# How has the Earth's Oceans all dried up?



## Ardias26 (Sep 26, 2008)

considering that water covers two thirds of the planets surface, I cant see how even 40 millennia of man made activity could see all of it disappearing. Has the fluff ever explained how earth or 'terra' has lost all its oceans or any fan theories?

ps...sorry for bad spelling


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## Davidicus 40k (Jun 4, 2010)

Ocean is wasted space. Think of Holy Terra as a darker Coruscant from Star Wars - a planet-city with the main buildings of the Imperium occupying entire continents. I'd imagine they either evaporated or simply drained all the water. Easily possible in the next 38,000 years, if we really wanted to do it. I haven't seen any official fluff referencing the oceans specifically, though.


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## Belthazor Aurellius (Jan 16, 2009)

In Tales of Heresy: Blood Games, the story takes you to the South American continent at one point, and shows that there is a large power station there, whose power draws so much heat from the local area that over the millenia, a large glacier has formed. I would imagine that several spots across the globe posess similar glacial formations, and that the rest of the world's water supply has been transported off-world to terraform Mars and other planets/moons in system. Also, the 30,000CE Terra is not barren of water, like it is in the 41st millenium. I would suppose that during the Horus Heresy, many weapons were employed to dry up the world, during the siege, and that what was left has been usurped by later conflicts (Age of Apostasy?)

I'm sure I don't know it all, but that seems like a viable place to start, when figuring out where the water's gone to.


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## Khargoth (Aug 5, 2010)

Nothing stopping them from building cities _on top of oceans_. It takes some really insane engineering tricks but it could be done with modern technology. It's just not fanancially feasible or practical right now.


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

It's also stated that the devastating nuclear wars boiled the oceans away, the fact that there was more than nuclear war does give some plausibility to that statement (if not much).


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## darklove (May 7, 2008)

There are probably ocean sized reservoirs to supply the population of Earth, but, as the planet has been fully built over, these would be underground.


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## CaptainLoken (May 13, 2009)

In one of the earlier WD's it said it happened during the heresy When Horus bombed the planet it done serious damage.


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

This is warhammer physics.... so it really doesn’t have to make any sense.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

In warhammer physics/fluff it could be just done by being attacked at various times.
In a more real-world type logic it would just have to be tens of thousands of years of spaceships loading up on surplies of water and people and leaving terra: if people are 70% water that that must be 50-100kg of water lost for every person leaving terra, plus the thousands of gallons each large craft would take on board before leaving and you can see that it wouldnt take all that long to get rid of the oceans. That leaves the lovely question of what happened to all the salt though- there would be absolutely vast salt deserts created, as well as techtonic uplift (removal of the weight of the oceans would cause the seabeds to 'rise' and the continents to 'fall' relative to each other.... so it would be a vastly different terra then the earth we know (as if you hadnt already guessed that one).


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## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

I read in one of the rulebooks that said there is 1 small ocean, where the pacific use to be, that is used by the nobles on terra.


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## Davidicus 40k (Jun 4, 2010)

locustgate said:


> I read in one of the rulebooks that said there is 1 small ocean, where the pacific use to be, that is used by the nobles on terra.


Even nobles need swimming pools :grin:.


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## 5tonsledge (May 31, 2010)

outsourcing probably just like the jobs in america damn asia took all of the nike manufacturing jobs. but in all honesty its probablynuclear fall out im assuming at one point durring the horus herecy water could have been destroyed but a personal phiosphy is that another war took the waters of terra. think about it when you are going up against and emperor with his warriors you probably wont beat them in a fight so a way you can do some serious damage to an enemy by destroying important resources such as food and water. armies have used this method for years the french did it back in the middle ages they would take the fields and stop the transportation fo water and trade by surrounding the castle and wait til the enemy surrendered. another incident is the bosnian war the red cross sent food and supplies by trucks and the enemy would steal them to keep the moral of the enemy down and they were plain and simply starving. so if this is the case would asume that this tactic could have been used against humanity either by chaos or previous afairs.


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

Maybe the Emperor got thirsty...?


