Writer Research & Reaction to TYRANIDS FIRST CONTACT & The Battle of Macragge | Viewer Recommended

The way long range communication works for the Imperium is the use of astropaths. It's a telepathic communication network based on psykers. This means they are not able to communicate long range in like a conversational way but it's like they send each other images/emotions/etc.

Also, it's not like they have scheduled check ins on planets (although they should). They're so many messages sent that the Administratum takes no news as good news. Even if they had of received a distress message, the Administratum is so backwards that if a particular box wasn't checked or a form wasn't filled out correctly, they'd just throw the message away.

So in short, the Imperium's interstellar communication network is based off sending each other memes and the government office workers hate their job and look for any excuse to not deal with something.

"We cannot live through this. Mankind cannot live through this. In a single day they have covered the surface of this planet with a flood of living blades and needle-fanged mouths. Kill one and ten take its place. If they are truly without number then our race is doomed to a violent death before every shred of our civilization is scoured away by a force more voracious than the fires of hell themselves! Death! By the Machine God, Death is here!"
-The last words of Magos Varnak entered into the black box of Tyran's command bunker.

This is what I love about the Tyranids. They are existential dread made manifest. They do not care about you, they do not care about empires, they dont care about anything except finding the most efficient way to remove you from existence and convert you into calories.

P.S. It's not necessarily bad writing to say the Imperium did not notice several planets being consumed by the Tyranids. Reminder that the Imperium is made up of over one million planets, possibly more. Also, the Imperium is bloated by bureaucracy; with a large quantity of information recorded by hand onto scrolls. It wouldn't be hyperbole to say entire planets fall between the cracks sometimes.

The space locusts went space biblical on the universe.