40 Facts and Lore about Civilian Life in the Imperium Warhammer 40K 

A very common thought for a hive citizen. Forced conscription may be the norm but with volunteers from the lower hive levels alone the gard would still count in the billions.

John Howard same

Weeeeell maybe living as rightless livestock for the Imperium sucks but do you know what else sucks? Being disintegrated by painfull sci-fi weapons, being sacraficed to some primordial horror-god, being shot to pieces by your traiterous best friend, being crippled for the rest of your short life by some alien acid, being abducted to some big, creepy city in the Web-Way and there being tortured for amusement, being torn apart by the demons your "comrade" psyker unleashed acccidentally, being tossed out to space as your transport ship gets attacked, having to shoot the young recruit your responsibe for because he showed three minutes late to your officer...do you wish me to continue? Seriously i hardly can imagine a life worse than that of a guardsman.

Those seem like special circumstances compared to the much more common deaths like being shot, dying in an explosion, warp storms etc. Plus those are still quicker deaths than slowly rotting away, toiling in some munitorum factory. At least as a Guardsman there's a sense of adventure, a shot at glory, a chance of freedom. You can climb the ranks, gain respect and become more than a simple cog in the machine. And any loyal imperial citizen will gladly die for our glorious god Emprah! *Smiles at camera* Enlist now kids! :D

Either that or sneak your way onto the closest Rogue Trader that happens to make port.

Brandon Aughtman let's wait 40k years to see what happens.

SkiniNinja Uhh...good point. How about we just make sure that Judge Dredd does not happen for the next 100 years. First Mega Blocks and then Hive Cities.

Well, for most people, living in warhammer 40k would be like living in a mix of medieval cities and early industrial revolution-type circumstances. Tiny rooms where whole family have to live, no freetime, horrible work conditions that kill you early... humanity already got that bad. The imperium has an enormous scale so that instead of cityblocks, its whole planets in these conditions, but still. it is not as far fetched from reality like it might seem.

Yah know. there is an actual reason that the Administratum actually encourages that kind of living and the attitudes it brings. They actually purposely do it to keep the human mind complacent, beaten down. because large numbers of people with feelings of happiness, euphoria, feeling like they can make it and have pride, all promote some of the more insidious and hard to counter Chaos gods. The preference would be a human population without hope, without pride, and without ambition. A neutral emotional slate that didn't give the Chaos gods any power Unfortunately, as we know, it really only helps Khorne and Nurgle, mostly, and Slaanesh in the higher castes. Pretty much stomps on Tzeentch though, most of the time. But, trying to reach that ultimate goal of placid easy going mindless humans is the point of it all.

Brandon Aughtman for most not in a hive city life's okay, a colony world or agro world can be very much like our own current world

Conquistadoge necromunda

Necromunda:underhive wars is a new videogame

Aye , but had the imperium still had the emperor to follow life would be massively better.

That sounds like Chicago

That would make a kick-ass IP all by itself, the 40k brand would just bring the fans on board and morale it more money. :D

Daniel rogers Or has the spikiest and edgiest clothing ever.

lol

Name Surname Its probably in real terms one of the best things about life in 40k everyone can look awesome and it not be weird

Daniel rogers I would love to dress up as an 80's looking cyborg with the wackiest clothes possible.

wouldn't it be cyberpunk?

and later gaurdsmen :D

Zerg King and potential heretics

Excuse me the emprah has no slaves only workers who don't get paid don't stop working and get killed for fun so my point is valid due to a sister of battle bolter

*Horst wessel begins to play.*

I don't actually understand why bolters are supposed to be so lethal? They're rocket powered, sure, but they're supposed to be penetrators (rather than explosive), aren't they? The wiki doesn't imply that the ejection mass allows them to move faster than the already supersonic speed of say... a rifle bullet (which is typically well above Mach 2, 700-950 meters per second, typically IRL).

billyboyjennings I'm pretty sure hive worlds only have trillions not quadrillion's but I could be wrong

At best, a single hiveworld has maybe 100 billion to 1 trillion people. There is no way in hell that a single hiveworld would contain several quadrillion, unless it was planetwide like that of Terra's

+RedMatter ... "Unless it was planetwide" it's called a hive WORLD, dude. It's not a hive city. The entire planet is a layercake city.

