transporting it to orbit for an endless procession of cargo craft to ship it to it's destination.

Let's go into detail; there are about a billion hectares of arable land on Earth. That's maybe enough to support 50 billion people, maximum. So you need the food production of 60 earth-like planets to feed each hive world with three trillion inhabitants. That's already more than a million planets to supply 30,000 hive worlds. Reducing the hive world population to couple of hundred billion makes it a lot more manageable; only a handful of agri worlds are needed for each of them.

But maybe the Imperium can produce food more efficiently than we can; a dozen agri-worlds with five times the food production capacity of modern Earth could feed a three-trillion person hive world.

Then we have the shipping; we know that the Imperium's largest military transport ships are capable of transporting a few million men, thousands of vehicles and months of supplies for them. That indicates a cargo capacity in the millions of tons per ship range. Civilian ships aren't much bigger, but they don't have to carry armour or weapons, can get by with less powerful but more efficient engines and don't need to carry spare as much spare fuel to account for unexpected situations, so they can probably manage significantly more cargo. Still, probably not billions of tons per ship though; more like tens of millions of tons. That means that each ship will be able to carry enough food to keep maybe a few hundred million people alive long enough for it to make another journey to pick up more supplies.

A multi-trillion person hive world would need hundreds of large ships arriving full of food every day, which doesn't seem too absurd. However, it also means that each agri-world would have dozens of large ships in orbit at any time, which seems a lot harder to reconcile with what we usually see in the books. It also means that each agri-world has enough surface-to-space transport to lift tens of millions of tons into orbit every hour. That's something like a hundred times more than our modern air cargo capacity and comparable to the amount we move by sea. That doesn't seem consistent with the image of the average agri-world as fairly undeveloped.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So this came up in the Eldar rumors thread and got me thinking, what do people think is the right (VERY ROUGH) ratio of populations in the Grimdark Galaxy of 40,000 AD?

Say the Imperium's population across a million worlds =1000

If I had to re-scale what GW messed up it would look like this:


Imperium=1000

Orks=1200

Eldar now (dark, craftworld and outsiders)=10

Eldar at their height=100

Necrons=200

Tyranids=1+x ( Nids could split the biomass however they want, so "micro"-nids could outdo everyone and "garganto"-nids may have a hard time competing with the rarest of creatures in a head-count match )

Tau=0,01

Eye of terror (mortals)=25

Daemons in the warp=10


The 2 species you run into in this Galaxy should be Orks or Humans, followed by those who got the mobility to make up for numbers ( Eldar, Warp creatures, etc ), then Necrons who may be spread all across the Galaxy too but many of them inactive and the tendrils of the Hive fleets. Last place are tne new kids on the block, like the Tau.

IIRC GW has stated that Orks are the Galaxy's most populous race, and that the only thing keeping them from overrunning everything was the fact that they're just so disunited and fractious by nature.

Yeah, found the passage in the 4E ruleboook "...Orks have spread throughout the Galaxy from the core to the outer rim. If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them".

As for estimates of human population, who knows. There are massive hive words with uncountable billions, and feral worlds with but a couple million people. If we just use the population of modern Earth as an average across a million worlds, we get about seven quadrillion (7,000,000,000,000,000) humans.

 Vaktathi wrote:
IIRC GW has stated that Orks are the Galaxy's most populous race, and that the only thing keeping them from overrunning everything was the fact that they're just so disunited and fractious by nature.

Yeah, found the passage in the 4E ruleboook "...Orks have spread throughout the Galaxy from the core to the outer rim. If ever the Orks united as a race, no force in the galaxy could resist them".

As for estimates of human population, who knows. There are massive hive words with uncountable billions, and feral worlds with but a couple million people. If we just use the population of modern Earth as an average across a million worlds, we get about seven quadrillion (7,000,000,000,000,000) humans.

Larger then that. The total of Hive Worlds boosts accounts at minimum for five quadrillion, quite likely more given that some can have a trillion or more people on a single planet alone, hence humanity possibly stretching into the quintillions.

But Orks outnumber everyone besides Chaos Daemons. They also possibly have colonized at least one Galaxy of the local group, which would boost their numbers into the multi quintilions plus.

 Perfect Organism wrote:
If hive cities are about as common on a hive world as cities on Earth are now, you would have 40 times the population living in each with 'only' 140 billion people on the world. Most cities have quite a few buildings over 100 metres tall. If a hive is basically 40 cities built on top of each other, that would give you spires that reach miles into the sky.

