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Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.

 Ratliker wrote:
Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.

Except tyranids who can make supplies as they go, and orks who can craft supplies as they go - along with unending reinforcements due to their unique way of reproduction, and dark elder who don't need ships as they can just dart in and out of the web way, and daemons who don't need supplies, and necrons...

Modern militaries don't have the capacity to wage total war like we could during WW2 anymore. Everything is simply too expensive and requires specialized production facilities (you can't really make tanks at car and tractor factories like before for example) so anyone who makes it into a drawn out slug fest is going to win sooner or later. Even the countries most capable of sustaining a total war (by modern standards) footing like America and China can only manage for about a decade before their economy and supplies collapse.

Similarly, modern society is hugely dependent on the continuation of trade for raw materials other countries don't have enough of. If you start disrupting that supply network modern society starts unravelling and collapsing as fuel stops being provided and countries that are net importers of food start experiencing mass famine. Internally you can do things like seize the American breadbasket and cause a knock on effect that causes countless millions of people to starve as you take the most agriculturally productive area on earth.

Similarly, modern armies are flat out tiny and we can't really drum up more men and materiel with the same kind of pace we did in world war two. The coalition found itself critically low on Javelin missiles after just a years worth of engagement in afghanistan and that's a war that didn't have things like all those factories and mines that are essential to getting the raw materials and working the assemblies to make Javelin missiles get taken out. And as I mentioned before, the civilians in most countries today are largely entirely defenseless against a military attack. We don't have any serious fortifications to prevent areas like New York City from becoming a slaughterfest for invaders as the enemy keeps on pressing the attack while we expend our last anti-tank only to find ten thousand more Daemon Engines over the horizon.

More important that people forget is that most 40K armies are pretty capable of wiping out our power grid with very little issue. A marine just has to nom on somebody's brain, a psyker rip the information from some poor sod's mind, a Dark Eldar just torture the information out, etc to get the locations and boom. Mass riots everywhere as civilization slowly collapses as power is quickly knocked out across the state that causes a massive crisis.

You don't have to occupy Earth, you just have to break the morale of the civilians in the major nations until they demand their superiors surrender (if such a thing is an option). Of course if this is Chaos, Tyranids, Orks, etc, then it simply speeds along the destruction of the afflicted nation.

 Ratliker wrote:
Modern military LOVES obliterating slow, massed targets with carpet bombing, guided artillery, cruise missiles and the like (and tactical nukes if needs be); including well armored targets mind you.
And warhammer 40k armies tend to present a lot of those targets once they are deployed.
However, as with all planetary invasions, it’s all about Space domination. Invader with ships in orbit can deploy troops and bombard ground targets (inaccurate as wh40k orbital bombardments are), including army bases and carried battle groups. But if earthly militaries can shoot those ships out of orbit with nukes/ secret orbital weapon platforms flying around since cold war, any wh40k armies left stranded on the ground would be matched, and most probably destroyed (due to lack of supplies and air superiority) by earthly forces.

We have no way of attacking a ship in orbit. And even if we could, we couldn't bypass it's defenses.

krystalking wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.

We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.

Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.

True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.

The problem there is that the Orks have aircraft and AA of their own, and even the Orks are far more technologically advanced than we are.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

krystalking wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Ork insertion method involves raining asteroids down from outer space.

We have nothing to defend against that , and no way of compensating for the sudden loss of sunlight and warmth from the planet-covering dustcloud that will be kicked up. We also have no real means of dealing with the Orks who land in out-of-the-way places, such as deep deserts of Africa, the Amazon, Antarctica, etc.

Within 30 years, the Ork Spores from those landing sites will have led to the creation of entire Orky civilizations. We'd be doomed.

True on both accounts, but any asteroid that can safely deliver troops alive, even orks, are not going to be planet ending, and the Spores would be a problem.
Ignoring the long term effects and insertion methods, if both sides were deployed on a mostly equal field, the usualy Ork horde-rush opens itself up to artillery, bombing, and whatever. Or even better, just use aircraft and victory would be easy.

