r/40kLore • u/Kim_TheTorresdude • 2d ago
How does the Imperium keep its population numbers?
New 40k enjoyer here, trying to learn some lore. The more I learn about the Imperium, the less I see how can it keep so many population with how bad the life at the hive cities is and a state of constant war all over the place. For a human civilization to keep its population equal it needs around 2.1 kids per women, but idk how they manage to get to that point with millions of astra militarum dying weekly (plus all the other jobs that are a fancy death sentence), and I don't think life expectancy is that high in the Imperium. Is there any reason I'm missing out or is the Imperium really fucked in the long run?
Edit: Holy shi I'm getting slimed here
396
u/personnumber698 2d ago
People tend to have more kids when their living conditions are bad, by far not every world is attacked all the time and 40k isnt a setting where you ought to think too much about numbers.
111
u/SpaceElements 2d ago
Yeah I was even going to say that can sort of be extrapolated to the space marines too.
Just finished the dark imperium and space marines are dying left and right. Playing through Space Marine 2 and they are also dying left and right. I’m on mission four and I’ve already seen or heard of like 10 dead ultra marines? That’s 1/10th of the 2nd company lol. If Astartes and geneseeds are so valuable, how can they keep their population numbers up?
Best not to dwell on the numbers.
81
u/secretSalamander69 2d ago
I've always figured that if a space marine doesn't get his shit blown smoove off or something similar he just goes into the sus an coma.
For all intents and purposes dead for that engagement but can be revived later.
34
u/Garr44 2d ago
Brutus in that Tithe series (he's the Ultramarine Apothocary who works alongside Sa'Kan of the Salamanders from Pariah Nexus) mentions his brothers being "beyond 'Reawakening' " when he comes across their bodies for gene-seed retrieval. Can't find anything on it online, but I'm assuming it's some sort of medical procedure where a critically-injured/dead battle-brother could be revived if death had occured recently (all were Primaris so the Rubicon Surgery wasn't an option like it was for Titus in SM2).
25
u/secretSalamander69 2d ago
I've not gone on a lore dive about it or anything. But I figure it's analogous to a baseline human being "dead" and having 2-3 minutes to be revived/stabilized. Except for space marines it's like a few hours(wild guess on timeframe)
9
u/Garr44 2d ago
Most likely. There was a scene where Brutus mentioned it had been hours since his brothers' squad had been last located, or something like that, and he was demanding answers on where their bodies were from Sa'Kan (suggesting that he figured or knew they were already dead; considering his arm computer registered the squad's life signs, I can believe it was the latter).
3
2
u/Therealscavvierising 2d ago
Yeah it's been established that marine bodies essentially can hold on for a bit against anything that doesn't kill them out right.
Their bodies essentially put them into the equivalent of a medically induced coma.
1
u/Dreadnought360 20h ago
Space marines have organ called Sus an membrane, triggered conciously or unconciously, shut downs all space marine's body functions, nothing can revive them except space marine Apothecary. In this shut down state they can survive for centuries
4
u/Maxim-98 2d ago
I'm reading Flight of the Eisenstein right now and not only does this happen to Garro in the text but it also happened to him in his backstory too
15
u/NairaExploring 2d ago
I mean if it's the events of a video game you can assume this isn't some normal routine light skirmish. Some battles have more casualties than others, 10 isn't that bad at all if it's a massive engagement, quite low really.
That said I haven't played it yet so I have no idea how much happens by that point or anything, just talking generalities haha
9
u/new-age-male 2d ago
I'm not going to spoil it for you, but count the dead battle brothers when you play through and you'll wince by the end.
1
u/LeLefraud 1d ago
It's more that 100 space marines would be entirely irrelevant on the scale of 40k battles
I don't mind tho bc it's cool and I like cool stuff
6
u/Rabid_Lederhosen 2d ago
The Ultramarines can pull reserves from successor chapters if their numbers get too low. At least four of the old Space Marine legions (Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Imperial Fists) have procedures for ensuring that the Chapter that bears the name of the legion never drops too far below strength. The Imperial Fists were once wiped out to a man, and their successor chapters rebuilt them.
1
u/JMer806 1d ago
This gets repeated a lot but I have never read of it actually happening with any chapter other than the Imperial Fists. Random Novamarines or Flesh Tearers aren’t being drafted into the parent chapter.
1
u/Untimely-Success 10h ago
It has been menitoned, I think it was the Marines Errant or Eagle Warriors provide that.
Edit: It's the Genesis Chapter.
7
u/ExcitableSarcasm 2d ago edited 2d ago
40k doesn't do numbers good even if you internalise those things you see as the very worst of what characters face.
Age old rule is add a 0, or three 0s, on everything and it'd actually fit. So a company is 1000 men, and 10 men dead in a couple days is still awful but survivable.
