Poll: immortality of age or of injury?

[BehattedWanderer]

The words you're looking for would be immortality, which is to live forever but still be susceptible to becoming deadsies, and invincible, which is where no harm shall come to you but you'll age more or less normally.

That aside, immortality all the way. I'll be safe, and learn all kinds of things.

 

[DaphneRose]

I'd choose immortality. Madness would come, but I would focus my last scraps of sanity on being the storyteller humanity deserves.
Civilizations may flourish and fall. Great men will be born and die. We will uncover secrets both great and terrible.

But humanity's deathmarch will never stop. And when every other being has died, I will still be here, waiting to tell the next life that comes of the mistakes of the last.

And when they make their mistakes and lead their own civilizations tumbling into open graves, I will tell the next sentient life of that civilizations' mistakes, and so on, until finally I will see utopia with my own two eyes.

 

[Womplord]

I think that people who say they never want to die, ever, just have an irrational fear of death. That is obviously an illogical choice.

 

[Scabadus]

Injury, experiments have reversed aging in mice and soon will for humans. Aging is likely to be cured this century

Have you got a source for that? It sounds like an interesting read, I'm curious as to whether simple telemere reconstruction does the job or whether the entire DNA strand has to be monitered to prevent long-term side effects such as cancer.

Anyway, like the unbearable smartass that I am I feel the need to point out that aging is nothing more than the breakdown (or micro-scale injusy if you will) of the body and that dying of 'old age' or 'natural causes' is more often than not actually dying of a simple disease that a seventy year old immune system can't fight off. So yeah, take Injury and you get Age thrown into the bargin!

But as an actual answer to the spirit of the question, Age. It's not all that difficult to live life without being stabbed by orcs or the like, so as long as you stayed alert you could live for as long as you wanted to.

 

[Totenkopf]

Those guys seem pretty cool, but...
Well, that looks very Chaos-y as well, good sir... *raises eye-brow*

I like Space Marines, period. My preference is not restricted by matters of affiliation.
Just finished reading the second novel in the new Night Lords trilogy, and I'm currently considering erecting a devotional shrine to the author in my apartment. It's that good.
So yeah, right now there's little room in my head for the forces of the Imperium.

By the way, I've never understood what people find so interesting about the Black Templars. Every chapter is a brotherhood of knights anyway, so I don't see what's so fascinating about these guys in particular... they're almost as vanilla as the Ultrasmurfs, if you ask me.
Besides, they're Second Founding. Those posers got nothing on the 18 legions.

That was not really meant as an attack on your taste, rather the other way round.
(The misunderstanding here is my fault though, worded it quite ambiguous, I even wrote it with split intentions)
See, the artwork of the Night Lords you posted above was one of the first pictures that made Chaos Space Marines look interesting to me.
Reading background info about them on the Lexicanum did a further step on the ladder of interest.
Since I'm relatively new to the whole lore, Chaos Space Marines were so far only "Space Marines with hornes and spikes, and in evil" to me. And to be honest, I found that simply extremely uninteresting and unimaginative.
And since those guys would have been / are a (welcome) change to that, I got cautious and raised a virtual eye brow to double-check

Regarding the Black Templars:
I've recently read their Codex, and since then they seem to me like they are made of pure epic. (Talking about devotional shrine...)
While it's true that every chapter is kind of a brotherhood of knights, I think (so far) that only Black Templars actually manage to give you this "knight / crusader feeling", that's from my point of view missing from the other chapters I know (mainly Blood Ravens [got introduced to the lore via Dawn of War 2], others only by looks).
So, they are, at least to me, pretty unique in this aspect.
I'm simply into their crusader aesthetics, close-combat focus and kick-ass attitude, the codex read like they are the elite of the elite, what is, already in itself, pretty sweet.
I could even say that I found the thing of the lore that suits me best.
Changing to a meta-level, that's simply a matter of perspective here.
To me they seem kick-ass and unique, while they seem to you "vanilla" and negligible.

PS. As I said before, I'm relatively new to 40k as a whole, so could you please explain to me why the Ultramarines always get this ridiculous amount of hate and ridicule? (I've seen it especially in threads concerning the new "Space Marine" game)
I don't really know much about them, but I can't really see what makes them the target for this spite. I can't grasp why they should be any less awesome than any regular Space Marines

 

[Lunar Templar]

'Quality of life is more important then quantity of life.'
'No, what's the point in living if you don't have anything to live for anymore.'

why i would not wanna live forever right there

immunity to injury? that, could be fun, if its like Wolverines healing factor, i would TOTALLY be-doing insane shit daily, just to screw with people, if its like super mans, same, only with more dumb struck looks of the ' how are you not HURT?!?' verity

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

i'm guessing by diseases the op means pathogens, but the question is so damn vague i have no idea.
clarify a bit more, perhaps?

well it wouldn't be real invulnerability to injury if you still died of things like organ failure, since thats what usually kills people when they're badly injured. Since that is also the same stuff that kills you 'of old age' you would also have 'invulnerability to time' as op called it.