The problem there is that the Orks have aircraft and AA of their own, and even the Orks are far more technologically advanced than we are.

The Orks also have mass teleportation IIRC.

Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit.
Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons.
Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.

Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.

The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.

Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.

Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.

Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.

Ratius wrote:Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit.
Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons.
Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.

The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have. Although knocking out comms would be disastrous.

Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.

The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.

Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.

Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.

Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.

The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.

 Ratius wrote:
Theres also our reliance on technology from communications networks to software in military kit.
Any faction that can "hack", disrupt, or plain destroy that would be a total nightmare for our current armies. So Tau, Eldar, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Crons.
Other armies are probably less adept at it - Nids, Orks, DE.

Nids' Shadow in the Warp also affects normal real space communications.

 Enigwolf wrote:

Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.

The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.

Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.

Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.

Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.

The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.

Not in the actual game they don't. SM get 1 tank. Skittari have the dune crawler. That is it. In the whole imperium.

Everyone else is firing flakk. Hydras, aegis lines etc.

Firing flak is more reliable than a guided missile? Sorry, no. You are wrong. That is why we progressed from using flak guns to guided missiles half a century ago. Flak is cheaper, and much much worse.
Guided missiles are much more reliable, can hit targets at greater altitudes and are more destructive.

The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have.

Not the high level stuff though. Things like nukes need some serious software to even launch them let alone target them, hell the missile likely wont even fly if its electronics are fried/disrupted.
Anything nuclear too - all of it is controlled by software systems - Iran Stuqnet etc.
Most MBTs also rely on targetting software, very few afaik rely on the old gunner pointing and physically shooting the shell.
Aircraft fly by wire and aeronautic controll flaps/vectors and trust are all 90% computer controlled afaik - wasnt it said without the software programme governing its surfaces the f22 couldnt even fly straight?
I could go on - point being, unless we';re talking about ground pounding troops, mortars or pre 1980s vehicles we're likely to have a severe time with our software and electronics fried. Its why many countries fear solar flares so much (and I dont even mean militariliy - I mean power grids etc).

Big Blind Bill wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:

Big Blind Bill wrote:Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.

The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.

Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.

Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.

Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.

The Imperium does have guided missiles, I don't know where you got the impression that they didn't. It's just that auto-tracking systems and a ton of explosive shells are a heck lot cheaper to produce and more reliable than a massive guided missile.

Not in the actual game they don't. SM get 1 tank. Skittari have the dune crawler. That is it. In the whole imperium.

Everyone else is firing flakk. Hydras, aegis lines etc.

Firing flak is more reliable than a guided missile? Sorry, no. You are wrong. That is why we progressed from using flak guns to guided missiles half a century ago. Flak is cheaper, and much much worse.
Guided missiles are much more reliable, can hit targets at greater altitudes and are more destructive.

In 40k, we can presume that targeting systems built in to flak guns (as opposed to manual-aim flak guns of WW2) are far more accurate than anything we can produce now. Look at the Sicaran Battle Tank, for example. Hydras, in lore, are also noted that "once locked, they don't lose target lock". With regards to reliability, I am referring to field maintenance and vulnerability to EMP. If you EMP a missile battery, that's it. Out of action. You EMP a guided flak weapon, you can at LEAST still fire the flak weapon manually. Additionally, flak weaponry have the second function of being very effective at troops and light vehicles, as the Germans and Soviets found out.

Ratius wrote:

The amount of software actually in current military kit worldwide is laughable compared to what people think most armies have.

Not the high level stuff though. Things like nukes need some serious software to even launch them let alone target them, hell the missile likely wont even fly if its electronics are fried/disrupted.
Anything nuclear too - all of it is controlled by software systems - Iran Stuqnet etc.
Most MBTs also rely on targetting software, very few afaik rely on the old gunner pointing and physically shooting the shell.
Aircraft fly by wire and aeronautic controll flaps/vectors and trust are all 90% computer controlled afaik - wasnt it said without the software programme governing its surfaces the f22 couldnt even fly straight?
I could go on - point being, unless we';re talking about ground pounding troops, mortars or pre 1980s vehicles we're likely to have a severe time with our software and electronics fried. Its why many countries fear solar flares so much (and I dont even mean militariliy - I mean power grids etc).

