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 Kroem wrote:
Just a quick thought on this; don't male babies have a higher mortality rate than female babies? (Apolgies if my science is bad)
If the only goal is to put bodies in the field then it would make more sense to clone females to me.

I think that probably wouldn't be a factor in the future if they can just mass clone people for soldiers, since they would eliminate that gap given the biological science that's available to the DKoK. It's even possible they can accelerate the growth rate straight into an age right before puberty so you could ignore that problem.

 Kroem wrote:
Just a quick thought on this; don't male babies have a higher mortality rate than female babies? (Apolgies if my science is bad)
If the only goal is to put bodies in the field then it would make more sense to clone females to me.

That is irrelevant because males are, from a biological standpoint, far more disposable than females. The bottleneck for any population growth is the number of females in a population, not the males. To look at an extreme example, 1 Female with 100 Males can only produce at most one set of offspring per breeding cycle. 100 Females with 1 Male can potentially produce at most 100 sets of offspring per breeding cycle. This is ignoring other factors such as genetic diversity or weird things like Seahorses.

True, but if you're talking artificial reproduction, the logic goes out of the window.

Ultimately, we don't know. Firstly, we don't know how high tech the Vitae womb technology is - whether selecting for sex is a viable option. Krieg's general level of technology is not great - note that their standard infantry arm is a laslock not a lascarbine, for example. Yes, cheap and disposable, but assuming a particular generic capability may not be justified.

 Kroem wrote:
Just a quick thought on this; don't male babies have a higher mortality rate than female babies? (Apolgies if my science is bad)
If the only goal is to put bodies in the field then it would make more sense to clone females to me.

Slightly yes, but there are more male babies born than female babies born on averae (53 to 47 if I remember correctly). Though women are silghtly morre at risk of lethal cancer and development trouble than men due to exposure to radiation. I think that could play into account since Krieg is a radioactive wasteland. Of course, maybe the artificial womb were designed specifically for that problem rendering this difference void.


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 BaconCatBug wrote:
100 Females with 1 Male can potentially produce at most 100 sets of offspring per breeding cycle. This is ignoring other factors such as genetic diversity or weird things like Seahorses.

Or capacity to provide for those children and pregnant women... It suffice not to make kids. We humans need to care of our children for years before they become autonomos enough to survive on their own. If you have a cornucopia of resources, a ratio of 1 to 100 could allow humanity to maintain itself, but in any realistic scenario, it would lead to enormous problems down the line. There's a reason why our natural ratio is basicall 1 for 1 and it's because we would struggle in any survival setting without it.

So I am getting that the answer to the original premise is "we don't know, but it is reasonable to assume they are all male or nearly so."

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So I am getting that the answer to the original premise is "we don't know, but it is reasonable to assume they are all male or nearly so."

My takeaway is much like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, we may never know

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I’m kind of curious, since it is hard to tell under the mask and coats.

There is no real indication that they do or don't. But considering the post-civil war culture of Krieg, it wouldn't make sense if they did. Fertile females would be too valuable a strategic commodity to waste as cannon fodder. And those that can't conceive would be better suited to run Krieg's industries and infrastructure (alongside militarily unfit males), freeing up suitable young males for indoctrination into future military service (not all Death Korpsmen are products of Vitae Womb technology).

But ultimately, 40k is all about "your dudes". If you want to designate some of your Krieg Guardsmen as female troopers for personal flavor, knock yourself out.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So I am getting that the answer to the original premise is "we don't know, but it is reasonable to assume they are all male or nearly so."

My takeaway is much like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, we may never know

I think Mr. Owl pretty definitively concluded it is three.

Schrödinger's Cadre; they’re both male and female, until someone opens the box / trench coat.

Unless stated otherwise, yes they do


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Cronch wrote:

But civilizations in a life and death struggle constantly at war tend to take life choice out of the equation and allocate resources where they are most needed.