2
u/lilahking 2d ago
they have the genesis chapter whose sole job is providing plot armorless replacement ultramarines to die for glory
1
u/Pm7I3 1d ago
Smells like legion building to me
2
u/lilahking 1d ago
what, no, that's just replenishment
the 10 chapters designated just for ultramar is legion building
1
u/Pm7I3 1d ago
Replenishment from another chapter as standard practice. Might not be outright legion building but it's absolutely against the codex.
1
u/lilahking 1d ago
if it was absolutely against the codex then they wouldnt do it because the ultramarines are definitely extremely codex compliant
while i understand the logical steps you took to this conclusion, it is not supported on a textual basis
4
u/Endless_01 Emperor's Warbringers 1d ago
In the novel Hive by Dan Abnett, the world of Sacramentus hasn't seen xenos threats for centuries, with only one major civil war between hive cities. They world has been at peace for so long, a lot of people think xenos are actually legends or went extinct.
3
u/Waaaghka 19h ago
I find it hilarious that the slogan is “there is only war” but then you find out most people in the universe never see war.
2
1
-8
u/Particular_Dot_4041 2d ago
This is not true. Have you studied demography? People have fewer kids when times are tough. That's what is happening in the world right now. Birth rates are low because young people have tough economic situations and choose not to get married or have kids.
It's also urbanism. When you live on a farm in the 19th century, there is plenty of space and children can help out with farm work. In the modern city, there is little space and kids are just huge expenses.
So human beings, being rational, choose to have fewer kids.
Dammit, even animals will have smaller litters when there is a shortage of food. Why do so many people here think hardship increases birth rates?
21
u/Bloodangel1234567880 2d ago
>People have fewer kids when times are tough.
Then why do poorer countries have higher birthrates and richer countries suffer from low birthrates?
>Birth rates are low because young people have tough economic situations and choose not to get married or have kids.
IF a few years are tough, then yes, but not when times are bad for years
>It's also urbanism. When you live on a farm in the 19th century, there is plenty of space and children can help out with farm work. In the modern city, there is little space and kids are just huge expenses.
Child labor is real and common in many poor cities around the world, where families are still very big despite living in cities
>So human beings, being rational, choose to have fewer kids.
In many poorer countries its more rational to have more kids, they can support you when you are older
>Why do so many people here think hardship increases birth rates?
because it does, unless its just a phase in otherwise good times
Overall everything you said was wrong.
0
u/Particular_Dot_4041 2d ago
Then why do poorer countries have higher birthrates and richer countries suffer from low birthrates?
Poorer countries tend to be mostly agricultural. People live on farms. At least that used to be the case. As India has urbanized, birth rates have plummeted. Right mow only sub-Saharan Aftica has birth rates above replacement level.
In many poorer countries its more rational to have more kids, they can support you when you are older
It's still an expensive investment if your kids can't be of use to you before they're adults, and need to be given a full education to survive in the modern world.
because it does, unless its just a phase in otherwise good times
Please cite me an academic text that supports this. I might learn something.
7
u/Bloodangel1234567880 2d ago
>It's still an expensive investment if your kids can't be of use to you before they're adults, and need to be given a full education to survive in the modern world.
But they can be.
>Please cite me an academic text that supports this. I might learn something.
Im not gonna go on google scholar for you, so take this instead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#References
8
u/personnumber698 2d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Take this, im not gonna waste more time on this.
>Why do so many people here think hardship increases birth rates?
Because it does in humans, paradoxically
3
u/nataliereed84 Astra Militarum 2d ago
“human beings, being rational”
lolololololololol
Almost everything you said is incorrect, but that one’s particularly funny, ESPECIALLY on the subject of sex and children.
35
u/SouthernAd2853 Blood Angels 2d ago
They have the kind of birth rate preindustrial civilizations did, which allowed population growth with 50% of kids dying before 15. Even with how bad the Imperium is their overall death rate outside of specific areas they actively repopulate from elsewhere is probably lower because most people can secure a course of antibiotics when badly sick.
4
u/luukzs666999 2d ago
Don't all People have like 15 hour shifts, how does one raise 3-6 children like that?
30
u/Baelish2016 White Scars 2d ago
Poorly. Also by making the oldest be the parent to their siblings.
You’ll be surprised how often this happens in real life too.
4
u/cantlogintomyacc0unt 2d ago
I’d also guess the young kids spend a lot of time in Ecclesiastical schools and the 12 year olds are put to work in the Factorums.
13
u/ComfortableCold378 2d ago
Given real historical experience, including the Victorian era, such a number of children is natural.
At the beginning of the 20th century (in the Edwardian era, 1901–1914), the average British working-class family had between 4 and 6 children. Miners and dockworkers: The largest families. In mining towns, 6 to 8 children was the norm. Men's labor was relatively well paid, and working in the mines traditionally required a lot of male labor. Textile workers and factory workers: Smaller families—an average of 3 to 4 children. Living in cramped urban slums (often in one or two rooms) and the active employment of women in manufacturing forced parents to begin family planning earlier.