My bad. I thought you were referring to the warfighter's equipment, which in my research thesis used "kit" a lot to refer to. You are right about ICBMs, vehicles, aircraft, etc.

Sorry, yeah I meant our general tech overall and reliance on electronics really.

 Ratius wrote:
Sorry, yeah I meant our general tech overall and reliance on electronics really.

This goes beyond tech and into doctrine too. Most combat units are so reliant on communications with HQ and getting battlefield sitrep (much like we are reliant and used to being ever-connected on our phones) that most infantry units at the company level and below will be hard-pressed to properly operate once cut off from their immediate report-ups - we're not trained for that anymore, unless you're talking special forces-type (aka commandos, SEALs, Delta Force, etc.)

 Big Blind Bill wrote:
Dark eldar seem an obvious one to me.

The sole reason they are able to threaten the imperium in 40k at all is due to humanity forgetting how to mass produce SAMs, and instead rely on manually operated flak guns.

Seriously, we were past this stage of weapons development by the 1950s-60s.

Cardboard boxes, albeit fast and pointy ones, don't last long vs guided missiles.

Without their transports the DE would be a favourable match up for a conventional military force. Webway portals and mandrakes not included.

There isn't a country in the world that can afford to give a substantial enough air defence grid to protect all of its major metropoli or resource stations. Especially not from an enemy that can teleport in and out of the webway whenever it feels like it.

The Dark Eldar pointedly ignore our militaries while stripping whole million+ person cities bare of any and all people and kidnap the miners, factory workers, and other workers who operate the means of production and laugh as the fragile global economy enters a death spiral from which it can't recover.

Our military never even sees the Dark Eldar while their support structure collapses all around them; and then all our tanks are running without fuel, our soldiers don't have bullets, and we can't manufacture any missiles anymore while most countries collapse into anarchy as the economy implodes.

we're not trained for that anymore, unless you're talking special forces-type (aka commandos, SEALs, Delta Force, etc.)

Rough neighbourhoods may be our best last line of defence.....

Also to nitpick, EMP's are largely overblown as a threat. You can easily "harden" targets against them- the Abrams for example was meant to wade through post apocalyptic nuclear wastelands to slug it out with the Soviets.

Eldar for me because I would gladly bow down to a Howling Banshee any day.

I feel like people really underestimate our race. We aren't the dominant species (by miles) on our planet for nothing. One victory vs the tau, or mechanicus even a small one. (As in, hey look! We managed to salvage some of the enemies tech!) Would jump our technology by leaps and bounds.

War is the mother of invention. Many things civilians use today were developed for war in the 40s/50s/60s.

Someone stated earlier that tau and human innovation would be at the same rate. When you have tech you can reverse engineer the one doing the reverse engineering will advance by leaps and bounds until they are not so far behind from their tech. Within ten years either of war or acceptance of the greater good we would be on par with the tau, if not advancing further.

Also people here seem to underestimate the human spirit as well, wars are won by men, honestly a nid invasion would end us most likely unless it was a tiny splinter fleet it would radically change and disrupt our world in more ways than one even then. However I feel if we survived a splinter fleet given a few decades we would be much better suited to combat the bugs than before. If you know you are going to die if you don't win you do crazy yet amazing things. Honestly I feel like the end result would be similar to gears of war sadly.

Now let's look at this realistically. Our planet is not that large, or important the guard would not send an increbliy large army or fleet against us. Let's say max size of the millions. If they tried diplomacy first no country on earth would accept in the end. The regime is to facist, racist, etc. Even russia and China would join usa GB etc to fight them off. The terrorists of Islam would quite quickly turn against the relegion of the imperium.

