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So this isn't a new debate, thoughts on the size of Armageddon's population and its recruitment potential have been ongoing since 2000. I've discussed this before too. However, I have found some new information recently. I have also had the opportunity to think more about how the Imperium is able to recruit soldiers and how the populations of hive worlds are viewed.

I will be focussing on the population prior to the 3rd war. Obviously the population during the 3rd war after the Ork invasion and daemonic incursion is going to be significantly lower...

For context, the 3rd war begins in 757998.M41. Ghazghkull leaves Armageddon in 990998, although this raises a potential discrepancy with some of the numbers below (such as there still being ~400 of his personal warbands still on Armageddon in 721999.M41).

There are a few old datapoints that get considered:
-The 3rd edition rulebook states that hive worlds have a typical population of 100 billion - 500 billion.
-The 5th edition rulebook lists Minea as a typical example of a hive world with a population of 154 billion (consistent with the above source) and a standing PDF army of 2 million soldiers with an annual tithe of 1.249 million soldiers. The tithe grade is Exactis Extremis (one of the highest tithe grades)
-The 5th edition rulebook also mentions Coronis Agathon with a population of 120 billion and this is considered a fortress world with a garrison >10 million
-According to Codex: Imperial Guard (5th edition), during the 2nd war, Armageddon was noted as raising more soldiers than the next two planets combined in Segmentum Solar. Considering that Segmentum Solar contains both Terra and Necromunda with truly enormous populations, this suggests a very high recruitment overall. The same sources notes that most of these regiments were destroyed in the fighting, suggesting a very high attrition rate.
-Codex: Armageddon has the following dispositions for the Imperial forces active specifically on 721999.M41 (about 1 year into the war):

-Epic: Armageddon has a similar disposition list at the end of the first Season of Fire (which is presumably later than the source above, probably right at the end of 999.M41), after the relative lull in the fighting caused by said season and some time to recuperate:

-The novel Helsreach has General Kurov mention that there are over 50000 Astartes and "30 times that number of guardsmen" active in the Armageddon subsector. That comes out to ~1.5 million guarsdmen. However, technically this doesn't include PDFs and militia, particularly the Armageddon defence forces and militias which made up the vast majority of Imperial manpower during the war. Guardsmen are generally going to be more capable units than these, so probably represent the combat power that can actually be relied on to perform all actions expected of a unit. Militia and PDF are much more likely to be useful in holding the line but poor in offensive operations.

Armageddon has a similar tithe grade (before the war) to Minea- both Exactis Extremis. This suggests Armageddon has a population at least in the same ballpark of ~150 billion. It is notable that despite this population, Minea supports ~3.5 million soldiers per year, a tiny fraction of its population. Coronis Agathon is notable in having >10 million garrisoning it per year.

Many people have noted the forces shown are very small- even with fairly generous apportioning of numbers, it is hard to get to numbers >5 million. I think two things are worth noting. Firstly, these only represent a selection of the active fighting forces- there are probably more forces present for both sides that are recuperating or in reserves, and this largely does not seem to include logistical units beyond the mentioned Departmento Munitorum corps. Secondly, these numbers are from deep into the war after massive, massive casualties have already been sustained by both sides (more on this later). It is very probable that the starting forces were considerably greater. This is consistent with most regiments raised in the 2nd war being destroyed too.

Even so, the numbers of soldiers seem to be low compared to the likely population of Armageddon, but consistent with recruitment figures for other hive worlds. My thoughts are that the Imperium simply cannot realistic raise and support armies of the scale potentially enabled by the enormous populations of their hive worlds. They don't even have a solid grasp of the population size on these worlds, and probably estimate them from food consumption or similar.

Raising large numbers of troops quickly is difficult- command and control elements in particular become very stretched and the units enter combat extremely green and poorly lead. This has been seen in both world wars once conscript armies were expanded, such as Kitchener's army in WWI or the Red Army in 1941. It takes time for these units to become proficient, time that just isn't there in a massive conflict like Armageddon that has lasted for less than 18 months at the last timepoint we have rough numbers for. These green units are also going to suffer casualties very quickly, so will not last long in combat against a vicious enemy like a Waaagh! Essentially, the quicker the Imperium raises them, the worse they are and the less likely they are to survive in combat. It is likely that Armageddon is raising millions upon millions of troops, but they are dying almost as quickly.