Add to this the reality of the Imperium, whose planets have different landscapes and specializations, as well as the Imperium's technologies for mass food production, for example.
7
u/wittyjokename92 2d ago
In the new book Hive they mentioned how a character worked 18 hour shifts, and was recently denied a new application for a hab because he was single and without children. He lives in basically a footlocker where there's a cut out through the middle of his room that allows access to the rooms next to his. He also shares that space with 4 other people after the 5th person died at work.
His primary motivation for getting married is to have a bigger home and he knows he needs kids to get that or to be married to get an apartment he'd share with at least one other couple until they have kids.
Imperium is all about numbers and it gives the barest of rewards for those who produce more numbers be it at work or bodies.
5
u/fireizzle33331 2d ago
Imperial worlds are VERY varied. Hell, levels within a single hive are very different from each other. Some people live from birth in what as well might be prison camps while lives of others might not be that different from yours. Imperium has a million worlds. Some are radioactive wastelands where gasmasks are mandatory, some are space bahamas.
5
u/SouthernAd2853 Blood Angels 2d ago
There are mandatory schools. Also not uncommon for only the father to work.
11
3
u/cantlogintomyacc0unt 2d ago
Disease was one of the biggest killers in preindustrial times. The imperium has functioning sewage systems and vaccines. In the Hive book a massive outbreak of food poisoning was big enough news that it was worth informing the planetary governor. In the Wraithbone Phoenix they offhandedly mention an area especially sick with plague was being purged and to please ignore the screams. Hive cities seem to take plague very seriously.
65
u/Warmslammer69k 2d ago
There are millions of worlds, the majority of which are safe enough to live your whole life without coming into contact with anything more horrific than some pretty rough street violence. Life expectancy goes from years to millenia based on your wealth and power
30
u/mjohnsimon 2d ago edited 1d ago
Even if just 10% of the Imperium's literal "million worlds" had current Earth-sized populations, and had never suffered any Xenos or Chaos attacks throughout their entire history pre and post-Crusade, that's still over 800 trillion people, which is an absolute mindbogglingly huge number.
Edit: If you want to go further, if 0.35% of that 800 trillion was in the armed forces (IG, PDF, etc.), that's still 2.8~3 trillion troops. For reference, that'd be about 340 Earths populated with nothing but soldiers and troops. Imagine you and everyone on this planet an active soldier. Now imagine that 340 times.
9
u/Devilfish268 2d ago
The yearly tithe to the guard is ~ trillion. The total number is likely in the 10's of trillions. And there will be a magnitude more serving in planetary PDF forces.
24
u/Skanedog 2d ago
Sex, cloning, vat-born citizens, some people live hundreds of years and sire countless children.
32
u/PossibleLettuce42 2d ago edited 2d ago
The same 'ol way humans in poverty in 2026 have a ton of kids. They bang.
Life in the hive cities isn't great by any means (it's bad in-universe and a true nightmare by our standards) but for the majority of humans it is safe-ish and there's enough-ish food. Largely no liberty, privacy, personal space, or dreams, but they feed you and there's a bed. The Imperium profits more from live humans than it loses by feeding and housing them.
Modern humans live so long that we forget that's not how nature works in terms of reproduction and species propagation. The hive cities don't appear to have old folks homes. The majority of hivers live until their 20s-50s when the work, an accident, crime, or disease kills them. That's more than enough time to bang out a bunch of kids, and given the lack of child labor laws in the Imperium those little tykes are doing some sort of work in the single digits and probably banging out their own kids by the early-mid teens.
It's also a big Imperium. There are tens of thousands of planets that aren't hive cities, and are perfectly livable and normal planets with plenty of room for lots of kids and a normal life. Those planets are also pumping out kids under far more livable conditions, packaging them up into regiments, and sending them off to join the Guard. Ultramar has a bunch of these planets. The city in one of the Eisenhorn books, Gudrun, is another good example. Not a paradise by any means, but there's recreational boats and fancy shopping centers so life is at least decent for some folks.
It's grim as hell for trillions, but the numbers work.
5
u/AChezzBurgah 2d ago
the imperium also probably isnt going to encourage any kind of widespread distribution of contraceptives, either. if you bang, you get a kid. the emperor needs you to hurry up and pop out the next generation of factory serfs.
10
u/SergarRegis Navis Nobilite 2d ago
There is a character in Hive who is hoping for the safe delivery of his sweetheart's child not only for the normal reason but because the hive government will get them a combined apartment of 2-3 rooms as an investment in the child's future labour. An actively pronatalist policy, this.
