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 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Nym wrote:
Could Earth hold out ? Probably, if several countries united their forces. Would they though ? Probably not.

Let's face it : it's been 5 years and ISIS has not yet been defeated, despite being on the same attrocity level as Nazies. Our governments are for the most part composed of people who would see the Earth burn if they could make any profit from it (ans that's actually what they're doing). Orks would destroy us one after the other.

The difference is that the Nazis were a governmental, military force. The only way to wipe out ISIS is to exceed even Stalin on the Crimes Against Humanity scale.

Also the orks are literally not human, and quite self evidently so. There would be no empathy for them, no hesitation, no compassion, no mercy for them and no children to have compunctions for.

Given what humans have done to their own kind thru history I almost pity the orks for what it would do to them....

Unless you get people worshipping the Orks.

We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

locarno24 wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Question. Do the orks have any kind of space presence. Cause if they do, our changes get a lot worse. Barring some kind of hidden technology (totally possible) even the most advanced nations don't have tech that could hit a fast moving object in space that can both quickly change it's course and fire back. Even a small ork kruzer would be a massive trump card.

If the orks knock out all of our satellites that's a huge blow to most armies from the bigger/more advanced nations. If they start bombing cities from orbit, civilian panic is going to cause just as many if not more problems then the orks on the ground themselves.

Indeed. Humanity today would have serious trouble engaging any 40k-era starship, especially a capital ship. Proper saturation orbital fire can make a real mess of planned modern warfare.

Other than that, have a look at John Ringo's Posleen saga. It's a pretty good idea of what a massed ork invasion would be like.

500,000 orks the world could handle. It'd be sucky to be wherever they landed, but they're not going to conquer the world.
5,000,000 orks? That's more of a problem, because you're not going to wipe them out before they get their feet under them, and spores, looted assets and crude industry starts supporting the initial 'drop'

To put it into scale, the rough estimate of the armageddon invasion based on the old campaign codex was about 4,000,000 ork boyz, 100,000 artillery gunboyz, 300,000 speed freaks, about 100 gargants and 200 battle fortresses.

but Armageddon is largely inhospitible to humans but inhabitable to orks. There are swaves of land and sea for the orks to hide, multiply and asset strip in.

Orks would never be defeated proper on Earth. Someone is bound to try farm them for the oddboyz. If you could RND from Ork level technology you'd be bound to make some very profitable discoveries.

Coastal deserts, Antarctica and rain forests could all culture some mean orks.

There are also lots of subterranean environments on Earth that are barely explored.

 Melissia wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

I commend your faith in humanity. But I gotta disagree. They'd see Orks as a tool to accomplish their own geopolitical objectives. Humans are complete bastards.

I understand your cynical view of humanity and generally agree with it. Still being eaten is a primal fear in humans and once it was made clear orks ate humans that would trigger a primordial fear response.

Also xenophobia would be a factor.

I think people also overlook The Big Picture here. Orks reaching earth would be a paradigm shift in history. We would finally know baying a doubt we are not the only technological society in the universe, there is at least one other sentient species and they are HOSTILE.

The human race would not be the same again.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Once cell phone video of orks eating human s got out, peolle would unite in a flash. Orks nuked.

I commend your faith in humanity. But I gotta disagree. They'd see Orks as a tool to accomplish their own geopolitical objectives. Humans are complete bastards.

I understand your cynical view of humanity and generally agree with it. Still being eaten is a primal fear in humans and once it was made clear orks ate humans that would trigger a primordial fear response.

Also xenophobia would be a factor.

I think people also overlook The Big Picture here. Orks reaching earth would be a paradigm shift in history. We would finally know baying a doubt we are not the only technological society in the universe, there is at least one other sentient species and they are HOSTILE.

The human race would not be the same again.

The downside that even if we were to exterminate them completely, just having that knowledge would do little to help us. If it was Tau or Imperium, we'd at least have a chance at reproducing the tech and moving on from there to be better prepared to face the next Big Bad to come our way. Ork tech, rather like Eldar and Necron tech, relies too much on the possessor to create, be created, or even simply use, and the less said about a Tyranid invasion, the better.