There is also the issue of simple space- there is only so much room in the defence line to put units, so many units might be accumulating in strategic reserves to swap out with exhausted or destroyed units, which might not be considered "active" in the dispositions above. Armageddon is a smaller planet than Earth, with fighting concentrated in fairly small areas.

Why were the armies not bigger prior to the conflict? Unclear. The Armageddon PDF might have been enormous, but decimated prior to the dispositions above. I think a pre-war garrison of >10 million PDF is probably reasonable based on the conversion of Armageddon into a fortress world and the numbers for Coronis Agathon. But it also might have been fairly limited due to a combination of command constraints (mentioned above) and also the Imperium's very real fears of rebellion and insurrection. Many regiments turned traitor in the 1st war, and populations rising up is an issue. Part of the job of the PDF is to suppress dissent within the populace, and hive worlds are a few missed food deliveries away from rioting in many cases. The Imperium is a colonial power sitting upon vast, exploited populations that are quite indifferent to its larger goals. It needs its PDFs to be as loyal as it can make them, so smaller, more heavily vetted PDFs is logical. I don't think it is an accident that the Necromunda PDF, for example, is based in a particular gang faction that has been given criminal amnesty and power in return for loyalty to Hel'mawr. The comparison is historical colonial forces, where a small amount of foreign troops (equivalent to off-world Guard garrisons) lead a somewhat larger force of local colonial troops, all of which are a small fraction of the overall colonial population being exploited. Take British India- in WWII, only about 0.2% of the Indian population was recruited for military service, in comparison to about 20% of the Soviet population. I think British India is a better analogue for hive world recruitment than the USSR.

Finally, the new source (to me) that sheds light on Armageddon's population size, from the 3rd war for Armageddon background book:

This is a wanted poster for Herman von Strab, I think issued during the 3rd War for Armageddon, but possibly following the 2nd war's conclusion. He is wanted for the grievous murder of over 38 billion citizens- this probably covers lives lost in the 2nd war and/or lives lost in and around Hive Acheron in the 3rd war. Personally, I think this is likely to mostly be casualties in the 2nd war, a much smaller conflict where fighting was mostly concentrated in Hades and Helsreach. 38 billion casualties amongst the population- even if that was 10% of the population (a high percentage) it would suggest a world of 380 billion people. The 2nd war featured a single space hulk worth of Orks, the 3rd war was at least 10 times that number of hulks alone, plus hundreds of smaller Ork vessels, plus the millions of feral Orks already on Armageddon. I think it is probable that the casualties in the 3rd war are far, far greater, and this goes some way to explaining how such large numbers of troops might have been burnt in the crucible of battle on Armageddon.

I think a ballpark for Amrageddon's population pre-3rd war is reasonable to assume at least 150 billion, but I think numbers of >300 billion are likely just based on those casualty numbers.

A last tidbit on the Ork populations on Armageddon: a genetor attached to Armageddon's ruling military council estimated that the feral Ork populations outnumbered the human population on Armageddon 20:1 prior to the 3rd war starting, and this has increased to a minimum of 30:1 and more likely 56:1 at the time of the note below, which is after Ghazghkull had already left following months of fierce fighting and after the Season of Fire had heavily depleted Ork numbers in most areas. Of note, they say "all stages of evolution" and earlier in the missive the genetor discusses other Orkoid species like squigs and gretchin. So these estimates probably include all Orkoid creatures present on Armageddon- squigs, snotlings, gretchin, and orks themselves as a probable minority sitting atop the pyramid. All of those creatures are dangerous to humans and it gives an indication of the scale of the infestation, so an interesting bit of information:

Well if you want a total war mobilisation that is Soviet Union in WW2, at the end they had pretty much run out of men. New recruits were rare. If you know how many are in the regiments you can work backwards from there.

I'm not very deep into Armageddon lore, but I top think those numbers provided are often times comically low.

