THE DEATH OF KNOWLEDGE - Why Can't Humanity Invent in 40K? | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History 

Today we cover why it is that the Imperium of Man is so unable to progress forward, why it is mired in ignorance and why it is so unable to dig itself out of this stagnation. As always a big thank you guys for your continued support, there will be more stuff soon, if you enjoy please drop a like and check out the links below the video.

I am a maintenance and sustainment engineer for aerospace systems first fielded in the 1960's. Many of the drawings are now unreadable, the calculations lost and the techniques lost with deaths and retirement. I completely sympathize with the tech priest and their plight, however I completely disagree with their methods. Incense does nothing against Gremlins, only holy oils can appease machine spirits.

So basically education in 40k goes something like: Schoolmarm: "How high can you count?" Imp. Citizen: "Umm...Up to ten." Schoolmarm: "Good. Your education's finished. Off with you now." Imp. Citizen: "But what comes after ten?" Schoolmarm: "Heresy."

Emperor: All right, are you watching closely? Tech priest: Yes, Lord. Emperor: **presses button, mounted fish starts singing "take me to the river"** Tech Priest: **writing furiously**

One of my favorite bits of mechanicus lore is the Ritual of the Knock. A step-by-step ritual on how to whack a machine on the side to try and get it to work.

Ahhh the Imperium, where finding an STC would be rewarded with an entire segmentum and building one would be rewarded with an entire clip of bolter rounds to the face.

“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”

I’m a heavy equipment mechanic for an infrastructure construction company, and this faction speaks to me on a very personal level. When I got into 40k, the Mechanicus was not a playable faction, I’m so happy that has changed. From a lore perspective, it really is not a simple task to reverse engineer anything at all. I work on all kinds of equipment, have a couple years of experience under my belt and work alongside some amazing mechanics, but there are limits to our knowledge, and many things we have to just figure out along the way. I can diagnose and fix the problem 9.8/10 times, but there’s just no way I could scratch build components or “reverse engineer” entire systems, even a 1-to-1 replacement of wires can be a real gamble. Excellent video!

The language thing is true af. My native tongue is archaic, non-written and from agrarian hilltribes. We don't have terms for mid level science stuff outside of simple labels. I once tried to explain atoms, molecular biology and astronomy to my mother once. It ended up being a hodge podge of metaphors that broke down the deeper you got. As for the mechanics thing. It can be done from scratch but what level of fabrication are we talking here? I know many guys who have built race cars from simple steel tubing but at that point they're not mechanics anymore are they?

The machine spirit of my computing device deems this video sufficient

Well, as a mechanic, building a car is quite easy, just grab your wrench, close your eyes, get on your knees and pray that your wrench will build the car for you.

Mildly depressing answer: Because GW need for the limited line of models they sell to be able to represent all the battles that take place in a setting that spans a galaxy and a millennia. Therefore, all the Chapters, Regiments and other imperial forces need to use roughly the same equipment, and follow roughly the same organisational doctrine (Codex Astartes.) In Rogue Trader, the galaxy was a huge, varied, wild and wacky place where almost anything could happen, since it was big enough to fit everything... but that was because GW made a handful of models and advised that you improvise houserules, kitbash vehicles, make your own mutants and aliens etc to plug the gaps. When the 40k range got big enough, GW said: "Aaaaaaactually... you really need to buy a Predator model, because it's the main battle tank of every chapter, has been for 10,000 years, its heresy for a chapter to build their own tanks, and that's the bottom line, so throw away that kitbashed thing of yours."

Here's a fun thought, no one person knows how to make a pencil. Sure, you have the basics: wooden body, stick of graphite, rubber bit on the end, but what species of wood works? How does it have to be cut? What kind of graphite do you use? What needs to be blended so it writes well? And don't even get me started on rubber

GW: There is no innovation or progress in the world of 40K Also GW: Buy this new model that never existed before because....uh....reasons

There a very few people even today that can build a light bulb. Everything is compartmentalized. One company makes the filament, another the glass, another the metal, another the wire, etc... And the. Another company puts it all together.

