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.
@toplinefool444 I make the video not the comments section, not sure exactly what you want me to do about others opinions or thoughts. I don't even know what youre talking about to be quite honest. My suggestion I guess is - just watch the videos?
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.
Even things like 30s stationary engines can be a quest to understand deeply, thanks to things even as simple as different measuring systems mixed in together. You try and ask the dude who was 40 in the thirties why he designed the carb secondary jet screw to be reverse thread with a spring washer with a brass washer on top, and why it's a certain ratio of brass, tin, and steel as opposed to another
@@JoeWalker98 I absolutely and truly hate it, when you've done all the calculations, you model it with an advanced finite element analysis, and you finally convince yourself the old guys knew the margins of safety were good. You then meet them and find out they made it out of brass, tin, and that ratio because that's what was lying around the shop at the time.
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.
@@Cole-ui8bi They've given entire planets as a reward for finding an STC Pattern for a single object (a KNIFE iirc), as such it can be reasonably assumed that an intact STC along with all of the patterns it contains, which would advance the Imperium's technology to an almost unrecognisable extent as well as actually build the stuff for them, would be worth infinitely more than the plans for a really nice knife. Thus, Segmentum.
@SpaghettiandSauce That explains a bit actually - I've always wondered why there aren't tech priests getting a permit to explore a forbidden world, buggering off somewhere quiet to do their research and then returning with "Look at what I recovered at great personal risk!"
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**
The order of the singing salmon is a well know and respected order on Mars. Also know for gardening a prison men are iron who started the technological revolt name Genghis Roomba. His prison is just a baby gated corner of a room.
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?
Couldn’t you introduce words into your language? Like, creating a word for things based on their meaning, like how the sun is a star, and we study the stars with astronomy, which breaks down to it’s meaning.
I can attest to the same exact phenomenon. My mother tongue is Tamazight and we lack so many words for even basic modern day things. Our best analogue is Arabic, which is very well equipped to express anything you could want. Still, so little literature of Tamazight exists that it is on its way to becoming a dead language.
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."
@@L0stEngineer I can take it apart but I'll need tools I don't have to take it apart properly and then materials and tools I don't have to put it back together. This is why reverse engineering takes time.
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.
@@michaelweldon4699 the orks throw their wrench onto a stack of scrap piled onto 4 wheels, hammer in a steering wheel and drive off. They don't need to build the car because they painted it red.
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.
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!
Even if you could rework something, it’d likely be very different than it’s original configuration; jury-rigged bypasses, newer components, and just flat out replacements of entire sections that need their own work-arounds to function with the preexisting parts.
I am senior mechanical designer and in fact I currently design parts for engines, and that is why I understand that I dont actually understand anything :D I cant design and create/manufacture from scratch a working engine, or rather if given infinite time and resources I might be able to create engine that is low power, highly inefficient, highly unreliable piece of crap.
That's the job of a machinist. They fabricate the parts that are needed down to miliimeter fractions. If you learn how to machine your own parts you'll be able to command a higher price for your services. Not many guys do that because it's not necessary, and the company just outsources those components anyway. Though, for very specific tooling a machinist will always have a job and always make some serious cash.
@@Jabullz Very true, I do wish I had access to machining tools, would make my job so much easier. In the context of 40k, when it comes to the AdMech, I suspect their manufacturing and machining capabilities to be quite impressive. The problem is they lack the fundamental knowledge of WHAT they’re making and why, only that it makes the tanks work or the Titans walk correctly. Even their best machinists and engineers are unable to understand Golden Age technology, let alone recreate it accurately, thus we see the stagnation and in many cases regression of Mechanicus tech. They also can’t afford to tinker with things and are heavily warned against experimenting with technology, as it cannot be replicated and will, in all likelihood, destroy the entire facility.
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.
Hell, try explaining how an iPhone works to your average person today. Now couple that with the idea that neither one of you has access to documentation that explains components in the circuitry nor the equipment needed to properly measure or study it, and then you have the issue that plagues the Imperium.
@@Grounders10 The point is that a device powerful enough to destroy an entire region and render it uninhabitable for decades any time anywhere in the world would be completely intangible for anyone living in Ancient Greece, just as Golden/Dark Age tech would be completely intangible for anyone living in the Imperium, hence why they can't replicate the technology from that long lost era.
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.
yeah, its something I make a habit of reminding people of very often. I think many ppl do not realise how with even a minimal level of disruption the entire modern world would grind to a halt almost instantly. Its quite scary the more you look into it the worse it is.
@@jamesgornall5731 Much easier, turn off electricity and we have the same problems. Without electricty about 99% of our modern world won't work anymore.
I agree, but unfortunately modern society just makes sense the way it is. The extreme compartmentalization lines up up with the economics of today perfectly. It's just the most efficient service to the demand of everything by humans.
@@Sike679 Absolutely, of course. That's the beauty of 40k writing and a lot of fictional literature. It reflects and shines a light on the world we live in. What we do makes sense, but we are also aware of how easy it can all come crashing down. So many books or movies have been written on the subject. 40k takes that same thing and exaggerates it 100x over, excessive compartmentalization, excessive superstition, outrageous grandiose designs. Its comical in a sense to where it allows us to laugh at ourselves and what we do but also reflect on what we do also. Alot of fiction does that.
There is some innovation just very very slowly. It's only done by upper level magos and every step of the process takes centuries of "Okay are we ABSOLUTELY sure that adding that extra circuit won't make it explode into daemons?"
@@stantrien8106 Not really correct. Mechanicum is very different from forge to forge, and even the most conservative ones typically change excisting patterns so they can be easier to manufacture in their manufactorums. Also, new Skorpius shows how quickly can the template be designed, even a seemingly complex one, with anti-grav suspension. Also, Macharius and new cruiser designs in Calixis sector
That can easily be handwaved as "A Mechanicus expedition in Sector X recovered a mostly intact STC sample on planet Generic thereby allowing for the production of this new thing".
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
The first half of what Mr. Evilsatan said was quite intriguin. However, the latter half was utterly (poor) sci-fi (what with the "war makes your scientists run out of theories" - clearly not a man who has studied philosophy of science or read Popper and Kuhn) and everything after that was really preachy and droning. But that's basically what Warhammer lore is like: there are intensely interesting premises that get ruined by having 6-year olds develop the background without any understanding of context or training in fields that could be applied to the lore like history, economics, philosophy etc etc.
You know what. I was born in a forge city of an Empire that was about to take over the world. And I mean it - my home city Kaliningrad/Korolev was the space center of the USSR. Both of my parents were engineers in the space race. Time and again we've heard that there were enemies behind the gates, and that people in space race are to focus on practical tasks rather than on "theoretizing". Which meant that technological advances has all but stopped. My father was delayed with his thesis for 3 years just because he wanted to employ a century old math instead of just Newtonian Mechanics, the only thing understandable to an "ordinary soviet engineer". And indeed, the soviet technology has almost stopped progressing, for well, the rockets designed in the 60s did flew... until they started failing, and there seem to be no one capable not even to progress with the tech, but rather to change the politics that favored creation of 400/man strong depts within the mission control center just to suit another man who was promoted to a primarch, doing virtually nothing. All the while the tau empire of Elon Musk launches rockets for a fraction of the soviet dinosaurs.
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.
There is also the issue that romans didn't have technnology advanced enough to built engines able to withstand high steam pressure. So in the end it remained as "cool yet inefficient" thing until the advent of more developed metallurgy and engineering, which also made it economically feasible.