Could we win? Perhaps. Who knows, if we could reverse engineer their plasma tech and even melta its quite possible. We may even figure out a way to create stronger materials cheaper. And as someone said before our military would love their giant convoys of men. The likely hood of any space marines being deployed is almost non existent unless chaos was found here. The army would resort to the communication used in Vietnam and other lesser tech if the mechanicus shut down the other. I fully believe that if we were invaded people would flock to support the worlds militaries (sure you'll have some fools preaching peace but those are always there) and possibly a few joining the imperium, but the funny thing about dictators is they don't like being below someone... I doubt many would decide to bend their knees quickly.

The problem does arise that surrender is an option, however with the way the world is now (half the world belonging to one relegion or another, the other half mocking relegion) I doubt many would want to join the almost theology based imperium.

Another problem can come from our reliance on advanced tech. Satillites and the like are extremely vulnerable, as are our other systems. Either to hacking or plain out shutting them down. IMO its a toss up depending on just how advanced their tech and materials are to ours and to how fast we advance from reverse engineering. Drafts can still conscript a lot of people, many of which would be trained for 6-8 months (at first) and sent to fight, with the more intellectual and schooled going into logistics and the like.

Against chaos we have little chance, religions would see it as the end times and wait for their god, governments would fall as people would riot either due to being turned or because they want answers the government can't give assuming the government wasnt turned themselves. (Ha)

Works would pose a strange issue in that, if it is a small waaagh (most likely) their tech won't be much more than wagons, guns, boyz, and maybe some walkers. We won't advance as quickly as we would vs tau or imperium but we still would advance faster than we do now if only from the -need- to advance. I'd imagine a seal being able to go toe to toe vs an ork boy and win, perhaps not easily but win. In a us marine (much more numerous) would have a decent chance IMO. A nob would be a completely different story, but still doable. (With the right CC gear of course) the very nature of orks would work for us in that they would bypass civilians and fight the military because its "more fun" giving draftees time to learn and be trained. Eventually cities will begin to be more prepared against attacks as new buildings were made etc. Humanity would adapt and grow. Seals would be sent in with assistance from bristish special forces and other European forces to take out the warboss which would cause in fighting among the orks. After all we have to assume the same weakness for the armies as they are in the fluff not just strengths.

In the end, earth would gain the most from fighting tau, imperium, space marines or even orks. (A common enemy for people to unit against)

Even a tiny splinter fleet of nids as we would be forced to unite and perhaps advance our tech at astounding levels. (Especially if we managed to stave them off and survive).

Dark eldar would be one of the worst, following behind chaos, as, as said above they would quite literally out maneuver the military and cause such fear that people would begin rioting demanding protection, and even with martial law the forces patrolling cities will probably fall to the eldars swift attacks. Though I do believe we would begin to inflict casualties.

In many of the "die or die" wars (nids, chaos, necrons, dark eldar) many people would give in to despair and mass suicide may be a problem however I do believe more would fight to the last and die standing giving everything they can and taking as many of the bastards with them as they could. I know I would.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As an amedium I'd say 75% of our production would shift to military in any of these situations. And most people would be okay with it. (Well, countries like China and Russia, Nkorea would probably force their entire populace into the military and leave any that disobeyed to starve. And probably starve most of the infrastructure personal as well.) Other countries would not be much better off but the tech and designs for creating military grade equipment would become widespread. After all, the survival depends on it.

The world doesn't have the capacity to wage conflict on the scale it did in world war two anymore. It's too expensive and we don't have the infrastructure in the countries that matter to rapidly equip a large army like in the second world war. In a global invasion taking place all over the world at once, we wouldn't have enough time to start the rust belts back up, or at least not fast enough for the supply chains that make modern economies work.

Like, what they don't show you in global alien invasions is the collapse of the global economy, mass famine, and disruptions to supply chains caused by supply systems built on the assumption of safety suddenly being disrupted by worldwide conflict. And not even just global in the sense of a world war, but global in the sense that every country is in the front lines and nowhere is safe. Supply is what wins wars, and if you can break the back of our supply chain, our militaries would fall apart.

