# Why arent there nukes in 40k??



## Soviet Lord (Nov 6, 2011)

Why arent there nukes in 40k?
They would solve many problems.


----------



## Lord Sven Kittyclaw (Mar 23, 2009)

Planetary bombardment?


----------



## Soviet Lord (Nov 6, 2011)

What do you mean?


----------



## Lord Sven Kittyclaw (Mar 23, 2009)

Gigantic space to surface explosives that wipe whole civilisations out? Or Virus bombs. They don't really "need" nuclear weapons.


----------



## Samules (Oct 13, 2010)

Well they have far more destructive weapons but here's a different perspective on it: here.


----------



## Soviet Lord (Nov 6, 2011)

What if a planet is full of orks or Chaos why couldnt the Imperium just make a nuke the size of a titan and blow up the planet?
It would be much easier rather than to send troops to fight


----------



## The Sullen One (Nov 9, 2008)

Some of the massive defence missiles like the one that slagged the Crimson Fist's chapter monastery are basically nukes, only on a larger scale.


----------



## Soviet Lord (Nov 6, 2011)

Ok cool


----------



## aboytervigon (Jul 6, 2010)

Guard have a nuke, it's called the the Deathstrike missile.


----------



## RedHotMagma (Nov 8, 2011)

what about orbital bombardment? I think it count as nukes


----------



## stevey293 (Aug 16, 2011)

Am i not right in saying they can rip planets apart in 40k if they want thus making our days nuke pothetic in comparison.


----------



## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Of course the Imperium posses various nuclear weapons. They also have a lot of other 'weapons of mass destruction' which are often more effective or more desirous to use. 

Virus Bombs, Ground to Orbital Torpedoes (which are essentially missiles, packed with al lovely plasma warhead), and planetary bombardment of various types all fit the bill. Not to mention planet based missile bases and artillery. 

Often though a 'regular' planetary bombardment would be more desirable than using nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have the nasty side effect of fallout and radiation, something plasma warheads or lasers, or macro-cannon do not. 

As to why the Imperium invades planets rather than destroying them from orbit it comes to cost-effectiveness and the Imperium's greater goals. It is actually cheaper and easier for the Imperium to send in millions of men to take a planet than it is to use the Navy to bombard it for weeks. There are trillions of soldiers out there but many less ships which are always needed. Dumping men on a planet for a few years or even decades is easier and cheaper for the Imperium. 

There is also the fact that they want to capture planets relatively intact. The Imperium needs resources after all and if they render every planet they fight over worthless or uninhabitable then it's a net loss for them. 

That said they do engage in Exterminatus; the destruction of planets wholesale. Inquisitor Krytpmann torched hundreds of planets in a attempt to re route the Tyrannids to ork held worlds as the concentration of biomass suddenly shifted. Often a planet that has suffered a particularly bad daemonic invasion suffers Exterminatus and it is a tactic used against the Tyranids. They are fought for a planet for as long as possible; expending energy to do so, then the planet is destroyed when it can no longer hold out, essentially wasting the Tyranid effort and weakening the Hive Fleet. 

Extermiantus can only be initiated via Inquisitorial order, you can't just have random Captains deciding a planet needs torching. (though Chapter Masters seem to have some autonomy in this regard).


----------



## Hellados (Sep 16, 2009)

They also use nukes in one of the Gaunts Gosts novels, the forces of chaos do or it is a self destruction thingy. thing is theres not a lot of skulls or blood left for khorne after one of them goes of. . . 

Also in a Heresy book they virus bomb the planet then create a fire storm using nukes set of in tactical places to ignite the atmosphere 

but they wouldn't go nuking a forgeworld with one of the last copies of the LR blueprint on it would they? that's irreplaceable, the men of the IG and for that matter the Astrates are.


----------



## the_man_with_plan (May 3, 2011)

the armageddon steel legion nuked their own homeworld as akind of hundred year long rite of penitence. yes, you read that right. they nuked their planet continuously for 100 years.


----------



## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

That was the Death Korps of Krieg. The actual 'nuking' of their planet only lasted for a few days/weeks, the civil war however lasted centuries. The penitence is an ongoing thing whereby they punish themselves for their ancestor's rebellion (though this is the winning side who didn't actually rebel so go figure) by taking the very worst battlezones. 

The Steel Legion are from Armageddon, curently the site of the largest Ork/Imperial war and are famous for their mechanised units, Armageddon being an exporter of Chimera APC's.


----------



## shaantitus (Aug 3, 2009)

Damn Ninjas.
The climate of krieg is as a result of the over use of nukes. So yes, the imperium has nukes. There are however better things to use on occasion.


----------



## ThoseKrazyKasrkin (Aug 2, 2011)

aboytervigon said:


> Guard have a nuke, it's called the the Deathstrike missile.


Thats plasma not nuclear


----------



## Fallen (Oct 7, 2008)

read the Death Korp of Kreig fluff.


----------



## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Dark Crusade books sees CSM use nukes against an SM space station. They capture a loyalist ship, shove lots of homing beacons on it and send it back tot he station: when it passes the rad scans and docks they then teleport loads of nukes over and destroy half the station in 1 go.