I think a major reason why the Imperium doesn't invent much anymore is because, given the mind-boggling scale of lost knowledge from the Dark Age of Technology, it can be argued that it's actually a better use of resources to rediscover lost technology than invent new technology.

I have never had the desire to play 40k games, to be honest I still don't but I am somehow immensely fascinated by the 40k universe and how in depth the lore is. I am working my way slowly through your lore series and I just wanted to express my appreciation for how well put together your videos are. From the structure to your insightful thoughts on the material, you have managed to create dozens of hours long videos that are easy to follow even for a 40k newbie like me. So thank you and I hope you will continue having fun making these videos.

I guess explaining Golden/Dark Age tech to even the most gifted amongst the Imperium would be like explaining how a thermonuclear ICBM works to Socrates.

42 minutes of narration before the sleep? I am 32 years old and your videos are the best bedtime stories of my life. Never slept better. Thank you.

"I could go on about 1984" I'd be up for that.

W40k : **Decentralized languages spoken by the majority of uneducated peope, the "high" language spoken by the elite** Romance-languages-speakers : First time?

Lol uses futurama photos to represent the men of iron Thinks we won’t notice it We do and love it.

40K has humans using British Mark 1 tanks- the kind built during WW1 -against alien hovercraft...

One interesting correlation between real history and WH 40K is during the (early?) Roman Empire an inventor created a very basic steam engine. When he showed this to the current Emperor, the man was impressed, but nevertheless discouraged its development. After all if this new mechanism were to gain widespread use then the massive amount of slave laborers being brought into the Empire through its conquests would become nearly worthless. And would potentially destabilise the Empires economy and social structure.

Joe Rogan on Technology: "If I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet... how long until you could send me an email?"

I just rewatched your entire 40k playlist and now you bestow this gem upon us. Emperor bless you, Lore Master :3

Random person: "You can't make a historical documentary based on a fictional universe, it will never be as good as a real documentary" Luetin09: "Hold my ration bars"

My great uncle worked for an engine manufacturer for decades. He learned how the tech he worked with was put together and its failure points. He even helped some of the less strict Amish communities install some of the less complex engines for heavy construction. When he finally retired not a week went past without him receiving a call from someone at his old company asking for help and advice on some problem or another. It's scary how quickly knowledge can be lost and the more complex the system the easier it is to lose that information.

One of my favorite quotes concerning the Imperium and their technology. It's a much more grimdark interpretation on the Imperium and the Cult Mechanicus than my own, but it does help get the gist of the Humanity's situation. Personally, I believe that the Imperium and the Cult Mechanicus aren't nearly ignorant as many people believe, that the Imperial elites and the Cult Mechanicus, or at least, at their highest levels, do possess vast knowledge on physics and etc, to a level that far outstrips modern Earth. The problems, however, is that they have no idea on how DAoT technology (seriously, DAoT tech are BULLSHIT) work or where even to begin, that the Warp hates humanity and wants daemons to possess their toasters, that the Imperium's sheer size and decentralized nature hinder research, standardization of technology, and replacement of old hardware, the fact that Humanity are under attack from everyone and everyone, and the kleptomania within the Mechanicus ranks in hoarding knowledge to increase their own status and power against their competitors and rivals within the Cult, and much more. Anyways, here we go: "The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fucked. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not. The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find shit, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you. "If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fucked with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fucking grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fucking Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seek to kill you. "Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fucking please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day shit. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed. "This is why they do not like ANYONE fucking with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to fuck with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fucked everything up and the Heresy double-fucked it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, and they never have. "This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fucking military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity. "This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built. "Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade. "Since some still don't get the idea, try this. "Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there? "Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fucking-where near it. Where the fuck did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden. "Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right to read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have. "Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling. The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer. "The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single shit decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a shit life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die." -- Baron von Evilsatan