As perspective I always look at cold war western Germany.
A country of about 60 million people could support a standing army of 500.000 and have another 800.000 in reserves ready in case of war. And compared with the Imperium in the WH40k setting German society even in cold war was pretty peaceful and not really militarized.
So 1% population active military personel, 2% in case of war seem to be no biggy and not even hamper a countries economic development that much. Also compare to South Korea (500.000 active, 3.1 million reserves in a 52 million country).

In other words: hive Worlds of >100 billion inhabitants should have PDFs of >a billion in my opinion

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I'm not very deep into Armageddon lore, but I top think those numbers provided are often times comically low.

As perspective I always look at cold war western Germany.
A country of about 60 million people could support a standing army of 500.000 and have another 800.000 in reserves ready in case of war. And compared with the Imperium in the WH40k setting German society even in cold war was pretty peaceful and not really militarized.
So 1% population active military personel, 2% in case of war seem to be no biggy and not even hamper a countries economic development that much. Also compare to South Korea (500.000 active, 3.1 million reserves in a 52 million country).

In other words: hive Worlds of >100 billion inhabitants should have PDFs of >a billion in my opinion

I think what is economically possible to support is different to what a nation can actually support. I don't think Imperial hive worlds generally mobilise most of their population for reasons other than economics, but rather due to issues of command and control and distrust of having widespread military training amongst a huge, oppressed, poorly-understood population. That is why I was looking at British India, an enormously populous colony where only a small fraction were mobilised even in WWII.

Essentially the Imperium is constrained by its own inefficiencies related to being an oppressive colonial overlord.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Well if you want a total war mobilisation that is Soviet Union in WW2, at the end they had pretty much run out of men. New recruits were rare. If you know how many are in the regiments you can work backwards from there.

The USSR ended up mobilising about 20% of its pre-war population, some 34 million soldiers. That is very much about as high as they could manage and they were probably fairly close to exhausting their capacity to fight at the scale demanded by the Eastern Front. That is over a period of 5-6 years though, and somewhere in the region of 1/3rd to half became casualties (incl. PoW) during the war. I agree that is approaching a societal maximum for typical industrialised societies, but I don't think Imperial hive worlds can achieve that in the same timeframe due to the starting level of troops and sheer numbers involved.

To reach that kind of maximal mobilisation on hive worlds, you probably need long wars like the 500 year war on Krieg to really exhaust the hive populations.

 Haighus wrote:


To reach that kind of maximal mobilisation on hive worlds, you probably need long wars like the 500 year war on Krieg to really exhaust the hive populations.

Which in turn runs into the issue that if you are in a total mobilization type war for 500 years, you likely already collapsed under the strain.

I personally I believe it impossible for the IoM to achieve high percentage mobilization: it is too big, too inefficient and too corrupt.

While I understand and respect your arguments I find it hard to believe that worlds that are suffering under active invasions or in case of Armageddon persistent Ork infestations would not at least mobilize to the degree common in peacetime cold war frontier states.

To give a perspective in the other direction: the mentioned ~1.5 million Guardsmen on a World of 150-300 billion would be equal to 0.001% to 0.0005% of their population. For the USA with their 330 million people that would mean 1650-3300 armed forces in total.

That's why I think these numbers are comically low especially when you have Orks in the jungles and half the sector depends on your industrial output. Armageddon is far to valuable to have them garrisoned by such a tiny force.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
While I understand and respect your arguments I find it hard to believe that worlds that are suffering under active invasions or in case of Armageddon persistent Ork infestations would not at least mobilize to the degree common in peacetime cold war frontier states.

To give a perspective in the other direction: the mentioned ~1.5 million Guardsmen on a World of 150-300 billion would be equal to 0.001% to 0.0005% of their population. For the USA with their 330 million people that would mean 1650-3300 armed forces in total.

That's why I think these numbers are comically low especially when you have Orks in the jungles and half the sector depends on your industrial output. Armageddon is far to valuable to have them garrisoned by such a tiny force.

Firstly, I don't think 1.5 million guardsmen is even the majority of non-Astartes troops at the onset of the war. Given Armageddon was turned into a fortress world under military control between the 2nd and 3rd wars, it probably had a garrison of >10 million PDF troops in addition. Guardsmen would, generally, represent the elite of those human forces and be the more capable units that enable increased capabilities.