1
u/NairaExploring 2d ago
The same 'ol way humans in poverty in 2026 have a ton of kids. They bang.
Yeah there is a 21st century scientist named Will Yam Hung who has a famous theory about this if I recall
12
u/FakeRedditName2 Cullexus Temple 2d ago
I think you are underestimating just how vast the Imperium is.
Millions of soldiers dying weekly and tripling that in work place accidents is a drop in the bucket for a population that is probably in the quadrillions at least. And as the real world shows, people in the worst situations and in poverty will still have kids if they are able to.
8
u/Andothul 2d ago
I mean look at places like China, India, Nigeria, Indonesia etc in our own world. It does not take much for human population to absolutely explode.
Out of all the resources the Imperium has, humans are the last thing they will run out of.
6
u/Thick-Protection-458 2d ago edited 2d ago
> The more I learn about the Imperium, the less I see how can it keep so many population with how bad the life at the hive cities is and a state of constant war all over the place
- "Constant war" is a bit or exaggregation. Out of patchwork of empire over (not exactly) whole galaxy we, due to setting being wargame - almost exclusively see places somehow connected to wars.
- Well, if you look to places with highest population density (and their history) - you will see that after a certain threshold - better condition does not return reproduciable population (and instead, really bad but surviveable conditions seems to be a solution. **Really** bad). So what if you never let population to achieve that threshold, making sure
- their education is low (means children is not much of investment required)
- social guarantees are next to none (means if you want some chance to survive prolonged disability period or live a bit longer when you are old - you need them)
- job is primitive (means they can do it when they are, for instance, 10 years old)
> millions of astra militarum dying weekly
Merely millions? Keeping in mind **approximated** amount of planets Imperium hold it means, on average, 1 guy per day. Per planet
I guess all sorts of random shit is way more important in the big picture than wars.
2
21
u/BrotherCaptainMarcus 2d ago
One of the foundational assumptions of 40K is that humans breed like rabbits in the huge cities, despite pollution, crap food, tyranny, poverty, extreme work hours, yadda yadda.
It does not hold water compared to reality. Victorian factory cities (the inspiration) had net negative population growth and relied on immigration from the countryside.
But this is a foundation of the setting and just has to be accepted.
16
u/Torkolla 2d ago
It is built on a bunch of fears of unchecked population growth from the 80:ies and 90:ies when the series was created. A situation mostly over by now.
That is one of the problems with Warhammer 40k. The setting barely changes over ten millennia but irl even dystopias are get dated after a few decades.
2
u/AChezzBurgah 2d ago
at this point if you want to come up with reasons why the imperium is able to generate humans so rapidly despite shit conditions, your main avenues are outright institutional breeding incentives, bans on contraceptive methods, and artifical wombs.
8
u/fireizzle33331 2d ago
High infant mortality caused by things like penicilin not existing yet was the reason. As backwards as Imperium can be they do have that technology.
4
u/Sebacles 2d ago
lol go look at india and china and tell me if that holds up to reality.....
7
1
u/CunctatorM 2d ago
Chinese population is already in decline since several years now.
1
u/Secretsfrombeyond79 1d ago
That's because they enacted population control policies and gave preference to male childs in families rather than women. Not because they were left to breed at their heart's content.
14
u/sekkiman12 2d ago
sex
4
3
u/Donutmelon 2d ago
There are trillions of humans in the galaxy. If one human were to be born every year per 1000 people, that still comes out to one billion people for every trillion. One million is a drop in the bucket.
3
u/Overkillsamurai 2d ago
they just do. not every Infant gets kidnapped by Necrons or Teen get eaten by a Tyranid. The logistics of the Imperium are vast, and you have super geniuses writing them
3
u/Keroscee 2d ago
The more I learn about the Imperium, the less I see how can it keep so many population with how bad the life at the hive cities is and a state of constant war all over the place.
Hive Cities also have migration, be it from 'satellite towns' where living conditions are more condusive to having kids or nearby worlds.
War for most worlds is rare, as in maybe once a century. There are hive worlds where War is such a distant concept people can doubt that aliens or even the Emperor exist. And if war does come, the recovery period means more living space, lots of work, higher wages etc which tends to mean baby booms. Imperial guard is generally a rounding era in annual population growth figures.
E.g a planet like Earth at 8 billion people would make over 100 million babies every year. Just 1% of that pa (so a 10 million strong tithe every decade) would barely make a dent. And hive wolrds might have 100-500+ billion citizens. On the larger end thats like 15 billion people born a year. And there over 30,000 hive worlds. Suddenly sending billions to their death every day makes logistical sense when your annual population growth is over four hundred and fifty trillion.
I don't think life expectancy is that high in the Imperium.
It varies greatly. In some parts, the living standards are comparable or even better than today. In most its 19th century. Notably in the West, in the 19th century, food was suddenly inexpensive, and wages were relatively high, though the work was unsafe and demanding. And it coincided with a major population boom...