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

There is one real world explanation no-one has even thourght of, that far in to the future the sun is going to have run out of hydrogen, and will have started to burn its heavy elements. This will increase it volume and its heat out put, thus causing the surrounding planets to warm up dramtically, thus reasulting in no oceans, of cause necular wars, and weapons of distruction fired from space, will on compound the problem and result in an accelaration of the water disappering problem. Its simple really


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## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

WhoHitJohn? said:


> There is one real world explanation no-one has even thourght of, that far in to the future the sun is going to have run out of hydrogen, and will have started to burn its heavy elements. This will increase it volume and its heat out put, thus causing the surrounding planets to warm up dramtically, thus reasulting in no oceans, of cause necular wars, and weapons of distruction fired from space, will on compound the problem and result in an accelaration of the water disappering problem. Its simple really


I thought that takes millions if not billions of years


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

Yeah 38,000 years isn't going to cause an appreciable difference to the sun.


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## ChaosRedCorsairLord (Apr 17, 2009)

locustgate said:


> I thought that takes millions if not billions of years


Billions of years. Assuming 40k stars follow the 'lifecycle' of real world stars. Maybe a C'tan was munching on Terra's star?


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

true enought in this realilty it would but it is believed that in alternate realilities that events can happen at different time frames, so its not that far of to say it possible

Edit: plus its never said that it is the 41st christian milleneum, because human civilition has had more than two but in 2000 A.D. we welcomed the 2nd milleneum, so its also plusible that it has been more that 38,000 years in to our suns life


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

It's suppose to be based off of our reality, kind of, so the sun hitting it's expansion should be running on the same time frame and if was hot enough to vaporize the water on earth it would be hot enough to kill everyone on it.


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## BrainFreeze (Oct 9, 2008)

The problem with vaporizing the water is that the atmosphere would have to maintain a certain set of conidtions, other wise the water will just fall again as rain.


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## Barnster (Feb 11, 2010)

Pollution would result in the water failling as an "acid" rather than water. 

Horus's lance batteries would cause major damage to the water, but why was horus targeting the ocean? The siege never lasted long enough for it to be a viable tactic and based on how horus fought the siege he never wanted to wait 

The emperors unification wars did do alot of damage to the quantity of water, as would the mass population boom and the expeditionary fleets which would require vast reserves of resourses like water


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

gen.ahab said:


> It's suppose to be based off of our reality, kind of, so the sun hitting it's expansion should be running on the same time frame and if was hot enough to vaporize the water on earth it would be hot enough to kill everyone on it.


how would it, there are places on the earth that get up 100 degrees in temp, and thats the starting point of vaporisition of water, also known as evaporation, so really it is not that far fetched, and even if you say its set in our reality, which ok in 38,000 years our sun will not be entering a state of expantion, it is not stated in what calendar the 41st millenium has been established, there for it could be alot further into the future than you think, as i said before we celabrated the 2nd millenium 10 years ago but it was not humanities 2nd millenium, so to discount the theory simply "because that can't have happened yet" is a pritty uncovinsing argument.

Plus a reality where humans are on earth and has simulatrites to our own, in argument could be based of ours, or vise versa if you want.

Plus its also theoried that if we had not had gone thourgh the dark ages we would be colonizing space now, due to an accelirated scientific understanding


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

WhoHitJohn? said:


> how would it, there are places on the earth that get up 100 degrees in temp, and thats the starting point of vaporisition of water, also known as evaporation, so really it is not that far fetched, and even if you say its set in our reality, which ok in 38,000 years our sun will not be entering a state of expantion, it is not stated in what calendar the 41st millenium has been established, there for it could be alot further into the future than you think, as i said before we celabrated the 2nd millenium 10 years ago but it was not humanities 2nd millenium, so to discount the theory simply "because that can't have happened yet" is a pritty uncovinsing argument.
> 
> Plus a reality where humans are on earth and has simulatrites to our own, in argument could be based of ours, or vise versa if you want.
> 
> Plus its also theoried that if we had not had gone thourgh the dark ages we would be colonizing space now, due to an accelirated scientific understanding


It was only Europe that went through the Dark Ages, every where else was fine making scientific advances- I know 40k is set 38,000 years in the future because one of the early HH novels uses a 'quote' from a writer/philosopher that we're familiar with and dates the excerpt as being from M.2.


