40K - INDUSTRIALISED BIRTH & YOUR WORTH | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History

[Music] the majority of a hive city's population will never see the sky it's billions of citizens work hennessy across thousands of roles often unseen but essential to the operation of the city many of these citizens are manufacturing workers that dominate the vast mid levels of a hive that could take days or even weeks to cross harsh working conditions and punishments for lackluster efforts will only reward citizens with the prize of an early death but it is the only life they'll ever know most importantly it is the will of the Emperor [Music] so an interesting topic that often arises when people begin to think about the Imperium and life in the 41st millennium is the process of replacing the vast losses continually counted by humanity and other races as well and this will focus today mainly on humanity as the other races are even less well defined but also much simpler when it comes to birth and reproduction but this is not something well documented in general so it's very open to loose interpretation the too long didn't read version is that it's one of those things in actuality in 40k that's not as exciting / harrowing as you might think so first off let's look at the abridged version for non humanoid races which is as follows the Necron well they didn't really die and they're not really born so orcs are basically fighting mushrooms that are grown from spores Eldar are a dying race and so have very minimal birth similarly the Dark Eldar tyranids they're born is necessary from weird egg sacs or live birth or whatever it's just very xenos and then finally of course the stupid tau now there's a joke by the way relax people still don't get my pho hate of the towel and that it's an ongoing joke for me but the tower their lives are comparable peaceful to much of the galaxy we know little of their reproduction they do have mating cycles and we know from Imperial biologists dissection of a female tau that their reproductive organs are described as being similar to humans so it's logical to assume that the Tau actually reproduced not entirely dissimilar to humans and on a comparable timescale orcs and turrets can easily replace their losses by their very nature necron don't really replace themselves they just phase out and then reappear in their stasis chambers they apparently can't do this forever but they're very hard to kill as it is conversely the Eldar are not easily replaced at all so any battle losses for them are actually very very severe and this is why their race is kind of dying out now if the tower are similar to humans in their reproductive scale then they'll be able to recover similarly however the scale of their cities and worlds is nothing compared to the hive worlds of the Imperium so on that basis alone it's not is easy for them theoretically to replenish their losses now you will also notice how I have omitted chaos here and this is because the chaos things let's just say they deserve their own video which will look at soonish after this one but also remembering that a lot of chaos is just stuff from the war the only real chaos entities are cultists which are humanoid and then the space marines and i can say we'll get into that in another video and then we come to humanity and the Imperium of man now as per usual I don't want to mess you around so let's start with the common question that arises almost immediately does the Imperium use some kind of horrific birthing Factory or women who are forced to become something like slave breeders to replenish its losses this is usually where conversations related to this kind of topic go after very few replies the assumption being that given the general level of horror in 40k this is surely an inevitability however the answer generally speaking is no now sit down okay those of you who know lots of detail of the lore sit down because the key words here are generally speaking the Imperium does not commonly have vast berthing factories where women are press-ganged into some kind of battery and life of forced insemination and chemically induced faster reproduction for birthing hive workers and Imperial Guard recruits potentially there are such places that are vaguely alluded to as existing but generally speaking this kind of thing is not an established practice it wouldn't be accurate to say that this is how things are and it's not for any ethical moral reasons but more for the boring reality that it's just not necessary and I'll get into explaining why that is shortly but just to initially stop anyone who's by now probably foaming at the mouth and about to go on a huge rant in the comments industrialized birthing does exist although like I say it's only vaguely described its origins of course occur in the world of Krieg [Music] now the inhabitants of Krieg home to of course the famous death Corps of Krieg keep fairly quiet their use of something referred to as vitae wounds it's not particularly clear what exactly these vitae wounds are some speculate that they enable a process of cloning except this is not noted anywhere and it's not very likely because producing healthy and stable clones seems a very advanced genetic manipulation for a heavily damaged world like Krieg and even if those like Belisarius call are able to achieve such things your lower tier mechanicus are not on that level they're biologists are not at that stage and then that level of understanding it's more likely that they're biologists had to come up with some way to efficiently produce new soldiers and when Krieg after its uprising came back under the rule of the Imperium the fact that they had developed this process was knowingly exploited by the Lords of terror as Krieg was slapped with the maximum tithe levels