Mistwingz I thought the term implied that the planet even held hives, rather than that the world was a single hive

I'm talking about the total populations of all the Hive worlds in the Imperium put together, not just one Hive world. According to the official lore, there are roughly 32,380 Hive worlds. The average Hive world has a population of 100 billion to 500 billion. Adding that up equals several quadrillion citizens. Over 3 quadrillion to be precise. Now, include all the populations of the other 967,620+ Imperial planets (civilized worlds, Forge worlds, etc) plus all the people living on space stations and starships and you got a shit ton of people.

Xenovista knowing the inquisition, they'll actually find a way to carry that punishment out.

Servitors!

WH40K started out as a satire of fascism and a parody of dark sci-fi/fantasy :D

GameOfThomas And now WH is a global industry, & id like to see a well crafted cinema movie of the WH 4K epics w/ a little bit more of the ideological bent more so than the vid game violence every nano sec of the movie, but when violence is needed in its truest form w/ out the soft disney land bent that'll literally ruin the WH space opera UC.& have a couple of buds when watchin also.👽👍🍻🌿🌿🍻

When you live in a society where the police come up and arrest you and say how dare you try to commit suicide their your corps will damage the the machinery below their, also preventing us from using said corps as a servitor is a sin.

But those planets hold most of the populace of the Imperium.

Earthworm Jim *only*

Dude the numbers of Warhammer are so dense it’s hard to conceptualize. Like the math of how many hive cities are on each of the 33k planets and a billion or more people in each city is so staggering

@@jordanlewis4983 Not to mention that there are 10-100 billion people PER hive world. If we're going on the MINIMUM of 10 billion, the population would be 330,000,000,000,000 JUST for those hive worlds.

@@KosherPorky And add Terra with minimum trillion population

***** Just as in real life, yes.

Blue nah, if it wasn't for the pretty hard rule of the imperium then humanity would collapse and be most likely destroyed by chaos and stuff like tyranids

James Stewart I believe that we may fear the government and tyranids equally.

Blue on one side you have an organization that is pretty distant for the most part and you'll only have trouble with if our planet is involved in something while on the other you have bugs that eat literally everything organic on a world

Or the damned Orks. They're everywhere.

Muglosx Nah. Workers/ slaves mostly don't even get the chance to enter the Imperial army. Recruitment depends on the worlds/ subsectors and the varying demands of the Administration . Mostly take from the middle to high class. Bibliothek or cemetery worlds have quite low to no recruitment. PDFs (Planetary Defense Forces) come often from other planets.

Oh yeah that is the Nore in this grim dark universe

They don't really care, but from their point it's win/win. Higher production and higher conscription.

Dustwake can u check my channel out

chaos is never the answer #fortheemperor

Chaplain Thor how about no #milkforthekhorneflakes

*Tau

Wouldn't chaos be worse with demons and such?

straighter100 ass rape while being whipped to build statues?

Without lube.

That would be pretty insane ...

you forgot insertions

Just read Dante's Inferno

But times a thousand

Only everybody's a briton

Hongkong basically. Kowloon walled city if you want to be precise.

For how often the narrator pauses, you'd think he'd get the pronunciations right more often.

@@flawlessbinary7449 Koowlon with addtional minimum 100 floors on the entire planet

He'll most likely make a part 2.

Yeah your right. and some of these video are more storytelling rather than facts

All you really need to know is that unless your rich, life will suck and you would probably rather die than live as an average citizen in the Imperium.

@@Fredfredbug4 same as irl

Yes, but planets like that are usually the result of a nearby forge moon of the admec.

It would be cool to actually see some civilized worlds being more advanced than a typical Tau World.

Meh, the tau will have their big fall at some point. Most likely scenario is the drones will turn on them.all science fiction dictates that A.I. always turns on its creators. In fact I hope that the Tau A.I. insurrection is so bad that the whole race gets retconned.. Farsight is cool, they can stay.

The TAU should stay, I'm not a fan of them yet they're still unique for 40k. What I want is more human factions that aren't chaos nor Imperium.

yeah, that will never happen.

In a Fortress World there are no civilians

part 2 yo

we will look into that

Yay thanks

THOSE THAT HAVE RENOUNCED THE GLOREH OF THE IMPERIUM HAVE RENOUNCED THEIR CITIZENSHIP AND THUS THEIR HUMANITY, THEY ARE ALL HERETICS THAT MUST BE PURGED *IN HIS NAME*

ahh its the youths of space rearing their heads again are you still banging rocks together? or did you discover fire yet?