A great video. People often refer to the war or horror in 40k as the grimmest aspects of the series. But, to me, this is. Technology is what separates man from the animal kingdom, the Imperium is mired in its own dark age with no end in sight. Nothing is more terrifying than a world in which mankind has lost it's "Spark" for curiosity, self betterment, inventiveness and innovation. Additionally, for reference, we have moved from bronze working to the information age in about 5-6 thousand years (technological progress was even made following the fall of Rome and during the European "dark age", to take a Eurocentric view, despite what most people think). In 40k, totally ruined or isolated worlds (post Golden/dark age) have had *at least* 10 thousand years (they would have also had thousands of years, more, before being reunited with the empire) - to basically reboot their societies from the *stone age*, if needed, with literally no prior knowledge, at all. No ideologies (social norms / taboos etc) or religions would remain static over that time period, as no human language will remain static over that period, either (this also goes for High Gothic, despite what the series suggests, the massive space/time difference between different worlds in the galaxy would lead to many flavours/variations of High Gothic - and even alternative Mechanicus coding languages [libraries] appearing, too, as tiny tweaks and edits build up over the millennia). This linguistic and social volatility (which has been a part of human society for as long as we've even had societies) would likely manifest itself in the future, too, and eventually lead to new thoughts and ideas: If you are on an inhospitable hellhole of a planet, you have adapt and further the quality your own life/community, or you'd die out. We should see many worlds - ones on the fringes of the Imperium, in particular - developing their own industrial/post-industrial economies, at the very least. But we don't. 1984 is a great book and has probably had a profound influence on the 40k universe(s writers), but it's scope is incredibly small. It examines the dangers in the transition of a society to totalitarianism over 1-2 centuries. 40k's scope comparatively dwarfs 1984. It considers time periods *several times longer* than the entire length of Human civilisation (about 6 thousand years), providing ample time for the core ideas, values and customs of humans in the far future to shift - many times over. At least some of those shifts should, statistically, be "progressive" ones, aimed at technological enhancement. Assuming they are anything like us (see below). Setting aside writers license. I think this absence of innovation has persisted for so long in humans in the 40k universe, because they are no longer like us (modern day humans). They lack the fundamental spark we have - perhaps on a genetic or spiritual level. They don't look up to the stars and dream or wonder about the world and try to better themselves. They are content to be animals. The truest form of "Grimdark" horror, in my opinion, is stripping us of what makes us Human. GW probably know this, and this is a fate far worse than anything Chaos - or any of the other horrors in the galaxy - could impose upon mankind.

"...I'm getting dangerously off topic here" sounds like a new video to me ☺

Imagine a warhammer game like Mass Effect based on golden age of tehnology era, oh boy

I had a story idea when I was a teen that the Emperor _had_ set aside a world with full knowledge of technology. However, to avoid all of the warpstorms and wars he could foresee, he had cut the world off from the Warp somehow... and because he had told no-one, the world was just there, waiting for him to return. It probably doesn't work as a story, but it was one of the first times I had ever tried to actually come up with a story idea and work on it like a real writer.

When you started talking about language from 1984, it reminded me of the Tower of Babel biblical story. A lack of understanding due to language barriers ceased all building of the Tower of Babel all together.

Considering Belisarius Cawl, the only human (and I use that term _very_ loosely) in 40k who seems to know how to invent things is _loathed_ by almost half the Mechanicus... I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on the Techpriests. 'course, the fact Cawl feels like he's a few minutes away from bursting into a 30-minute seminar on "How the Orks are right about this 'Red Ones Go Fasta!' idea" and then going full Mekboy while ranting how about everything could use more dakka, along with his extreme fanboying when it comes to all things Necron-related.... doesn't exactly paint 'human inventors' in 40k in the best light.

Inventor: So I have this new idea Everyone else in 40K: HERESY!

Forgotten weapons had a couple of videos talking about how hard it is to manufacture a gun even if your have all the drawings and specs. A lot of knowledge is required to tool the shop, how to heat treat parts, what tolerances are acceptable. And he is talking of 30-50 year old designs. If you don’t have the knowledge the blue prints are of very little help.

You explained the subject perfectly. How I wish for intact STC to be found.

