Warhammer 40,000 takes place in a dark, dystopian future. The level of technology there is completely different from today, and since war – as the name suggests – plays a major role, there are naturally crazy weapons. The flagship here is the Bolter. However, they are much more than just better assault rifles.
Roughly shaped like a rifle or a pistol, but much thicker with a barrel that you can easily fit a thumb into: that’s the Bolter. If you see an image from Warhammer 40,000, you will almost always find such a weapon depicted somewhere.
While swords play an important role in combat in Warhammer 40,000 and laser rifles are more commonly used because they are cheaper, hardly any weapon is as well-known as the Bolter. Many armies and factions use them in their standard equipment, such as:
- almost all Orders of the Space Marines as well as their brothers fallen to Chaos
- the warrior-priestesses of the Adepta Sororitas
- parts of the Astra Militarum and the Adeptus Mechanicus
- even among the wild, battle-hungry Orks, Bolters are used, albeit usually as loot
If someone sees the weapon and doesn’t know it, they might conclude from its appearance and name alone that they are simply looking at a large rifle with thicker cartridges. But that is far from the truth.
In Space Marine 2, you can use various Bolters yourself:
Forget “Bolts”: Bolters fire half grenades
A “Bolt” is not just a thick piece of metal fired from the barrel of a weapon and hitting a target at high speed. Bolter ammunition consists of several components:
- a propellant that drives the bolt
- a warhead with a core of “depleted deuterium” – in our world, deuterium is used for the manufacture of nuclear weapons
- a detonator
In the end, Bolters do not fire cartridges, but small, armor-piercing rockets that detonate upon impact or, more precisely, whenever activated by “mass.” This also fits well with their size, as Bolters have a caliber of between .75 and 1.0 – roughly between 19 and 25 mm.
For comparison: Underbarrel grenade launchers fire ammunition with a diameter of 40mm. A Desert Eagle and most large sniper rifles fire up to .5 caliber ammunition. So you can imagine the recoil.
A weapon that “normal” people can hardly use
Standard versions of the Bolters are correspondingly bulky and not designed to be discreet. They are weapons of war that are meant not only to destroy but also carry a psychological factor.
Size and recoil make it impossible for humans to use Bolters properly. They are meant to be equipped with power armor. The armor of the Space Marines is deliberately oversized. The Adepta Sororitas are therefore the only “normal” humans who can carry Bolters as standard.
This has the advantage that certain technological improvements work without any issues. There are Bolter variants that only function when the owner is using them. This technology is used by many Space Marines, although not all Orders.
Nevertheless, Bolters find use among people in the Astra Militarum and especially among the Space police and judges of the Adeptus Arbites. However, smaller Bolter variants with more manageable grips and slimmer designs are used for this purpose.
Bolter is not equal to Bolter
If you see images of Warhammer 40,000 depicting a Bolter, in most cases you will see a Bolt Pistol or a Standard Bolt Rifle. These are also the most widely used variants of this weapon, but there are many more, such as:
- Heavy Bolters, a type of machine gun usually used by Devastators and Terminators
- Storm Bolters with two barrels, which basically function like two Bolters glued together and come as weapons integrated into power armor
- Psycannons, special weapons with negative psychic energy, particularly effective against Psykers, demons, and the possessed – often in use by the secret Grey Knights
- Bolter Sniper Rifles, especially popular among Scout Squads of the Space Marines
- Bolt Shotguns that… well, do what you think, a weapon from the “dwarves” of the Leagues of Votann
- various Bolt weapons of the Chaos Space Marines enhanced by demonic energy, such as Warpstorm Bolters
- Platform-mounted Bolt Cannons like the Hurricane Bolter, which are mounted on weapon systems of tanks or Cybots, the walking sarcophagi of Space Marine heroes.
Additionally, there are completely different types of ammunition, some of which are somewhat larger or smaller than the standard version. While bolts are usually already armor-piercing, there are also Inferno bolts, which set the target on fire, Subsonic bolts for silenced shots, or Kraken shots that ignite another propellant after the first impact and burrow into the target.
The reason people in Warhammer 40,000 rely on such archaic weapons lies not solely in the deterrent factor or the potentially lower costs. An important technological step had to be reversed by the Imperium: In Warhammer 40,000, there is no artificial intelligence, and there is a good reason for that