We'd still be stuck on this rock with our same tech level, no advent of Psykers, Emperor, or Dark Age Technology to recover to bolster our defenses, combined with a retained massive level of political distrust between major planetary powers. We'd be scrambling to build our tech base up to try and reach out to the rest of the galaxy before they could shut our planet down. The competition between the nations would either accelerate this development, if kept 'friendly', or destroy us if kept adversarial.

The real question is, are Orks a vegetable or a meat?

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

We don't.

The whole point is that once orks are introduced they would stay in our ecosystem or fauna would morph or world would be doomed. They will return bigger badder than ever.

All it takes is one ork to lead the horde, and we are done.

We have to remember that we wouldn't know they reproduced and spread by spores. And that we have to hit them hard and fast with overwhelming firepower. We would underestimate their ability to withstand damage and be mindful of causing collateral damage. By the time we realise what to do they would be so wide spread that we would not be able to eliminate them spore and all. Thoroughly burning a few square kilometres is one thing but thoroughly burning a few thousand square kilometres is another.

We'd find out how they bred when someone saw an ork emerging, and started digging up emboyonic orks.

We would totally know, there are quite a lot of 40k nerds in the military.

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

Yes we can and we have in several cases. It's just expensive to do and the cost-benefit is not always perceived to be worth it by the people with the money.

 Flinty wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
We can't handle invasive species moved from one part of our world to the other.

How do you expect us to defend against an invasive species from space that's more aggressive than any species we have, and it propagates an entire ecosystem.

Yes we can and we have in several cases. It's just expensive to do and the cost-benefit is not always perceived to be worth it by the people with the money.

There is also a huge difference between combating a bark beetle and something much larger and aggressive. The beetles are difficult to spot and you cannot be sure you got them all. The orks aren't going to be hiding.

The thing about 40K armies is they’re ridiculously tiny. For example, Earth today (one of its more peaceful eras) has more than 27 million people serving in various militaries. During wartime (e.g., U.S. during WW II), you’ll have 10% or more of your population in service. With the world’s current population of 7.6 billion, that’s 760+ million people in military service once we’re mobilized.

The idea that 500k orks would even remotely resemble a serious threat is ridiculous. Even the 4 million mentioned for Armageddon is ridiculously small.

Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

Modern militaries rely very heavily on information, on knowing where their opponent is and predicting their actions and reacting accordingly. Surprise attacks are the surest way to throw a modern military off. As most modern militaries have mostly been dealing with "over there" wars rather htan defensive ones, I actually can see something like Orks conquering part of the US, Russia, China, or EU before being stopped and held at bay, and becoming a permanent fixture on our planet.

And if they landed in a third world region like sub-Saharan Africa or South America, I find it unlikely we'd respond in time before they, again, became a permanent fixture, and a much larger one than the previous scenario, at that.

Unlike with modern militaries, 500k orks is literally 500k fighters, not 100k fighters and 400k support staff (taken as a whole, 1 in five soldiers being frontline fighters is actually quite generous to a modern army; the US air force has one in twenty, while the US navy has one in ten, and the US army tries to boast somewhere between one in five and one in four).

It's unlikely they'd quickly conquer the planet. But a part of it? Definitely. And from there, it all depends on way too many factors to guess. Can think of numerous scenarios where we win, and where we don't, and where we end up having a permanent stalemate.

 Melissia wrote:
Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

That's the biggest issue actually. They can deploy anywhere at any time. If they want to teleport and take the pentagon, the kremlin and two nuclear silos at the same time before we even know we are at war, they can. Then they can launch the missiles wherever they want and while the world most powerful army has lost its strategic center, its commanding officers and some of its most powerful weapons. That's the first six hours of hte war btw, a few cities are destroyed in nuclear blast as orks turn our weapons against us and kill our biggest concentration of troops. Half our best military assets are deployed around the world in peace and counter terrorist mission. The orks either dig into those fortresses and take over important urban center nearby that are now completely defenceless when faced by an army of this size or simply teleport away to another bigger fight. If you want some real world number, the city of Aleppo, a city of 4.5 million people was wrestled away from the Syrian goverment control by a militia with little military equipment and training numbering at around 20 000 and was reconquered four years later by an army of around 30 000 soldiers. If a city gets attacked by surprise, people don't rise as a militia and are ready to fight. It's total Chaos and people try to flee as fast as possible creating even more panic and Chaos.

epronovost wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Not really. An army of 500,000 brutal, fearless warriors with advanced technology and reality-bending powers just suddenly appearing somewhere, especially if led by a competent warboss (and if it's an army of 500k invading orks, the boss is likely at least competent)...