And there are still speeds the human body isn't meant to go at. Just because they were wrong about the specifics, doesn't mean they didn't have a point to make.
Its safe to assume that the human mind can only handle a finite amount of information, excessive amounts of info might not cause insanity but somewhere along the line you're going to forget things. It may take centuries, it may take millenia but eventually as you experience later years of life, you're likely to forget your earlier years.
And in the end, what use is immortality if you can't remember half the experiences you've lived through.

but what you're describing is one way the human mind would cope with immortality. You're proving your own side wrong XD

Also, who says you'd forget all the old stuff and remember only the new? Just cause something happened recently doesn't mean you take the time to remember it. Hell I can't remember what I had for lunch a few days ago but i remember riding down a hill at my cousins place on a small tricycle before i even started primary school.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Age.

I'm not angsty about life, I genuinly enjoy it, and find the morbid side fascinating too.

I think that people who say they never want to die, ever, just have an irrational fear of death. That is obviously an illogical choice.

With this option you can still die, you just get to do it when you're ready and not after a painful deterioration.

Dying on your own terms is too good to pass up.

 

[Kunzer]

I chose Age.

I feel that life without risk of injury would largely be boring. There are a great number of activities that we humans engage in largely, or indeed solely because of the rush of adrenaline we feel when we "risk it all".

 

[TiefBlau]

I want to live hard and die at a normal age, not die late and live in perpetual fear.

 

[Biosophilogical]

Can I have both, because I would very much like to not die. If I can only have one, then I guess i'd go with age because growing old must suck.

Also, how much does 'invincibility' protect against being a sentient skeleton incapable of movement? I mean, if you can't be hurt, can your body decay? I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere, or are we assuming that you don't die, so you'd be a completely unique case of what happens to the body over time without the effects of outside influences?

OT: I'm going to read through some more posts and see if you've clarified this aging-invincibility issue, then come back.

EDIT: Okay so you haven't clarified ... I'd assume that invincibility would also mean immunity to aging (cell degeneration). So you'd be like Wolverine (no aging), just instead of healing from injury, you don't get injured to start with. Though if I was offered invincibility, I would wait a bit to put on some muscle, because you can't put on muscle if your muscle isn't damaged. But yeah, put on some muscle, then invincibility (I'd imagine I'd stop aging at about 25-ish, you know, after you have completely finished growing).

However, if invincibility doesn't protect against the damage caused by aging then ... I'd go with age, because I'd rather have a long life with a good body than a short-awesome life where I gradually weaken and decay as I get older (because living for 80+ years with invincibility probably wouldn't be as good as living for longer than that (barring a tragic accident) in a perfect body).

 

[CrystalShadow]

Eh. Neither is really guaranteed immortality.

If you're immune to injury and disease, you'll live quite a while, and be able to do all kinds of insane things while you're alive.

But, sooner or later you'd die. (Although that's a bit weird, because even death by 'natural causes' is in some ways a disease')


The other option is that you won't die due to time alone.

You might think you'd live a long time that way, but you'd have to be really careful. Avoid accidents. Wars. Psycho killers...
Getting serious illnesses...

Starvation.

I don't actually know how long you'd survive like that before you just randomly succumb to something fatal.

 

[mikeli4194]

Immortality of age.
Chicks dig scars, not wrinkles

 

[Z(ombie)fan]

age, I already have a sort of injury imperviousness, surviving the most inexplicable of mis haps (once fell off a cliff, Not a single broken bone. this is a recurring experience.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I would choose injury, I mean, it guarantees that I will only die of old age, which I would imagine would be my body giving up at about 120 years old, until then I can travel the world, jump down to the bottom of the marianas trench with a rope to pull me out, fly into orbit and skydive back to earth without a parachute, drive powerful cars and crash them at max speed for the sheer fun of it.

 

[pearcinator]

I choose injury...basically you don't die from old age, age weakens your immune system thus making u deathly ill from a common cold.

So choosing injury still means you will have a rather long life (depending on whether your organs degrade when you age)

 

[Scorpianhead]

Injury so that when i join the armed forces i can walk right up to the badies and shot them in the face and everyone will be like that guy is awesome. Then i will get free stuff for bheing awesome and it was the best day ever.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I choose injury.

 

[noxymoron19]

I feel Id get way to confident and end up killing myself anyways. If I live forever am I allowed a plus 1? Cause that would rock. Otherwise I'd choose injury

 

[The Shade]

If immortality in age lets you get hurt, could you still get killed? Or, more to the point, kill yourself?

Because if you get bored of living forever, you could always do that.

If age means forever, I'd pick injury. Be sweet to be invincible, if only for a while.