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

finily someone who has some information to back up the argument for not 38,000 years in our reality but you still can not discredit mutliverse theory, (alternate reality theory) because by the fact that in each reality there can be corisponding events or people but not all events will happen at the same pace of time, ergo in a alternate reality the sun could be going nova right now, at this very second as an alternate me sits here writing something simular


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

Our reality applies to our earth, our timeline so same date. Assuming Sol is the same age, which it should be if it is using our timeline, which I believe it is, Terra should have another bil years or so. 

And converting entire oceans to vapor would require far to much heat for humanity to still exist outside. 

The emperor was born in the year 8k BC(BCE for those who give a shit). He would be on the same date system we are. 

If Sol were to be going nova it would be at the end of it's final expansion phase which would mean the earth would have been consumed by the sol since it's diameter would be past the current orbital path of mars.

I am not saying your multiverse theory is wrong just that the Sol expansion might be.


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

@gen.ahab do you attualy get multi-verse theory, because i do not think you do, if you want it in layman's terms it means that anything that can happen WILL, IS, or HAS happened, therefore its no big strech to say what i have said, i understand you point but since realites can follow eah other closely enough to have events at the sametimes and even the same sort of time measurment systems, therefore if the 40k universe is an alternate reality of our earth then it would follow that some events that have happened here will happen there, However others COULD happen before they happen here or even AFTER.

Plus i used the nova as an example to my point i was not saying that sol had gone nova for that would have ment bye bye terra

simply said that it had started to burn its heavier elements there increassing its heat output and effecting terras climate


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

Yes but even if it were, which I wasn't saying it wasn't, that realities timeline progressed exactly the same as ours from our perspective. Imagine all the events that 40k describes are happenig now, we just aren't aware of it. There could be eldar and orks beating the living fuck out of eachother right now but we are stuck here, on this world, so we won't know it. The emperor could be walking among us, hell, he could be a member of the NFL( kidding). That's the perspective 40k takes. It could be a different verse, but that different verse, if we were to take our time and travel to it at the same point in time we are at, nothing really significant would have changed. The universe, the galaxies one, would still be about 13.7 billion years old and the earth would still be 4 bil old... But orks and eldar would be going at it.

Also, Sol is the same as we know it now, nothing about it is different. What removed the water was the wars, from what I remember. If it were something like a Sol expansion, it would have been noted. Although it is very neat to think about.

Although the timeline could be very very different, as you said, it is just that if it got hot enough to totally remove the water from Terra, or to the extent it is in 40k, it should be too hot for life. Could be wrong though.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

WhoHitJohn? said:


> how would it, there are places on the earth that get up 100 degrees in temp,


Just had to correct that one- 100deg C is the temperature at which all water turns into a gas... evaporation is a different thing entirely: its small amounts of water 'disolving' as it were in the air and happens at different rates in all temperatures. This is why it doesnt need to be 100 degrees for something to dry (otherwise there wouldnt be much point in a washing line to dry clothes)... and since there is water vapour in the air its good that that doesnt mean the air must be 100degrees or more (unlike ice- if ice exists in water then the water's temp is exactly 0 degrees C... if is properly mixed, but thats a weird side effect of thermodynamics).


Again, Im going to stay on the same track when I say that there is *no way* that Terra's oceans have simply evaporated. There is a planet in our solar system that did at one time have oceans but they evaporated. That planet is Venus. While closer to the sun and with a very large amount of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere that doesnt give anything like enough heat to explain the +400 degrees C that Venus has on Earth... the big difference is that once Venus got hot enough to vapurise its oceans its game over: water is a very powerful greenhouse gas and once you vapourise an ocean the planet would become far too warm for that water to ever to condense and fall as rain. If this happened to the Earth (or Terra, assuming its vaguely the same planet) then the planet would heat up to something far above 300 degrees C, humans certainly wouldnt be able to live there.