But there are good reasons why the Imperium doesn't want armies to be too big and hive world populaces too well trained and heavily armed. So garrison forces are unlikely to ever be truly huge. That then puts hard caps on training fresh troops in an emergency- every soldier training a squad/platoon/company (with diminishing returns as the ratio of drill officers to recruits drops) is a soldier off the frontlines. The more you dilute them out, the worse your troops are too.

Also there are aspects of diminishing returns. Hive cities are very dense urban centres. Hive Primus on Necromunda, for example, has a population of billions but is only ~10 miles in diametre. That is a rough circumference of 31 miles. Compare to the Western Front in WWI, a famously dense and stagnant front which was 440 miles long. If you had a million troops garrisoned in a hive that size (which seems broadly comparable to the hives on Armageddon), there is 32000 troops per mile of frontline. If there were a billion (approaching maybe 5% of the hive population if assuming a population similar to Minea divided evenly over 8 hives), that is 32 million per mile of front. At that point, you are using the entire population of the Tokyo conurbation to defend an area of front the size of the medieval City of London (the small bit in the centre of modern London). Where would you put them? How do you keep them supplied if they move out of the hive infrastructure/the infrastructure is damaged by combat? You can push the defensive lines out, but they'll only get harder to resupply if you do.

I think it is much more reasonable that Armageddon, and Imperial hive worlds in general, have relatively small standing forces but are able to sustain very high attrition rates amongst those forces without the numbers on the front dropping (although quality probably would).

Also you would want forward defences, and constant counter attacks never giving an inch, because if a technically numberless horde gets in, how would you ever manage to fight all through the hive to get them out?

If a hive can house several billion civilians I don't really see why it should not be able to garrison 1%of that number under arms.

And to be able to quell potential rebellions of your billions of manual workers the Imperium needs soldiers/armed forces on world. Even in the billions they are no threat for the Imperium as a whole as long as they don't have a Navy.

And while force concentration seems absurd given the small size of the hives you mentioned: if that hive obviously has the structures (roads, hab blocks etc.) For billions of civilians than there are Potential battlefields for millions of soldiers. Especially as hives are a 3D structure and not a WW I 1D-frontline

[edited to correct number of Londons on lower floors, because I can't handle areas of circles, apparently ]

Random statistics that might help understanding the scale.

Lexicanum lists Hive Primus on Necromunda as 100 miles diameter at its base, and about 10 miles high.

Greater London is roughly circular at an average diameter of about 30 miles. So on each of the lower floors of the Hive base you could plonk 10 Londons.

Population of London is about 9 million people. While a lot of the buildings are quite tall, there is also a lot of 2 storey housing, so I'm going to assume that averaging things out means that you need 3x 5m-storeys over the area of London to house everyone. this is probably wrong, but seems to be about the right order of magnitude. So 100 storeys at the lower end gives you space for about 3Bn people (I think).

At 10 miles high, the hive has space for 3,200 such storeys. As the thing is a complex conical shape, the floor area drops off quite rapidly, but basically, there is definitely space inside hives for a lot of carnage.

WW2 Stalingrad was about 30 miles long, but quite a bit less wide. At the peak of combat there were 2m soldiers deployed on both sides, with their attendant equipment.

So at the lower end, every couple of storeys of hive has space for 10+ Stalingrads.

The real space magic of hives is that if you have Stalingrad going on at the base of the hive, how do you stop it from just collapsing entirely?

Hive Primus has a diametre of 10 miles, not 100, at least according to the Necromunda rulebook. It is part of a large hive cluster though, so there are other hives close by. Most of the population lives in the first 5 miles, with only nobles and their (extensive) servants above this point.

I've crunched numbers for a rough theoretical maximum in that space based on the volumetric population density of Kowloon Walled city, but that is assuming all internal space is living quarters, cottage industry, and small streets. Obviously this isn't the case, so you could probably half these numbers off-the-bat. I can't find the calculations right now, but they were in the ballpark of 60-80 billion depending on the diametre at 5 miles for the frustum, so 30-40 billion is more realistic.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pyroalchi wrote:
If a hive can house several billion civilians I don't really see why it should not be able to garrison 1%of that number under arms.