"This blueprint says that we need a Spanner. What is that?" - "probably gun. Try shooting it"

I love how this actually explains the challenge of terraforming Mars because unless we were able to restart the natural magnetic field of Mars, or develop an articificial one, any terraforming we do on Mars would be undone by solar radiation almost as quickly as we deployed our efforts

This helped me understand the mechanicum more. The analogy at 29:20 about the car was most helpful. Thank you!

Luetin: "I could go on and on about 1984." Me : "Please do" In all seriousness I'd love a "Luetin discusses classic literature" series.

A great story that has a backbone based in one aspect of the fear of technological advancement, human frailty and corruption, is "Titanicus" by Dan Abnett. A Titan forge world is invaded by a Chaos Titan force. A Magos is convinced to open certain classified archives containing data on the construction of Titans in an attempt to get an upper hand on the Chaos forces. These archives are often on paper, and aren't compatible with the current tech used by the Mechanicus and must be "translated". This is initially a success, with the adepts uncovering information that enables them to identify the original patterns of the now traitor Titans and allowing the forces in the field to exploit manufacturing weaknesses and achieve kills. Of course though, human greed and corruption abuse these efforts. Some other, non Titan related data is uncovered, the Lord Executor of the forge performs a small manipulation and, of course, denies the divinity of the Emperor and begins a rebellion with his vile heresy. Titans fight Titans, Skitarii fight massed battles, high ranking Tech Priests are murdered and assassinated, some poor PDF heroes get caught up in the wholesale slaughter and somehow a few survive, but at what cost. All because some damned fools opened some books they shouldn't have. All in all a damn fine read. It ends before the Inquisition turn up and put everyone to the flame in the name of the Emperor as is good and right, but hey, we all know it happens.

"Behold! Pimaris Astartes! The new tool for the Emperor's wrath!" **Inquisitor starts sniffing about**

This is probably one of the most depressing aspects of 40k. Imagine what humanity could accomplish if it regained its past knowledge and even expanded it.

Awesome analogy around 30:33. There are so many tools, procedures, materials that go into manufacturing. Let alone the engineering/machining that goes into those materials.

*Cawl laughs and cries in multiple personalities and AI*

1984 was literally the only book we read at school that I enjoyed and I still have a distinct memory of the terror of realization at the moment when Winston explained that freedom would stop existing because the idea and words for it didn't anymore.

Is it weird that when Arch Warhammer describes the Emperium I am horrified, but when Leutin speaks my mind goes"Well, I guess it is time to join the Crusade." FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!

This has always bugged me. Thanks for a video on on the subject!

"Why Can't Humanity Invent in 40K? " See Also: the dismantling of understanding/science happening in modern politics today.

as I understand it the Mechanicus has access to and an understanding of technology greater than what they give the Imperium. They just tend to keep the best goodies for themselves. I'm not just talking about hoarding technology, I mean they seemingly have at least some capacity to construct more advanced machines but intentionally give the Imperium lesser versions much of the time. I assumed this is partly an insurance policy for if the Imperium ever tried something and partly them not wanting the fleshy dimwits to get their grubby hands on all their hyper advanced toasters.

The Emperor "fixing machines with a touch" was probably just him kicking the damn thing until it started working again :P.

Long story short: "Progression is HERESY!!!" :P

Apparently the tech priests of mars write their notes in Greek.

00:00 Intro 02:40 Downfall of Man / Age of Strife 10:52 Language / Education 20:35 Mechanicus / Knowledge 27:23 Lack of Research / Loss of Tech 36:06 Rediscovery / Prevention

It seems to me that the Space Marine armor and tanks that the Imperials used have shown advancement since the very first edition of the game. We have 4-6 versions of progressively advanced Space Marine armor that all came out after Horus' rebellion and the tanks advance whenever GW decides to release a new tank model.

Watching another vid, get a notification Luetin just posted "This can wait, what's Luetin got going on?"

21:50 *overstated If something can't be 'understated', then it is of absolutely no consequence.

We need a 40K movie series like lord of the rings! Fascinating story! and art work! Please keep up the great work

Your video about the first contact of the tryanids got me through my timed Physical test. I imagine myself being part of the reinforcements so I had X amount of time before they fellXD not cannon but it helped alot when I was hard of breathing. Another great vid!

