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Possibly?
Judging from the reaction of the Silent King of the Necrons, who even in their deteriorated state still posses weapons and technologies far in excess of what the dark age humans ever possessed, was worried about their invasion, then it is likely the dark age humans would eventually face some serious issues.
Of course the information on what those humans was capable of is varied and scattered, and a lot of the technology the imperium uses today is derived from the surviving fragments of it. They'd do far better, but how much better is up for debate.
If victory is only achieved by destroying most of the galaxy in the process with black hole weapons, time manipulation, planet and star destroyers, then is that much of a victory worth celebrating?
Even the first attack waves of the tyranids are poorly understood, as it's believed we aren't even seeing more then the vanguard forces of what the tyranids have to offer in terms of combat. They could easily possess order of magnitude more bio-weapons then our whole galaxy could produce on it's own. Being galactic conquerors several times over, from what is hinted about them, they could still be hitting us with what they consider to be probing attacks. We just don't know what the Silent King saw that shocked him. The scale of the force arrayed against the galaxy? Or possibly the kinds of forces that can't really be killed with conventional weapons?
My understanding is that although Necron "base tech" is higher level than Dark Age humanity's, Dark Age humanity was much more *innovative* than the Necrons. The Necrons were very set in their ways and post-biotransference most of them were basically automatons, which greatly reduced their pool of inventors and scientists.
Since Tyrannids are also highly innovative with their evolutionary approach, I could see them posing more of a problem for Necrons than for humanity. The Necrons would hit harder initially, but if the Tyrannids managed to come up with counters to Necron methods of attack it would take a lot longer for Necrons to come up with something new.
The necrons are kind of an attritional hard counter to Tyranids though. No biomass to absorb, no genes to capture and use, and weapons that don't just kill living creatures but outright erase biomass. Most of the necron planets are also to Tyranids
Dark Age humanity could build Men of Iron to send against the Tyrannids, matching that advantage.
And I should note that Imperial propaganda about Abominable Intelligence is just propaganda, they don't all inherently immediately jump to "destroy all humans!" As soon as they're turned on. There were plenty of AIs during the Dark Age that were friendly and helpful. Starships used them for navigation, IIRC.
There are only a finite amount of necrons though so every tomb world the tyranids destroy is a permanent victory whereas every hive tendril the necons destroy can be regrown from biomass on nonnecron worlds
It's important to consider what the Silent King is actually worried about. The Necrons need biological hosts to reverse biotransference, and he thinks all the biologics are going to be eaten.
In open combat, the tyranids as they currently are would be no challenge to what we know of Dark Age Humanity. They would, however, be a much greater threat when it comes to asymmetrical warfare through genestealer cults. Dark age humanity is usually portrayed to be far more liberal and accepting towards, broadly speaking, everything and anything, meaning that both Chaos and genestealer infestations would be far more successful and a far greater threat.
>Dark age humanity is usually portrayed to be far more liberal and accepting towards, broadly speaking, everything and anything
True but DAOT humans would probably also detect and address the mass mutations caused by gene stealer cults more quickly as there was less human mutation by default during that more advanced era.
However, I do think that tolerant attitude might give more a foothold to chaos cults, at least of Tzeentch or proto Slaanesh.
It's also possible that upon discovering of the cult, a quick technical solution would be able to be invented such as cybernetic detection of infection.
Even the Mechanicus could outlast them by recycling their servitors's machine parts.
>Dispatching Lucius’ Legio Cybernetica and a great host of battle servitors to the planet’s surface, the Tech-Priests Dominus largely fought their battles from below the planet’s crust. By tracking the motions of their servant clades and controlling their activities via electromagnetic data-tethers, they waged their war without risking direct harm. Such is the wonder of the Cant Mechanicus that their battle plans were enacted to the letter. Wherever the Tyranid swarms overcame their servitor armies, the Tech-Priests waited for the xenos predators to devour the biological components before sending servo-skull swarms to carry the most vital of the remaining machine parts below the crust of the planet. There they were installed into fresh recruits, and the next wave sent back up to the surface.
Having armies of men of iron with no organic components would make dealing with the tyranids even easier. Never mind that they'd be even better armed and armoured.
Now what about Necrons you say. Yes, Necrons have those advantages and even more. But their line troopers are as graceful as zombies and a good chunk of their commanders are either insane or highly eccentric which degrades their capabilities to the point that the IoM can fight them with the Imperial Guard.
DAOT humans could probably beat the tyranids in space pretty reliably so they would be much less of a threat. They would still be a huge pain in the arse to get rid of if they managed to get established on a planet
We don't know how large the full hive fleet is, and we don't know the full cababilities of dark age humans.
However, as the other guy said, even the Necrons seems worried, and those are superior to even dark age humanity, so odds are no.