And to be able to quell potential rebellions of your billions of manual workers the Imperium needs soldiers/armed forces on world. Even in the billions they are no threat for the Imperium as a whole as long as they don't have a Navy.

That is one of the limitations of oppressive colonial empires- those local troops are likely as, if not more loyal to their kinfolk on their homeworld as the wider empire. Instead of quelling rebellions, they may join them. This actually happened on a large scale during the 1st war in Angron's invasion. Retaking the world with external troops is massively harder if the PDF is collossal, given the limitations on transports for Guardsmen.

You could starve them out... but that comes with a big loss in tithe output for what might be quite a long time if the hive world has good stockpiles. The Imperium relies on tithe output from hive worlds, losing the output from one for too long cripples the surrounding region.

And while force concentration seems absurd given the small size of the hives you mentioned: if that hive obviously has the structures (roads, hab blocks etc.) For billions of civilians than there are Potential battlefields for millions of soldiers. Especially as hives are a 3D structure and not a WW I 1D-frontline

Once the enemy is in the hive, yes, but generally forces try to hold enemies on the outside to avoid infrastructure and civilians being consumed by the combat. Fighting for the hives on Armageddon mainly occurred in the fortifications around the outskirts, Helsreach being a notable exception where fighting occurred across the lower levels in the early phases.

Fair enough, that sounds convincing.

Maybe different hive worlds exchange their troops? Armageddon is policed by Praetorians and vice versa? Who knows.

I think the hill I'm willing to die on is that 1-2 percent population under arms is not a lot and that personellnumbers of the Imperial Guard as given in the fluff are too low.
Even today were the Bundeswehr of reunited Germany is massively critized internally and externally for being far to tiny for a NATO member of its size it still has a standing army of 0.2-0.25% of its population. Ergo at least for my headcanon Hive worlds raise billions of PDF/guardsmen and it is quite likely to meet soldiers from the 435.278th Praetorian rifles instead of regiment numbers being more or less capped at 3-4 diggets.

The counter argument is that today's most populous countries (China and India) have militaries way below 1% of their total population: India is at 0.1% (1.4 million military for a 1.4 billion people) and China is slightly higher at 0.14% (2 million for also 1.4 billion)


And these are highly aggressive countries with plenty of territory disputes and expansionistic daydreams that are actively trying to expand their militaries and yet are unable to enlist even 1% (or 0.2% for that matter) of their population.

Ok, I checke back a little about current military personell rates and ignoring the outliers like North Korea, the majority of countries seem to fall in the 0.1-0.5% category.
That would still leave hundreds of millions active personell as likely numbers (in my opinion) for hive Worlds of hundreds of billions.

And I would argue that during active invasions or Ork infestations it is very realistic to approach closer to cold war/Israel/South Korea territory of 1-2 %

Well, once the invasion began, I think recruitment rates just couldn't keep up with loss rates, for the Orks too. The planet got minced with orbital bombardments, falling orbital wreckage, titan-grade weaponry all over the place, and intense attrition warfare on most fronts.

Going off the von Strab wanted poster, 38 billion civilians died in what is probably the smaller 2nd war, the 3rd war probably makes that look like a picnic. Even so, during the combat lull* in the Season of Fire the number of Armageddon units more than doubled (except the command guard, but these are probably very specialised). Based on the dates provided, those two force dispositions are probably only 2 or 3 months apart. That gives an indication that the combat prior to the onset of the Season of Fire was probably consuming units too fast to maintain numbers, let alone grow in strength.


*Very much a lull, not a cessation. Intense combat was still occurring on all fronts, particularly the Equatorial Jungle. So losses would still have been very high. Ghazghkull had left at this point, so Ork force strength did take a twofold hit from the departure and deaths from exposure to the storms.

 Haighus wrote:

 Pyroalchi wrote:
While I understand and respect your arguments I find it hard to believe that worlds that are suffering under active invasions or in case of Armageddon persistent Ork infestations would not at least mobilize to the degree common in peacetime cold war frontier states.