Incidentally, what is left is still kicking their collective arses when the crons just turn up, take 1 look at it, and destroy it...


----------



## mynameisgrax (Sep 25, 2009)

Soviet Lord said:


> What if a planet is full of orks or Chaos why couldnt the Imperium just make a nuke the size of a titan and blow up the planet?
> It would be much easier rather than to send troops to fight


That's exactly what they do, but in this case either side would try to stop them in space, and we have a Battlefleet Gothic game.

The Imperium only gets involved in unit to unit combat when there's something strategically important about the planet that makes it worth saving.

If a planet is just filled with the enemy and nothing useful/reclaimable, then yes, they'll just annihilate the planet, but as others have mentioned, they have better weapons than nukes for that.


----------



## Igniskhin (May 19, 2011)

when in doubt, nuke it from orbit!


----------



## eyescrossed (Mar 31, 2011)

A nuke the size of a titan. Lulz.


----------



## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

Because anything a nuke can do the Imperium has something else that can do it better. Nuclear weapons are dirty, primitive things and in the future we've moved past them to either less fallout inducing plasma warheads or more destruction causing virus bombing/cyclonic warheads.



Hellados said:


> They also use nukes in one of the Gaunts Gosts novels, the forces of chaos do or it is a self destruction thingy.


I'm guessing your talking about _Necropolis_ where traitors infiltrate a hive and somebody overloads the hives reactors. Although this causes an insane amount of damage I can't recall whether it was specified to be atomic in nature, generally the Imperium uses plasma for that kind of thing.


----------



## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

Tim/Steve said:


> Incidentally, what is left is still kicking their collective arses when the crons just turn up, take 1 look at it, and destroy it...


I'm gonna miss the good ol' days of silent death armies... In the new fluff Imotekh would have turned the station into a huge likeness of himself to gloat about it, then have it blown up a few seconds later by some random SM captain. :threaten:

On topic: The races of 40k are somehow able to ignore the effects of massive nuclear bombardment. That is why they have Exterminatus which uses Cyclonic Torpedoes, weapons that make megaton-class nukes look like the tiny tactical ones used in Star Craft. Those are the crazy planet-busters you're asking about. :biggrin:


----------



## Weapon (Mar 5, 2009)

Who needs nukes when you've got the Ultramarines?

/jab

I'm joking by the way, I've got nothing against Ward.


----------



## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

Nukes are still used, just not as much. However a large enough nuke would kill a planet just as fast as any other imperial weapon. Hell here we are now with nukes that come close to ravaging our entire world for centuries if we detonated them in orbit, and our tech is hardly amazing compared to 40k. Fact is no matter where you are in history the idea of a weapon that can vaporise steel and ruin a worlds ecosystem for 100s of year is scray, but I am sure the imperium aviod them not out of concern of their effectivness but for some other reason like legistics or transport. Luckly chaos seems to not give a rats ass and has used these cheap and effective weapons to great effect.


----------



## Hellados (Sep 16, 2009)

MEQinc said:


> I'm guessing your talking about _Necropolis_ where traitors infiltrate a hive and somebody overloads the hives reactors. Although this causes an insane amount of damage I can't recall whether it was specified to be atomic in nature, generally the Imperium uses plasma for that kind of thing.


think gaunt said they used atmoics, i would check but its upstairs and i cant move


----------



## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Enough nuclear for one day?


----------



## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

There's at least one space marine chapter that still uses nukes.


----------



## DeathKlokk (Jun 9, 2008)

Crimson Fists nuked their own planet, now that's hardcore!


----------



## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

In the Horus Heresy they mention a city being radioactive after it has been bombarded. Pretty sure a lot of what people take as "other weapons" are in fact nuclear in nature.


----------



## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

one word......Exterminatus


----------



## Minizke1 (Feb 7, 2010)

Insanity72 said:


> one word......Exterminatus


^ this.


----------



## darkreever (Apr 3, 2008)

Rems said:


> That said they do engage in Exterminatus; the destruction of planets wholesale. Inquisitor Krytpmann torched hundreds of planets in a attempt to re route the Tyrannids to ork held worlds as the concentration of biomass suddenly shifted. Often a planet that has suffered a particularly bad daemonic invasion suffers Exterminatus and it is a tactic used against the Tyranids. They are fought for a planet for as long as possible; expending energy to do so, then the planet is destroyed when it can no longer hold out, essentially wasting the Tyranid effort and weakening the Hive.


Actually I do believe that Kryptman's aim was not to reroute the tyranids to ork held worlds but rather to simply starve the hive fleet until it could be properly engaged. After all, tyranid ships expend biomass in order to travel from planet to planet and system to system. If you lure a fleet into a system, let them expend energy getting to the target, and then rob them of those resources then its a net loss everytime.

If, ultimately, the tyranid hive fleet changed course and went after ork worlds then it was not by Kryptman's design. In then end the tyranids would come out of thatas strong or stronger than before with less opposition and with Imperium able to sacrifice fewer worlds. (If memory serves, I think that was his exact fear to boot.)


----------



## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Krieg was completely nuked by Imperial loyalists to prevent the traitors from defecting then was retaken via a 500 year bloody civil war that continued from there.

So yes, nukes are used (to great effect) from time to time.


----------