forcing them to contribute the highest amounts of physical manpower to the Imperium Craig as a world and society already walks on the wrong side of the line when it comes to ethics and so it's attitudes to reproduction and no exception additionally things like eugenic policies are known to be implemented there and their cities churn out new humans just as factories turn out new rifles vitae wombs are the mechanism by which they achieve such things but they are essentially unknown of outside of the ranks of the adapters biologists but even within their own cult they're seen as dangerous and abhorrent by many in the mechanicus and this likely as a result of typically conflicting sub factional beliefs not dissimilar ly to the ecclesia key in the inquisition the true nature of vitae wombs though is not explicitly described to us however the fact that they are described in part as wombs is suggestive that this incorporates a natural combination of DNA to just state an individual but that elements of the process are considerably artificial in nature now your imagination runs wild thinking of what this could be a vitae womb could be anything from a simple cybernetic birthing chamber to actual wombs that are harvested and then somehow incorporated into mechanical devices to enable on going back tree farm birthing on the darker side of things perhaps female servitors essentially lobotomized human-machine honey breeds are used as hosts for newborn Imperial soldiers essentially themselves forming a chamber that can be used until it is broken and organics ready for recycling my own personal view and please take note that this is all entirely my own speculation because so little is written about these vitae wombs is that likely the process is more oviparous and does not require human hosts who are traumatically forced into endless childbirth any necessity would likely be that both male and female genetic material are harvested and available probably in a less than delicate fashion and then used to contribute to the industrialized growth of new citizens and this would have to occur so as to keep the genetic pool of individuals rich enough to prevent things like inbred negative traits occurring the biologists likely further manipulate or screen the DNA for a known mental and physically unwanted material the actual growth and birth process I envisage as being more akin to the way the shark family reproduces like I say more a rigorous whereby individuals are grown by means of an exterior egg sac essentially a floating womb that is outside of a person and it's this that would be constructed from womb like organic material hundreds of individuals thousands strung up like a meat processing factory injected and monitored for abnormality any flaws or weaknesses leading to them being instantly flushed and reprocessed for that organic matter once they reach a state of full growth they are unceremoniously dumped onto a cold metallic floor with drainage to allow amniotic fluids draining away servitors would then drag the shivering newborn humanoid of likely say a late teenage age maybe they arrived already kick-started with some learning and information that's been somehow melded into their brain false memories or some framework like this could be built into them like replicants or maybe they go through some further process of condensed intensive learning i imagine that they're only partially conscious for these first kind of 24 hours of birth and programming and later awaken vast hive dormitories not really understanding how they arrive they're only knowing their purpose and the general order of things indoctrination already teaching them that to question such things is irrelevant and punishable all of this before the general Krieg ideology and distinct lack of concern for physical loss begins to be pounded into their mind on a daily basis still whatever the reality the critical aspect is that this happens on an industrial scale and no matter the process a means of achieving the material vitae wounds certainly sit at the lower to some level of the ethical and moral scale but such things are not something many are greatly troubled by in the 41st millennium and regardless vitae wounds are not even a commonplace reality for the Imperium they're an exception not the standard [Music] so what is the standard means of birth and reproduction in the Imperium how does the Imperium cope with constant wars of attrition and battles that lead to the deaths of human Imperial Guard and navy by the millions well it all comes down to my favorite thing of course context when you have context things tend to generally make more sense and context is something that's sadly lacking far too often both here and in reality without proper context you can largely twist anything to be anything and that's not what we want here we want to know what's possible so the first question regarding reproduction in the Imperium would be something like could it occur naturally and still allow them to replace the losses of many millions as I've said previously such vast numbers can be difficult to visualize you might want to follow that up and ask would people even have enough time to reproduce given the very hard lives of citizens to both of those questions the simple answer is yes most hives where your unwashed masses congregate are not dissimilar to late nineteenth and early twentieth century working class environments a period of heavy industrialization but with poor living conditions and yes they will have some modern mechanical elements here and there as well as possible video screens Vox comms transportation etc but your basic working-class hive citizen is going to be living a life of grinding hard labor and with what little time they have left over they're going to be going and maybe