That's the biggest issue actually. They can deploy anywhere at any time. If they want to teleport and take the pentagon, the kremlin and two nuclear silos at the same time before we even know we are at war, they can. Then they can launch the missiles wherever they want and while the world most powerful army has lost its strategic center, its commanding officers and some of its most powerful weapons. That's the first six hours of hte war btw, a few cities are destroyed in nuclear blast as orks turn our weapons against us and kill our biggest concentration of troops. Half our best military assets are deployed around the world in peace and counter terrorist mission. The orks either dig into those fortresses and take over important urban center nearby that are now completely defenceless when faced by an army of this size or simply teleport away to another bigger fight. If you want some real world number, the city of Aleppo, a city of 4.5 million people was wrestled away from the Syrian goverment control by a militia with little military equipment and training numbering at around 20 000 and was reconquered four years later by an army of around 30 000 soldiers. If a city gets attacked by surprise, people don't rise as a militia and are ready to fight. It's total Chaos and people try to flee as fast as possible creating even more panic and Chaos.

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation. They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

The bombs launched by the bombers, though, are a different story. The only other question is if they would consider the positive ramifications of nuclear strikes (enemy dead with a big boomy) as well as the negative ones (such as not having anyone to fight in the area).

If this was a Chaos Marine force, you bring up very valid points, but not necessarily one I would consider for Orks who tend to fight just to fight and only escalate to what they are fighting.

 Charistoph wrote:

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation.

They did used it on several planets with great efficency even back when this was supposed to be a new technology for the Orks.

They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

In a half a million horde of Orks, there will be several meks, docs and weirdboys. Plus ballistic missiles of that sort are far from unknown to orks. Deathstrikes missiles are supposed to be long range missiles with some powerful enough to destroy entire continents. Orks also have similar tech themselves.

epronovost wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Well...Ork shooting is only a little more accurate than their teleportation.

They did used it on several planets with great efficency even back when this was supposed to be a new technology for the Orks.

For the ones that made it, yes.

epronovost wrote:

They would need a wierd boy to figure out how to launch any ballistic missile system, much less get them fired on the right target. Add to the fact that aside from the missile launch itself, there is little visceral satisfaction in using any type of ballistic missile for warfare unlike the short ranged missiles used by a rocket launcha.

In a half a million horde of Orks, there will be several meks, docs and weirdboys. Plus ballistic missiles of that sort are far from unknown to orks. Deathstrikes missiles are supposed to be long range missiles with some powerful enough to destroy entire continents. Orks also have similar tech themselves.

The first part was all the traps set up to ensure against an accidental firing. Wierd boyz would probably be able to figure out, but they'd actually have to be at the firing location. They may not be in time to figure it out and fire it.

The use factor was being based more on desirability than actual capability. A lot depends on who is at the button at the time, and if they have a commander savvy enough to take advantage of using such strategic weapons. Just because you're the Boss of 500,000 Orks doesn't make you Gorgutz, after all.

 Melissia wrote:
I actually can see something like Orks conquering part of the US, Russia, China, or EU before being stopped and held at bay, and becoming a permanent fixture on our planet.

They would definitely become a permanent feature of the planet, but 500,000 would not be enough to take over unless they had some space ships with them. If they literally just crash landed on a couple Roks we could survive.