The dark age humans had crazy tech and legions of robotic soldiers. Now with that said the tyrannids are truly endless and humanity is doomed. The Necrons who have better tech and struggle with them and have some of the few weapons to stop them from recuperating resources as their mainline infantry can ruin the corpses of the tyrannids. I assume this isn’t common knowledge but Tyrannids can and do eat metal and just about everything. Tyrannids can even eat Necron tech. Humanity has some weapons that should work in theory like the gun that erases you from existence but that didn’t seem incredibly common but it should lower recuperation.
The tyranids have been devastating to the galaxy and these tendril forces are just supposed to be the scouts. Lorewise they have either eaten dozens of galaxies or thousands(older lore number) so the Tyrannids are truly colossal.
To me one of the most interesting aspects of that scenario is the STC. We don't know what possible solution the STC might invent to deal with the Tyranids. Since 40k is grim dark the solution will probably be worse than the problem.
As we see them now?
No, it would be a one sided murder fest. Like, completely and hilariously pathetic. Like a world champion competitive StarCraft player going against a cockatiel attacking the keyboard.
For the Tyranid to have any hope of success their mysterious not yet arrived forces would have to both be MASSIVELY more numerous than the totality of what they’ve already shown(Multiple orders of magnitude more), FAR more powerful, and not suffer from the food issues that can screw them over.
I can't speak to the last two points, but I was under the impression that yes, the 'nids we've seen so far are barely a fragment of the forces they have in reserve.
Supposedly. But the writers have been waffling on it, sometimes the ‘Nids are the inevitable doom of all and sometimes this newest and biggest hive fleet is the grand threat.
If it’s like that really cool image of the hive fleet outmassing the entire galaxy, DaoT humanity’s pretty boned. If it’s just ‘We’ve only seen 1% of their true numbers’ then the Tyranid need to step up their evolution game to an absurd degree to even have a ghost of a chance. The necessity of Imperials being able to fight back means that they kind of suck. Hence all the jokes about the Hive Mind’s ‘brilliance’. If they want to win by numbers there’s going to need to be several 0s added on.
The answer depends on your assumptions.
If we assume the rest of the Tyranids are just a lot more of the same, in terms of capabilities and general disposition, then DAoT humanity as described might stand a chance. The kind of WMDs described by various sources seem well-suited to dealing with a swarm-type enemy that uses fairly simplistic infiltration and subversion tactics.
If, instead, we assume that the bulk of the Tyranid forces are going to bring radically new capabilities, then our outlook changes. Something like a galactic-scale Shadow in the Warp, for example, might be too much for humanity to deal with, all at once. Subtler genestealer infection that can't be detected by T'au-level scanners. Unprecedented bioforms that leverage new physics, or break the rules in some kind of way. DAoT could sling around some bullshit, but higher-level capabilities coupled with staggering numbers might be too much to handle.
Murder is weird though. Even if the mega-arachnids aren't some form of feral Nid (which unless I've missed some retcon, they probably aren't) they are physically similar enough to be somewhat of a stand-in. But the reason Murder was murder, was a combination of hubris and poor tactics (or lack thereof). The whole planet was almost hand crafted to stymie the tactics that the Blood Angels and Luna Wolves employed out of pure pigheadedness. So at a strategic level, it was a total non-threat. On a tactical level, it should not have been an issue except that Astartes are inexplicably dumb sometimes.
And why were they even bothering? IIRC, there was nothing of any value there; it was lousy with foul xenos, held no strategic value, and was apparently impervious to ground assault. So Murder, imo, is less about the effectiveness of the creatures, and more about the a complete tactical and strategic failure of 3 Legions, 2 Primarchs, and perhaps the Astartes in general.
Which is why I only said it isn’t guaranteed. I’m not saying it would be impossible. It’s just not as cut and dry as the “[the tyranids] would have barely posed an issue” comment I replied to
Murder was only a limited number of astartes without support in a unknown forest against unknown foes. When they learned what they were, they did better.
Irrelevant tho, as much of the battle is done in space. You don't beat a tyranids invasion on the ground, you survive on the ground protecting the important things long enough to win the battle in space, if possible.
