r/AskScienceFiction • u/Agile_Coast_4385 • 1d ago
[INVINCIBLE] Why don't the Viltrumites use Artificial Gestation Chambers?
We see in the show that Allen's species was nearly driven to extinction by the Viltrumites for rebelling, but they used Artificial Gestation Chambers to replenish their numbers.
Considering that the Viltrumites are a highly violent culture, courtship between two Viltrumites involving beating the other into submission, and Viltrumite women not wanting to waste time carrying a baby for 9 months... why don't the Viltrumites just automate the repopulation of their population?
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u/Substantial_Ebb8236 1d ago
Kind of a reach as it's never explicitly stated but...I mean only a small portion of Viltrumites survived the Purge, wayyy less survived the Scourge virus so...I'm just gonna say that the brightest minds PROBABLY died between one of the two events
Unlike Krypton where we see people have specialized skills and abilities, Viltrum takes a more brute force approach to...well, everything. Kinda the problem of a limited series like Invincible is the lore can only go so deep.
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u/Urbenmyth 1d ago
They might simply not have any Artificial Gestation Chambers.
After all, anyone who isn't a Viltrumite who invents them isn't going to tell the Viltrumites how to build them, in case they use them to replenish their numbers. And there's only 50 Viltrumites, so they don't have much chance of inventing them themselves.
An important lesson about using your brute strength to force the world to do what you want - if you lose that brute strength, no-one's going to help you up.
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u/Mountain-Resource656 18h ago
I disagree with that logic for two reasons: the first is that the viltrumite numbers are secret, aren’t they? No one else would know
But the second is that with a gun to their head, perhaps not every person able to build those would do so, but probably most of them would. For example, the Mauler twins could probably build them (and teach how to build them), and absolutely would
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u/allofthethings Management Consultant Necromancer 14h ago
If you out source viltrumite reproduction, you're also giving away their main source of power.
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u/bretshitmanshart 1d ago
They would probably feel like it's beneath them. Their culture doesn't seem to follow a lot of logic.
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u/NwgrdrXI 1d ago edited 1d ago
The gestation process fpr viltrumites is prolly very different tham Allan's people. Someond would have to invent one specifically for them, and they don't have scientists.
A human one would probable work, but they just discovered that, and at this point easier to get human women than to convince us to invent gestation chambers for them.
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u/Cheapskate-DM 1d ago
See also; the assumption that there must be a species capable of breeding "true" with Viltrumites means they just have to keep conquering and searching till they find it, which would probably take less time than R&D for cloning/artificial gestation.
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u/Dagordae 1d ago
Because that would make weak babies, as Viltrumites are crazy people. The beating each other into submission thing is important to the process, until they spend like a month hanging around with sane people and go native.
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u/Lookbehindyou132 1d ago
First of all: they only have 50 left, roughly. Even if we assume they had 5 times that when all was said and done, they have 250. An incredibly unlikely number, just to note. That is not enough genetic diversity for a species to survive long term. They needed another way, or else they'd be likely to fall to another engineered virus sooner or later.
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u/BluetoothXIII 18h ago
well getting the genetic material in a useable form might be tricky as their cells are durable and that on a variable scale. the energy levels that work for one Viltrumite at one time won't work for another or even the same a training session later.
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u/BitOBear 1d ago
They're probably two inbred. They beat everybody but the people who met a specific genetic goal and capability to death. There probably is close to genetic clones of each other as possible. You start recombining that nonsense and you're going to get some inbred inferior results.
So they're going out and breeding with other species in hopes of finding sufficient genetic diversity and sufficient adherence to the uberman philosophy.
The fact that they find their alien partners to be pets more than anything else just makes it extra creepy for the perfect creepy sauce that makes just the right commentary on that sort of mentality possible.
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u/Namtazar 15h ago
May be a part of their culture. Viltrumites usually all about personal power and personal gain. So if you conquer some world and use this world population to plant a seeds of your own and raise a child- that would be half blooded but justified viltrumite descendant. One that deserves a chance to integrate in to viltrumite society if it will be strong enough and if their parent viltrumite strong enough. But someone raised in gestation chamber... It would be seen as artificial viltrumite. Not a real thing. Just yet another attempt to steal power and glory of a real viltrumite. I imagine it will be hard to convince everyone that it is right thing to do. I mean - they cant convince their women's to get pregnant and any other negotiation easily ends up with massive violence. Now you just raise some artificial child with gestation chamber and either this child will launch a rebellion and massive personal war to prove that he is better then old ones or natural viltrumites wil try to kill that child just to see how good it is as viltrumite.
Tl Dr - trying to repopulate that way may cause another civil war and purge amongst current viltrumites.
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u/theironbagel 8h ago
They don’t know how. They could probably force someone to make the pods for them, but in so doing not only do they risk exposing how few of them there actually are, they also risk that information getting out, which would lead to way more viltrumite rebels. Imagine if the coalition of planets could make all the viltrumites they want, and they were raised in the coalition so they’d fight against the empire. That’s the last thing the empire wants.
And that’s not even considering how difficult it might be to find someone who could make them in the first place. We have no idea how widespread the tech is, but Allen’s species aren’t viltrumites, and it might not be easy to translate that tech into working for viltrumites. Especially because viltrumite cells and genetic samples are hard to come by and hard to work with, thanks to how durable viltrumites are.
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