Remind some of the Greeks. I believe Heron, created something known as a “steam ball”, basically a crude steam engine, as a toy. And they had complex gearing, as we know from the Antikithira (probably spelt that wrong) Device. So they could have had an industrial revolution, in Ancient Greece. But they did not. And why? Probably because slaves were cheap and plentiful, so no need. Reminds me of the imperium in a lot of ways.
@@Erakius323 No, even with complex Machinery it still has to be strong enough to withstand constant steam pressure of which any such device made in their time would inevitable break down and would be more trouble than it would be worth.
It's weird. He can be talking about how humanity will experience a death of knowlage and moral values but because of his voice and way of narration it sounds like the smoothest thing in the universe
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."
In the end, it is what game developers/company wants to give us. Myths about Terra's past? They are just left open, even they don't know it, or know it vaguely (for example: their contradictionary explanations what lasguns are). Fanbase will fill the gaps with right or wrong quesses. In the end, this is all fiction, which people try to make sense of. And what for? Somewhat nihilistic view, but this is a reality. We are just numbers and resources (resources of money) to GW, like imperial citizens to imperial administration.
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.
Yeah it's amazing how deep the universe runs. I've spent tens of thousands of hours researching warhammer 40k and I still haven't uncovered everything.
Same, I had some friends in highs I that played the tabletop game and tbh watching people battle with space orc models is cringy af but I appreciate the lore
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
I've wondered this for a while but never bothered googling and at this point i don't want to because the mystery is just so illusive but what the FUCK actually is rubber?
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"
@@rocknessmonster2540 Basically it is because of how expansive is the lore, try to remember how many fictional worlds can have anyone making hourlong videos just to explain basic concepts for that world.
Ration Bar? I would like to think Luetin is not in such hard times that rationing food is required nor that he is engrossed enough in this universe that he is reenacting conditions there.
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.
Question is are they?. This all feels like a cult who believes in magic rather than science. Where in RL such a society would have been reduced to dust and back to sticks and stones in less than few decades. And it feels like that was the initial plan but fandom kept dragging it and now nothing makes remotely any sense.
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.
Here's a fun thought: Maybe the tower of Babel was an *actual* tower to the heavens - a space elevator. We had advanced technology in the distant past and lost it in some calamity that decentralized civilization. Atlantis lost.
@@gracefool that's definitely a fun thought. I have actually theorized among other players that the planet we call Earth isn't actually Terra and that we may actually be a long lost distant colonized planet cut off from the Imperium. Backing this up a bit is that 40k star maps don't put Terra in the same location in the Milkyway galaxy as our scientist place Earth. Not to mention that it doesnt seem that in any text anywhere that 40k ever refer to Terra as Earth. But for some strange reason we refer to Earth as Terra. This would make it seem as though we adopted the term "Terra" from somewhere, but 40k never adopted the term "Earth" from anywhere. As though they never knew Or know that Earth even exists. To go along with what you theorize those at GW and others around the planet may be latent psykers who are writing ebbs and flows of what we think is a fictional 40k, but not knowing 40k is an actual reality in other parts of our Galaxy that GW writers and others are unknowingly tapping into. If we believe the Tower of Babel and other beginning biblical stories around the world have some merit of truth to them and coincide it with this theory then the 1st human beings on earth could have come from the stars with only a few sole survivors making planet fall (Adam and Eve) with enough geneseed pods to populate and grow a thriving colony once more. Adam Valdimir and Eve Constanress crashed on Earth and populated the planet using advanced 40k tech. But the age of strife decimated all that old technology or the age of strife ruined the colonial expedition and of course we were brought back to the stone age here. I mean there had to have been some colonial ships still out there traveling when the age of strife 1st hit. God help us if any one finds us 1st other than the T'au lol. Its funny how our depictions of aliens that have visited our Earth look similar to T'au of the water caste. Because not all T'au have the deep blue skin color but many have a grayish blue skin color also. But all these theories are crushed by the idea that its recorded in imperial records that Khorne was born at the set of the 1st murder (Cain and Abel) or something like that. But who is to say that is not a deception from the warp to keep us all in the dark, superstitious, and blind. Surely the Aeldari and orher species have been murdering long before the 1st murder among mankind. Is it all a lie... Lol 😋
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.
It has always seemed to me that the humans of 40K are at best a caricature of real humans. The ancient psykers reincarnated themselves into the Emperor to try to guide the species away from disaster millennia before they would even leave their planet. They have existed under a potent psychic hegemony since almost the beginning, and all of their growth was made under it. There are also the chaos gods that may be purposefully suppressing human progress.
"They don't look up to the stars and dream or wonder about the world and try to better themselves." I like this part a lot from your essay. I would even put an emphasize on it and put it like that: "They don't look up to the stars and dream or wonder about the world and try to better themselves. They look up to the stars with fear and dread about the next Tyranid, Dark Eldar, Tau or Orc invasion."
@@freshprinz8996i was gonna say the same thing, the fear they have drains them, along with everything else. the amount of dangers surrounding them is immense
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.
@wowalinbie even if all the hardware wasn't compatible, each peice barely working and a patchwork of other tech, no internet, even when it's used properly it's in an ancient language if not completely currupted, and all the while you have no idea what this "email" thing even is.
A modern person with some advanced knowledge could do it in a few years give a resource rich area. The Imperium being handicapped by old tech is stupid. After generations of using old tech and repairing it people will do one of two things; learn the old tech or use the old tech to invent new tech. Also it only takes one Tesla or Da Vinici to rewrite tech history.
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.
@@technomorphtv5834 My problem is what to do with them. I keep thinking that a world like that should have advanced beyond the rest of the Empire. But I don't want to just have them sweep in with amazing technology and just solve all the problems (it doesn't fit the grimdark narrative) so I end up sort of stuck. I have far too many of my own original ideas that I never have time to write though, so this one will probably never see the light of day, lol.
@@hansellius the Grimdark version of that story for me is that the people of that world as so deeply insular due to living in paradise that they become detached from the suffering of the rest of the universe. They retreat into fantasy worlds of their own creation, and ultimately go in the path of the Eldar: indulging in hedonism and losing sight of real morality, ultimately birthing a new cosmic horror that devours them...
@@DisgruntledPeasant That could work - and has some crossovers with another idea I have. The short version of that is that humanity retreats into (simulated) fantasy worlds of their own creation. I fucking love Eldar though. They were my favourite when I wasa teen, and that hasn't changed in 20 years.
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.
In fairness, the result of that situation really had nothing to do with someone opening some books and learning stuff, and everything to do with the Lord Executor being a suicidal fool and starting a hopeless rebellion, in an empire ruled by religious zealotry. It could have just as much resulted in, "Oh snap, we could have been building these titans without importing a billion tons of candle wax each year all along? This is going to quadruple our productivity!"
''Fun'' fact: the Golden Throne is failing and it can't be repaired with the technology that the Imperium currently has. The clock is ticking, the Imperium HAS to find a STC or lose the Astronomicon and become a prey to every horror in the galaxy.
@@UkletiHolandjanin-pd1bf STC is short for a Standard Template Construct, an ancient device that held the sum total of all humanity's scientific knowledge from Dark Age of Technology. STCs were mass produced and handed out to people colonizing the galaxy. Their secondary function was the ability to create so called "STC patterns", blueprints of various devices, from farming equipment through microwaves and tanks all the way up to battleships that could be made from materials avalible to the colonists at any given time. In 41st millenium they are all corrupted beyond recognition and so rare that finding one will make you so rich you'll be able to buy entire planets. As for who can repair the Golden Throne: literally nobody except for the Emperor himself
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.
