You've probably heard the various ways that you're going to die a horrible and vicious death from veteran guardsmen. How an Ork will gun you down, a cultist will do unspeakable things to your skull, a Necron will rip you apart atom by atom, a Carnifex will swallow you whole, the Eldar will fry you with their oh so superior minds, and the Dark Eldar will do whatever depraved things they can think of to you, etc etc etc. Sadly these are all true. However, the one thing people never seem to talk about in basic is all the STUPID ways you can die. Things that officers never expect their soldiers to do, and their soldiers turn out to be a huge disappointment. I have served since I could hold a rifle in the Imperial Guard, have been to planets all throughout the Imperium, and seen some Emperor-forsaken idiots who died painfully stupid deaths. I write this list in the hopes that a few less Guardsmen will die idiotic deaths this year. My hopes are not high.

Grenades are for killing, not juggling: This sounds like something obvious but I swear to the Emperor every planet has at least one frakhead who thinks that he can stare death in the face and laugh. Death proceeds to laugh all the way to the Eye of Terror, dragging one idiot soul with him. Usually alcohol is involved. Just to make things worse, sometimes the people who die from this aren't the jugglers getting a taste of divine retribution. It reminds me of the one time a drunken Catachan tried to do it with a MELTA CHARGE! Long story short, I was on the opposite side of the mess hall, and I still spent half an hour crawling around on the ground trying to find out where the other half of my nose went.

2. Do not overload your lasgun. You've probably heard stories about how guardsmen have overloaded their power cells and turned their lasguns into makeshift grenades. While I have seen this work firsthand, I have also seen it gone horribly wrong firsthand. The thing is, there's a reason we don't use makeshift grenades if we can help it. Regular grenades have a set time before going off, which is drilled into our heads during basic training. Lasguns are not designed to overload, and the time it takes for them to do so and explode could be anywhere from twenty seconds to one. Look, if you've got your backs against the wall and have nothing to lose, fair enough, but don't use it just to show off. If you don't get killed, you're gonna have to explain to an irate requisitions officer why you keep losing lasguns, and eventually you're gonna be fighting cultists with a stick.

3. An officer's pipe is not meant for target practice, especially if he's still smoking it: Yeah, this actually happened. Needless to say shooting an officer's pipe constitutes as shooting at an officer, which counts as treason which is punishable by death. The officer in question had a really dark sense of humor though, so he made the guardsman in question smoke his pipe while he shot him through the pipe. Pretty messed up. Though it was kinda funny.

4. Do not use Ork guns: Assuming you can pick up the thing (In which case I'm never arm wrestling you, because I could only hold up one of those things for five minutes tops. Long story, I had a bet.) don't actually take it along into combat. Really this should be common sense as Ork weapons aren't very well known for accuracy, but somehow when Humans use them they actually get worse. They jam, they misfire, and that's when they don't just fall apart in your hand. Not to mention it makes you a more appealing target because you have a "propa orky gun ta steel".

5. Do not go to any base with anything even slightly related to Slaanesh: Look, I know servants of Slaanesh can be attractive (Sometimes) but even the most suicidal guardsmen knows better than to screw one. Less people know better than to snog or grope them, because that's all they need to get under your skin. If you count that one time, literally. What can I say, they're into weird stuff. Then again if you're stupid enough to actually WANT to be with one, you're probably ideal cultist material anyway, so nothing lost.

6. Do not try to outsmart the Chaos gods: I don't care how smart you think you are, you will always get fucked by them in the end, literally if Slaanesh is involved. Any deal you try and strike with them will end up with you being trapped in a loophole, usually directly damaging the thing you were trying to protect. So no, you are not smart enough, stop being so narcissistic. The Traitor Primarchs thought that they were smart, look how well that turned out.

7. The Tau are not your friends: This one I kinda understand. The Imperium can be a really though place to live in, I'm not gonna lie. And compared to every other race out there who wants to kill us on sight (or in some cases worse) I can see how they would be a fresh breath of air. Problem is that if you join the Tau empire you're gonna get your dick cut off or ovulary ripped out and be used as cannon fodder in a much smaller army with less people. Also all their talks about greater goods and their mech suits haven't done that much to stop that Tyranid hive fleet that's heading in their direction. So yeah, while the Tau have some potential as allies to the Imperium, joining up with them is pretty much hanging a dinner bell around your neck.

8. Never tell a Kroot "Bite me": Kroots are pretty much jackasses through and through, something they seem to take pride in. Their entire sense of humor revolves around making people around them feeling as uncomfortable as possible, and there's that thing where they eat what they kill. So if you say "bite me" in the rare circumstance that you would find yourself working alongside a Kroot mercenary, he's gonna be a smart ass and be literal about it. And those beaks come down hard.

9. Rebelling against the Imperium does not work. Ever: Ok look. Nine Space Marine Legions with trillions of supporters once rebelled against the Imperium, and they lost. You'd think after that people would realize that a fight against the Imperium isn't something you're gonna win, but for some reason people keep trying to rebel. Look, no one ever said living in the Imperium was a cake walk, but what exactly do you think rebelling with accomplish? At most, you can get a system independent from the Imperium. Good luck holding your own when you can't call on the Imperial Fleet to fight off the latest cosmic horror the galaxy throws at us. And that's if you actually win, and don't get killed by, say, a bolt round to the face from a Comissar, a bolt round to the face from an Astartes, a bolt round to the face from your superior officer, and if by some miracle you win, dying a slow and painful death from the virus bombs the Inquisition would drop on you. And Outreach used to actually be a nice place to live.