This is some nice heresy you got going on here be a shame if someone inquired about it

The system of the mechanicus reminds me a lot of guilds. The gathering of knowledge, the approving through higher ranking members, the unwillingness to share findings....even the problems of language

I love the insertion of the killbots from Futurama lol

Every time you release a new long form video I wind up rewatching your whole 40i playlist. Heck yeah

It’s hard to process a lot of data (let alone just simple math on large excel spreadsheets) without a computer.

Reverse engineering is kinda not as easy as it sounds. Imagine you having no knowledge of how an car engine works. You could probably still disassemble it and with some luck you might even be able to put it together again, but beyond that, would you actually understand HOW the engine works following this? Reverse engineering is not at all as easy as it sounds, since you'll need a thorough understanding of how something works, before you can build something like it.

When I look at the mechanicus I see a kind of ocd played out on a cosmic scale. Think of it-if you have a lightswitch that sometimes works and sometimes does not, and you notice it working after you perform a certain action -such as flipping it up and down several times, banging on the wall or say, praying to the light switches spirit- you might the think it was that action which caused the switch to work this time and keep doing it. I can imagine how a particularly obsessive culture that revered its machines might develop a whole system of rituals having to do with their technology that had the end result of producing, maintaining and repairing of that technology, but without necessarily understanding how it all works. I feel like the stories often to a poor job of conveying the difference between the machine priests and scientists. At least the ones I've read. Many times it seems like they just throw in some references to machine spirits and incense and have done with it.

Damn I want a poster of 34:00. The art you find for these videos is almost as good as the lore itself.

That section about language, is that, in a way, the reason why Gothic is similar to Latin? In a way, Latin structure and wording is both simple and complex depending the context used. As in everyday mundane tasks and conversations would be just quick sub-five worded sentences while in the higher echelons of society are able to expand their conversations to be far more complex because Latin (well the 40k Gothic version) is flexible enough to allow the diversity. An interesting point of view, especially in the light of what you bring up in this video. Much to think about with this ever deepening rabbit hole

As to reverse-engineering the ancient tech basing on unreadable sources. You see, people have now deciphered Sumerian language. This language wasn't spoken for 4000 years, forgotten by ancient scholars 2000 years ago, has no known relatives, and is written in the cuneiform script that presumably was not even originally created for that language. In addition, Sumerian was reconstructed basing on Akkadian, which uses the same writing system, but had distant living and historical relatives in the form of Hebrew and Arabic. But the discovery of this relatedness won't have been possible if there haven't been bilingual writings in Akkadian and Old Persian. The latter, in turn, was written in cuneiform alphabet that resembled the Akkadian, but was otherwise completely unrelated - both as writing system, as well as the language, as it was Indo-European in contrast to the Semitic Akkadian. Now you may imagine what a titanic job was it to reconstruct Sumerian, based on a reconstruction of a reconstruction. And yet, there are now huge swaths of texts in Sumerian, from bills to private letters judicial protocols, to astronomical, medical and mathematical texts to high literature - including the first literary text attributed to a named author, the high priestess Enheduanna. And all this gigantic work of deciphering and translating was carried over by at most a few hundred people within the previous two centuries. This example shows that if the empire, with its trillions upon trillions of subjects, had an incentive to really pursue the true reconstruction of ancient texts, it would have succeed virtually instantly even with the tiny fraction of the textual remains. That it doesn't - means that the empire has no such incentive.

At this date there is already code of old programming languages from the 80s and 90s like "cobalt" running systems in banks and factorys for which there are only very few persons left who could understand and maintain it. Since its either to costly to completly replace them or they are too viable to turn them of like ventilation systems they are just beeing kept. Also if you have not learned this specific programming language or a related one it is almost impossible to learn and understand the language from the existing code.

There is some weird and wacky shit, hidden deep within the depths of the Temple of All Knowledge, on Holy Mars itself.

What lies in the depths is what drives everything, we must be so careful when we try to advance.

