Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-8881468-20150204091114/@comment-6078851-20150213182914

i don't think gw will let emps die outright as they have an issue with making significant changes to the universe of 40k. if he returns to his own pre-heresy body then that'll just be gw recycleing old story (though possible it's very unlikely), but if he ends up as a warp entity then that could shake things up (which has a higher likelyhood as referenced by the starchild theory), but personally i think the best way the story could advance is if they let him die - despite how much of his essence is bound to the warp he is still a corporeal and mortal being (maybe not mortal as we think of mortality but he is still mortal) and i believe that when his physical body dies then so too should his warp presence.

emps' death doesn't mean the death of humanity. remember that there was a massive galactic empire without emps' leadership or astronomican. emps came to prominence around 30,000 but his crusade was reclaiming the worlds of the last empire which were cut off from each other via the warp storms during and succeeding slaanesh's birth. those storms lasted about 5,000 years, i think, so i think it's safe to assume that the previous empire was well established by around 20,000.a.d. obviously emps was around then but he was still firmly behind the scenes, so that empire was achieved by humans and not by emps-led-astartes. and i may be wrong here but wasn't the previous human empire actually larger than the imperium of man? i seem to recall that the imperium hasn't reclaimed all the worlds of that empire.

if emps were to die completely then there would be many, and immediate, troubles for humanity and the imperium of man would be boned, but the human race would, most likely, survive and have already proved that they don't need emps, or the astronomican, to sustain a sizable empire. i don't see the imperium of man as being central to 40k, or even needed to continue the story of 40k. a possibility of emps' death saving humankind could be by making them take responsibility for their own fate again intead of relying on the litany of 'the emperor protects'.

as for religion i'd say i'm about 80% athiest and 20% agnostic.