10. Eldar are not your fuck buddies: Let's get something out of the way. The Eldar are the most insufferably arrogant people in the galaxy. And I've talked to Ultramarines that actually believed that spiritual liege garbage. As hot as Eldar women are, they're only one step above trying to sleep with cultists. I know a lot of people are talking about that LIIVI guy and how he got to bone a Faraseer, but let's be frank. That was a one in a trillion thing. Met a guy who said he got to screw an Eldar and surprise surprise, she put a bomb in him while he was sleeping. At least it beeped loudly so I got to run and scream "I told you so". This goes double for the Dark Eldar. At least with the Eldar you have a one in a trillion chance of ending up like LIIVI. You don't even have that with the Dark Eldar.

11. Don't make fun of the Imperial Fists' name: They will actually do it. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. DON'T DO IT!

12. Never talk about things that never happened around the Dark Angels: The Dark Angels are the most loyal Space Marine Chapter that ever existed, so they're well within their right to torture you to death if you ask them about things that clearly never happened…just roll with it.

13. Don't go drinking with Space Wolves: This one won't necessarily kill you, but there's always that chance. They always bring the home-brewed stuff, and I actually got sent on a rescue mission to find a platoon that had gotten drunk and somehow gotten up into the mountains. They were all buck ass naked when we found them, and I'm still not sure how some of them managed to get their bodies the way that they were. Space Wolves brew strong stuff.

14. Don't Steal a Comissar's Hat While he's Sleeping: Knew a bit of a joker once. Wore the hat all around camp, imitating the Comissar as he went. Everyone had a laugh. Sadly it turns out Comissars are pretty light sleepers. Not sure how he thought this was going to end, but I imagine being forced to charge an Ork horde wearing nothing but the hat wasn't on the list. I swear, high ranking officials in the Imperium all go to an ironic death seminar.

15. Don't be a smart ass around an Orgyn. Orgyn are tough as hell shock troopers that will always cover your back with piss and vinegar, always right to fight for the Emperor. But bless them, they're kind of on the slow side and have troubles with metaphors. They're kind of like the Kroot, except more innocently clueless. Like this one time a guardsman from some mining colony in the middle of nowhere told an Orgyn "Shoot me now.". Full ripper gun clip, we had to clean the lady up with a bucket and a mop. Then again she was pretty cruel to just about everyone and I don't think the Orgyn liked her very much. I mean he insists he didn't hate her, but he DID get a medal for it that he seemed pretty proud of.…I think I may want to go back and double check what happened there with a friend or two.

16. Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed's abilities are not as good as everyone says: Ok look. The good Lord is stationed on what is arguably the most dangerous front in the entire galaxy. He has stood up to the frakking Black Crusades and walked away from them alive. He is without a doubt a tactical genius and the Imperium would be lesser without him. But for the Emperor's sake, he can't hide tank behind a lamppost, he can't hide a platoon in Abaddon's bathroom, and he can't hide a Titan in a frakking bolted shell! What does this have to do with staying alive you might ask? Because maybe a certain author is tired of hearing about it and a certain author might edit the copy of his book for someone who comments about Creed's nonexistent god powers again. An edit that says that the truth of the Emperor's wishes are in a Grox's mouth.

17. Do not screw around with Necrons; Necrons have got to be one of the most infuriating enemy to fight in the 41st millennium, as their technology stops just short of being able to warp reality on a whim. I fought a long hard campaign once, got skimmed by a gauss flyer, and that's why my foot is metal now. Eventually, we thought we had taken an armory back from the Necrons, had taken an entire squad firing non-stop just to bring one of them down. One of my squad mates was pretty angry at all the friends he had lost that day and he decide to piss on it. Thing is, Necrons have a self-repair protocol and…well…he survived at least. Bet he wishes he hadn't though. I mean I was being carried by our heavy weapons specialist, clutching my stump of a foot, and she said I looked pretty by comparison.

18. Never accept anything food locals that you didn't see them prepare: Here's the thing about the Imperium, we're spread out over two million planets and some of those planets have been inhabited for 25,000 years. When a population lives on a planet that long, the countless generations tend to make them immune to little quirks that kill the rest of us. A saw a guardsman get a meat pie from a cook on some death world in the middle of nowhere, take one bite and died on the spot. It would've been tragic if she hadn't hunted an animal that the locals called the VENOMOUS DEATH KILLER six hours ago for that very same cook.

19. Don't screw around with stray bolter shells: I get that the average citizen of the Imperium will never see a Space Marine, even at a distance, and that even fewer will see the weapons they use up close, but if you find a bolt round lying on the ground after a battle, don't assume that it's empty and for the love of the Emperor, don't whack it with a hammer. I swear, not a single person felt sorry for her, and I don't blame them.

20: Tech Priests are just as bad as the Ecclesiarchy: When people talk about religious fanaticals taking worship of the Emperor way too far and killing people over stupid reasons, they tend to point to the cone hats. While this is true, people tend to forget that the Tech Cult is still a religious organization that worships the Emperor, just in a different way. You not showing proper respect to their various bits of shiny metal tends to not sit will with them. I figured that out the hard way and I swear my eyes will never stop twitching.

That's all for now, maybe I'll write another chapter, probably won't though. Really if you need anymore advice after that, nothing I can do to help you.

Author's Note: Just a short little something I scribbled up in my free time. Thought it would be amusing to share.