I think Dan Abnett’s book Double Eagle takes place on a world with a mid 20th century tech level.

There is a zero percent chance this would every happen, just completely unreasonable to think that any of the explanations given could totally destroy knowledge. Besides due to how humans works we pass on all our knowledge to others, you may lose something but you will NEVER lose all the knowledge. ITS ALWAYS OUT THERE

3:28 NO! NOT MOMS FRIENDLY ROBOTS! OME this is Hereticaly good.👍

I love this text by ... some guy I guess? I found it on 1d4chan, but I think it is really fitting (long text ahead, quite possibly not entirely accurate to the lore): "The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is fucked. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not. The files have been corrupted into madness by the Fall, and the unleashing of the most potent informational warfare systems ever to exist to defeat the Iron Men. Nearly all of Mars was rendered uninhabitable, what they live in now is built on the top of the ruins. They send archeotech expeditions in to find shit, nearly all of them never come back. The sheer number of rogue war machine running around in there is sufficient to rape the mind. Then came the Heresy, which was not earth-exclusive. Mars as the second most critical planet in the Imperium was the site of fighting nearly as ferocious as on Terra, with Mechanicus loyalists and Hereteks fighting tooth, nail, and mechadendrite everywhere. Ancient machines were unleashed, viruses both normal and daemonic unleashed into all the computer systems. Nearly every single stored record on Mars was rendered unusable, and those that survived are half the time self-aware and don't like you, or daemonic and actively try to kill you. If you come back with a schematic, it is almost certainly gibberish, and if it isn't, it's probably corrupted into uselessness. If it does come back whole it was probably malevolently fucked with so that instead of a Lasgun power cell it's a fucking grenade set to detonate the second you finish building it. Why do you think they want off-world STCs so damned much if they had them all here? The fucking Heresy is why. Off-world they only have to contend with the Fall's war and its effects on the machinery plus twenty thousand years of degradation with no maintenance. But at least off-world it'll probably just not work instead of actively seek to kill you. Why do you think they seek to placate the Machine Spirit? It's because it exists. The fragments of trillions of self-aware programs, flourishing during the Dark Age of Technology and shattered by Man in his war with the Iron men, imprisoning the few who had not set themselves irrevocably into the machinery, a prison smashed wide open by the Heresy. Everything that can hold programming in the Imperium has a shard of a program in it. EVERYTHING. And you'd better fucking please it or it will do everything in its power to make your day shit. Sure, if it's a Lasgun it'll just not work or start shooting off rounds by itself, but if you piss off a Land Raider you can say bye-bye to half a continent. They apply these principles to things without spirits by habit, since they're so used to dealing with tanks that if not talked to just right might go rogue and annihilate the Manufactorum before they can be killed. This is why they do not like ANYONE fucking with technology, because it is so rare to find anything that just works it is critical it not be compromised. That, and they do not have the actual knowledge to fuck with it intelligently, just through experimentation, which inevitably leads to slaughter. Pressing buttons to see what works is fine in a 21st century computer, but it is a very stupid thing to do at the helm of a 410th century starship with the destructive power to end solar systems. The entire knowledge base of humanity was lost. Not forgotten, but outright lost. Everything at all, poof. Nobody knows anything because the Fall fucked everything up and the Heresy double-fucked it. To rebuild the theoretical framework needed to design new technologies that don't kill everyone near them would require starting from the ground up. They don't have the time, and they never have. This gets on to the point of war and what it does to technology. Someone will parrot that it makes it go much faster. Yes, it makes practical applications of technology go much faster. It also utterly stops all research on the scientific theories behind those technologies. This means that when war chugs along for a decade or two things get done. It means when it goes on too long you run out of theories to turn into technologies, and then you run out of technologies to apply. You stagnate. When you have been fighting in a war for survival in a drastically overextended empire, this is what happens. You are desperate for any extra materiel that can possibly be produced. Half your entire fucking military might went rogue, smashed the half that stayed, leaving you with the tattered shreds of a war machine to keep hold of an empire that was reaching straining point with an army far larger. There is no time for the sort of applied research programs that took Man twenty five thousand years to develop, in a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity. This is also why the Adeptus Mechanicus insists on cargo cultism. It's because when you are dealing with things you barely understand because everything you knew about them was destroyed it is the safest and most reliable option. The rituals do not exists for mysticism, they exist because they are the most practical means of building, repairing and maintaining the equipment they have with the knowledge surviving. You don't understand why pressing that button makes it go, because the manual tried to take over your brain and the copies are all unreadable and the research base that would let you reverse-engineer it does not exist and cannot be built. Why are the Tau doing so well with their technology? Because they had peace. Eight thousand years unmolested by any enemy and they were helped the entire time by the most advanced biological race in the galaxy. Give the Imperium eight thousand years of peace and I can guarantee you it will be harder than it was during the Great Crusade. Since some still don't get the idea, try this. Build a library, fill it with all human knowledge. You take it elsewhere when you need a book from it, but the book is only a simplified copy. You don't understand the real book, and you don't need to. Nobody takes the real books anywhere because why would you, when there's a whole library there? Now that library goes rogue and the maintenance machinery starts killing everyone any-fucking-where near it. Where the fuck did they all come from, you swear to god there weren't this many, and there weren't because they're using the library's information to fight their war. The government fights a battle that destroys the planet against these robots and tears apart the library to stop them using it, only to be destroyed in the process. The library is leveled, cast into flames, every book burned and every computer virus-laden. Then comes a man who worked there. He talks to the few surviving library workers, assembles their information, and starts rebuilding a city around the library and expanding it as the librarians find little scraps of paper and fragmented bits of files that stuck together just right to read something. They rebuild a library from scrap on the ashes of the old. It isn't a shadow on the glory of the old, but it is all they have. Then the city turns on itself, kills its master, and the librarians turn to rage. Half of them kill the other half and destroy the remnants of the library because where they're going they won't need science. Everything burns, and the city is left to a scattered few survivors, walls open to the world, with the hungry predators circling. The Adeptus Mechanicus is the sole surviving librarian, desperately scrabbling through the ashes of paper and splinters of hard drives for anything to help him and the city he needs to survive just a second longer. The Imperium isn't grim because things suck by choice and could be fine if a sensible person came along. That sensible person wouldn't survive fifty seconds of the reality. The Imperium is grim because every single shit decision, every single sacrifice, every single death, every single man woman and child suffering a shit life in the worst conditions imaginable, is the absolute best that can be done. It is a study of the worst happening to everyone and what part of your humanity must be sacrificed today just to stand a chance of survival, and all it asks is whether or not it would have perhaps been better to die." • Baron von Evilsatan