At least our technology is evolving instead of degrading. Invention is not heresy and we know how and why it works instead of worshipping it and having to say a litany and 2 hours of prayers before we push the big button that says "on", Honestly it is the imperium that is starting to go back to banging rocks together.

There is no such thing as retirement. Once you sign up, you're in for life.

No rest for the holy

+Yeager Bomb Guardsmen don't last that long.

nope, a lot of guard actually survive

zebro If by "a lot" you mean the lucky 1%, then sure, a lot of guardsmen survive. And then die of old age while serving.

Completely fucked might be a slight exaggeration. If you land on a hive world, you are most likely to be a worker in heavy industry. Hundrets of thousands of people worked like that in the past in history and they managed to live through it. If you're on a civilized world, there's a reasonably high chance that live would not be very different from your current reality at all. You go to school, you get a job, you work for the rest of your life until you're old and you get some freetime inbetween. There's always a chance of things going south but given the scale of the imperium, it's really not that likely that you'll ever see some big catastrophy. As said in the video, there are *thousands* of hive worlds and only a handful of them saw big catastrophies in recent history.

So what, you hope you're born into a world not about to face a cataclysm or a poor hive world? That's crap.

EmptyMan000 That might be crap but it is not particularly worse than reality. Especially in the past, from the dawn of civilization to the beginning of modern times, you were most likely to be born poor, it was always possible that your home got wiped out by some desaster you had no control over and you were likely to be born under some pretty rough regime that didn't gave a frak about human lives.

HERESY

ghost59able You are aware of the fact that many 40k facts enjoy Destiny right?

Nord Vampire Lord you know its heresy to use other images from other worlds that's not from Warhammer 40k right ?

HERESY! BLAM!

ghost59able The user "NordVampireLord" has been removed from the internet by order of the Inquisition. Repetition of his views on Destiny-Warhammer relations will be henceforth considered heretical and those agreeing with them will be punished. The Emperor expects.

When does it appear?

Most of the time, they'd be unaware of most of these things. Knowledge about chaos and most xenos is not wide spread among civilians in the imperium. So, you would *know* that there is an emperor somewhere on a planet called terra and you'd know some legends and stories about xenos and dangers that are out there. But it would be pretty surreal, like, for example, in modern days the danger of an asteroid hitting earth. Yes, it could happen, but it is neither likely nor something you'll think about in everyday life. All hive- and civilian worlds also have their own history and politics. So rather than thinking about what the imperium is doing as a whole, you'd be reading news about the newest local gangs, nobles and the new monorail that is supposed to be built in hive-block A. You'd be angry about off-world meat getting more expensive and happy about your better healthcare provided by the new hospital accross the street. Your biggest dream would probably be having some holidays on one of the high spires where you could see the sky Maybe, just maybe, you know someone who knows someone who joined the guard. They then might be telling stories they heard about where that person might be or what they could be fighting. But that would all be very vague too

MrMartechi Thanks for the answer.

They gave a pretty good one as well. The only thing I'd add is that each of these hives have pretty much unique cultures and even languages. Their worship of the Emperor is the only real thing that unifies them, but even in that respect they can be wildly different in their beliefs. One hive city may believe that the sun is the "body" of the Emperor or even the very ground they live on. The point is that when these places have populations of the tens of billions, bare in mind our own planets population is still currently less than that and just think of the variety of beliefs and cultures we have here. So that just more so as more people and all bottled up inside a single city.

Many planets are only in medieval or high middle ages tech level as well, with the exception of the Imperial Guard. That's why some imperial worlds have cavalry regiments and use single shot volley fire tech guns and tactics. Also not all citizens live on Hiveworlds. Hiveworlds are certainly the most important just like the big megacities on earth dominate politically and culturally here on earth. Imperium of man consist of over a million planets, only about 33,000 of them are hive cities but hive cities produce the most goods and services and dominate the majority that lives on comparative "rural/mining" worlds.

It is said that the average hiveworlder doesn't even know there is such a thing as the universe. A worker in the lower hive may not even understand that anything at all exists outside the hive, because understanding things besides direct orders is none of their business.

Uhh arent Hive Worlds just civilized worlds on a large scale ?

badfoody can u check my channel out

EliteSwagNinja can my channel out you?

Aramus, the Force Commander, from one source, was also recruited from Meridian...

well, Seccc just coted the rule book ( at least it was in the 4 or 5th edition, so I don't think they change it in the actual edition). So imao Seccc is right.

Pretty sure Agriworlds classifies under Civilised worlds.