Like, in the cold war, it was assumed that in the event of a nuclear war, that while the armies might possibly survive their home countries glowing in the dark, the destruction of their supply chains would mean they'd only have enough for one big maneuver. You can replicate something as equally bad to the world's supply network by just invading everywhere at once with overwhelming numbers, preventing the global network from reaching other parts of itself. This leaves our forces only enough to fight for a brief while before tanks run out of shells, planes run out of fuel, and ships are all out of missiles. At that point if Nuclear weapons are out of the picture the only thing left to do is surrender because no more effective resistance can be mounted.

Or if it's like, Hive Fleet Behemoth dropping on our doorstep we can, as a planet, extend our middle digits in a last gasp of defiance before we're devoured.

That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
About famine and crippled nsupply. I point you towards Russia in WW2.


Also, in any case of non chaos/nid/necron its very unlikely they attack -everywhere- at once.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing is that nations capacity for total war is no less than it was back then. Simply the US only endured total war for about 4 years, the other nations endured it for 7+ and you see what happened to even the victors. Russia recovered though which was an amazing feat in itself.

I'm not disagreeing with you on no supply=no fight just on the idea that supply would be shut down entirely immediately.

 raiden wrote:
That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
About famine and crippled nsupply. I point you towards Russia in WW2.


Also, in any case of non chaos/nid/necron its very unlikely they attack -everywhere- at once.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing is that nations capacity for total war is no less than it was back then. Simply the US only endured total war for about 4 years, the other nations endured it for 7+ and you see what happened to even the victors. Russia recovered though which was an amazing feat in itself.

I'm not disagreeing with you on no supply=no fight just on the idea that supply would be shut down entirely immediately.

I am Russian.

Allow me to point you to the massive areas of Russia that were not under any threat. It's why the whole move factories to the east thing worked. There was space that was not under threat to bury our materials safely.

In addition, there were countries with Surplus' of food that could trade with the Soviet Union or any of the other allies even under the darkest days. I.E America, which was never at any one point under any serious threat by the Axis powers.

If you were to take out the American midwest, you'd instantly lose humanity the most productive farming area on the planet and cause mass starvation not only in America, but throughout much of the world that relies heavily on American Produce as millions of people start dropping dead in weeks. Similarly, countries like America have the majority of their power come from easily disrupted sources such as coal. Once you start interrupting the coal supply chain, the power grid starts failing en masse and people are quite literally left in the dark. The military will be fine as they have their own power production capabilities, but Civilians will again start dying in their millions as civilization collapses around them.

And the military will have to worry about factories going dark or being taken out or even sabotaged by enemy infiltration. Given how the current military can vastly outstrip the country's ability to build higher end munitions in intense combat situations (America was running low on javelins after just a year of combat ops in Afghanistan. In a global war America would be out of Javelins in weeks or days, along with other high end munitions) any disruption to munitions production is catastrophic to the ability of forces like the Russian or American army to operate.

Our highest end equipment like the T-90 or the Abrams are also very maintenance intensive beasts that require huge amounts of fuel and spare parts to keep running at optimal capacity. When cut off from their supply of such parts, vehicles start being unable to show up for battle because the drive train broke down and nobody could find a replacement or the barrel's too dangerous to use from wear and tear but the order for more is so backlogged that you won't be getting a new one for months. Planes stop being able to run sorties because there's not enough materials left around to maintain them and we're left dragging out museum pieces because there's nothing else that can fly.

In essence, it'd be the apocalypse and it's something that the world's standing armies can at most delay for a little while before we run out ammo, fuel, and spare parts for all our best toys while our countries devolve into anarchy and suffer catastrophic die offs as medicine, electricity, and food stop being available and attrition wipes away all the initial professionals and forces us to give guns and uniforms to random hicks just to hold the line a little longer.

That's the thing. We would most likely be forced to move back to less maintenance intensive and lowered end tech that can be produced in random Joe blows car manufacturer. Munitions don't need highly specialized equipment to create. Still if it is simply a tau/imperium invasion I highly doubt it would be a large enough force to threaten every supply station/manufactory we have. (Any of the other factions would probably be GG in minutes. With humanity most likely nuking themselves and the invaders as a final feth you)

But to the imperium or tau, our world nwouldnt be considered a prime target or a terribly large threat. (Whether or not we are) if the imperium come in with 15 million guardsmen for our planet/system it would be max tops. I doubt that they would bring that many.