The likely end result is the Orks are eventually relegated to a few occupied zones that periodically launch raids into human territory, and we just have to continuously cull them with large attacks to keep the population down. Which is how Ork invasions are usually portrayed in 40k. The Orks attack and are eventually defeated, but the planet will forever have a population of orks that has to be dealt with on a regular basis. Earth would gain some new species as orkoid fungus, Squigs, and Squiggoths became part of the environment.

I would think to teleport 'anywhere at any time' you would need real time intel of the landing sites and about perfect geo-int of the locations as well. Not sure how they infiltrate the sensors/observers to gather that intel to enable the teleport 'anywhere at any time'.

And frankly taking the Pentagon (or even destroying it) doesn't really hurt the field commanders fighting the invasion. The Pentagon is not the HQ that is responsible for active campaigning at all. Pretty sure the same holds true for the Kremlin.

You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

Teleporting into empty desert/middle of the ocean/amazon jungle and so on would wear thin quickly. Teleporting and ending up in a block of granite would be pretty crappy too. I know we're talking sic-fi 'magic' versus real world. If they really are just teleporting around willy-nilly they won't be too hard to handle, and they wouldn't do too much damage all that quickly at all, so I have to assume there is SOME basic targeting going on and some level of organization. Otherwise they would spend all their time teleporting through the emptiness of space and statistically never hit populated planets.

 CptJake wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You say that as if the Orks are actually planning their raids and not just tellyporting willy-nilly until something sticks.

Teleporting into empty desert/middle of the ocean/amazon jungle and so on would wear thin quickly. Teleporting and ending up in a block of granite would be pretty crappy too. I know we're talking sic-fi 'magic' versus real world. If they really are just teleporting around willy-nilly they won't be too hard to handle, and they wouldn't do too much damage all that quickly at all, so I have to assume there is SOME basic targeting going on and some level of organization. Otherwise they would spend all their time teleporting through the emptiness of space and statistically never hit populated planets.

The Gestalt Psychic Field orks generate probably helps them a lot. It makes the Tellyporta take them to a good fight... most of the time. The Orks aren't going to have some big cunnin plan about where they're gonna be teleporting most of the time. Most of the time they're just jumping in the tellyporta and hitting the big red button!

But that doesn't mean the orks have plans most of the time. There was a Warboss who famously made a warp jump with his fleet and ended up going back in time. So he attacked his own Waaaagh and killed himself to get a 2nd copy of his favorite shoota. Nobody could have planned that, and Ork Teleportation attacks would be just as crazy.

Orks are actually relatively easy to handle for a modern army so long as it isn't a "tech'd up" Ork WAAAGH!. The main concern when fighting Orks is when they reach a technological point where they start fielding energy shields which means you can't just nuke the Warboss and disable the Orkish horde, or even fielding Titans en masse. Up until that point we should be able to take them out so long as the Warboss is spotted and turned into a red smear. Along with every other Ork who tries to rise up to the position of Warboss, leading to the horde degenerating into civil war which would allow a coalition force to sweep it away.

Of course this is assuming the Orks don't have orbital support. If Orks have spacecraft we automatically lose the conflict as we have zero means with which to contest anything floating in orbit as even our nuclear arsenal pales in comparison to Orkish and Imperial broadsides. Or if they construct Tellyportas which allows Orks to deploy everything up to bloody titans at a whim anywhere on the planet.

While orks appear stupid individually it seems they have a collective consciousness that is quite intelligent. Whole small you its of orks may make idiotic deciscions that lead to their destruction the orks as a species is quite successful, arguably the most successful species in the galaxy at least until the 'nids came. So while small groups of orks may do things that look stupider than a sharknado fan convention their collective efforts result in a very successful species.

Also, don't forget Grots
,

Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

 Melissia wrote:
Or warbosses, or weirdboyz. I just don't see modern humanity reacting fast enough and unified enough. We'd probably lose an entire continent or subcontinent to Orks before we stopped them.

In terms of pure military capacity, sure, we could annihilate them, and it wouldn't even be the biggest battle we've ever faced.