I really can't think of Terra as another universe's version of Earth. I only ever think of it as the far future of our own. Mainly because I cannot believe the Multi-Verse theory, both on a scientific and a personal level. Give a pacifist a gun and tell him to point it at the head of a small child and ask him nicely to pull the trigger... multi-verse theories say that somewhere he decided that he would pull the trigger (and that that is the point that verse splits from ours). I might be willing to believe that the future isn't 100% predictable since atomic decay really does appear to be random... but personally I think that if you understood how everything worked, knew where everything in the entire of everything was and had the inteligence to work out where it was going and what interactions it would make you would know exactly what would happen in the future... but then that must be pretty much as close as you can get to a secular definition of God.

[/philosophy]

um.. Horus made it go boom by thinking it :so_happy:
Its a story, a made up universe... believe what makes you happy :wink:


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## WhoHitJohn? (Jul 3, 2010)

Tim/Steve said:


> Just had to correct that one- 100deg C is the temperature at which all water turns into a gas... evaporation is a different thing entirely: its small amounts of water 'disolving' as it were in the air and happens at different rates in all temperatures. This is why it doesnt need to be 100 degrees for something to dry (otherwise there wouldnt be much point in a washing line to dry clothes)... and since there is water vapour in the air its good that that doesnt mean the air must be 100degrees or more (unlike ice- if ice exists in water then the water's temp is exactly 0 degrees C... if is properly mixed, but thats a weird side effect of thermodynamics).


yeah i was wrong there there i was tired should have checked what id put, and i always hated thermodynamics


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## unixknight (Jul 26, 2010)

If you really want to make a mental exercise of it, just apply a few simple scientific principles and the answer is clear.

First, we discard the multiverse theory. It's not that such a theory is implausible in the fictional universe that is WH40K, but if we go that rout the mental exercise ends. "Oh, it's another dimension. Ok. So anyway, how 'bout that Dorn?"

So let's assume that the Terra of 40K is indeed the Earth we know today, 38 millennia into the future.

Another theory that's been postulated is that the Earth's oceans have been vaporized by war/industry/solar activity. The problem there is that whether water evaporates or is boiled into steam, it still has to be accounted for. The Earth's atmosphere simply can't be saturated with water enough to hold the entire volume of Earth's oceans at a temperature and pressure where life could survive on the surface. The water has to go _somewhere_.

We know that by the time of the Heresy the oceans were already gone. At the risk of giving away spoilers, some of the events early in the novel Nemesis take place in a dustbowl that was once the Atlantic Ocean. Tales of Heresy also describes the last church as existing on a hillside in a region that was once the bottom of the ocean. It is implied that it's a relatively recent development, as the former oceans are not yet as densely populated as they are in the 41st Millennium, but nevertheless it is clear that they're either completely gone or that no more than a negligible amount of water remains on the surface. 

That means that either the water has been removed from the planet completely or it has gone underground. Both theories are plausible and maybe the most realistic approach is to assume some combination of both. 

Consider:

Terra is the Imperial Capital. It is the most heavily defended world in the Imperium and presumably part of that defense is the ability to withstand a siege. Well, when you're preparing a fortress to resist a siege, what do you need? You need supplies. Food, ammunition and water. Terra's population in the 41st Millennium is unknown but we can reasonably conclude it's several times greater than the population today, perhaps in the order of tens of billions. It would take a vast quantity of water to sustain that population even under normal conditions, let alone during a siege of the planet.

I find it hard to believe the Imperial Capital is so reliant on importing water that without it the entire planet would be dead of thirst within a few weeks, so we have to assume there are some kind of vast reservoirs of water somewhere.

Underground. It seems likely that the volume of water from the oceans is contained in vast underground reservoirs. Perhaps in empty magma chambers, or caverns that formerly held raw fossil fuels long ago drained, but in any case Terra MUST have an independent supply of recyclable water and that says to me that it's underground.

Some significant quantity of it may also have been moved off planet for colonization purposes but I think it's unlikely to have been very much. Water is a precious resource that if it had to be drained away to supply colonies, I don't see it being taken from the Imperial Capital. Water is a molecule that is easily made from burning hydrogen and oxygen so it seems more likely that colonies and starships would rely on this process for their water. (Seem unrealistic? Guess again. The American Space Shuttle does exactly this in its fuel cells.)