drinking in these small taverns it's going to be little more else to do than that and procreate also I'm not certain the Imperium has a very comprehensive Family Planning and contraception program I'm not sure these kind of social issues are very high on their agenda and I'm joking of course it's almost a certainty that such things are non-existent we also know little about the perception of monogamy in the impairment however given the ecclesia keys reach and its general focus away from hedonistic activities avoiding the dark pleasures of cults like slush it seems a logical assumption that monogamous relationships would be the norm and especially given that if you're working anything like 15 hours a day you're not going to have huge amounts of time to spend socializing and building up a network of casual relationships so whether you wanted to there's certain practical restrictions there then given the fact that the support network for life in general and the individuals within a hive city are nothing more than a speck of dirt on the decaying Hulk of humanity it brings a classic quote immediately to mind you will not be missed this statement sums up just about everything for Humanity in the 41st millennium mothers living in the under hive exist in a daily survival of the fittest mentality that's the level below ordinary human habitation their lives aren't too far away from the lives of ordinary hive citizens and what I'm getting at is that we could easily assume that with little to do mortality rates probably not being very favorable family size and life expectancy all again probably comparable to the early 20th century now I just want to make a brief aside on the issue of quotas for hard labor performed by Imperial citizens on hive rods because I remember many people being skeptical about the length of working days in hive factories for example and the fact of the matter would be that when you're looking at an empire as vast as the Imperium of man such things are not going to be universally consistent they may even vary based on age or gender or who knows the specifics with in hives themselves some worlds may operate on a 10-hour day of shift work others could be as high as eighteen and remember not all worlds operate on a 24-hour clock so even if you have these longer days you may still end up having many hours of time off to recuperate or what if you had such a high population that everybody was working like one day on one day off the permutations are endless and all of this will be dictated locally by planetary governance not the Imperium itself on a widest scale the only thing the Imperium cares about are that the ties of whatever material are demanded are met and that's all how this is achieved does not concern them unless of course an Inquisitor raises some eyebrows within that working day though the time period might not necessarily mean that you're literally clocking in and out it'd be dependent again on the world and its local edicts which may incorporate things like morning worship for the Emperor travelled to and from a fact doram machine prep shift changeover so within those very long days you could be top and tailed by at least several hour of subsidiary tasks and we know that descriptions of most things are always extreme in 40k but this doesn't mean to say that that necessarily is the norm for everyone in the Imperium so I think it's fair to assume that unless you're working within a particularly extreme planetary regime there will be at least some minimal time assigned to work is to allow them a modicum of social time to not have such things makes little sense the life is already hard for an average Imperial citizen especially on a hive rod but they're not penal workers it doesn't mean that they have an easy life of luxury or leisure by any means but they will still have some small crumbs of personal time to just scrape together the basics of human life just enough to prevent most people from losing their minds and also just enough to maintain the work force because at the end of the day the planetary governor's the hive nobles and so on they're interested in making sure that this stuff keeps running so they can enjoy their lives of luxury so driving your workforce into the ground making them go crazy by just working 20-hour days or some insane stuff and they never get a break they want the population to have a natural population increase a change a turnover they want to make sure things stay stable and stay running so again trying to make sure that your citizenry work as hard as they possibly can but at the same time still are able to exist and live as humans is important and what it's all about now with that said let's return to the idea of replenishing losses it should be fairly obvious that for Humanity this is not too big of a problem because if millions of individuals are lost in a battle whilst this is not something anyone wants to see and is appalling we can consider that on a generic hive world of the Imperium a planet will commonly accommodate between five and twenty five cities that's on one planet and that each of those hive cities will contain anywhere between 10 and 100 billion people hives are not a generic size they vary greatly so while the losses of the impairment these massive battles are heavy they are entirely contextually tolerable and in fact even beyond that this sheer abundance of individuals has largely dictated the imperials approach to war the Imperium does not really value the worth individuals not unless you are say anistar tees are princeps or some other high role of major importance like say a navigator an ordinary citizen is worth little to nothing you're not a beautiful unique snowflake you are the same decaying organic flesh matter no one other than maybe those in your immediate circle