W40k : **Decentralized languages spoken by the majority of uneducated peope, the "high" language spoken by the elite** Romance-languages-speakers : First time?
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.
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
I would argue that "You learn too much, you'll never know" Like what Luetin mentioned in his opening. We are all specialists now, specialists that rely on someone or someother person/machine to do our work. This is why I say, you can't have arbitruary targets of 50% of students going to universities as its irrelevent and actually stumps growth of the economy and skills.
Look up un agenda 2030 and 2050.they want to do exactly that.they want to get rid of all humans except 500million or so and herd them into citys were every aspect of there lives are controlled
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.
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.
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
I'm pretty sure both low and high gothic are an unrecognizable mix of all languages, it's just "translated" into english and latin for us so we can actually understand what they're saying and thinking. It has been more than 38000 years since present day, just look at what happens in less than 2000 with English.
I understand that and I used Latin like an example from both Roman and the Medieval world, I'm just not good at explaining something to make sense very well, but in a way it's like what happened to Old English (The Anglo-Saxon language so to speak) over the ages, where it was adapted and hybridised by the French Normans and the various Norse Kingdoms to make modern English, but on a more grander scale in terms of the Gothic language seen in the 40k universe as Gothic adapted and got hybridised by the ages and the many wars and conquests on Terra and afar. But again, in that light of historical significance, English was used by the peasants and lower nobility to show class while the higher-ups spoke French to give that impression, and oppression, between the Normans and English, as in to say "we are better and more civilized than you", more or less in a similar way to what was mentioned in this video. But like I say, much to think about
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!
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
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.
@@grandsensei4507 Yeah makes sense if you're already Greek. In the western world, the non Greek speaking parts have long regarded Greek and Latin as the languages of scholarship and learning. Mostly thanks to the church and the writings of the Greek philosophers. So the phrase originated from that.
This coming from the guy who preaches that God is dead? Expect a smart visitor from some "Ordos" at your door in the near future. The Emperor protects.
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
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.
Yes, but actually no. -jokes aside The Admech are just super-dedicated to chasing you up for doing something without them and 50 years of prayer and arguing with a bunch of spare parts and vindictive hard drives masquerading as a democracy. So really, progression without church approval is techno-heresy.
The bigger problem is closer to asking random person to build a car . there is so much knowledge in the 40k world that advancing beyond it is very difficult
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.
This is why I think they are actually stuck up to a point, when you look at computers now and talk of Quantum computing etc you begin to realise that perhaps in the future we will be having AI building other AI because its beyond our capability, this is what I believe happened in the DAOT and why humanity ended up so screwed. So the Mechanicus is actually doing sort of the right thing, for sort of the right reasons.
@@Luetin09 Huh. Having vellum as the major form of recording information actually being one of the blocks from reaching even our 'modern' forms of tech is something that I haven't thought of before. Even with the use of an abacus (which from what I've heard, is suprisingly fast with calculations), it will take an inordinate amount of time to go through the processes, and this is not taking into account processes that aren't just math.
print screen it, put in paint, and google how to find similar images or just use google image drag that paint that you did to the search bar and it will upload it self, and voala gratz.
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
Why wouldn't that one guy that survived just say fuck the library and start over from scratch? Wouldn't it be a waste of effort to try and work with a bunch of literal junk when you can just start with the bare minimum and work your way up from there, while also not messing with the things you already have? The efforts of the adeptus mechanicus in 40k are all in vain. There's no point in trying to continue, because there's nothing left to save.
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!!!!
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.
I feel like we really take modern education for granted really. Obviously most people with a college or even high school degree would know that there must be a missing part in the switch, a loose connection, or some other error just from basic knowledge of how electricity works, and how such mechanisms are usually handled. On the other hand if you never had an education, you might assume that the switch must be working perfectly fine, and that it is somehow your fault that it's not performing the way you want it to.
Indeed. I once had privilege to search the temple archives for knowledge regarding mechandrites. To most peculiar interest, I happened upon designs for simple mechanical limb extenders, shaped to form the head of a long extinct Apex predator of Holy Terra.
This make me wonder how much research the Dark Mechanicum manage to accomplish. Pertubaro was know to invent and probably still protect some secret research lab to maintain the edge that the Iron Warriors have in war. He could have an oddly complete STC library with some new creations that he got over the millennia.
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
That's true, but even today it may be seen that many people, even in the First World, are incredibly low information and have to be spoon fed most knowledge about the world. Very few people question anything, to do so these days is almost "heretical".
Another great video. You are one of the reasons why I stay interested in Warhammer. Is it just me or does the Imperial Fists "Phalanx" remind you a bit of a Blackstone Fortress?
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.
@@Luetin09 me too. This video was amazing dude. Took me 3 hours to just stop in between...Relate it with other stuff in our real world to actual religions to the stagnation of knowledge, 1984 and how tech, supply lines work today....It's all so fragile, no? Anyway, amazing amazing video dude
We've always had this problem though, since our lives got more complex than "how to start a fire, how to throw this stick to kill that animal". If you go back in time to when we had just started inventing and using farming en-masse you'd find nobles and many regular civilians with absolutely NO idea how a farm actually works - from the day-to-day to the yearly operation. How do you make sure your crops are properly watered? How do you choose the correct crops to plant and when, to ensure the best harvests and the prevention of the land being completely drained of nutrients? And yet the same people who had knowledge of this stuff had NO idea how to build a roof for a new dwelling, or how to provide a growing village/town with enough water (ie where and how to build wells). That's the entire reason jobs exist in the first place and how businesses became a thing and why humans have always specialised. No single person has ever been able to do absolutely everything required to live and thrive. That's why civilizations exist in the first place and why humans have always existed in groups - we HAVE to work together for the benefit and survival of all because NOBODY can do it all themselves. Yes the creation of more complex technology has made this issue worse and widened that chasm of knowledge, but it's actually always been there in some form or another since before our caveman days. People who try to go off on their own and "live off the land" - doing everything themselves all by themselves more often than not end up failing because SOMETHING comes along that completely throws a wrench into the works. Be it trying to figure out how to build a decent domicile, or even say they have an accident that causes injury - now they have to be a medic with knowledge of how to stave off infection (yeah good luck with that when all you have is some sticks and a bit of moss) for long enough that they heal, but all the while they're now unable to do all the rest of the hundred other jobs needed for survival. And that's how they either end up dying out in the wilderness or having to be rescued and returned to actual civilization.
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.
I'd buy that. The tech priests are not idiots, and are fully capable of tinkering with equipment and gear. However, even in our current society there are somethings that just shouldn't be tinkered with. Let's say an engineer working on a nuclear reactor decided he want to innovate and tinkered with the core of the nuclear reactor and accidentally triggered a meltdown. Well shit now you have an ecological catastrophe in your hands because some douchebag thought he was smart enough to tinker with something that didn't need to be tinkered with. The same logic applies to 40k tech or perhaps even more so. If some heretic tech priest fucked around with the gellar field of a navy vessel now you have a horde of demons ready to fuck you to death. Or even worse if a tech priest fucked around with dark age tech then you could potentially end up with a whole sector collapsing to a rogue machine. When the stakes get higher innovation tends to slow down. Which probably explains why nuclear technology advancements are slow. Could we potentially make leaps and bound in nuclear technology if engineers were allowed to test things with no restrictions? Perhaps, but the cinsequence of that would be half a continent becoming an irradiated wasteland.