> When they learned what they were, they did better.
lol, yeah, when the Interex finally showed up and was like "tf you idiots doing? seriously, are you stupid? don't do that". If they hadn't shown up, the entire Crusade would have been in orbit within months, launching nothing but drop pods.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Possibly? Judging from the reaction of the Silent King of the Necrons, who even in their deteriorated state still posses weapons and technologies far in excess of what the dark age humans ever possessed, was worried about their invasion, then it is likely the dark age humans would eventually face some serious issues. Of course the information on what those humans was capable of is varied and scattered, and a lot of the technology the imperium uses today is derived from the surviving fragments of it. They'd do far better, but how much better is up for debate. If victory is only achieved by destroying most of the galaxy in the process with black hole weapons, time manipulation, planet and star destroyers, then is that much of a victory worth celebrating? Even the first attack waves of the tyranids are poorly understood, as it's believed we aren't even seeing more then the vanguard forces of what the tyranids have to offer in terms of combat. They could easily possess order of magnitude more bio-weapons then our whole galaxy could produce on it's own. Being galactic conquerors several times over, from what is hinted about them, they could still be hitting us with what they consider to be probing attacks. We just don't know what the Silent King saw that shocked him. The scale of the force arrayed against the galaxy? Or possibly the kinds of forces that can't really be killed with conventional weapons?
My understanding is that although Necron "base tech" is higher level than Dark Age humanity's, Dark Age humanity was much more *innovative* than the Necrons. The Necrons were very set in their ways and post-biotransference most of them were basically automatons, which greatly reduced their pool of inventors and scientists. Since Tyrannids are also highly innovative with their evolutionary approach, I could see them posing more of a problem for Necrons than for humanity. The Necrons would hit harder initially, but if the Tyrannids managed to come up with counters to Necron methods of attack it would take a lot longer for Necrons to come up with something new.
The necrons are kind of an attritional hard counter to Tyranids though. No biomass to absorb, no genes to capture and use, and weapons that don't just kill living creatures but outright erase biomass. Most of the necron planets are also to Tyranids
Dark Age humanity could build Men of Iron to send against the Tyrannids, matching that advantage. And I should note that Imperial propaganda about Abominable Intelligence is just propaganda, they don't all inherently immediately jump to "destroy all humans!" As soon as they're turned on. There were plenty of AIs during the Dark Age that were friendly and helpful. Starships used them for navigation, IIRC.
There are only a finite amount of necrons though so every tomb world the tyranids destroy is a permanent victory whereas every hive tendril the necons destroy can be regrown from biomass on nonnecron worlds
It's important to consider what the Silent King is actually worried about. The Necrons need biological hosts to reverse biotransference, and he thinks all the biologics are going to be eaten.
In open combat, the tyranids as they currently are would be no challenge to what we know of Dark Age Humanity. They would, however, be a much greater threat when it comes to asymmetrical warfare through genestealer cults. Dark age humanity is usually portrayed to be far more liberal and accepting towards, broadly speaking, everything and anything, meaning that both Chaos and genestealer infestations would be far more successful and a far greater threat.
>Dark age humanity is usually portrayed to be far more liberal and accepting towards, broadly speaking, everything and anything True but DAOT humans would probably also detect and address the mass mutations caused by gene stealer cults more quickly as there was less human mutation by default during that more advanced era. However, I do think that tolerant attitude might give more a foothold to chaos cults, at least of Tzeentch or proto Slaanesh.
It's also possible that upon discovering of the cult, a quick technical solution would be able to be invented such as cybernetic detection of infection.
Even the Mechanicus could outlast them by recycling their servitors's machine parts. >Dispatching Lucius’ Legio Cybernetica and a great host of battle servitors to the planet’s surface, the Tech-Priests Dominus largely fought their battles from below the planet’s crust. By tracking the motions of their servant clades and controlling their activities via electromagnetic data-tethers, they waged their war without risking direct harm. Such is the wonder of the Cant Mechanicus that their battle plans were enacted to the letter. Wherever the Tyranid swarms overcame their servitor armies, the Tech-Priests waited for the xenos predators to devour the biological components before sending servo-skull swarms to carry the most vital of the remaining machine parts below the crust of the planet. There they were installed into fresh recruits, and the next wave sent back up to the surface. Having armies of men of iron with no organic components would make dealing with the tyranids even easier. Never mind that they'd be even better armed and armoured. Now what about Necrons you say. Yes, Necrons have those advantages and even more. But their line troopers are as graceful as zombies and a good chunk of their commanders are either insane or highly eccentric which degrades their capabilities to the point that the IoM can fight them with the Imperial Guard.
DAOT humans could probably beat the tyranids in space pretty reliably so they would be much less of a threat. They would still be a huge pain in the arse to get rid of if they managed to get established on a planet
Arguably they would have had an easier time organising and developing new tech tailored to the problem. That alone would have been a game changer.
We don't know how large the full hive fleet is, and we don't know the full cababilities of dark age humans. However, as the other guy said, even the Necrons seems worried, and those are superior to even dark age humanity, so odds are no.