of fellow humans will ever give you a passing thought for your comfort your desires or your suffering and it's because of its vast resources in terms of manpower that the impairment leans into treating its own citizens more like ammunition than actual soldiers despite the tales of glory and honor when you detach yourself from that and stand back the imperious approach is generally not an elite specop surgical strike approach to war and I would go as far as to say it's even more clumsy than a sledge hammer it is sheer blunt trauma it approaches about as refined as bludgeoning your enemy unconscious and then while they're lying there helpless you pulp their head with a giant rock that's about the level of sophistication and morality humanity operates with in the 41st millennium and yes they have shiny warriors who rattle off poetic quotes about honour and so on but these are figures who are immersed in war they are literally gods of war so if everybody else is really nothing graceful or elegant about the way the Imperium wages war it's more likely that they be seen implementing orders along the lines of charge into the enemy until we clog their machines with our dead tactical plans that are basically just throw enough manpower at them until the enemy run out of ammunition this seems a little harsh there are many masters of war in their starties and the Imperial Guard but it's not harsh by very much not if you were to compare them to say the elder or the Tau and that's not just me speculating either there are many appalling examples of absurd human battles like for example the proletarian crusade too many battles that were just barely won by sheer gritted teeth or just outright dumb things like leaving Guardsmen to die in a desert because they were unable to keep up with their arrogant superhuman as starties leaders they probably didn't see their day going that way when their Lords of war initially arrived so while tactics an experienced player roll for the more elite forces in the Imperium your average human soldier is going to be fighting a ground pounding war of attrition and little else that's because of not despite the vast numbers of humans available now while this complete lack of empathy on the face of it seems reprehensible I put it to you that this is entirely fitting and is in fact reasonable for a human civilization existing which has regressed so far in the darkness of the 41st millennium and let's keep it real things weren't much better during the first and second world wars in the 20th century so I might sit on our high horses tutting and going for shame Imperium how awful everything's so bleak in 40k how incomprehensibly massive their wars are to that I say please the level of apathy for human life displayed by the Imperium is almost if not definitely existing right now in the 21st century the Imperium is just less disingenuous about it so I'd say it's certainly easy for us to see why such low regard would be given for human life in a place as nightmarish as the galaxy of the Imperium not to mention the fact that often there's a little choice to be made it's a case of look what do you want to do here you have two choices throw enough people at the problem or be exterminated still returning to the question could they replace those losses though the answer like I said is basically yes because reproduction aside hive cities contain enough individuals unlikely surplus citizenry that you could temporarily bolster local forces or if the high factors required consistently high levels of manpower they couldn't have spare this and other planets could easily be assigned to provide extra support via Imperial tithes until such time that the losses could be replaced and this is the entire point of how the Imperium operates with its tithe system you draw what you need from the areas who can spare it to those which are suffering then collectively recover your losses so no weird breeder birthing factories are needed it's just about moving numbers around it's not boring hives are one of the primary sources for human Imperial forces that then go on to suffer these massive casualties because they usually filled them in the first place more developed worlds that are comparable in living quality to earth now are going to still have large populations but it's debatable if these would be as var as hive planets because hives have such a very high concentration of citizens within a hive general mortality for the young and old is going to be fairly poor infants will be susceptible to unsanitary conditions and general poor habitation this will be again variable dependent on the leadership of the hive and the planet but it's never going to be five star accommodation or likely even two star citizens not necessarily going to be living well into old age when they are working so hard and existing in less than ideal living conditions although of course some well so considering these living standards we can explore how they affect people's ability to both procreate unrelated mortality rate the majority of hive world citizens will be living we could loosely imagine to be an early industrialized standard of living it's reasonable to consider the life expectancy and general mortality are comparable to this period of the early 1900s and we can see how the data from that time can inform our speculation about the realities of population change in the Imperium and if it can sustain its losses so to do this we'll use the UK because conditions during the turn of the century from around 1900 to 1910 for working-class citizens were not fantastic like Imperial citizens they would have shared along working days and weeks which included some time for religious worship and then the rest of their time would have been spent very closely with family and local friends