Astartes got me started, now I’ve been consuming your vidoes in quarantine, and this universe is...awe inspiring. I’m a huuuuuuge Frank Herbert fan especially Children of Dune and God Messiah, this reminds me a lot of Dune
Aside from entertainment (my kind) your videos like this about 40k are actually thought provoking and interesting. I appreciate the videos, even though your videos are pretty much all i know of 40k.
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
Excellent and very enlightening video. Especially as it pertains to the modern world that we live in. I am a machinist and have made parts for hundreds of different machine used in making thousands of different everyday items and I can honestly say that I only know how a handful of those parts actually worked in their final role. Again compartmentalization. Even within a single company the machinist doesn't always know what the engineer's final design is meant to full accomplish and the engineer has no idea how to make the part that they have drawn. It's all really fascinating and terrifying.
I think people need to start appreciating how easily knowledge can be lost forever. There are organization dedicated entirely to preserving mankind's vast space of knowledge. Even these archivists can only guarantee 20 maybe 50 years of preservation in the case of an end of the world event. Even at that point, with considerable corruption to the information. Entropy is a real thing people. Your best hard drives can last 3-5 years without constantly refreshing the data. 10 years regardless. Entire fields of study have already been lost completely already and today we face another more insidious form of information loss. Over-saturation. It's estimated a lot more information is lost in the form of research and discoveries due the fact there is too much noise for anyone to notice and preserve your work beyond your own efforts perhaps due to death or career change or whatever. A future bronze age collapse or medieval collapse similar to what has occurred in the Middle East, is very possible.
This is definitely one of the most darkest and depressing things about modern technology. The thousands of years it took to get here could all be lost in a few centuries. The good news though is that if people do take the time to learn and they aren’t extinct, they probably will learn eventually relearn it again. Give or take another few centuries
![THE RISE & FALL OF THE MECHANICUM OF MARS | WARHAMMER 40,000 Lore [Mechanicus History]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/F0GObe51--c/mqdefault.jpg)
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.
Have school tomorrow, but I have you now so my sleep schedule is gonna be warped
Your work as always is awesome thanks for the new video.
We get spoiled. My patreon money was a good investment!
@toplinefool444 I make the video not the comments section, not sure exactly what you want me to do about others opinions or thoughts. I don't even know what youre talking about to be quite honest. My suggestion I guess is - just watch the videos?
Great video dude
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.
And cyberdong?
I hope there are more engineers out there who are into 40k.
unreadable and lost old drawings and stuff... damn thats uncomfortable close to some of the madness in this video haha !
Even things like 30s stationary engines can be a quest to understand deeply, thanks to things even as simple as different measuring systems mixed in together.
You try and ask the dude who was 40 in the thirties why he designed the carb secondary jet screw to be reverse thread with a spring washer with a brass washer on top, and why it's a certain ratio of brass, tin, and steel as opposed to another
@@JoeWalker98 I absolutely and truly hate it, when you've done all the calculations, you model it with an advanced finite element analysis, and you finally convince yourself the old guys knew the margins of safety were good. You then meet them and find out they made it out of brass, tin, and that ratio because that's what was lying around the shop at the time.
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.
Entire planet
@@Cole-ui8bi Huh?
@@aecides3203 they only give entire planet not segmentum there's only five of them the segmentum solar,Pacifica,gothic and the others that I forgot
@@Cole-ui8bi They've given entire planets as a reward for finding an STC Pattern for a single object (a KNIFE iirc), as such it can be reasonably assumed that an intact STC along with all of the patterns it contains, which would advance the Imperium's technology to an almost unrecognisable extent as well as actually build the stuff for them, would be worth infinitely more than the plans for a really nice knife. Thus, Segmentum.
@SpaghettiandSauce That explains a bit actually - I've always wondered why there aren't tech priests getting a permit to explore a forbidden world, buggering off somewhere quiet to do their research and then returning with "Look at what I recovered at great personal risk!"
The machine spirit of my computing device deems this video sufficient
Your cogitator brother!
Funny. Mine own decided that this video was highly heretical. Then I got ads for Bolters. The Imperium is spying on us!
Smh.
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**
Emperor: you must guard it with your lives
He said “lord” not “my holy emperor”? TIME TO GET THE SHOVEL
@@88thdeathkoregrenadier68 😂😂
Holy emperor. Imagine if that's the terminus decree
The order of the singing salmon is a well know and respected order on Mars. Also know for gardening a prison men are iron who started the technological revolt name Genghis Roomba. His prison is just a baby gated corner of a room.
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?
Helpful interesting thanks for posting
What language is it, out of curiosity?
@@wmooring Silbo :')
Couldn’t you introduce words into your language? Like, creating a word for things based on their meaning, like how the sun is a star, and we study the stars with astronomy, which breaks down to it’s meaning.
I can attest to the same exact phenomenon. My mother tongue is Tamazight and we lack so many words for even basic modern day things. Our best analogue is Arabic, which is very well equipped to express anything you could want. Still, so little literature of Tamazight exists that it is on its way to becoming a dead language.
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."
Oh that's bloody rich
We're not much better off right now. If you don't agree, try reconstruct your smartphone from memory.
@@L0stEngineer
I can take it apart but I'll need tools I don't have to take it apart properly and then materials and tools I don't have to put it back together.
This is why reverse engineering takes time.
Legend says the inquisitors got a special education.
They learned how to *subtract*
@UCfhP6tAxpysu8N2Tz9Ta7Iw Please use commas in your run-on sentences.
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.
@I can’t decide on a name. Why you angry? I'm right
@@MinhNguyen-yk4yu You didn't mention oils.
Switches love holy oils.
Pretty close to what the Orks do...
@@michaelweldon4699 the orks throw their wrench onto a stack of scrap piled onto 4 wheels, hammer in a steering wheel and drive off. They don't need to build the car because they painted it red.
@@michaelweldon4699 mr. Inquisitor this comment right here
“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt”
So true yet so disturbing in the wrong hands.
"An open mind is like a fortress with the gates unbarred and unguarded" always liked that one.
"Faith is purest when it is unquestioned"
And yet the Mechanicus preaches that a man's knowledge defines his worth. How ironic.
@Just Jeff
Could just be differences between the Imperial Cult and the Machine Cult. One encourages ignorance, the other requires knowledge.
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.
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!
Even if you could rework something, it’d likely be very different than it’s original configuration; jury-rigged bypasses, newer components, and just flat out replacements of entire sections that need their own work-arounds to function with the preexisting parts.
I am senior mechanical designer and in fact I currently design parts for engines, and that is why I understand that I dont actually understand anything :D I cant design and create/manufacture from scratch a working engine, or rather if given infinite time and resources I might be able to create engine that is low power, highly inefficient, highly unreliable piece of crap.
That's the job of a machinist. They fabricate the parts that are needed down to miliimeter fractions. If you learn how to machine your own parts you'll be able to command a higher price for your services. Not many guys do that because it's not necessary, and the company just outsources those components anyway. Though, for very specific tooling a machinist will always have a job and always make some serious cash.