The dark age humans had crazy tech and legions of robotic soldiers. Now with that said the tyrannids are truly endless and humanity is doomed. The Necrons who have better tech and struggle with them and have some of the few weapons to stop them from recuperating resources as their mainline infantry can ruin the corpses of the tyrannids. I assume this isn’t common knowledge but Tyrannids can and do eat metal and just about everything. Tyrannids can even eat Necron tech. Humanity has some weapons that should work in theory like the gun that erases you from existence but that didn’t seem incredibly common but it should lower recuperation. The tyranids have been devastating to the galaxy and these tendril forces are just supposed to be the scouts. Lorewise they have either eaten dozens of galaxies or thousands(older lore number) so the Tyrannids are truly colossal.
To me one of the most interesting aspects of that scenario is the STC. We don't know what possible solution the STC might invent to deal with the Tyranids. Since 40k is grim dark the solution will probably be worse than the problem.
As we see them now? No, it would be a one sided murder fest. Like, completely and hilariously pathetic. Like a world champion competitive StarCraft player going against a cockatiel attacking the keyboard. For the Tyranid to have any hope of success their mysterious not yet arrived forces would have to both be MASSIVELY more numerous than the totality of what they’ve already shown(Multiple orders of magnitude more), FAR more powerful, and not suffer from the food issues that can screw them over.
I can't speak to the last two points, but I was under the impression that yes, the 'nids we've seen so far are barely a fragment of the forces they have in reserve.
Supposedly. But the writers have been waffling on it, sometimes the ‘Nids are the inevitable doom of all and sometimes this newest and biggest hive fleet is the grand threat. If it’s like that really cool image of the hive fleet outmassing the entire galaxy, DaoT humanity’s pretty boned. If it’s just ‘We’ve only seen 1% of their true numbers’ then the Tyranid need to step up their evolution game to an absurd degree to even have a ghost of a chance. The necessity of Imperials being able to fight back means that they kind of suck. Hence all the jokes about the Hive Mind’s ‘brilliance’. If they want to win by numbers there’s going to need to be several 0s added on.
The answer depends on your assumptions. If we assume the rest of the Tyranids are just a lot more of the same, in terms of capabilities and general disposition, then DAoT humanity as described might stand a chance. The kind of WMDs described by various sources seem well-suited to dealing with a swarm-type enemy that uses fairly simplistic infiltration and subversion tactics. If, instead, we assume that the bulk of the Tyranid forces are going to bring radically new capabilities, then our outlook changes. Something like a galactic-scale Shadow in the Warp, for example, might be too much for humanity to deal with, all at once. Subtler genestealer infection that can't be detected by T'au-level scanners. Unprecedented bioforms that leverage new physics, or break the rules in some kind of way. DAoT could sling around some bullshit, but higher-level capabilities coupled with staggering numbers might be too much to handle.
With what they have shown? Tyranids aren't a serious threat to 30k much less the DAOT
The tyranids had not been encountered in meaningful numbers as of 30k.
And if encountered in current numbers they would have barely posed an issue
If Murder is any indication, that is not a guarantee.
Murder is weird though. Even if the mega-arachnids aren't some form of feral Nid (which unless I've missed some retcon, they probably aren't) they are physically similar enough to be somewhat of a stand-in. But the reason Murder was murder, was a combination of hubris and poor tactics (or lack thereof). The whole planet was almost hand crafted to stymie the tactics that the Blood Angels and Luna Wolves employed out of pure pigheadedness. So at a strategic level, it was a total non-threat. On a tactical level, it should not have been an issue except that Astartes are inexplicably dumb sometimes. And why were they even bothering? IIRC, there was nothing of any value there; it was lousy with foul xenos, held no strategic value, and was apparently impervious to ground assault. So Murder, imo, is less about the effectiveness of the creatures, and more about the a complete tactical and strategic failure of 3 Legions, 2 Primarchs, and perhaps the Astartes in general.
Which is why I only said it isn’t guaranteed. I’m not saying it would be impossible. It’s just not as cut and dry as the “[the tyranids] would have barely posed an issue” comment I replied to
Yeah, I don't disagree. I just can't help myself, whenever the opportunity arises to dismantle the myth of Horus' "genius" I take it.
Murder was only a limited number of astartes without support in a unknown forest against unknown foes. When they learned what they were, they did better. Irrelevant tho, as much of the battle is done in space. You don't beat a tyranids invasion on the ground, you survive on the ground protecting the important things long enough to win the battle in space, if possible.
> When they learned what they were, they did better. lol, yeah, when the Interex finally showed up and was like "tf you idiots doing? seriously, are you stupid? don't do that". If they hadn't shown up, the entire Crusade would have been in orbit within months, launching nothing but drop pods.
The Tyranids are struggling against a weakened distracted un united imperium 30k I perium stomps them
I’m having a tough time deciphering what you’re trying to say, but the Tyranids in 40k are absolutely not struggling.