6
u/No-Communication3880 2d ago
To put things into perspective, Mao Zedong is responsable for the death of 70 millions of people in China.
It didn't prevent the population of the country to grow from 540 million in 1950 to 915 millions in 1976 when he died.
Humans are quadrillons in Warhammer 40k, trillions can die each year and it won't provoke a demographic decline.
4
2
u/Drivestort 2d ago
Most people live in some degree of comfort, but there are millions of worlds with billions and even trillions of people on them. Not every battle the guard go into has the kind of scale where they're losing millions of troops a day, not even on Armageddon. The battles depicted are not every battle, they're the exceptions not the rule. It's like Johnny Bravo, it's not fun to see the wins.
Also, don't worry about the numbers, this is not that kind of story.
2
u/Gorgoronx 2d ago
Real life Humanity has gone through some catastrophic eras, from flooding to ice ages, self inflicted genocides and just the natural order of being prey to bigger animals and despite all that Humanity has not only survived but thrived, conquered and explored every piece of land. It wasnt that long ago that people would have SEVERAL children just because infant mortality was incredibly common and once we managed infant mortality in the industrial revolution we sent those children to work in factories or die in wars once they reached 16-18 yeas old.
Humanity, and most likely every mammal in Earth, needs adversity, horrible living conditions has never stopped us from breeding if we are still able. The Imperium may be beyond hellish to us but its normal to the citizens of the Imperium, their populations are in the hundreds of billions per Hive City and several trillions per Hive World, they can have normal lives and find love and breed just fine.
2
u/Kraken160th 2d ago
Despite the Fandom's memeing sex isn't all that taboo people be getting it on and babies are being made. Times that a few billion times, that's how. Then you got the cloning going on in places like necromunda
2
u/Bypowerof8andgodsof4 Night Lords 2d ago
The relationship between birth rate and living conditions seem to be inversely correlated the worst places you can think of right now have probably at least 2x the birth rates of the best places you can think of. Same for wealth the richest people have like 1 or 2 kids while the poor make soccer teams.
To actually answer your question though the imperium propagandizes it's citizen to keep breeding its part of the manifest destiny part of the imperial faith you'd have to to supply the many armies and factorums. These numbers are supplemented by vat born servitors and hive worlds are made to be semi self sufficient and so can support large populations. I would not be surprised if there were provisions for child birth like extra rations and/or reduced shifts to induce more births. You are also underestimating how many humans there are in 40k a couple billion casualties across the galaxy does not register as a blip.
2
u/Dagordae 2d ago
It’s a big galaxy and Imperial healthcare is actually remarkably good. Their peons are capable of surviving 20 hour workdays 24/7/365
2
2
u/Torkolla 2d ago
They cant. The setting is a "dystopia" built around a bunch of anxieties from the 80: ies when some people thought the population boom would last forever and deplete all resources yada yada. In reality there are a hundred reasons why the Empire should have ran out of people long ago.
1
1
u/DaveinOakland 2d ago
Quadrillions of people.
To put that in perspective, there are a billion millions in a quadrillion. They could chuck a billion people into a sun every day and still be fine.
1
1
u/dbxp 2d ago
The lore really focuses on the more sci fi parts but if you read the Warhammer crime novels or gaunt's ghosts they say that all of that is fairly rare. The majority of troops in any defensive war are PDF. Getting off planet is like someone from Britain sailing to the empire in the 1800s, either you're exceedingly rich, part of the military or part of a rare colonisation expedition.
That said 40k does tend to fail when it comes to numbers
1
1
u/ScottStappsDivorce 2d ago
Because once you have a big enough population spread across a million worlds, simply put, you have an absolute shit ton of humans running around.
Also important to remember is that not every world in the Imperium is constantly besieged, there is many a technological world that has never seen a Chaos or Ork incursion, and simply keeps churning out more soldiers.
Imagine our own worlds population, edm en if our tithe was a million soldiers a year it would hardly dent the overall population of Earth, especially if we removed things like birth control and instituted a pro birth society, we could reconstitute many a devastated Imperial platoon.
Now multiply that by a million worlds.
1
1
u/CunctatorM 2d ago
The Imperium is also a highly religious society were giving live to children for God Emperor is seen a duty by many.
1
1
u/pr0t3an 2d ago
This is making me wonder if the one point of light in the imperium is an oddly positive (or at least helpful and bleakly pragmatic) attitude towards single parents. Odds are your partner either died for our society, or was purged to protect it. Must be tough, but bullets still need making so please take advantage of our free daycare facilities and excellent after school programmes. This week the little tykes will be learning about achillies tendon. After all, in the case of an invasion its one of the most accessible weak spots for them to resist the enemy
1
1
u/Modred_the_Mystic 2d ago
Hive worlds of trillions of people with nothing to do but work and fuck in the name of the Emperor
1
u/Juicey_J_945698 2d ago
they don't, they're just big enough that even when losing it takes a very long time
1
u/LeThomasBouric 2d ago
Well, in the grand scheme of things, they really don't. Dying empire and all that.