@@Jabullz Very true, I do wish I had access to machining tools, would make my job so much easier. In the context of 40k, when it comes to the AdMech, I suspect their manufacturing and machining capabilities to be quite impressive. The problem is they lack the fundamental knowledge of WHAT they’re making and why, only that it makes the tanks work or the Titans walk correctly. Even their best machinists and engineers are unable to understand Golden Age technology, let alone recreate it accurately, thus we see the stagnation and in many cases regression of Mechanicus tech. They also can’t afford to tinker with things and are heavily warned against experimenting with technology, as it cannot be replicated and will, in all likelihood, destroy the entire facility.
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.
Well, at least they'd understand the concept?
Hell, try explaining how an iPhone works to your average person today. Now couple that with the idea that neither one of you has access to documentation that explains components in the circuitry nor the equipment needed to properly measure or study it, and then you have the issue that plagues the Imperium.
@@Grounders10 The point is that a device powerful enough to destroy an entire region and render it uninhabitable for decades any time anywhere in the world would be completely intangible for anyone living in Ancient Greece, just as Golden/Dark Age tech would be completely intangible for anyone living in the Imperium, hence why they can't replicate the technology from that long lost era.
He was probably of higher than average intelligence so one could probably explain it to him
Socrates would be willing to go through a decade of education to learn that.
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.
yeah, its something I make a habit of reminding people of very often. I think many ppl do not realise how with even a minimal level of disruption the entire modern world would grind to a halt almost instantly. Its quite scary the more you look into it the worse it is.
@@Luetin09 smash up the semiconductor fabs in Korea, Taiwan, then we'd have some problems.
@@jamesgornall5731 Much easier, turn off electricity and we have the same problems. Without electricty about 99% of our modern world won't work anymore.
I agree, but unfortunately modern society just makes sense the way it is. The extreme compartmentalization lines up up with the economics of today perfectly. It's just the most efficient service to the demand of everything by humans.
@@Sike679 Absolutely, of course. That's the beauty of 40k writing and a lot of fictional literature. It reflects and shines a light on the world we live in. What we do makes sense, but we are also aware of how easy it can all come crashing down. So many books or movies have been written on the subject. 40k takes that same thing and exaggerates it 100x over, excessive compartmentalization, excessive superstition, outrageous grandiose designs. Its comical in a sense to where it allows us to laugh at ourselves and what we do but also reflect on what we do also. Alot of fiction does that.
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 is some innovation just very very slowly. It's only done by upper level magos and every step of the process takes centuries of "Okay are we ABSOLUTELY sure that adding that extra circuit won't make it explode into daemons?"
@@stantrien8106 Not really correct. Mechanicum is very different from forge to forge, and even the most conservative ones typically change excisting patterns so they can be easier to manufacture in their manufactorums. Also, new Skorpius shows how quickly can the template be designed, even a seemingly complex one, with anti-grav suspension. Also, Macharius and new cruiser designs in Calixis sector
It never existed before because it was lost during the Age Of Strife, and has recently been rediscovered.
That can easily be handwaved as "A Mechanicus expedition in Sector X recovered a mostly intact STC sample on planet Generic thereby allowing for the production of this new thing".
@@philiproe1661 Which is still lazy and unimaginative.
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
1d4chan lmao
It also helps that one of the faster than light communication methods is the game telephone.
The first half of what Mr. Evilsatan said was quite intriguin. However, the latter half was utterly (poor) sci-fi (what with the "war makes your scientists run out of theories" - clearly not a man who has studied philosophy of science or read Popper and Kuhn) and everything after that was really preachy and droning.
But that's basically what Warhammer lore is like: there are intensely interesting premises that get ruined by having 6-year olds develop the background without any understanding of context or training in fields that could be applied to the lore like history, economics, philosophy etc etc.
You know what. I was born in a forge city of an Empire that was about to take over the world. And I mean it - my home city Kaliningrad/Korolev was the space center of the USSR. Both of my parents were engineers in the space race. Time and again we've heard that there were enemies behind the gates, and that people in space race are to focus on practical tasks rather than on "theoretizing". Which meant that technological advances has all but stopped. My father was delayed with his thesis for 3 years just because he wanted to employ a century old math instead of just Newtonian Mechanics, the only thing understandable to an "ordinary soviet engineer". And indeed, the soviet technology has almost stopped progressing, for well, the rockets designed in the 60s did flew... until they started failing, and there seem to be no one capable not even to progress with the tech, but rather to change the politics that favored creation of 400/man strong depts within the mission control center just to suit another man who was promoted to a primarch, doing virtually nothing. All the while the tau empire of Elon Musk launches rockets for a fraction of the soviet dinosaurs.
@@LukeVilent and you guys still do it better than Boeing
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.
Also when the Roman empire fell so did the way to get lead (or something like that) , just like that people couldn't get lead
@@blackmailerhack3056 the eastern roman empire lasted till the 15th century with the conquest of Constantinople by tbe otoman's.
There is also the issue that romans didn't have technnology advanced enough to built engines able to withstand high steam pressure. So in the end it remained as "cool yet inefficient" thing until the advent of more developed metallurgy and engineering, which also made it economically feasible.
Remind some of the Greeks. I believe Heron, created something known as a “steam ball”, basically a crude steam engine, as a toy. And they had complex gearing, as we know from the Antikithira (probably spelt that wrong) Device. So they could have had an industrial revolution, in Ancient Greece. But they did not. And why? Probably because slaves were cheap and plentiful, so no need. Reminds me of the imperium in a lot of ways.
@@Erakius323 No, even with complex Machinery it still has to be strong enough to withstand constant steam pressure of which any such device made in their time would inevitable break down and would be more trouble than it would be worth.
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.
It's weird. He can be talking about how humanity will experience a death of knowlage and moral values but because of his voice and way of narration it sounds like the smoothest thing in the universe
I have discovered and gotten into WH40K about a month ago and I agree completely.
in the grim of the dark future, there is only sleep
Lol uses futurama photos to represent the men of iron
Thinks we won’t notice it
We do and love it.
Killbots to be exact
Imperium following the futurama startegy, send wave after wave of men at the iron men until they reach their kill limit.
Hedonism Bot would for sure be a Planetary Governor
I was looking for this exact comment
@@harrisonlee9585 Hedonism Bot would be a massive upgrade over the vast majority of Planetary Governors.
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."
In the end, it is what game developers/company wants to give us. Myths about Terra's past? They are just left open, even they don't know it, or know it vaguely (for example: their contradictionary explanations what lasguns are). Fanbase will fill the gaps with right or wrong quesses. In the end, this is all fiction, which people try to make sense of. And what for? Somewhat nihilistic view, but this is a reality. We are just numbers and resources (resources of money) to GW, like imperial citizens to imperial administration.
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 think it’s all just a bunch of overly gothic and depressing stuff made by fat neck beards who get hard off pain and misery
Yeah it's amazing how deep the universe runs. I've spent tens of thousands of hours researching warhammer 40k and I still haven't uncovered everything.
It’s my favorite sci fi universe for Role playing. I don’t play the miniature game, though.
Same, I had some friends in highs I that played the tabletop game and tbh watching people battle with space orc models is cringy af but I appreciate the lore
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
I've wondered this for a while but never bothered googling and at this point i don't want to because the mystery is just so illusive but what the FUCK actually is rubber?
I just rewatched your entire 40k playlist and now you bestow this gem upon us. Emperor bless you, Lore Master :3
thanks hope you continue to enjoy :D
It’s like the warmaster, but with lore
It’s like the warmaster, but with lore
40K has humans using British Mark 1 tanks- the kind built during WW1 -against alien hovercraft...
...but the effectivness of its armour is equivalent to 3.6 meters of modern military grade steel...