To give a perspective in the other direction: the mentioned ~1.5 million Guardsmen on a World of 150-300 billion would be equal to 0.001% to 0.0005% of their population. For the USA with their 330 million people that would mean 1650-3300 armed forces in total.

That's why I think these numbers are comically low especially when you have Orks in the jungles and half the sector depends on your industrial output. Armageddon is far to valuable to have them garrisoned by such a tiny force.

Firstly, I don't think 1.5 million guardsmen is even the majority of non-Astartes troops at the onset of the war. Given Armageddon was turned into a fortress world under military control between the 2nd and 3rd wars, it probably had a garrison of >10 million PDF troops in addition. Guardsmen would, generally, represent the elite of those human forces and be the more capable units that enable increased capabilities.

I am currently re-reading Helsreach (the source of the ~1.5 million guardsmen figure) and it has other info to back up my suppsition above. When the Orks enter the outskirts of Helsreach, the book states millions of humans are fighting across the hive. That is a single hive, early in the invasion, and strongly suggests to me that large numbers of PDF and militia units were being supported by a much smaller number of Imperial Guard units as the higher-quality troops.

Helsreach isn't a perfect source and does contradict some others. For example, the defence of the hive is lead by a mere colonel, not a general as would be expected. This is despite other sources stating Generals were present in Helsreach (such as General Bragg of the 7th Hive militia, although as a PDF unit they may be outranked by the Guard commanders, chain of command between Guard and PDF is a bit murky).

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I'm not very deep into Armageddon lore, but I top think those numbers provided are often times comically low.

As perspective I always look at cold war western Germany.
A country of about 60 million people could support a standing army of 500.000 and have another 800.000 in reserves ready in case of war. And compared with the Imperium in the WH40k setting German society even in cold war was pretty peaceful and not really militarized.
So 1% population active military personel, 2% in case of war seem to be no biggy and not even hamper a countries economic development that much. Also compare to South Korea (500.000 active, 3.1 million reserves in a 52 million country).

In other words: hive Worlds of >100 billion inhabitants should have PDFs of >a billion in my opinion

This is true.

However there is one potential answer as to why the numbers would be lower than the total population numbers would suggest. Logistics.

The Imperium has unlimited manpower. It does not have unlimited ships to maintain supply lines. So even if it can theoretically raise armies in the trillions, from a likely population in the high quadrillions, it can't transport and equip that many. It has to manufacture weapons, gear, and supplies to equip them, then it has to ship them to the designated warzone, then it has to dedicate ships to keeping a supply chain of food, ammunition, and replacement equipment/soldiers.

Even on ships that can transport hundreds of thousands of people at a time, a few million troops would quickly eat through the supplies such a ship could carry back and forth on voyages that will take months to make a round-trip best-case scenario.

GW should probably inflate their numbers by an order of magnitude or so, but this would still be far less than the population of the Imperium might otherwise suggest.

Now, PDF forces are not necessarily as constrained by the logistic limitations if their world is self-sufficient. Which probably won't necessarily be the case most of the time. They'll probably be importing something from the greater imperial supply network which would limit how many forces they could muster locally in desperation.

Regarding interplanetary transport: maybe
Regarding equiping the soldiers: I don't know. If arming 1-2 % of the population is notbthat hard for our current time (enough countries manage that and even far more during peacetime) why would it be harder for a hiveworld? I don't really see a reason why it should be more difficult for 100 billion people to stamp 1 billion lasguns than it is for 100 million people to producing 1 million AK47/G36/the rifle of your choice.

And we talked about the armed forces of a hive world that should protect that world during an ongoing Invasion. Transport logistics is less difficult when the soldiers are needed to defend the hive they were raised, trained and garrisoned in

A typical hive world can definitely equip a large number of soldiers with basic gear like lasguns and flak armour. Hive worlds are giant factories for low-tech* gear, especially war material. Plenty won't be able to produce large numbers of armoured vehicles like Armageddon, but lasguns is a different matter.

I think the supply considerations are more relevant for PDFs from the perspective of the Imperium as an oppressive empire. If you struggle to transport huge numbers of Guardsmen, you don't want PDFs to be so big that they can massively outnumber and outmatch the Guard forces you can deploy if the planet rebels.