Really good, really in depth video that stays engaging the whole time. Great job my guy.

I imagine even if there were changes to tech, the roll-out over a galaxy would be so slow that it'd be almost unnoticeable

I have been really enjoying the new music lately. It really adds much to the mood. Great work, sir.

I've always wanted you to do this one!!!! Best gift after a hard exam❤

This kind of forethought into what mankind could be in 38 thousand years from now is interesting and horrifying at the same time. I enjoy it.

The similarities to Ancient Rome go even further than I thought. This reminds me of how interesting and well constructed 40k is.

Ah, Luetin lore videos. The best bedtime stories one could ask for.

Thanks, I love listening your videos before going to sleep and its arrived just in time.

I would compare researching Dark Age tech in 40k to researching architecture from antiquity irl, like how ancient peoples somehow managed to create buildings that not only have lasted to this day, but were so precisely constructed that it would take our absolute best computing technology to calculate something similar, and even then idk if we've made things as precise as that (specifically referring to the astronomically precise measurements of the Great Pyramids' dimensions, or mysterious creations like the antikythera device)... therefor nowadays, dozens of centuries later, we can only look on and marvel at what they achieved without being able to grasp at the techniques they used to even begin to make such things Similarly, your average person has no idea how to build a cell phone or computer from scratch - digital technology is so far beyond us that even your average computer repair shop techy couldn't fabricate one, they only know the protocols for how to assemble the pre-existing components and how they're supposed to work when they are properly built - thus is the plight of humanity in the 41st Millennium, everyone has the understanding of an average person, while the tech-priests only know the protocols to maintain what is, and no one has any concept of the unfathomable techniques that were originally used to produce the device I feel like, were I dropped into the 41st Millenium and asked to provide information on the technology of my home time period, I couldn't do any better than anyone else in the Imperium at describing the technology their ancestors passed down to them

