[Ardias26]

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

 

[Davidicus 40k]

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.

 

[Belthazor Aurellius]

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.

 

[Khargoth]

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.

 

[Baron Spikey]

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).

 

[darklove]

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.

 

[CaptainLoken]

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

 

[gen.ahab]

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

 

[Tim/Steve]

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).

 

[locustgate]

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.

 

[Davidicus 40k]

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:.

 

[5tonsledge]

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.

 

[Serpion5]

Maybe the Emperor got thirsty...?

 

[WhoHitJohn?]

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

 

[locustgate]

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

 

[Baron Spikey]

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

 

[ChaosRedCorsairLord]

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?

 

[WhoHitJohn?]

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

 

[gen.ahab]

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.

 

[BrainFreeze]

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.