Yes, but Imperium in 40k is eminently not allocating resources rationally, or it wouldn't just kill or lobotimize people at the drop of the hat. Sorry, it's either "Imperium is using war logic and allocating resources by cold calculation alone" or "haha commisar go blam!".

"Commisar uses cold, calculating logic to determine that he indeed shall blam without prejudice"


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The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Actually not: the nazi Germany did never enlisted the women, not even during the 1945; for example.

Maybe not, but the Soviets did. Atleast in their air force, but I assume they had female infantry too

123ply wrote:

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The_Grim_Angel wrote:
Actually not: the nazi Germany did never enlisted the women, not even during the 1945; for example.

Maybe not, but the Soviets did. Atleast in their air force, but I assume they had female infantry too

The Russians had (at least) thousands of female soldiers during the First World War. During the Second World War that number was in the hundreds of thousands. Most women served in support roles, but there were entire regiments of female troops fighting on the frontlines of both wars. The Germans had considerably fewer female troops, but they definitely fought in the Volksturm militia. The British and Americans also had hundreds of thousands of female troops, just all in support roles and not near the front line.

Actually, the sexually segregated armies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aberrations; most armies that I know anything about had large numbers of women travel with them. While frontline soldiers were almost always men, women would serve in supporting roles, such as maintaining arms and weapons or carrying ammunition up to the soldiers. We also have innumerable instances of actual female soldiers serving in these armies, to the point it's sound to conclude that most regiments had a woman or two in the ranks. Not many, mind you, but they were there.

Both the Nazis and the Soviets also conscripted children. During the opening actions of the siege of Stalingrad the 16th Panzer Division engaged Soviet artillery batteries crewed by teenage girls from the local school. Likewise, many of the German "soldiers" opposing the 82nd Airborne during the Battle of Nijmegen Bridge were teenagers. Both armies also scraped the bottom of the manpower barrel during the war, forcing the ill and infirm to fight. Healthy young men make the best soldiers for all of the obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean they were the only ones to serve as soldiers.

As for the Imperium, it's impossible to draw a single conclusion. Literally every planet will raise and organize its regiments differently, and so will come to different conclusions. This thread has some good arguments about the mindset of Krieg; I don't have anything to add to that, other than to say that I think it likely that any regiment that didn't explicitly bar women from the ranks would have at least a few female soldiers.

It is worth pointing out that Krieg is a nuclear wasteland. The fact that they need some sort of artificial reproduction/cloning/rapid aging tech is in part due to the implications that living in such an inhospitable world means that many men and women (perhaps most) are infertile. As such, the whole "women are needed to reproduce/pre-modern argument" doesn't really fit. Also, from the only book that we have on the Krieg, many of their soldiers (who knows just how many) are teenagers, young teenagers at that. Physical strength doesn't seem to play that big of a role in their modus operandi. They are used in attrition warfare, mass artillery barrage, WWI style trench fighting - again, innate physicality doesn't matter too much in this scenario either. They aren't gorilla/mountain terrain/etc. style fighters that need to carry their gear quickly over dense terrain. All of this suggests that they would make little distinction between male and female soldiers. As a last point, the fluff as it exists makes it quite clear that far, far more Krieg soldiers exist campaigning around the Imperium than those actually living on their irradiated wasteland of a planet. Culturally, their entire reason for living is to die in the name of the emperor and (hopefully) in doing so, redeem themselves for their past sin. Once more, doesn't really matter if one is a female or male - their culture is one big death cult.

But, as plenty of people have said, the fluff is purposely vague in the case of Krieg (like most 40k subjects) so that you can "forge your own narrative." To each their own.

All worlds who have imperial guard regiments will have male and female unless its stated otherwise. Krieg troops barely count as human so gender makes no difference they are all expendable cannon fodder, even more so than other regiments.

The Imperium just needs fodder for the wars it fights and the requirements are basically your able to fire a lasgun. Women are as good as men for being thrown into the meat grinder.