@@imperialguardsman135 So it's A Abram
I detect doubt... we have a black ship with your name on it. Come aboard... wer'e expecting ya!
R U L E B R I T A N N I A
40K has humans using British Mark 1 tanks against alien hovercraft... And winning.
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"
Hold my amasec
To be clear I think that this is possible with very few fictional universes, 40k being one of them.
@@varonosminxaouzen8921 Well it certainly helps that the lore is so expansive.
@@rocknessmonster2540 Basically it is because of how expansive is the lore, try to remember how many fictional worlds can have anyone making hourlong videos just to explain basic concepts for that world.
Ration Bar? I would like to think Luetin is not in such hard times that rationing food is required nor that he is engrossed enough in this universe that he is reenacting conditions there.
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.
Question is are they?. This all feels like a cult who believes in magic rather than science. Where in RL such a society would have been reduced to dust and back to sticks and stones in less than few decades. And it feels like that was the initial plan but fandom kept dragging it and now nothing makes remotely any sense.
"I could go on about 1984"
I'd be up for that.
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.
Grimdark dystopias like to borrow themes, don’t they?
Now with globalization we can do it again.
Here's a fun thought: Maybe the tower of Babel was an *actual* tower to the heavens - a space elevator. We had advanced technology in the distant past and lost it in some calamity that decentralized civilization. Atlantis lost.
@@gracefool that's definitely a fun thought. I have actually theorized among other players that the planet we call Earth isn't actually Terra and that we may actually be a long lost distant colonized planet cut off from the Imperium. Backing this up a bit is that 40k star maps don't put Terra in the same location in the Milkyway galaxy as our scientist place Earth. Not to mention that it doesnt seem that in any text anywhere that 40k ever refer to Terra as Earth. But for some strange reason we refer to Earth as Terra. This would make it seem as though we adopted the term "Terra" from somewhere, but 40k never adopted the term "Earth" from anywhere. As though they never knew Or know that Earth even exists. To go along with what you theorize those at GW and others around the planet may be latent psykers who are writing ebbs and flows of what we think is a fictional 40k, but not knowing 40k is an actual reality in other parts of our Galaxy that GW writers and others are unknowingly tapping into. If we believe the Tower of Babel and other beginning biblical stories around the world have some merit of truth to them and coincide it with this theory then the 1st human beings on earth could have come from the stars with only a few sole survivors making planet fall (Adam and Eve) with enough geneseed pods to populate and grow a thriving colony once more. Adam Valdimir and Eve Constanress crashed on Earth and populated the planet using advanced 40k tech. But the age of strife decimated all that old technology or the age of strife ruined the colonial expedition and of course we were brought back to the stone age here. I mean there had to have been some colonial ships still out there traveling when the age of strife 1st hit.
God help us if any one finds us 1st other than the T'au lol. Its funny how our depictions of aliens that have visited our Earth look similar to T'au of the water caste. Because not all T'au have the deep blue skin color but many have a grayish blue skin color also.
But all these theories are crushed by the idea that its recorded in imperial records that Khorne was born at the set of the 1st murder (Cain and Abel) or something like that. But who is to say that is not a deception from the warp to keep us all in the dark, superstitious, and blind. Surely the Aeldari and orher species have been murdering long before the 1st murder among mankind.
Is it all a lie... Lol 😋
@@trevrockrock16 With modern industriallization and globalization
I belive that we will be able to produce enough iron chariots to stop him.
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.
very good thoughts on this
It has always seemed to me that the humans of 40K are at best a caricature of real humans. The ancient psykers reincarnated themselves into the Emperor to try to guide the species away from disaster millennia before they would even leave their planet. They have existed under a potent psychic hegemony since almost the beginning, and all of their growth was made under it. There are also the chaos gods that may be purposefully suppressing human progress.
"They don't look up to the stars and dream or wonder about the world and try to better themselves."
I like this part a lot from your essay. I would even put an emphasize on it and put it like that:
"They don't look up to the stars and dream or wonder about the world and try to better themselves.
They look up to the stars with fear and dread about the next Tyranid, Dark Eldar, Tau or Orc invasion."
@@freshprinz8996i was gonna say the same thing, the fear they have drains them, along with everything else. the amount of dangers surrounding them is immense
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.
To be fair, I to would fanboy about the necrons when you start finding out about the insane shit their technology can do
Joe Rogan on Technology: "If I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet... how long until you could send me an email?"
"do you think we could put AI on DMT?"
@wowalinbie even if all the hardware wasn't compatible, each peice barely working and a patchwork of other tech, no internet, even when it's used properly it's in an ancient language if not completely currupted, and all the while you have no idea what this "email" thing even is.
A modern person with some advanced knowledge could do it in a few years give a resource rich area.
The Imperium being handicapped by old tech is stupid. After generations of using old tech and repairing it people will do one of two things; learn the old tech or use the old tech to invent new tech.
Also it only takes one Tesla or Da Vinici to rewrite tech history.
give him a girl, and you'll get a morse code message in about 200 years. maybe longer if they forget what they're they for in the first place....
I have a hatchet?
Oh good, so I can kill people and take their cell phones.
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.
You could use that for your own custom Legion having 1 legion to protect that world and memory wiped from the others
@@technomorphtv5834 My problem is what to do with them. I keep thinking that a world like that should have advanced beyond the rest of the Empire. But I don't want to just have them sweep in with amazing technology and just solve all the problems (it doesn't fit the grimdark narrative) so I end up sort of stuck.
I have far too many of my own original ideas that I never have time to write though, so this one will probably never see the light of day, lol.
@@hansellius the Grimdark version of that story for me is that the people of that world as so deeply insular due to living in paradise that they become detached from the suffering of the rest of the universe.
They retreat into fantasy worlds of their own creation, and ultimately go in the path of the Eldar: indulging in hedonism and losing sight of real morality, ultimately birthing a new cosmic horror that devours them...
@@DisgruntledPeasant That could work - and has some crossovers with another idea I have. The short version of that is that humanity retreats into (simulated) fantasy worlds of their own creation.
I fucking love Eldar though. They were my favourite when I wasa teen, and that hasn't changed in 20 years.
Luetin: "I could go on and on about 1984."
Me : "Please do"
In all seriousness I'd love a "Luetin discusses classic literature" series.
i may be another lost soul but I support this man
1984 is not classical.
@@METALFREAK03
It is now. What with being written before most of us were even born.
I agree
Frank Spencer I would say it is classical sci fi. Sci Fi is a newer genre, and as such even something written only 67 years ago would be appropriate
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.
In fairness, the result of that situation really had nothing to do with someone opening some books and learning stuff, and everything to do with the Lord Executor being a suicidal fool and starting a hopeless rebellion, in an empire ruled by religious zealotry. It could have just as much resulted in, "Oh snap, we could have been building these titans without importing a billion tons of candle wax each year all along? This is going to quadruple our productivity!"
You explained the subject perfectly.
How I wish for intact STC to be found.
I am imagining some warp lost 30k space marine ship coming into real space and then bam you have legion glave tanks in 40k.
@@daviddickson412 Speranza has a complete STC in its database
''Fun'' fact: the Golden Throne is failing and it can't be repaired with the technology that the Imperium currently has. The clock is ticking, the Imperium HAS to find a STC or lose the Astronomicon and become a prey to every horror in the galaxy.
Who can repair throne?
What is STC?