So my personal theory is that Terra's water is below the surface, safe from enemy bombardment and kept in such a way as to maximize the usable surface area of the planet.


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

Makes more sense than most theories I have heard.


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## Androxine Vortex (Jan 20, 2010)

I like the reference to Coroscant from Star Wars. I think it is because ov all the radiation, nuclear power, etc. i wonder how it has effected the water cycle and everything. would it cause it not to rain? Would that have lead to different approaches on farming? Would it have made species on Terra extinct? The chain is endless haha


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## Belthazor Aurellius (Jan 16, 2009)

I love how Unixknight cites The Last Church from Tales of Heresy. It rained all throughout the story. Rain, not acid rain, just a normal thunderstorm... Though it served to punctuate the Emperor's presence, and probably precipitated in part due to the Emperor, but the story relates the concept that there are still green grass areas (the battle recounted), and there's still rain. Also, in Tales of Heresy, Blood Games shows that there's glacial bodies on Horus Heresy era Terra. Admittedly, it's caused by a power station's cooling systems, but still... it's a huge mountain spanning glacier. Possibly one of many across the entire world.

Did anyone ever consider that the reason the oceans have dried up is actually because the glaciers grew exponentially due to geothermal tech? During the last ice age, the oceans were roughly 1/2 the size they are today. Perhaps the world is a lot colder in the 31st millenium?


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## manyfist (Aug 14, 2010)

I always assumed they boiled away or drained. I think that the water was needed to cool the machinery in early Mars, and what was left of it was boiled away with the end of Dark Age.


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## gen.ahab (Dec 22, 2009)

Belthazor Aurellius said:


> I love how Unixknight cites The Last Church from Tales of Heresy. It rained all throughout the story. Rain, not acid rain, just a normal thunderstorm... Though it served to punctuate the Emperor's presence, and probably precipitated in part due to the Emperor, but the story relates the concept that there are still green grass areas (the battle recounted), and there's still rain. Also, in Tales of Heresy, Blood Games shows that there's glacial bodies on Horus Heresy era Terra. Admittedly, it's caused by a power station's cooling systems, but still... it's a huge mountain spanning glacier. Possibly one of many across the entire world.
> 
> Did anyone ever consider that the reason the oceans have dried up is actually because the glaciers grew exponentially due to geothermal tech? During the last ice age, the oceans were roughly 1/2 the size they are today. Perhaps the world is a lot colder in the 31st millenium?


I believe it was described as hot and muggy(WTF?) in the sw book.


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## dewn_moutain (Aug 7, 2010)

If i remember correctly, what actually happened, from what ive read on the history of the 40k universe, is that during the unification wars back in the dark ages, circa 15K-18K, the massive build up of armies from all the factions pulled in the water resource. thats about the same time power armor came onto the scene. at first, it was designed to enhance the users strength and protect the upper body, but as the wars lingered on, and resources started to wither, the power armor was modified to have a filtration system to recycle the users sweat and urine productions into viable water. kind of like from DUNE, but with bolt guns.


course, it could very well have been chuck norris drank them all cuz he did his morning warm up.:grin::crazy:


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## GrimzagGorwazza (Aug 5, 2010)

On page 62 of Fulgrim Ostian is enjoying the view and recalls that "As a native of Terra, a world who's oceans had long since boiled away in ancient wars or environmental catastrophes,..." As this point in the book is set pre heresy we can assume that Horus didn't break the seas.

Edit: Scientists believe our sun is too small to supernova and so will white dwarf instead. Also in The flight of the Eisenstien when the Eisenstien is quarantiened near earth there is mention of the sun being yellow not red which is the colour that it would turn as it reached the end of its life and expanded.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Just had a thought- the Earth's/Terra's oceans could be 'boiled' away without increasing the amount of water in the air (and so leading to beyond catastrophic global warming) if the water was split into oxygen and hydrogen: the oxygen could be used to make explosives or for on-board use for ships, meanwhile the hydrogen can escape into space (or get used)...


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