With three trillion people on a Hive World, you would need truly insane logistics to support them. Even if interplanetary supplies only provide a tiny fraction of their food demands, you are talking about billions of tons being moved through the warp on a monthly basis. That's thousands of the Imperium's massive bulk carrier spacecraft dedicated to shuttling food to hive worlds, each agri-world not only growing billions of tons of food, but transporting it to orbit for an endless procession of cargo craft to ship it to it's destination.

Sure, but insane logistics makes total sense for the Imperium. Its a massive network of bureaucracy. Just having regular shipments of food is no big deal. Especially if a Hive World is recycling the vast majority of its food. Basically only the upper middle class and rich will have off-world food. Everyone else gets food from waste reclamation.

Let's go into detail; there are about a billion hectares of arable land on Earth. That's maybe enough to support 50 billion people, maximum. So you need the food production of 60 earth-like planets to feed each hive world with three trillion inhabitants. That's already more than a million planets to supply 30,000 hive worlds. Reducing the hive world population to couple of hundred billion makes it a lot more manageable; only a handful of agri worlds are needed for each of them.

But maybe the Imperium can produce food more efficiently than we can; a dozen agri-worlds with five times the food production capacity of modern Earth could feed a three-trillion person hive world.

Its not beyond reason for 1 agriworld to provide food for 1 Hive World, at least if you factor in all the totals. Especially if you also have hydroponics and aquaculture in addition to traditional crops and lifestock. Earth as it is has an insanely high potential for food production, far more than what your numbers were calculated if we use technological advancement.

Then we have the shipping; we know that the Imperium's largest military transport ships are capable of transporting a few million men, thousands of vehicles and months of supplies for them. That indicates a cargo capacity in the millions of tons per ship range. Civilian ships aren't much bigger, but they don't have to carry armour or weapons, can get by with less powerful but more efficient engines and don't need to carry spare as much spare fuel to account for unexpected situations, so they can probably manage significantly more cargo. Still, probably not billions of tons per ship though; more like tens of millions of tons. That means that each ship will be able to carry enough food to keep maybe a few hundred million people alive long enough for it to make another journey to pick up more supplies.

A multi-trillion person hive world would need hundreds of large ships arriving full of food every day, which doesn't seem too absurd. However, it also means that each agri-world would have dozens of large ships in orbit at any time, which seems a lot harder to reconcile with what we usually see in the books. It also means that each agri-world has enough surface-to-space transport to lift tens of millions of tons into orbit every hour. That's something like a hundred times more than our modern air cargo capacity and comparable to the amount we move by sea. That doesn't seem consistent with the image of the average agri-world as fairly undeveloped.

Agri-worlds are just underdeveloped in the terms that they have low populations, but they will still have massive transportation equipment for getting their produce into orbit. Besides, its not necessarily the planet itself that has this orbital lifting capability. More likely there are massive orbital stations which have thousands and thousands of cargo shuttles which are all remotely operated that move the produce into the awaiting ships. The

You're basically assuming that an Agriworld is growing crops and literally no other technology. But they MUST have massive cargo movement capability or they can't do what they're meant to do, grow food for other planets. Ergo, they must have massive ability to ship those tens of millions of tons of food into orbit an hour. Its not really any stretch to say they do, in fact it has to be one of our base assumptions.

An Agriworld might have dozens of ships at a time, but thats hardly inconsistent with what we see. Dozens of ships at a time wouldn't be very crowded at all. Even if these are 10 kilometer long cargo ships they'd still only be visible from very close distances. Even though ships in 40k are big, space is even bigger. You're talking speck of dust compared to a watermelon in terms of size comparison between a planet and a 10 kilometer long ship.

 Grey Templar wrote:
My density calculations were just to put it in equivalent terms.

In my calculations people are still living in the super mega dense hives not all over the planet. Its just equivalent to Tokyo's density across the whole planet.

I disregard GWs population metrics for hive worlds because GW is stupid and has no sense of scale.

The assumption of average density being equal to Tokyo is what is arbitrary. We don't have enough hard data to determine what the average density really is. All we know is that some areas are sparsely populated while others are literally hives of humanity, but all without numbers. The average density could be Tokyo, or it could be another less dense city equivalent.

An Agriworld might have dozens of ships at a time, but thats hardly inconsistent with what we see. Dozens of ships at a time wouldn't be very crowded at all. Even if these are 10 kilometer long cargo ships they'd still only be visible from very close distances. Even though ships in 40k are big, space is even bigger. You're talking speck of dust compared to a watermelon in terms of size comparison between a planet and a 10 kilometer long ship.