so first let's look at the fertility rate and what this refers to is the average number of children born to woman over her lifetime now in the UK from 1900 to 1910 this dropped from a 3.5 to about 3 so many families were having at least 3 children despite very low incomes for each family and extremely hardworking lives now they may have had more children but again maybe some of them died but on average overall it's about 3 despite this in other factors like more common spread of diseases than in the modern age generally poor health conditions the natural population increase for the country we're still around 450,000 people each year life expectancy for this period on average was between 45 and 53 years old this can be attributed again to the hard working lives of your average citizen lack of centralized health care typically harder living conditions and these figures are from what I've looked at reasonably comparable to other Western countries during the period of time something also to consider is that when you don't have an aging population this doesn't create certain burdens on other parts of societal infrastructure so simply put when people are dying at 45 to 55 and around long enough to develop conditions that require years and years of high end medical care they also don't burden individual families having to look after them for long periods of time within a hive city this population turnover would probably be seen as being advantageous as it would mean you're keeping your workers functioning in the period of peak strength for their lives but then not having to deal with the problems that come from having a large percentage of the population not able to do the work but still being a part of society again try not to read into this too heavily we all get old after all I'm just saying that from the perspective of some rich hive nobles or governors who are basically an aristocracy you're not going to be carrying in the slightest what's happening to the filthy plebs down below you would care about productivity and life expectancy not being too high it's probably helpful for the general order of things especially when you don't care at all about the wealth of the people below you so given all this let's lastly take a look at some more numbers that will help us consider how human civilization performs in terms of recovery in an industrialized world after a major conflict has occurred causing millions of deaths now just say that I pulled all this data from Wikipedia keeping in mind that this isn't some scientific study okay well this data is estimated and even population counts are not accurate luckily I'm not publishing an academic journal here we're making some speculative thoughts about a fictional future reality also I suck at numbers so whatever the specifics the general point is still good regardless so what we're looking at is of course World War two it's very much the most obvious example of a war that caused catastrophic loss of life measured in the millions across multiple regions around the world we're looking at the rough populations before and after to give us an idea of how well Humanity can weather and recover from severe losses losses that are worryingly comparable to those suffered by the Imperium in the 41st millennium ER has to be said so I'm using 1939 as an initial mark a date and starting with the country which had the highest population at the time which was China estimated around this time to have roughly a population of some 510 million people and during World War two it suffered military deaths of between 3 to 3.7 million however its total deaths as a result of other factors like famine and military operation are estimated to be between 15 and 20 million people and bear in mind that's over the entire period of the Second World War probably extending up to the late 1940s the Soviet Union or Russia is a difficult one because of its adjusting borders throughout the later part of the 20th century so I didn't use the World War 2 page for this reference I used the Russian demographics which showed it is having a 1940 population of some 110 million people it suffered military losses of between 8 and 11 million and a total loss of life considering your other factors between 20 and 27 million people the UK had a population of 48 million and suffered military losses of 383 thousand including civilian losses and contributing factors came up to around 450,000 the US had a population of roughly 131 million they suffered military losses of 400,000 and their total deaths including civilians was 419 thousand and Germany had around 69 million people military losses are between 4 to 5 million their total loss of life was near 7 million obviously these losses were just appalling and far beyond what we can easily imagine in any real terms but despite many of these countries suffering such high and tragic losses of life as well as severe damage to infrastructure and the obvious problems economically in recovering out of a brutal war all countries recovery in terms of population post-world War two is actually surprising some fared better in terms of population growth because other factors play a role in birth and death rate but on the whole all were positive year-on-year so in the same order looking at these countries 25 years after the significant losses that resulted from world war ii by 1975 china had nearly doubled its population to some 900 million and five years later it did and topped 1 billion citizens Russia again understanding the complex changes in territory and other factors despite those appalling losses had recovered from what we could have estimated would be around a hundred million people after losses up to 135 million people by 1975 the UK had increased after its losses to something like 55 million the US had