How Did Sauron Feed Massive Orc Army? | The Lord of the Rings | Middle Earth

In the Silmarillion, Morgoth commands an orc army exceeding hundreds of thousands. In The Lord of the Rings, the armies of Sauron and Saruman are also largely composed of orcs. So, what did these orcs, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, eat, and how did their masters manage to keep them fed even under a siege lasting 400 years?

#middleearth #silmarillion #thehobbit #tolkien #lordoftheringslore #sauron

Music: Scott Buckley @ScottBuckley

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Luke Martins

00:00 Intro
00:35 How orcs breed
01:34 How many orcs did Melkor have?
02:07 What orcs eat?
04:25 How did Melkor feed them during the 400-year siege?
05:12 Saruman Uruks
06:35 How many orcs did Sauron have?
07:35 How did Sauron feed them?
09:28 Is it meaningless?

[tijltrienen]

nothing but maggoty bread for 3 stinking days.

[Combatgoblin]

I always assumed the orcs ate mould, fungus and moss, things that grow in the dark along with any creatures that dwell in caves (snakes, rats, bats etc)

[sonicninja]

With Angband, consider that they had cave agriculture, i.e. mushrooms, worms, cave moss, bats, rats, pools of cave fish, etc.

[Ihavetostartwipingbetter]

I always loved how the orc who wanted to eat the hobbits and got stabbed for it looked and sounded like Keith Richards

[RobertEskuri]

Legs. Just a mouthful. A bit off the flank. 🍴

[BuddaToken]

Melkor corrupted Lembas bread turning it into the stuff that the Orcs drink.

[andrewgilbertson]

Re: Orc women; could also be that they were noncombattants (as is pretty standard for even most human cultures throughout history) and that is why we never see them- the civillian/breeding Orc population is tucked back in some corner of Mordor we never visit.

[linnharamis]

Tolkien may have pondered the “feeding Mordor” issue and therefore added The Sea of Nurnen as a source of water for agricultural production.

[finrod]

Cannibalism almost for sure. Not just Grishnakh’s accusation; Shagrat tells Gorbag “You’ll be for the pot”. Not definitive but it shows orcs aren’t squeamish about cannibal talk. No doubt they’d eat their dead, even if they don’t slaughter their kind for food. And I can’t imagine Sauron/Morgoth/Saruman hesitating to kill ( or at least butcher already dead ) orcs to serve up to his boys.
I always imagined that deep under Angband there were huge caverns where orc females grew food with artificial lighting and underground streams, and baked their hideous bread while males slaughtered “surplus baby” orcs for sandwich meat 😂

[lossefion]

Thanks for the thought provoking video. I'm convinced of a third option for Angband: I don't think Melkor had a huge army until the latter days when he was going to break the siege. A small force can effectively hold a fortress against a large army besieging it. Orcs multiply quickly, therefore there would be no reason to have a large force in abeyance until Melkor was prepared.

[richardrobinson]

Methinks they did sup on Uber Eats. Many a timid man-flesh did cycle to his doom through the black gates of Mordor. But there was always more to replace him.

[osadock]

in one of his letters answering a question about the Entwifes Tolkien wrought:

“They [the Entwives] survived only in the ‘agriculture’ transmitted to Men (and Hobbits), ” Tolkien continues. “Some, of course, may have fled east, or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic and agricultural background to their soldiers and metal-workers.

[MiguMormorda]

Think the answer is simple they ate anything they could get access to, crops, breads meats from slaves enemies or beasts.

[richardsanchez]

2:58 well that one orc did look at Merry and pippin and say" what about them, they're fresh"

[terrytwotoes]

We came up with a thought, in the two towers when the orc says “looks like meats back on the menu boys!” It suggest there are Orc restaurants, we then came up with a list of names, “Orcs and forks” won

[fiddleback]

When Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli followed the Orcs, they found things abandoned by the Orcs. Like a bag of solid, black bread loafs.

[the_jester]

It's a little know fact that the "Orc Draft" is in fact Guinness. Can keep a full grown orc marching for hours.

[BrendanKOD]

Well considering the Orc Draughts as paralleling Lembas, it could make sense for their origin to be some sort of moss or fungus corrupted by Melchor to force to body to keep functioning. Though an important factor is that while Sauron was the sort of order obsessed planner who'd keep the scheduling of the slave plantations of Nurn working, Melchor was always more about the ideas with others being left to handle the details. So if some underling came up with a way to grow plants by reflecting the light of the simirals into garden caverns, Melchor probably wouldn't object too much if it got results.

[BVargas]

I always suspected there were two types of orcs. Those that were made in a more natural form through breeding and those that were made unnaturally through sorcery. Similar to how Saruman (in the movies) spawned them in vats of mud and presumably other elements, bile blood other things. Perhaps even human blood. Similar to a crude magical form of cloning. Though other than a line remarked by Gandalf, assumably he was only using poetic speech when he says 'all the orcs spawned in Moria' the books and Tolkien himself never really mentions that as being the case. But it would explain their numbers and how Sauron and Saruman were able to quickly build armies of orcs including Uruks. I assume the more natural orcs that breed and live in tribes to be more independent thinking despite still being bound to the will of Sauron. While the magically spawned orcs are more loyal to their creator, as with Sarumans white hand uruks.

[richardsanchez]

7:50 i can't imagine any part of Mordor being fertile and green.