It is a balance between being strong enough to hold off invasions by aliens and heretics, but not being able to resist invasions by the Imperium itself. The Imperium isn't supposed to be efficient, it is constantly balancing its contradictions and only kept afloat through sheer, monumental inertia.

Intraplanetary logistics have a different constraint- massively inefficient bureaucracy coupled with feudal power structures. We are explicitly told that the Imperium rarely has good data on the populations of hive worlds, which are insanely vast. Actually recruiting and supplying troops from that population is not going to be efficient when they don't even have a good idea about the demographics of said population, and how this would interact with war-critical services like continuing weapons production, food and water and fuel distribution, actually moving large quantities of humans and material through the very dense, congested transport networks of the hive etc.

I suspect that much of the population of a major hive is treated as a bit of a black box mechanism- raw materials are fed in, industrial finished goods are shipped out. The "how" is completed through an incredibly complex, collossal web of contracts, feudal oaths, and familial links that no one person can hope to understand.


*Low-tech by Imperial standards.

I heard that argument several times but have to say I don't find it convincing. In between the options of naval bombardment, power armored forces the PDF can do little against (SM/Battlesisters) and the IG described as constantly far outperforming the PDF I don't see a large PDF bring more of a problem for the Imperium than a too small one is.

Inspite of all talk and debate about rebellions, losing planets to aliens (Orks, Tyranids, Necrons and even smaller factions like Kroot, Tarrelians etc.) should be a more relevant and more often occuring problem. (But correct me if I'm wrong)

Leaving a system like Armageddon on whose production at least the whole sector if not a chunk of the segmentum hinges garrissoned by so few PDF that they could hardly resist a scavenging band or a local uprising (Imperial trained PDF soldiers should still be more loyal to the Imperium then hive scum that never saw an imperial instructor at all, even if they have family ties), seems not worth it just to avoid that maybe the world goes renegade and maybe the PDF becomes a problem then.

For large PDFs, the standard imperial method of division would work here. I don’t imagine that the more populous planetary PDFs really work under a unified command structure. I would think that the Governor would be required to have the PDF split between all their planetary nobles. Makes it less efficient, but again less likely that a monolithic rebellion could start.

The IoM is pathologically afraid of rebellion because the Horus Heresy was a thing, because Chaos is a thing.

FFS the whole point of the Chapter System is to cripple the Space Marines into something manageable if they turn traitor.

Sure in M41.999, Tyranids, Necrons and Orks should be a bigger worry than rebellions, but the IoM isn't a rational place (and also Tyranids, Necrons and arguably Orks have only really been a galaxy wide problem in the last few decades).

 Tyran wrote:
The IoM is pathologically afraid of rebellion because the Horus Heresy was a thing, because Chaos is a thing.

FFS the whole point of the Chapter System is to cripple the Space Marines into something manageable if they turn traitor.

Sure in M41.999, Tyranids, Necrons and Orks should be a bigger worry than rebellions, but the IoM isn't a rational place (and also Tyranids, Necrons and arguably Orks have only really been a galaxy wide problem in the last few decades).

Plus the 4th major threat, Chaos, is one of the primary fomenters of rebellions within the Imperium. Tyranids are also a common cause of uprisings via genestealer cults and even Orks have been known to utilise human traitors (Von Strab in the 3rd war for Armageddon). Tau obviously foment rebellion and succession too but are still a fairly small player, but there are others like them.

That is to say nothing of all the others who turn against the Imperium for myriad reasons not related to the above. Civil war is one of the defining fears of the Imperium, not just from the Horus Heresy- the Age of Apostasy, Macharius Heresy, Nova Terra Interregnum, the Beheading, the Night of a Thousand Rebellions, etc.

The trouble with Chaos Cults is they’re well fuelled by the nature of The Imperium.

Because it’s not you going about your daily business and seeing a flyer for “Fed up with your lot in life? Why not try eating babies”. It’s slower, and more insidious than that. It’s about pushing and prodding humans toward ever more extreme acts. And because spontaneous mutation tends to come from actively dabbling, your cult can hide in plain sight. It’s even possible for cult members to not recognise the cult for what it is.