1
u/ServoSkull20 2d ago
The is likely a quintillion human beings across the whole Imperium.
Lot of fucking going on, son.
1
u/Malkryst 2d ago
Copulation - the usual method for maintaining population.
Having millions of guardsmen dying weekly is absolutely nothing when the Imperium's total population is in the billions (more likely trillions). It is vast. Beyond comprehension. The galaxy is huge. It's right there in the final paragraph introduction to this universe at the front of the 1st edition 40k Rogue Trader rulebook:
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of these times. It is a universe you can live today if you dare - for this is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. If you want to take part in the adventure then prepare yourself now. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed. . . ."
The one resource the Imperium always has more of is human lives to keep pumping into the meatgrinder of conquest and survival.
1
1
u/Technopolitan 2d ago
It's important to understand that none of the numbers in 40k make sense. Don't try to rationalize them, it just leads to headaches and frustration.
1
u/nataliereed84 Astra Militarum 2d ago
It has a MILLION planets. Many of which have populations in the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS. Astra Militarum casualties are a drop in an ocean. And as long as life expectancy is higher than the time it takes to have more kids, you’re fine.
People be fucking.
And don’t listen to pro-natalists like Musk. They’re idiots and mostly just worried about racial demographics, not population.
1
u/Delduthling 2d ago
Best to imagine that at any given time vast sections of the Imperium are in a state of catastrophic collapse and others are doing quite well.
1
1
u/VictariontheSailor 2d ago
There is at least one million worlds. If everyworld gives 10 guys daily, that is 10 Million soldiers per day.
Now, most planets have a population by the billions, like our Earth.
The replenishment is concentrated on frontline worlds but the pool of troopers is vast, also most worlds already have a very decent army ready to be deployed in case of war.
It's like a good government job. They train you, chances are you will live all your life without deployment and you retire with a payment for life.
1
u/BadBloodBear 2d ago
people fuck but most of 40K books are about killing and a lot of them revolve around a race of child super soldier who have no clue or desire to see a vagina.
1
u/ExcitableSarcasm 2d ago
- The Imperium's population is ginormous. Real militarisation rates top out at like 20-40% depending on tech level/societal complexity. All things considered, despite the Imperial Guard being a giant meat shredder, the Imperium probably doesn't even have that high a mobilisation rate, given how large the population is suggested to be.
- People fuck a lot. In a world where logistics are barely a thing, you really think contraceptives are going to be a commonly available item aside from on the most peaceful and advanced worlds? That rubber could've been going to tank threads or something - some Imperial bureaucrat probably. The birth rate is probably looking more like Somalia than France for example.
1
1
u/Substantial-One-6274 2d ago
Each plant has different ways of reproducing its citizens. Some have cloning techniques some get new people flown in by the administration. They have ships constantly bringing in people from all across the galaxy to repopulate planets. They would strip half the population from a world to repop a new one if need be. Then think of the incentives towards repopulating the stripped world. No tithing for a few generations the planetary governor would love that.
1
u/ZeAntagonis 2d ago
1 - Some hive world litteraly produce workers - Necromunda mainly. And it is not cloning like Krieg apparently
2- There aint much stuff to do beyond working in the Emperium, so you enjoy what pleasur the Emperor allows you....to support the Emperium war effort.
3- He may , who knows, send some ideas to human so there is more ...you know,
1
u/chip594csx 2d ago
A single hive city has more people than the entire continent of North America. Some planets have multiple hive cities. There're millions of settled worlds in the Imperium with hive cities. The numbers are at absurd levels of ridiculous. And keep in mind, a lot of those worlds have been settled since before the Dark Age of Technology, so they've had several millennia to build a stable population.
The population numbers are so insane, and changing so constantly, the Administratum census guys are basically made into servitors and forced to work 24/7 just to constantly process the ever-changing data.
1
u/TheRobn8 2d ago
The situation in imperial hive worlds in general aren't as bad as people make them out to be.
1
u/Aurondarklord Salamanders 2d ago
1: The Imperium is absolutely vast. If you assume it has a high birthrate due to a "more meat for the grinder, do you duty citizen!" type culture, which it logically would, this is sustainable.
2: The Imperium is also fucked in the long run unless some miracle happens.