If the average BFG transport is an indication of the average merchant ship in 40K, then it will be far more than just dozens as the transport ship is "escort" sized in BFG terms. The huge 10km or more cargo ships mentioned occasionally actually appear more the rarity than the rule. If the average is the smaller escort sized transport then agri-worlds would have their orbital space very crowded or with non-stop heavy in and out traffic, and the orbital stations for them to load/unload. We do not seem to see such heavy traffic described in the stories that feature agri-worlds, or in the BFG rules.

Well such details don't really make for good story telling, thats why they don't appear when Agri-worlds come up.

And yes Tokyo is arbitrary, but I picked it deliberately because it represents very dense urban living and 40k is going to be even denser. So its really the best choice for pop density estimation.

There was a Isaac Asimov story, "2430 A.D.", in which he calculated that, once humanity converted the planet total ANIMAL biomass into people, it would reach 15 trillion humans. To feed this, all the oceans were transformed into a planet-wide algae farm. He assumes his Earth was much better managed than hive worlds, but the notion of using the oceans to farm algae/plankton may be how the Imperium feeds its hives.

A whole agricultural world would need greater population than some millions to go that far, but that probably depends on the level of automatization. I assume a 100 million servitors wouldn't count as population, and humans could be only overseers.

The Imperium could dump the hives' organic waste into oceans, wait and harvest the plankton outgrowing everything else, process into bricks of wholesome nasty paste, funnel it through a orbital spire, and tow asteroid-sized containers until the closest hive world. The same containers would bring the waste back, and sterilized through vaccum exposure while the process is repeated. That would not substitute land farming, but would increase the agricultural yeld of a single world.

All of that strikes me as "underdeveloped" in Imperium of Man terms, because there is not any mass-production of leman russ, manpower tithes, not a single engine component. The natives probably can't even manufacture lasguns.

I am fairly sure Tyranids are the most numerous race overall, though. (Except Daemons but let's not go there.) Orks or maybe Necrons second.

Bosta wrote:

All of that strikes me as "underdeveloped" in Imperium of Man terms, because there is not any mass-production of leman russ, manpower tithes, not a single engine component. The natives probably can't even manufacture lasguns.

Thats a pretty narrow definition of development. I'm sure they could make those things if the Imperium demanded it, but they don't. Instead the Imperium demands food. So they are very developed towards that capacity.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Bosta wrote:

All of that strikes me as "underdeveloped" in Imperium of Man terms, because there is not any mass-production of leman russ, manpower tithes, not a single engine component. The natives probably can't even manufacture lasguns.

Thats a pretty narrow definition of development. I'm sure they could make those things if the Imperium demanded it, but they don't. Instead the Imperium demands food. So they are very developed towards that capacity.

I wholly agree it's narrow, but it seems (to me) the things the Imperium would value. Lasguns patterns, warp drives, tank variants, geneseed, those are detailed. Food it's an afterthought compared to them, not matter what, there will be infinite humans to die and kill. A side effect of being a wargame setting.

They can't have neglected food, because otherwise everyone would be dead.

Sure, its not mentioned, but the fact other things exist means that a massive transportation system for food must also exist.

Its no different from us assuming every world we see guardsmen fighting on without air tanks contains oxygen.

It's worth noting that Necrons are outright stated at times to be numerical equal if not superior to the IoM in numerous sources, should they ever all wake up.


So for necrons I figure 10-100 awake 1000 still asleep.

in other words, we're only seeing 1-10% of the necrons in existance right now.

Bosta wrote:
There was a Isaac Asimov story, "2430 A.D.", in which he calculated that, once humanity converted the planet total ANIMAL biomass into people, it would reach 15 trillion humans.

That seems unlikely. Humans are apparently a significant portion of the total land animal biomass already. 15 trillion people would be hundreds of billions of tons of biomass, which is in the range of estimates of total biomass (including bacteria and plants) given by wikipedia. Total animal biomass is probably less than ten billion tons (i.e. a few hundred billion humans).

Thats also only isolating the calculations to a single planet and not counting any importation of biomass or the creation of biomass from inorganic material. All of which exists in 40k.

And going by that, you can't have Hive Worlds getting too much food from offworld, otherwise you'd quickly have the planet getting covered in waste material. More likely they're getting maybe 5% of their total food from offworld, the rest is recycled from waste material or is grown on the planet itself. The rest is balanced by some matter leaving the world in some form or another, likely back to the agri-worlds as fertilizer.

Bosta wrote:
There was a Isaac Asimov story, "2430 A.D.", in which he calculated that, once humanity converted the planet total ANIMAL biomass into people, it would reach 15 trillion humans. To feed this, all the oceans were transformed into a planet-wide algae farm. He assumes his Earth was much better managed than hive worlds, but the notion of using the oceans to farm algae/plankton may be how the Imperium feeds its hives.