All we have to do is survive and defend for a bit. Eventually their tech would be our tech (probably better in the case of the guard) I highly believe we could. The problem is people are treating the guard as having unlimited reinforcements and supply when they most likely wouldn't or, at the least, would have weeks to months of waiting for the supplies to come in. Drafting would be a thing. And I'd gaurentee you 50% of the american population would be deemed combat ready (after minimal training) in a month. More depending on how bad things are going. The biggest problem we would have would be the 5-8 giant ships floating around our planet. Though I don't believe that many orbit to surface weapon strikes would be used at first.

As always we would adapt or lose. Though tau would most likely end at negotiations with us somehow nabbing their tech and using it to create our own.


I was simply saying based on fluff and in fluff tactics they would be the factions we would have the -best- chance against.


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After all, what are vox casters but amped up radio ;p

 raiden wrote:
That's it though, if these factions operate entirely as they do in the fluff their are some vulnerable to that last big maneuver. (If DoW is to be considered cannon, and I find much of that game suiting. Specificly the idea of an ork war boss freebooter fighting and saving a system for a hat and a "good fight", then nids -are- vulnerable to highly poisonous and deadly venom or chemicals made to specificly attack them. Which could work. 1/100000000000^1000 but hey. Would be worth the shot) or another option would be to launch ever nuke we have, most likely destroying the world 1000 times over and causing so much fallout and fire that almost any bug in our atmosphere or close space fries. Which is also quite possible. They are purely biological after all. .

We don't have enough nukes for that.

America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.

We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet

 raiden wrote:
America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.

We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet

There are 16300 nukes in the whole planet.

Assuming the average nuke is 1 megaton of explosive power, we have 16.3 gigatons in total. In comparison, the rock that killed the dinosaurs caused an explosion of 100 teratons, almost 10000 times more energy than all our nukes put together, and yet the world didn't end.

We have enough nukes to kill ourselves, but the planet is going to be fine, it has endured far worse than that.

 Tyran wrote:

 raiden wrote:
America has enough active nukes to destroy the world 59 times over. Alone. Not counting the ones we could make in a month or the ones that aren't considered active. america and Russia both have somewhere in the 2k+ range of nuclear missiles that are active. With almost the same amount awaiting dismantlement, along with other, lesser scale warheads of nuclear level.

We might not reach 1000 times over, but it would hardly be needed to obliterate most life on our planet

There are 16300 nukes in the whole planet.

Assuming the average nuke is 1 megaton of explosive power, we have 16.3 gigatons in total. In comparison, the rock that killed the dinosaurs caused an explosion of 100 teratons, almost 10000 times more energy than all our nukes put together, and yet the world didn't end.

We have enough nukes to kill ourselves, but the planet is going to be fine, it has endured far worse than that.

Actually even at the peak of our nuclear arsenals during the cold war, it was expected that humanity would survive a nuclear war. It'd be devastated and undergo a massive civilizational setback, but it would recover. It was expected that Brazil would probably become the world leader in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

 raiden wrote:
I feel like people really underestimate our race. We aren't the dominant species (by miles) on our planet for nothing. One victory vs the tau, or mechanicus even a small one. (As in, hey look! We managed to salvage some of the enemies tech!) Would jump our technology by leaps and bounds.

That assumes our scientists all will work together and can find out how the alien technology works all before we are defeated.

 raiden wrote:
War is the mother of invention. Many things civilians use today were developed for war in the 40s/50s/60s.

That depends entirely on the length of the war. If the war drags on too long or is too destructive, invention will actually decrease due to scientists getting killed, lack of resources and a focus on simple and cheap mass produced stuff.

 raiden wrote:
Even russia and China would join usa GB etc to fight them off.

You severely understimate Russia.
Putin would just strike a secret deal with the Imperium (they share a lot of values) to remove the degenerate West. Then the Imperium would reward him and Putin would rule Earth as planetary governor.

