Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25222488-20160902003110/@comment-24037808-20160902155438

Hard topic.

Maybe Imperium is still alive just for mere luck, considering the enemies they have to face and their strenghts.

I have grouwn the idea that Chaos Gods know the end of the Imperium is marked since the HH, it's just a matter of time. New enemies just make incredible the Imperium is still breathing...only logic reason outside the lore is just  to keep the WH40k francise alive.

If we look at the odds "strategically" Imeprium lost at the start. We are the only race/faction bound to the chain: conquer/consolidate/preserve.

Military speaking, this is a coffin.

Orks? They wage war, they don't need to mantain new territories at all. Nids? Total extermination is in their dna. They feed and prosper by attacking and deprive of existance every organic form...perfect machines of war. Necrons? Their final goal is the complete destruction of everything...very convenient when in war. Chaos? When in your territory you can bend the laws of physics nothing is really "needed" to be preserved or consolidated.

Then we can look at manpower.

Orcs? all they need is spores ejected by a single being. All they need, and they all are natural born killers: no training needed, no advanced tech..Old ones did a nice job, nothing to say about it. Nids? we just say they are perrfect, right? Add the chance to learn and evolve from enemies they encounter...just to make it more perfect than just perfect. Necrons? How many tombs?How many soldier each tomb? Almost unkillable, able to recover from almost everything. Chaos? Anything bad you ever think or feel become a weapon of chaos. If deamons and CSM are not enough, the most useless, tiny, small and short farmer can become an augmented servant of chaos. Men create, Chaos corrupts.

Then...humans: they constantly need food, shelter, training and equipment to be barely usefull in war vs those foes. All things all your enemies don't need, don't care to care of. Their only spark of hope (Space Marines) were wiped out as a credible force by the HH. Due to Chaos corruption, you cannot trust your elite force to be the same size and strenght as your enemies, because every time they can turn on you. Emperor and Primarchs are all dead, missing, or turned to Chaos, meaning that every Leader or general "above humans" is gone. Equipment and weapons are far from be the one of the past, scarce and hard to produce. Food and general goods are always target of all the enemies above, plus Dark Eldars and all the raiders in the Milky Way.

To summarize this, we can say that Imperium is the only one with the things everyone wants, and we are the weaker by far. And we are forced in a defensive stance, considering that everything our enemies need or want is obtained by moving forward and destroy.

In the end, i think Imperium is still present due to it's own huge domains, how much we colonize of the galaxy. But it sound like you start a journey by car with your fuel tank full, knowing that there are no gas stations left in the world. We are living the story of the Imperium 10 kilometers a time, but sooner of later, the tank will be empty for sure. Unless something incredible happens, as you say.