I remember that story, I also remember Dr Asimov's note at the end that all numbers were made up EXCEPT for his estimate that (based on then current growth rates) the human race would number 15 trillion by 2430.

So it's not really a 'calculation' of what Earth could accomodate.

Darn good story though, teared my up at the end.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OK, to expand on my thoughts...

IMPERIUM

Like I said at the start we 'know' more about the Imperium than any other faction, but any and all numbers are made up. We guess how big worlds might be, we guess their populations and we go from there. I like the guestimate of Earth's population (7 billion) times the number of worlds in the Imperium (1 million) for 7*10^16 people in the Imperium. Since it uses the only 2 solid numbers we have it works for me.

I assume the 'million worlds' number is actually a simplification. It does not count uninhabited/unhibitable worlds in Imperial systems, it does not count asteroids mines or moons with outposts on them. A 'world' means something with a significant population and an Imperial Governor. Not all Imperial planets would be one of the million 'worlds'. It's like saying the US has 50 states, we don't need to count or mention possessions like Puerto Rico or Guam or Midway. But they're still there.

Discussion of hive world populations have to take into account the fact we cannot use Tokyo or NYC population density and then multiply it by a planet since they rest on a broad base of farms, mines, lakes, forests, dumps and millions of other things that have to take up space on the planet. Yeah you could squeeze a few trillion people onto Earth's surface (especially once you boil off the oceans) but they'd be dead within a week. If not within an hour.

You can move some of that off world (don't forget those ag worlds can be in the same system which makes logisitics a bit easier) but I'd say Trantor/Courasnt style world cities would be very rare and would still need massive, massive uninhabilted areas for air flitering machines, hydroponics, ocean-sized resevours etc. Most Hive Worlds are more like Necroumda or Armeggeddon, huge acropolis style cities the size of a mountain (or several mountains) with hundreds of miles between them.

ORKS

I put orks at 250 because Ork economy is basically hunter gathering with some very, very limited farming and mining. they reproduce like, well mushrooms, but they just don't build the kind of infrastructure that can support large populations. Plus our one glimpse of an ork world in Gorka Morka showed them constantly at war which would keep population lower.

I like the idea that in ork society 90% might be grots/slaves, then it seems a little more feasible. Maybe with Mek Boyz running farms and mines and refineraries while the boyz run around in their fast cars crashing and bashing for fun.

Yeah, maybe.

But I still think savage hunter gatherers should be fewer in number than an organized, industrial race.

Plus if orks outnumber everyone the Gork and Mork should be strongest forces in the warp.

ELDAR

I think we all agree Eldar of all stripes are vanishingly small. I had a thought on craftworlds though, the miles-long craftworlds might just be the tip of a multidimensional iceberg with much of the craftworld being the webway/subspace/teseracts/whatever. It's a nice handwave which reminds us the Space Elfs are quite advanced and allows for all sorts of fudging of logic.

TYRANIDS
Yeah, impossible to estimate, I mean do we count rippers? guants? the guants' guns? the guants' guns' ammo?

Especially since they can breed and recycle organisms at will.


DAEMONS

One of the neat ideas in 40k is this symbiotic relationship between the warp and reality. Living creatures have a warp presence which feeds into tides and forces and over time these forces form into sentient beings. The big 4 chaos gods represent some fundamental desires shared by all living things.

So my thought is there's roughly one deamon for every living soul.

Few nitpicks, for one the average Imperial World is going to have a far greater population density then Earth, especially given their backwater, often despot nature which leads to runaway population levels. Our population after all is about to skyrocket to around 11-15 billion people in a century, and 40K worlds have been around for far, faaaaar longer. Basing the Imperium's population on Earth in the modern day is completely nonsensical as Earth's population is going to increase by around 63% by 2100, if not sooner. Meaning that the Imperium's population would be increasing at that rate as well.

Eldar meanwhile aren't small at all. Even with a very generously low interpretation of population density in the Dark City would leave us with hundreds of billions, if not trillions. Craftworld Eldar and Corsairs also number in the tens of billions as well. They're only "dying" in the sense that their reproduction speed is very, very slow and their original population was in the quadrillions at least, if not far higher.

Daemons meanwhile are inifnite in number. They aren't limited to the number of souls, and do not even need souls to sustain themselves. They just exist and proliferate in the warp without end.

Orks also don't need any infrastructure. They're completely magical fungi that require no farming or gathering of food. Their ecosystem that spreads through their constant contact with ANY ground (even space stations) sprouts the fungal food that they eat. They hilariously outnumber everyone besides Daemons and Tyranids that they do NOT require any such logistical needs. They just exponentially increase in number until they're killed. Unless they're killed, they simply multiply at a constant rate.