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'lo there

I was just wondering about warp travel and how dangerous it was. I know that it is considered dangerous and all, but in the scheme of things to the imperium, how dangerous is it? The only large scale disaster I can think of that happened to the space marines at least is the Fire Hawks. But shouldn't it be much more dangerous? Because I thought that the chaos gods could control what happened to you during warp travel, like how nurgle trapped the death guard. I know he had typhus's help, but couldn't he have done it without him?

To summarise; how dangerous is it actually to travel through the warp

Depends on the strength of the Gellar fields. It is super ridiculous dangerous, otherwise, as any breach in the shields == daemons on-board. For larger manifestations through a Gellar field, a Chaos daemon would need something to anchor it in the material realm, which would usually mean assistance from a cultist or a convenient host.

It's not safe in the slightest.

Just put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye before you leave because there is no guarantee that you are going to get where you are supposed to. Pray to the Emperor that you don't somehow attract the attention of a Chaos God or some other dangerous Warp entity. Either that or you get pushed into a pocket of the Warp where time freezes or you end up in a wrong current and get taken back 1000 years before you actually left on your journey.

The Gellar Field is no sure fire preventative either, like Omegus says. Influence on the crew can easily turn this off or if there are enough nasty gribblies out side they can force their way in.

It is not safe, but neither is it as dangerous or suicidal as it is sometimes portrayed to be.

This is because there are numerous worlds in the Imperium, such as hive worlds or forge worlds, that are utterly dependent on imports to keep their industries running or food imports to stave off mass starvation. These worlds could not have survived for any length of time unless there was sufficient reliability in warp space travel to keep a steady flow of food and material going to these worlds.

The entire Imperium is essentially dependent on warp travel to stay intact. From interstellar trade to tithe collections to the patrols of the Imperial Navy to Space Marines and Imperial Guard being moved to warzones, the entire Imperium would fall apart if space travel were not possible with some degree of reliability and expectation that the goods/people would arrive at their destination.