... if we were prepared for it (we're not), and if we reacted properly (I doubt we would), and if geopolitics didn't get in the way (it definitely would), and if they landed in just the right (or wrong) spot to let us react quickly enough (there's so many places in the world they could land and get an easy foothold), and what have you. So many ifs, it's really not as simple as point/click/dead like it's being made out to be. Real life is not an RTS game, and we're not prepared for that kind of thing to happen.

Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year and it takes decades for Orks to "orkify" an environment to start pumping out hordes of Boyz to replenish losses. They aren't going to suddenly turn all of Africa or South America into an Ork biosphere no more than how they don't instantly Orkify worlds in 40k when conducting their invasions. And even if they build a couple gargants, we do have the nuclear firepower to completely overwhelm their void shields; we just couldn't deal with a full gargant invasion.

I think a few things need to be put into scale first. Using both ingame stats and fluff to try and give the insane, over the top goodness of 40K some real world context.

Take a gaurdsmen as a trained solider with an automatic weapon and body armor. An ork boy is in almost every way several steps above that to terrifying levels. A heavy stubber is the equivalent to guns you see mounted on the cupola of modern day tanks. Even one of which can indeed cause havoc within well spaced infantry and that's the kind of weapon an Ork can pick up after a quick visit to some low level Mekboy.

We can also assume that the various infantry portable missile launchers are equivalent to the 40K versions. Can take out an ork tank with a well placed hit, or bounce off if it hits the armor incorrectly so neither races armored forces are invincible. As for aiming, the average grot is equivalent to a trained solider with BS3/hitting on 4+ (A space marine having super human accuracy at BS4/hitting on 3) to say nothing of the Orks willingness to just use grotguided missiles and the like which could be said to compare to all our technology assisted aiming.

Take into consideration how durable and utterly unstoppable a unit of nobs or, God-forbid, Meganobs would be. Able to stride through most of the conventional firepower we could put at them that isn't tank or aircraft mounted, hell they've been known to shrug off antitank weapons with nothing but irritation.

Those who mentioned long ranged missiles or even nukes. Orks have literal force field technology, not reliable but still nothing we can hope to replicate in terms of personal or area protection. And if we can shoot down missiles via CIWS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS) or counter missiles I would imagine orks can do it better. Then you have the possibility of those 500 000 orks rapidly spreading throughout populated areas with their fast moving ourtiders such as Kopters, Bikers, Jets and all the other stuff we've yet to see on the table top but have in the fluff.

Throw in the regenerative power of orks, fighting on through bullet wounds, lost limbs and even decapitation if the old painboy is hanging round. Verses when a person catches a lasgun equivalent bullet they're often down and out till they spend weeks of medical attention and rest to recuperate.

It's worth thinking about which clan hits earth, each wages war in very, very different ways. Goffs are brute force incarnate, they'd hit an area, level it and keep moving, over and over. It may be possible to set traps or ambushes to whittle them down for instance, where as evil suns would scatter out in all directions making unified counter-attack very difficult. Would there be Meks with their tellyporta tech, dropping Meganobs into military bases? Or Shokk attack guns infesting areas with Squigs. Would entire continents simply be set on fire and or bombarded from orbit via Freebooter ships.

And then, you have the be all and end all of orkisness. The warboss. Able to rip a tank to pieces, tear through fortifications and take more punishment than a light military vehicle. If he got anywhere near anything valuable you can be pretty sure it'll be either destroyed, stolen or thrown at something else valuable.

To summarize, hell no we'd be destroyed by what would amount to a average sized warband. If a Rok dropped in, became a massive fortress and base we'd try to adapt and counterattack, probably fail then be gradually overrun on the orks terms as they rapidly reproduce and scavenge literally any sheet of steel or raw resource. The fact of the matter is Orks are designed to go head to head with Space Marines, who in turn can take out entire planets with just a couple of squads. Us regular old Humans are meant to be laughably weak by comparison. Not that it isn't fun as hell to imagine the scenario.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Orks don't spread that fast. A military response would definitely be mounted in under a year

By whom? If the Orks landed in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa, or South America, I can't see any of the local militaries being capable of repelling that kind of force effectively. And I can't see first world countries committing to their aid fast enough to make a difference. There's no way a petty warlord could pull off that kind of a defense.