@@UkletiHolandjanin-pd1bf STC is short for a Standard Template Construct, an ancient device that held the sum total of all humanity's scientific knowledge from Dark Age of Technology. STCs were mass produced and handed out to people colonizing the galaxy. Their secondary function was the ability to create so called "STC patterns", blueprints of various devices, from farming equipment through microwaves and tanks all the way up to battleships that could be made from materials avalible to the colonists at any given time. In 41st millenium they are all corrupted beyond recognition and so rare that finding one will make you so rich you'll be able to buy entire planets.
As for who can repair the Golden Throne: literally nobody except for the Emperor himself
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.
Imagine a warhammer game like Mass Effect based on golden age of tehnology era, oh boy
What would be the appeal? Who would the enemies be? Mankind was beyond overpowered back then
Halford Cincuentaysiete Golden age in the beginning and then enter the dark age later.
So Total war Atilla 2 electric boogaloo in space. Take my money.
You will have one human general telling a army of robots to fight a group of orks, that will be about it.
@@Halfort57 the enemy could be fully awakened Necrons!
"...I'm getting dangerously off topic here" sounds like a new video to me ☺
Sounds like... H E R E S Y
W40k : **Decentralized languages spoken by the majority of uneducated peope, the "high" language spoken by the elite**
Romance-languages-speakers : First time?
@Sasha Da Masta French in England, about a thousand years ago
@Sasha Da Masta Latin spoken by rulers and priests and gaulich spoken by peasants in dark ages France/southern Germany
I think roman rulers spoke greek during the republic.
@@rrai1999 why did hat in a time became brown
@@UnordinaryCarl What?
This has always bugged me. Thanks for a video on on the subject!
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.
How long until we achieve this? China basically already finished it's progress on it. And Merkel wants to make it European.
If we could collectively forget the words "literally" and "basically," I'd be fine with that
Does it work that way for tyranny?
@@ExtremeDeathman
Lmao
So TikTok
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
"Why Can't Humanity Invent in 40K? "
See Also: the dismantling of understanding/science happening in modern politics today.
I would argue that "You learn too much, you'll never know"
Like what Luetin mentioned in his opening. We are all specialists now, specialists that rely on someone or someother person/machine to do our work.
This is why I say, you can't have arbitruary targets of 50% of students going to universities as its irrelevent and actually stumps growth of the economy and skills.
Look up un agenda 2030 and 2050.they want to do exactly that.they want to get rid of all humans except 500million or so and herd them into citys were every aspect of there lives are controlled
@@charlebrownga who's "they"?
@@mrbadguysan them.
@@mrbadguysan jews
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.
Excellent channel Forgotten Weapons.
This helped me understand the mechanicum more. The analogy at 29:20 about the car was most helpful. Thank you!
The Emperor "fixing machines with a touch" was probably just him kicking the damn thing until it started working again :P.
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.
Watching another vid, get a notification Luetin just posted
"This can wait, what's Luetin got going on?"
Trevor Berrhill I honestly did the same thing man
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
I'm pretty sure both low and high gothic are an unrecognizable mix of all languages, it's just "translated" into english and latin for us so we can actually understand what they're saying and thinking. It has been more than 38000 years since present day, just look at what happens in less than 2000 with English.
I understand that and I used Latin like an example from both Roman and the Medieval world, I'm just not good at explaining something to make sense very well, but in a way it's like what happened to Old English (The Anglo-Saxon language so to speak) over the ages, where it was adapted and hybridised by the French Normans and the various Norse Kingdoms to make modern English, but on a more grander scale in terms of the Gothic language seen in the 40k universe as Gothic adapted and got hybridised by the ages and the many wars and conquests on Terra and afar. But again, in that light of historical significance, English was used by the peasants and lower nobility to show class while the higher-ups spoke French to give that impression, and oppression, between the Normans and English, as in to say "we are better and more civilized than you", more or less in a similar way to what was mentioned in this video. But like I say, much to think about
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!
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
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.
Apparently the tech priests of mars write their notes in Greek.
Nice touch, that.
Greek is quite easilly to learn though
@@grandsensei4507
It's a joke. "Trying to read/learn Greek" is a phrase one uses to express that a subject is too complex for them to understand.
@@philiproe1661 ohh we greeks dont hear this frase too often xd
@@grandsensei4507
Yeah makes sense if you're already Greek. In the western world, the non Greek speaking parts have long regarded Greek and Latin as the languages of scholarship and learning. Mostly thanks to the church and the writings of the Greek philosophers. So the phrase originated from that.
This is some nice heresy you got going on here be a shame if someone inquired about it
Hey quit being such a nihilist, man...... you're such a Debbie Downer there Fred
This coming from the guy who preaches that God is dead? Expect a smart visitor from some "Ordos" at your door in the near future.
The Emperor protects.
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
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.
Long story short: "Progression is HERESY!!!" :P
Yes, but actually no.
-jokes aside
The Admech are just super-dedicated to chasing you up for doing something without them and 50 years of prayer and arguing with a bunch of spare parts and vindictive hard drives masquerading as a democracy.
So really, progression without church approval is techno-heresy.
The bigger problem is closer to asking random person to build a car . there is so much knowledge in the 40k world that advancing beyond it is very difficult
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.
Sure, but that's like 11,000 years after the Heresy, and it's just improvements, not radically new designs
We need a 40K movie series like lord of the rings! Fascinating story! and art work! Please keep up the great work
"This blueprint says that we need a Spanner. What is that?"
- "probably gun. Try shooting it"
21:50 *overstated
If something can't be 'understated', then it is of absolutely no consequence.
It’s hard to process a lot of data (let alone just simple math on large excel spreadsheets) without a computer.
This is why I think they are actually stuck up to a point, when you look at computers now and talk of Quantum computing etc you begin to realise that perhaps in the future we will be having AI building other AI because its beyond our capability, this is what I believe happened in the DAOT and why humanity ended up so screwed.
So the Mechanicus is actually doing sort of the right thing, for sort of the right reasons.
@@Luetin09 Huh. Having vellum as the major form of recording information actually being one of the blocks from reaching even our 'modern' forms of tech is something that I haven't thought of before. Even with the use of an abacus (which from what I've heard, is suprisingly fast with calculations), it will take an inordinate amount of time to go through the processes, and this is not taking into account processes that aren't just math.
Damn I want a poster of 34:00. The art you find for these videos is almost as good as the lore itself.
print screen it, put in paint, and google how to find similar images or just use google image drag that paint that you did to the search bar and it will upload it self, and voala gratz.
Leman Russ tanks.
i.pinimg.com/originals/33/06/14/330614ed869e72329d6934c4e7bdef0a.jpg
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
I thinķ hes exaggerated much points in him views.
Basically yes, started rambling a bit but it gets the point across
Jesus christ, reading that is horrifying and brutal, 40k is fucked beyond imagining.
Why wouldn't that one guy that survived just say fuck the library and start over from scratch? Wouldn't it be a waste of effort to try and work with a bunch of literal junk when you can just start with the bare minimum and work your way up from there, while also not messing with the things you already have? The efforts of the adeptus mechanicus in 40k are all in vain. There's no point in trying to continue, because there's nothing left to save.
Woah, awesome write up!
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!!!!
Inventor: So I have this new idea
Everyone else in 40K: HERESY!
just like every relationship between GW and Warhammer 40k fan animators... 🤣
*Cawl laughs and cries in multiple personalities and AI*
Cawl is unironically the worst thing to ever happen to Wh40k lore.
Newovar he has a sick model doe
@@Newovar
Better call Caul.
