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I am sure Tyranids will fear Baneblade when they see it.
Nope. It wouldn't register in the Tyranid psyche as a fearful object, just as a Land Raider wouldn't set off any real sort of alarm bells to a Necron Warrior. However, the latter owes its lack of fear more to the sense that they are more-or-less immortal. Some of them possess the intelligence to comprehend fear, but that comprehension has been overridden by centuries of near-perfect immortality.
The closest you could get to a sense of fear with them is what leaves a more threatening presence compared to another unit. Synaptic creatures don't fear - they direct their influence towards the lesser creatures on what would be a more threatening unit than another, and hence should be eliminated first.
Termagants and Hormagaunts aren't fearful in the sense of pissing their pants when something large crashes over them, or even feeling a blow to their morale (morale is an insufficient term in their case). It is more a matter of disorganisation rather than fear: they are not being controlled or directed by the greater Hive Mind, so their minds simply aren't able to comprehend what they should do - they aren't built for individual thought.
To put it in a more worldly context, Tyranids are like ants. They cannot comprehend fear as we think of it - the emotion simply doesn't register with them, and most of them don't possess the minds for such a thing. They are all cells of a greater complex organism directed through input via control systems (i,e: synaptic creatures). When those control systems are cut, disorganisation occurs due to lack of mediated communication, and the cells fall into disarray. As such they're not fearful like humans: They won't be overcome with dread or doubt or exert terror at the premise of their own demise. They merely lose the ability to act as a single unit.
If anything, it is an extremely primitive level of fear. It does not develop into more complex displays of fear (i,e: anxiety, phobia, paranoia, horror, panic). It is strictly physiological rather than psychological.
Edited by Gazdakka Gizbang, 01 April 2008 - 10:47 PM.