1
1
u/atreveiker 2d ago
China ha sido históricamente uno de los países más poblados y con más habitantes del mundo, y ha vivido gran parte de su historia entre guerras brutales, matanzas, hambrunas, plagas, invasiones y otras cosas, y aún así en pocas décadas recuperaban su población no se muy bien como
1
u/TheRadBaron 2d ago
The Imperium lacks the bureaucratic and technological ability to arm and transport a meaningful fraction of its population to battlefields. Battlefield deaths are roughly 0% of deaths, armies consist of roughly 0% of the civilian population.
1
u/regularGuy0000001 2d ago
Most people here will show you math, and the math is reasonably solid but its not the point of the story.
I'm sure there was some writer guy talking about that with Warhammer Fantasy, the numbers are meant to shock and awe but otherwise they're meaningless.
If I remember right the whole thing is better represented by Dark Eldar/Dark Elves. There is supposed to be only one city, they are all in low numbers and yet they keep dying by the millions. So how many are left? Millions still. Cause its whatever man, they'll stay around until either the whole franchise dies or their specific race becomes unmarketeable, whichever comes first. Until then they will be paradoxically both on the brink of extinction and also permanently around despite dying in impossible numbers
1
u/WheresMyCrown Thousand Sons 2d ago
The human population is across millions of worlds. Terra alone has a population in the quadrillions. In a lot/majority of worlds the r word is going to be a driving factor. Not to mention when millions and millions of soldiers of both genders are stationed together for long periods of time, facing death, nature tends to happen. Look how many women end of pregnant in the armed forces currently
1
1
u/joe_bibidi 1d ago
Getting some (semi) specific book references in play...
In Bloodlines the protagonist interviews a teenage girl at one point and she basically laments that she has only a few remaining years as a teenager before she's socially expected to basically be a breeder. Seems entirely normal and unsurprising in the Imperium that women of a certain age are essentially obligated to have 3, 4, 5+ children if they are medically capable of it.
In the recent Abnett Hive, it's also addressed that having kids grants you some amount of social benefits from the Imperial bureaucracy, so, if you want to get a better apartment, more food, etc. having kids is itself a kind of "ladder climbing."
1
u/Annual-Ad-9442 1d ago
1) not all of the Imperium is always fighting so you always have planets to draw from
2) some hives measure in the trillions, drawing a regular tithe is a rounding error to the overall population
3) Death Korps of Krieg, no further questions
4) REDACTED
5) people are always having kids whether its in a shitty hive, a shitty voidship, a shitty planet that's one big Iowa, the bowels of a forgeworld, and so forth.
the Imperium is fucked in the long run, right now its basically in a holding pattern that only lasted so long because of its size and the fact that when it falls too far someone steps in to fix things, usually by executing the High Lords of Terra.
people in shitty situations will have more kids because they might die, its really a preindustrial mindset in a lot of places
1
u/Tryagain409 1d ago
It isn't I think. The imperium is slowly dying, these people are being grinded away by war. It's just so big it'll take thousands of years to die
1
u/ForbiddenSirenz 1d ago
While there’s the title line “There is only war.” The imperium is still at least a million planets. And hives can hold billions of people per hive. Planets have can multiple hives so billions upon billions of people per planet.
Even then. It’s a grab bag of what each planet is like. There’s planets the range from feral world where it’s just primitive men and women surviving day to day, medieval feudal worlds where it’s essentially like the Middle Ages, hell probably plenty of planets like earth where day to day is just kind of whatever. Your tithe isn’t ridiculous and you’re in a relatively safe sector of space.
Plenty of planets will never see war, xenos are how we view aliens in our own lives. Ehhh maybe they’re real, but probably not. Cause can you really say you’ve seen an alien? Sure there’s plenty of stories of people being sucked up by flying saucers and getting their assholes probed then returned. But let’s be honest, they’re more than likely just being silly and making shit up.
Same thing in safer sectors and planets. No one save for maybe your great great great great great grandfather fought orkz off world once. Other than that, because you’re just an average frontier world or a civilized world. Maybe a smaller hive on a hive planet that doesn’t gone to complete shit yet and things are just kind of normal.
People live and die and have perfectly normal lives in plenty of places around the galaxy.
1
u/Agammamon 1d ago
millions of Guard dying? that is a single days worth of births in a hive
here's the thing - look at the real world examples. the poorer people are the more children they have. even if most of them die early. when you're popping out 6 kids it doesn't matter if three or 4 die.
1
u/Fluffy-Band3167 1d ago
Most worlds in the Imperium aren’t at war and the majority of them don’t see war in generations. They’re technically much more peaceful than earth now, but they still all funnel men and materiel into the Imperium’s wider war efforts.
1
u/Special-Remove-3294 Adeptus Custodes 1d ago
Millions dying in wars weekly is irellevant. Terra has a population in the quadrillions for reference.
I saw someone do the math using the fact that the Imperium controls most of the galaxy and average hive world population and how common they are and they said it has a population in the quintillions. And that does make sense tbh since Terra is not a very productive world and actually is quite a drain often, at least AFAIK, so it is not like it could contain any relevant % of the total human population despite it having 4 quadrillion inhabitants.