"Behold! Pimaris Astartes! The new tool for the Emperor's wrath!"
**Inquisitor starts sniffing about**
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.
I feel like we really take modern education for granted really. Obviously most people with a college or even high school degree would know that there must be a missing part in the switch, a loose connection, or some other error just from basic knowledge of how electricity works, and how such mechanisms are usually handled. On the other hand if you never had an education, you might assume that the switch must be working perfectly fine, and that it is somehow your fault that it's not performing the way you want it to.
"have you tried turning it off and on again" instantly comes to mind.
Give the example of the car , use the Blueprint of and old Fiat Panda to make comparison to 40k.
PURE GENIUS
The opening quote of this video is astounding
What lies in the depths is what drives everything, we must be so careful when we try to advance.
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.
There is some weird and wacky shit, hidden deep within the depths of the Temple of All Knowledge, on Holy Mars itself.
Indeed. I once had privilege to search the temple archives for knowledge regarding mechandrites. To most peculiar interest, I happened upon designs for simple mechanical limb extenders, shaped to form the head of a long extinct Apex predator of Holy Terra.
Kudos for sneaking in the still shot from Futurama.
This make me wonder how much research the Dark Mechanicum manage to accomplish. Pertubaro was know to invent and probably still protect some secret research lab to maintain the edge that the Iron Warriors have in war. He could have an oddly complete STC library with some new creations that he got over the millennia.
I have been really enjoying the new music lately. It really adds much to the mood. Great work, sir.
The best 40k UA-camr
Ah, Luetin lore videos. The best bedtime stories one could ask for.
The similarities to Ancient Rome go even further than I thought. This reminds me of how interesting and well constructed 40k is.
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
That's true, but even today it may be seen that many people, even in the First World, are incredibly low information and have to be spoon fed most knowledge about the world. Very few people question anything, to do so these days is almost "heretical".
Common core, wokism, the transgender war on kids...... Humanity is regressing
I've always wanted you to do this one!!!! Best gift after a hard exam❤
Another great video. You are one of the reasons why I stay interested in Warhammer.
Is it just me or does the Imperial Fists "Phalanx" remind you a bit of a Blackstone Fortress?
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.
Its actually a really interesting topic, Its something I think I will be reading about more
@@Luetin09 me too. This video was amazing dude. Took me 3 hours to just stop in between...Relate it with other stuff in our real world to actual religions to the stagnation of knowledge, 1984 and how tech, supply lines work today....It's all so fragile, no?
Anyway, amazing amazing video dude
We've always had this problem though, since our lives got more complex than "how to start a fire, how to throw this stick to kill that animal". If you go back in time to when we had just started inventing and using farming en-masse you'd find nobles and many regular civilians with absolutely NO idea how a farm actually works - from the day-to-day to the yearly operation. How do you make sure your crops are properly watered? How do you choose the correct crops to plant and when, to ensure the best harvests and the prevention of the land being completely drained of nutrients? And yet the same people who had knowledge of this stuff had NO idea how to build a roof for a new dwelling, or how to provide a growing village/town with enough water (ie where and how to build wells). That's the entire reason jobs exist in the first place and how businesses became a thing and why humans have always specialised. No single person has ever been able to do absolutely everything required to live and thrive. That's why civilizations exist in the first place and why humans have always existed in groups - we HAVE to work together for the benefit and survival of all because NOBODY can do it all themselves. Yes the creation of more complex technology has made this issue worse and widened that chasm of knowledge, but it's actually always been there in some form or another since before our caveman days.
People who try to go off on their own and "live off the land" - doing everything themselves all by themselves more often than not end up failing because SOMETHING comes along that completely throws a wrench into the works. Be it trying to figure out how to build a decent domicile, or even say they have an accident that causes injury - now they have to be a medic with knowledge of how to stave off infection (yeah good luck with that when all you have is some sticks and a bit of moss) for long enough that they heal, but all the while they're now unable to do all the rest of the hundred other jobs needed for survival. And that's how they either end up dying out in the wilderness or having to be rescued and returned to actual civilization.
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.
I'd buy that. The tech priests are not idiots, and are fully capable of tinkering with equipment and gear. However, even in our current society there are somethings that just shouldn't be tinkered with. Let's say an engineer working on a nuclear reactor decided he want to innovate and tinkered with the core of the nuclear reactor and accidentally triggered a meltdown. Well shit now you have an ecological catastrophe in your hands because some douchebag thought he was smart enough to tinker with something that didn't need to be tinkered with. The same logic applies to 40k tech or perhaps even more so. If some heretic tech priest fucked around with the gellar field of a navy vessel now you have a horde of demons ready to fuck you to death. Or even worse if a tech priest fucked around with dark age tech then you could potentially end up with a whole sector collapsing to a rogue machine. When the stakes get higher innovation tends to slow down. Which probably explains why nuclear technology advancements are slow. Could we potentially make leaps and bound in nuclear technology if engineers were allowed to test things with no restrictions? Perhaps, but the cinsequence of that would be half a continent becoming an irradiated wasteland.
Astartes got me started, now I’ve been consuming your vidoes in quarantine, and this universe is...awe inspiring. I’m a huuuuuuge Frank Herbert fan especially Children of Dune and God Messiah, this reminds me a lot of Dune
Really good, really in depth video that stays engaging the whole time. Great job my guy.
Thanks, I love listening your videos before going to sleep and its arrived just in time.
Aside from entertainment (my kind) your videos like this about 40k are actually thought provoking and interesting. I appreciate the videos, even though your videos are pretty much all i know of 40k.
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 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
Me doing a night shift bored as hell luetin vid pops up never clicked faster .
I am very impressed Sir. This is a vector of inquiry and understanding I've never heard expressed before. Well done.
I love that you used the gun bots from Futurama in a slide lol
I love the insertion of the killbots from Futurama lol
When you have to clarify it’s “just an analogy”
RIP. What a world we live in.
Excellent and very enlightening video. Especially as it pertains to the modern world that we live in. I am a machinist and have made parts for hundreds of different machine used in making thousands of different everyday items and I can honestly say that I only know how a handful of those parts actually worked in their final role. Again compartmentalization. Even within a single company the machinist doesn't always know what the engineer's final design is meant to full accomplish and the engineer has no idea how to make the part that they have drawn. It's all really fascinating and terrifying.
I think people need to start appreciating how easily knowledge can be lost forever. There are organization dedicated entirely to preserving mankind's vast space of knowledge. Even these archivists can only guarantee 20 maybe 50 years of preservation in the case of an end of the world event. Even at that point, with considerable corruption to the information. Entropy is a real thing people. Your best hard drives can last 3-5 years without constantly refreshing the data. 10 years regardless. Entire fields of study have already been lost completely already and today we face another more insidious form of information loss. Over-saturation. It's estimated a lot more information is lost in the form of research and discoveries due the fact there is too much noise for anyone to notice and preserve your work beyond your own efforts perhaps due to death or career change or whatever. A future bronze age collapse or medieval collapse similar to what has occurred in the Middle East, is very possible.
This is definitely one of the most darkest and depressing things about modern technology. The thousands of years it took to get here could all be lost in a few centuries. The good news though is that if people do take the time to learn and they aren’t extinct, they probably will learn eventually relearn it again. Give or take another few centuries
The most complex and OTT space opera/dystopian comedy in pop culture. Once again eruditely analysed and elaborated upon. Thanq 😁
This explains a lot why they’re stuck with the lack of inventors.