Humans rarely can get over their hatred for each other, even when faced with a common enemy. Their hatred for each other just outweighs their hatred for the third party.

 raiden wrote:
Could we win? Perhaps. Who knows, if we could reverse engineer their plasma tech and even melta its quite possible.

No, even if we found out how it works we still would need to have all the infrastructure to mass produce those weapons (which might very well also require technologies or materials we don't have) produce enough of them and distribute them to our troops. All before the enemy wipes us out. It could work if we had a decade. But we will have a few years at most.

 raiden wrote:
I fully believe that if we were invaded people would flock to support the worlds militaries (sure you'll have some fools preaching peace but those are always there) and possibly a few joining the imperium, but the funny thing about dictators is they don't like being below someone... I doubt many would decide to bend their knees quickly.

People want to live. As long as we don't fight an enemy that will exterminate us all, you will have many people deciding "Feth it, I don't want to die" and try their best to avoid the war as much as possible. Also, the Imperium rewards loyalty. The possible gains for joining the Imperium could be great if they win.
And even if people flock to join the military, in a total war there is no time or possibility to train or even properly equip them. We would have to rely on large groups of massed conscripts like in WW2 and 1 again.

 raiden wrote:
The problem does arise that surrender is an option, however with the way the world is now (half the world belonging to one relegion or another, the other half mocking relegion) I doubt many would want to join the almost theology based imperium.

You would not think it from the internet, but far more than half of the world is religious. But that aside, Earth is fundamentally divided. There is no way we would suddenly all stop fighting each other and sing 'kumbaya' when an alien invader starts showing up.

 raiden wrote:

Orks would pose a strange issue in that, if it is a small waaagh (most likely) their tech won't be much more than wagons, guns, boyz, and maybe some walkers. We won't advance as quickly as we would vs tau or imperium but we still would advance faster than we do now if only from the -need- to advance. I'd imagine a seal being able to go toe to toe vs an ork boy and win, perhaps not easily but win. In a us marine (much more numerous) would have a decent chance IMO. A nob would be a completely different story, but still doable. (With the right CC gear of course) the very nature of orks would work for us in that they would bypass civilians and fight the military because its "more fun" giving draftees time to learn and be trained. Eventually cities will begin to be more prepared against attacks as new buildings were made etc. Humanity would adapt and grow. Seals would be sent in with assistance from bristish special forces and other European forces to take out the warboss which would cause in fighting among the orks. After all we have to assume the same weakness for the armies as they are in the fluff not just strengths.

Even a small WAAAGH! is huge. As long as they have even a single Big Mek they will have highly advanced tech (by our standards). There is no way a US marine could take out an Ork boy in close combat, let alone a nob. A Cadian guardsmen can't normally do that, and they are trained from birth, far more heavily than the US marines.

 raiden wrote:

Dark eldar would be one of the worst, following behind chaos, as, as said above they would quite literally out maneuver the military and cause such fear that people would begin rioting demanding protection, and even with martial law the forces patrolling cities will probably fall to the eldars swift attacks. Though I do believe we would begin to inflict casualties.

Dark Eldar would probably be the worst. The Dark Eldar have wiped out planets without firing a single shot by getting the population to commit suicide and die out of fear and terror alone.

 raiden wrote:
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As an amedium I'd say 75% of our production would shift to military in any of these situations. And most people would be okay with it. (Well, countries like China and Russia, Nkorea would probably force their entire populace into the military and leave any that disobeyed to starve. And probably starve most of the infrastructure personal as well.) Other countries would not be much better off but the tech and designs for creating military grade equipment would become widespread. After all, the survival depends on it.

Such a conversion would take too long. To convert our present society (where many people don't even know what the hell war is) in a total war society would take many years. By that time we'd already be conquered. Our militaries are divided, and on their own they are tiny and insignificant. Combine that with the fact that any attack coming from space is a surprise attack and has a huge mobility advantage, our enemy could destroy all of our organised militaries in their bases one by one before we figure out what the hell is going on and who is attacking us.