Seccc Easy solution: Tyrannid Sandwishes (altough you gotta remove or boil the acid blood first)

they do. thats why many considdered joining the tau once the tau empire ivites them to join their battle for the greatergood.

Sounds like Heresy to me... wanna rephrase?

I would say greenskins and tyranids both have it a lot worse, but they are physically incapable of really suffering.

zebro Simple truth corpse worshipper.

it depends.... greatly depents...

I'm going to say the Traitor Primarchs. Come on, guys. Anyone who says otherwise forgets how godlike the original Primarchs were, and turned into Daemon Princes they'll be nigh unstoppable in a raw fight with the Custodes (without the Imperial Palace's defenses, that is).

dont forget about the strategically placed guardsmen regiments and imperial fists

cos it's more grimdark that way

Any other citizen in the imperium: You wake up, say your prayers to the emperor, go to work in a factory, work for a shift, get lunch, work for another shift, go home, listen to some vox-radio, sleep. Once or twice you go to an imperial shrine, sometimes you go to a bar and all the time you avoid dark alleyways to not get caught by some criminals. On the bright side: Things in the imperium don't change very often. Job security must be pretty high. If you're lucky, you end up in middle class jobs for the administratum. In that case, you probably work on your own cogitor unit and sort texts and data all day.

Day to day life of a space marine: "FOR THE EMPEROOOOOOOOR! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" *charges into the fray, bolters blazing, chainswords revving*. PS: If Heretic is found, insert *BLAM* to his head. Day to day life of an inquisitor: "HERESY! HERETICS! HERETEKS! THE RUINOUS POWERS!" PS: If Heretic is found, insert EXTERMINATUS on his planet and the 10 subadjacent sub-sectors.

In other words, life in the administratum is the same as life in 21st century western society :P Except of course our God is our government whom we are allowed to criticize but not disobey.

bkingk8 That's a lot a dudes

*Flashlights

currently we have just over 45 MILLION regular and reserve soldiers on earth. thats a fuck tonnne more than i expected

that means if earth was the average "other" type planet they alone would provide 967,000×45,000,000 =43,515,000,000,000 43.5 TRILLION men or 43 million armys

wow, no wonder "where one fall, ten more shall take his place" :) damn want to play DOW Winter Assault, General Sturnn for president :D

Not if your a citizen living in the lower levels, but above the underhive, in that case, voluntarily siding with chaos actually makes a lot of sense. Admittedly they would mostly pefer the khorne world due to chaos corruption, but still! It is in the end quite a subjective matter, BUT!! I have never heard of warriors of khorne preferring life on a hive world.

Its a bit morbid though

Is that where all the heretics are coming from!? BLAM! (Just to be on the safe side. Talking about heresy is heresy.)

Why is it so interesting to read lore about stuff that originated from someone else mind that complete fiction? I love real world history as well, but fiction really enhances it though i don't understand why. Humans have loved fictional lore for over 3000 years, probably more. From a cynical perspective it is all bullshit.

those were some dark time my brother

That's my belief as well. It would not surprise me if there were systems that have never even seen any conflict from another species. The most violence that they probably have to endure would be domestic and inner conflict with its citizens.

Muglosx Why would the PDF be so useless if every other week a new group of baddies shows up? They're just the law enforcement for planets. They're usually not expected to fight cosmic horrors from other dimensions, Orks, etc because they probably would never even see it.

barbiquearea if the people still worship the Emperor and aren't trying to do somethink stupid like trying to leave the Imperium, nothing. they can have whatever goverment they like as long as they pay their taxes veneterate the Emperor and be a part of the Imperium.

And if they DONT worship Emperor and/or worship chaos gods, dont pay taxes and leaving Imperium, Imperial Guard or even Adeptus Astartes will be used to bring them back to Emperors Light. By killing all rebels and heretics. And new goverment will be crated by Administratum. Also Inqusistion will start observing worlds life, and collect data to prevent new heresy and/or rebellion.

dakotagau there is a few planets like earth

Yes, there are. They're typically called 'Civilized worlds' and some are quite advanced where life is actually decent and even prosperous. Hell, some of them even hold democratic elections.

Death worlds, if populated at all, are usually either feral- or feudal-level. The people there are too busy surviving against all odds to become truely civilized.

RokuroCarisu That isn't truem Death worlds simply have extremely inhospitable environments. Mordia is a combination Hive World and Death World. Catachan is also an example of a Death world whose population isn't feral or feudal.