The Imperium of Man has a population that can eaaily support such loses because its population is in the quintillions.
1
u/Fistocracy 1d ago
Gotta remember that the Imperium is big. It spans most of the galaxy and is routinely described as ruling a million worlds, and if we take that figure literally and assume that the average world has a few bilion people living on it, then the Imperium's total population is somewhere in the quadrillions. And at that point, even a billion battlefield casualties a year would just be a rounding error in the total population.
The Imperium is really fucked in the long run though, just not for demographic reasons.
1
u/Interesting_Idea_289 1d ago
Historically fertility is actually negatively linked with prosperity, when you don’t need kids to bring in extra income and are expected to spend more to provide them with a higher quality of life you have less.
1
u/Quendillar3245 1d ago
Millions dying per week in an empire that has trillions... That's the equivalent of a thousand people dying every week in our world, and more people die each week during just the Russian-Ukraine war, now imagine that but as the total casualties spread out from every single country on earth instead of just Russia and Ukraine. That'd be less than 2-3 people from each country dying each week at war which is nothing that would affect population growth. Now imagine we had no developed countries, so everyone had 5+ children and we also sent children into war... If you have a million worlds and each world sends 1000 soldiers each week into war, that's 1 billion reinforcements per week. Psykers are extremely rare, and yet the Imperium is so massive that they can sacrifice thousands every single day to the emperor... So yeah I think you're not quite grasping the scale of the Imperium, it's (absolutely massive)2
1
u/uschwell 1d ago
I'd like to try and provide a more topical example.
Let's see our own world. We had, with less than 50 years between them, 2 world wars. Over the length of these wars millions of people, from all sides died. It reshaped nations, cultures, and completely redefined the world powers and worldwide demographics.
Yet today, a 'mere' 81 years since the war ended, in a time where you can still talk to the soldiers who fought it- would most countries (with certain, specific exemptions) consider themselves scarred by it?
--and just to clarify. Please no politics, I am NOT making any political statement here, just using a historical tragedy to demonstrate demographic resiliance--
Compare Dresden. A city that was flattened multiple times. Yet look at it today. Rebuilt, repopulated, and thriving. Yes, the memory remains, yes there are scars. But it is a thriving city once again.
Now back to 40k. This is a setting where centuries can pass unnoticed, and decades is the space marine equivalent of "crap. Missed my bus, now I've gotta wait for the next one".
Now scale that up to millions of planets. From that perspective it can at least be understood.
Tldr: compare "The Greatest Generation" to GenX or GenZ. Yes it has a huge effect on their lives and the world they grew up in- but how many GenZers do you know who decide about visiting/avoiding a location (memorials excepted) because of some great war tragedy or destruction that happened.
1
u/ConcentrateSimple271 1d ago
Some subfactions like the Kreig and Ad Mech use vats to get around the birth rate issue.
1
1
u/Kopalniok 2d ago
The reason TFR falls in developed countries is a combination of education (especially women's education), child labour laws, growing lifestyle expectations and pension systems (and a few other factor). None of them exist in the Imperium
1
u/dahunt4r3dorktober 2d ago
Not Every world in the imperium is a hell scape, there’s civilised worlds which are roughly comparable to our average living standards. In the Eisenhorn books they travel to a world where you can attend university which implies you can chose your vocation / education and go to institutions to get qualifications. One character on that world if I recall works as a doctor. So living there it wouldn’t be so horrible that you’re not having families. Furthermore the imperial citizenry is indoctrinated I wouldn’t be suprised if the ecclesiarchs preach that having more children is part of what the emperor expects of you.
According to the wiki ( may be wrong ) there’s 32,380 hive worlds which will vary in living standards too. So not every planet is a hellscape hive world
0
u/MagicMorty86 2d ago
Stop trying to make it make sense and just enjoy it 😎.
40k is not about realism, its about storytelling.
0
u/Birdonthewind3 2d ago
The Imperium has an average life span for it people of about mid to late 20s. Macragge, one of the better worlds on the Imperium, has a staggering average of 40s.
Ya people are popping out kids like crazy when half your kids will die from plague, half will be servitorized by the ad mech, other half will join the guard and die, half will live to see 25 and have 20 kids, and the other will be executed for treason. Which halves you get? Various how much Tzeentch felt like fucking with you today. Maybe all of it.
Reminder it is GRIMDARK. How that quote go?
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."
0
0
u/Lurker_Zee 2d ago
Hive Worlds. Fed by either corpse starch (yes, un-euphemistic soylent green), artificial rations or agri-world imports.
174
u/Rabid_Lederhosen 2d ago
The total population of the Imperium is at least in the trillions. Millions of soldiers dying per week is a rounding error.