risen from around 130 million to some 210 million and Germany had also increased to 78 million now as I said the accuracy of the numbers here not going to be exact they're obviously a multitude of very specific additional factors influencing each country coming out of this major conflict but for our purposes if you can put a pin in all of that and consider that despite whatever regional and global issues each country was going through they all managed to increase their populations significantly within a space of just 25 years so given that understanding we can see that even given some very dire circumstances humanity is able to recover from quite severe losses and in a very short space of time now of course as a discussion to be had about the age of people in that society and whether you and have enough of the right aged people to then fill roles like going into military service and so on but again you know generally speaking if your population is moving in the right direction you're going to have a fairly steady flow of people that are going to be able to take on that role especially if you're only having to replace a few million people and overall you're making increases year-on-year of 10 million 20 million people and so on which if you look at that data for say somewhere like China and then we were to scale up to a hive city size you can see just how many people hive cities would be able to turn out and consider that typical engagements for the imperium human fighters may not even take place on hive planets and if they do an imperial victory is one it could even be centuries before another conflict occurs even if something did occur sooner humanity would easily be able to field from one hive world enough new fighters to generally defend itself for example the period between the first and second Armageddon wars was around 450 years more than enough time to replenish the millions of fighters lost in defending it the first time around now it wasn't a great result but the general principle is they can easily recover most losses that are incurred and it is a bit of a generalization and generalizations are bad but I would say that if the Imperium despite suffering massive losses is able to usually then defend the world except in very extreme circumstances it would usually have enough of a period of grace to then recover losses if it were to be crushed later this might just be that the opposing force had significantly stronger power or just massive numbers or you know they cut off reinforcements etc but the list of potential reasons just goes on and on but largely speaking if an imperial world is able to defend itself it should be able to replenish and recover from that engagement so when it comes to life in the Imperium it's not all a horror show some things do bear a resemblance to human existence as we know it albeit still a grinding and physically ruining one and there are always going to be weird and extreme circumstances events processes experimentations you know joining things like penal colonies and servitor conversion they're not going to be high on people's to-do lists but for your average pleb work hard pray right have some offspring and you've served the Imperium well enough I'll be looking in more details at hive cities soon is this needs to be a precursor to another project but suffice to say the Imperium does not require horrific breeder factories because it's so vast it is sustained by the complex scale of its trade and ties networks the Imperium of mankind is fragile as it is often described is surprisingly resilient it can take blows and lose millions even billions of fighters and citizens but still replenish its ranks from the trillions of humans across thousands upon thousands of worlds in the galaxy this isn't to say that by any means the network transfer materials is anything that you would describe as being stable human error greed accidental catastrophes and just the oddities of warp travel can and regularly do undermine the effectiveness of supporting trade and material transfer not to mention the grinding agony of Imperial bureaucracy it's often a miracle if a world is saved from obliteration worlds may suffer from lack of military support or perhaps say a requisition is filed incorrectly that will then be lost in one of the vast libraries or administration centers of the Imperium which are like infinite labyrinths entire worlds may starve and descend into barbaric civil war simply because a piece of paper got put into the wrong entry something very important to understand about the Imperium is that it is literally held together by its universal currency and that's not mineral wealth it's not thrown guilt the true currency of the Imperium is human lives [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Luetin09

Views: 730,900

Keywords: Gaming, Discuss, Channel, Future, 40K, Warhammer 40K, Imperium, Humanity, Mankind, Doom, Fall, Space Marines, Heretic, Heresy, The Emperor of Man, Lore, History, Guide, Warhammer 40000, Warp, Immaterium, Rift, War, Slaughter, Horror, Nightmare, Tabletop, Inquisition, Birth, Krieg, Vitae Wombs

Id: oCt4PNcfb7c

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

Good reference to the first and second world wars. WWI saw charge after charge of opposing lines into machine gun and artillery fire all to just advance, retreat, advance, retreat, etc. During D-Day, the main strategy was blunt force and the Allies believed that given the choice the men in the boats had, either death by gunfire/drowning in the ocean or trying to advance on the beach with your brothers in hopes you take the high ground and live to see the end, the men chose to fight on which was one reason we won the battle. The men figured it was better to die trying to take the beach than die cowering in a ditch.