Keeping the genders apart is more likely to do with the chances of intimate relationships compromising tactical operations...though can happen even in same gender regiments, its simply less likely.

If krieg replenishes its numbers through like, cloning, then it's likely that they just don't have the idea of gender. just brainwash/genetically engineer the soldiers to not have sexual impulses and to be infertile, and then you don't have to go to the effort of bothering to make the people machine pump out only men.

Basically everyone in the imperium compared to a soldier fielded in the modern world would be physically weak, malnourished, and young. It's unlikely any differences would be noticeable.

For front line assault troops males work better due to faster running speed, upper body strength, etc.

For various other roles women are suitable, like snipers. The Russians fielded about 2000 women snipers in ww2. Russian women snipers were very effective and while Vasiley Zeitsev may be the glory there were some female russian snipers with a higher body count then he had.

The russians also fielded the night witches air unit to attack nazi troops in order to keep them from resting, they were subject to a lot of persecution and harassment from pig headed men but fought with such valor and distinction Joe Stalin gave night witch pilots the honor of being the first soviet air units to drop bombs directly on Berlin.

On the western side britian fielded a lot of female spies and saboteurs, many of whom were brutally tortured and murder by nazis. They also worked at Bletchley park decoding german messages thru the early mechanical computers based there.

America's very own Manhattan Project used a lot of trained women to operate the advanced, powerful and dangerous machinery that was used to make the first atomic bombs, because it was found the women could understand and follow technical instructions better than men.

epronovost wrote:
The only thing we know about Kriegs for sure is that they are born in artificial womb

They are born from in vitro fertilisation and grown in artificial womb until they are old enough to make soliders. They are thus of both sexes.

False. Dead Men Walking mentions pregnant Krieg women.


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Cronch wrote:

But civilizations in a life and death struggle constantly at war tend to take life choice out of the equation and allocate resources where they are most needed.

Yes, but Imperium in 40k is eminently not allocating resources rationally, or it wouldn't just kill or lobotimize people at the drop of the hat. Sorry, it's either "Imperium is using war logic and allocating resources by cold calculation alone" or "haha commisar go blam!".

Commissar doesn’t go blam

Logic says yes, likely views of a dumb backwards post-apocalyptic death cult says probably not. 40k in a nutshell.

No they don't. Women are either involved in birthing more babies or working in the factories on Krieg. Something many forget, they not only create their own troops, they also make all the equipment for them on that planet also, and there aren't enough men who for one reason or another aren't soldiers to man those factories. There are high attrition rates just during the training of soldiers, let alone when they go to war so the machine at home needs bodies, and those bodies are mainly female.

 Kroem wrote:
Just a quick thought on this; don't male babies have a higher mortality rate than female babies? (Apolgies if my science is bad)
If the only goal is to put bodies in the field then it would make more sense to clone females to me.

That's because in the real world we live in, we tend to 'assign' gender roles - females aren't 'supposed to be' boisterous and rambunctious, and getting themselves into situations where it would endanger one's own life. On the other hand, we let everything slide for males because "boys will be boys", and they constantly put themselves in the middle of unnecessary danger.

In general, women do tend to live average of 5~7 years longer as per world statistics. The statistics would also explain that one's life style is not accounted for in this metric - just simple age of death.

 Kroem wrote:
Just a quick thought on this; don't male babies have a higher mortality rate than female babies? (Apolgies if my science is bad)
If the only goal is to put bodies in the field then it would make more sense to clone females to me.

Yes. I used collate data on infant mortality (that was a fun job) in a children’s hospital.

Statistically, from birth girls are *slightly* less susceptible to most illnesses than boys, and are generally healthier.

Note this was for neonates as well as older children, so there are no environmental reasons for it.

I don't think the Vitae Wombs are cloning, rather just really big surrogate machines. Take what you need from the parents via surgery and the such then implant into the big tube and rapidly grow the babies like the dinosaurs you put in water to make big. When you exist in a future where you have lasers and cities the size of continents, IMR isn't a chief concern.