I agree the numbers should be larger, but we shouldn't be expecting the Imperium's local planets to be able to go on a total war footing with anything approaching double digit numbers of its population.

Armageddon's numbers should maybe be 10 times what they are, that seems reasonable to me.

Another thing that keeps PDFs small is the tithe, because it is very hard to build a military when you are forced to send away a significant portion of your military, both in bodies and equipment.

Honestly the big issue here is that the GW writers didn't think through the numbers, you cannot really take them at face value and just have to assume they mean 'lots' in a lot of cases. I mean heck, we are at a point where the opening point of this discussion is that Armageddon might have (or had) between 150 and 350 BILLION people on it. That is a wide margin of error.

Just some super quick scrawls here, but if even 0.1% of the population was mobilized for war with the low end of 150 billion, that is still 150,000,000 soldiers, crank it up to 1% and you are at 1.5 billion soldiers. Considering what a manufacturing hub Armageddon is/was, something in that range can be believable. You need the soldiers to hold the line, advance and take out Ork fortifications/manufactories, cycle troops on the front, plug gaps, train new soldiers, escort supplies, work in void warfare recapturing stations etc (though this one might be more in the Navy's reach). Plus lets face it, in an emergency the Imperium has no qualms whatsover with handing lasguns to a few hundred thousand people and ordering them to march in a direction for no other reason than to distract the Orks while they figure out the perfect angle to range their artillery at.

Long story short, while it pains to say it, you just kind of have to accept that GW isn't the best with numbers and work with the lore stating this is a huge massive war front.

It’s not just what a single planet can produce, but also what the Imperium as a whole churns out.

Granted there are age old difficulties and delicacies in distribution, but despite its renowned inefficiencies, for the most part The Imperium seems to manage that part fairly ok.

In the modern day we might think “100 Billion, how can a single planet support that many smelly hoomans”. But Armageddon, like many Hive Worlds and Industrial Worls, they’re fed by imports and other means, and so aren’t expected to be self sufficient.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

In the modern day we might think “100 Billion, how can a single planet support that many smelly hoomans”. But Armageddon, like many Hive Worlds and Industrial Worls, they’re fed by imports and other means, and so aren’t expected to be self sufficient.

I don't think anybody is questioning the ability for the Imperium to have 100 billion people on a planet. We're questioning that "If they have 100 billion people on X planet, why does the war on planet X only have a few million soldiers fighting on it?"

The least unrealistic part of 40k is the population of the Imperium. Real life Earth, assuming we went full "screw the environment, lets make as much food as is physically possible", could easily support trillions of people. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand and it is highly plausible for agri-worlds to support the countless quadrillions of humans that have to be populating the 40k galaxy if we take their population statements for stated hive worlds as representative of the whole.

Logistics is of course a reasonable limitation. But the numbers are still too low. I would say safely we should probably multiple the number of enlisted troops on Armageddon by 10 at a minimum, and this number should not include any militia raised from the locals to fight the orks. The local militia should easily be in the many tens of millions.

Really, any defensive conflict in the Imperium should show that sizable forces are raised from the local populace, given bare minimum equipment, and then sent to die as cannon fodder instead of the more limited Imperial Guard who actually take resources to supply and maintain.

I am imagining an upper echelon tactica guide for Imperial commanders including a section on fighting defensive wars in the Imperium telling them to organize the locals, stoke patriotic fervor, and try and use the excess population to fight the enemy. Benefits to this callous tactic would be less unrest as the civilian population will be reduced and not need as many supplies if the war drags on. Meanwhile the guardsmen will also suffer fewer causalities as the numbers are made up by the locals. Any local units who do distinguish themselves can be enlisted as the end of the conflict as veteran guardsmen as well. Naturally steps should be taken to keep valuable or skilled laborers among the populace off the front line, focus on the dregs of society first.

 Grey Templar wrote:

The least unrealistic part of 40k is the population of the Imperium. Real life Earth, assuming we went full "screw the environment, lets make as much food as is physically possible", could easily support trillions of people.

We would cook ourselves into extinction, heat has to go somewhere and trillions of humans (plus the infrastructure needed to keep them alive) is simply way to much heat.

The IoM probably has some sort of void cooling that simply dumps excess heat into the warp.