This is such a great topic because we're at that point today.. I'm a software engineer and while I have a better grasp at most things the breadth and depth of knowledge needed to design and manufacture the most basic electronic items is far beyond my understanding. Everything from the phones we use to the computers we rely on, without advanced degrees in CS and EE there's zero chance of going into a cpu fabrication plant and building a CPU. Wafer design, chemicals, materials- without a complete understanding of what's going on you can't do any of it. There are so many mechanisms for a company that there's no way for one person to truly know all of it. The software guy knows a little about the hardware and vice versa. Then there's the actual materials department. Then there's the actual manufacturing skills. There's no way you can build any kind of inter-redundancy. People don't realize it but that can easily happen to us right now. Science, medicine, biotech.. Most people have no idea how much of their lives relies on technology that they'll never understand. The disparity of knowledge is increasing so fast that at some point it's going to cause a massive breakdown in how our society works.

I bestow unto thee the rank Librarian. Henceforth thou shalt be known as: Librarian Luetin the nineth.

It's kind of like taking a car mechanic, pointing at an iron rich mountain and telling them to build the Large Hadron Collider.

man, I love your videos so much. I have listened to all your wh40k lore vids when I want to relax, when I'm studying or before going to sleep. your voice is so satisfying to listen to, especially when you are talking about 40k, two of my favorite things on youtube put together. :D thank you for all the hard work! and don't worry about taking a long time to make a video, I can wait. your quality is unprecedented. thank you for making my day :)

3:22 love the futrurama reference

Leutin09: Why can't humanity invent in 40k... Belisarius Cawl: Am I a joke to you?

Me doing a night shift bored as hell luetin vid pops up never clicked faster .

I appreciate your coverage of many & VARIOUS topics! Instead of many channels constantly hovering over the same topics. Great job

Phantastic video about my biggest puzzle of the 40k universe regarding their science fear.. Thanks luetin and additionally for the novel tip with belisarius... Kepp it up.. Best channel in yt

This explains a lot why they’re stuck with the lack of inventors.

I read somewhere that the Mechanicus is fully capable of innovation, but the problem is that they’re too good at it. Their innovation is wild and unconstrained, and that it leads to the creation of dangerous techno-abominations. Worse, sometimes their work can even reach into the more dangerous portions of the Warp, leading to daemonic possession. As a result, they willingly contain their own progress with doctrine and ritual.

My father was working in the Soviet/Russian space industry from mid 70s to late 90s, before switching to private firms and using his skills in all kind of private enterprises - from web development to aerospace simulations to AI in agriculture. His general impression of this was: "The primary goal of the space race facilities in my time was not launching satellites, but making smart people into pigs." The technology was stuck where it was well in the 60s, a boss had almost feudal rights over an engineer,there was 1 computer for some 10-20 people, which was mostly used by them for playing games - but this starting from the 80s. Prior to that there were soviet computers that in a case of fire had to be extinguished with poisonous substances, all the while the engineers had to literally beg for computation time on them even for impending orbit calculations, because the bosses never took responsibility to make given orders. It was not because of his background in space industry that my dad made a career outside of it. Quite the opposite - he was scorned by his "practical-minded" colleagues for studying more advanced math and languages like C++ instead of playing Crazy Digger line the "normal soviet engineers". There was even a formidable opposition within the head to introduce any new machinery. Just to give you a real-life analogy of why the imperium fails to innovate.

I've always operated under the impression that the mechanicus of 40k is meant as a criticism of religion. They're more interested in worshipping technology than actually understanding it, and because it's a part of their religion understanding it might actually lead to their religious beliefs being proven wrong - thus they'd have little interest in actually "educating" themselves.