How to destroy Earth : 10 easy ways

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have beenled to believe.You've seen the action movies where the bad guythreatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people onthe news claiming that the next nuclear war or cuttingdown rainforests or persisting in releasing hideousquantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatensto end the world.Fools.The Earth was built to last. It is a4,550,000,000-year-old,5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. Ithas taken more devastating asteroid hits in itslifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it stillorbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you,dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think thiswill be easy.This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely towipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no wayguarantee the complete extinction of the human racevia any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanityis wily and resourceful, and many of the methodsoutlined below will take many years to even becomeavailable, let alone implement, by which time mankindmay well have spread to other planets; indeed, otherstar systems. If total human genocide is your ultimategoal, you are reading the wrong document. There arefar more efficient ways of doing this, many which areavailable and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guidefor those wanting to annihilate everything fromsingle-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitableor simply conquer it. These are trivial goals incomparison.This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth tobe there anymore.Mission statementFor the purposes of what I hope to be a technicallyand scientifically accurate document, I will defineour goal thus: by any means necessary, to change theEarth into something other than a planet. Any of thefollowing forms could represent success: two or moreplanets; any number of smaller asteroids; a dustcloud; a more exotic object such as a quantumsingularity. But the list does not end here.Current Earth-destruction StatusNumber of times the Earth has been destroyed: 0Information courtesy of the InternationalEarth-Destruction Advisory BoardMethods for destroying the EarthTo be listed here, a method must actually work. Thatis, according to current scientific understanding, itmust be possible for the Earth to actually bedestroyed by this method, however improbable orimpractical it may be. This is a recent (20050303)clarification of the rules intended to facilitategreater scientific accuracy. Up until now the ruleswere "I'll add it if I feel like it" and things weregetting untidy. As a result of this change, severallong-standing methods have been relegated to the "lessscientifically probable" list.Methods are ranked in order of feasibility.Several methods involve moving the Earth aconsiderable distance off its usual orbital track.This is an essay in itself, so a separate page hasbeen created for it.Gobbled up by strangeletsYou will need: Some strange matter.Strange matter is a phase of matter which is even moredense than neutronium. (Wow.) It's theorized to formin particularly massive neutron stars when thepressure inside them becomes just too great for evenneutronium to exist: the individual neutronscomprising the neutronium are instead broken down intostrange quarks. The neutron star then becomes a"strange star" which is essentially a single giganticnucleon.Some theories suggest that a lump of strange matter("strangelet") could remain stable outside of theintense pressure which created it. This would make ittheoretically possible for strangelets of sizes allthe way down to the atomic scale to exist. It'sfurther theorized that the gravitational field of amicroscopic strangelet would be enough to gobble upanything it comes in contact with, turning it intomore strange matter.Method: Hijack control of a particle accelerator. Isuggest the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider inBrookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York.Use the RHIC to create a strangelet large enough toremain stable. Once created, your job is done: relaxand wait as the strangelet plummets through to theEarth's core, where it will eventually swallow up theentire Earth.Earth's final resting place: a tiny glob of strangematter, perhaps a centimetre across.Feasibility rating (revised): 2/10. Evidence for theexistence of strange matter is sketchy at best; thereare a few neutron stars which look too small to bemade of neutronium, there are a few earthquakes whichmight have been caused by a microscopic strangeletpassing through the Earth at high speed, but that'sabout it. And even if it were possible that smallstable strangelets could exist and swallow matter upin the manner described, the odds of forming one in aparticle accelerator are pretty much zero. Sucked into a microscopic black holeYou will need: a microscopic black hole.Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporatedue to Hawking radiation. For your average black holethis takes an unimaginable amount of time, but forreally small ones it could happen almostinstantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent onmass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must havegreater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equalto the mass of Mount Everest.Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since oneneeds a reasonable amount of neutronium, but maypossibly be achievable by jamming large numbers ofatomic nuclei together until they stick. This is leftas an exercise to the reader.Method: simply place your black hole on the surface ofthe Earth and wait. Black holes are of such highdensity that they pass through ordinary matter like astone through the air. The black hole will plummetthrough the ground, eating its way to the centre ofthe Earth and all the way through to the other side:then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like amatter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come torest at the core, having absorbed enough matter toslow it down. Then you just need to wait, while itsits and consumes matter until the whole Earth isgone.Earth's final resting place: a singularity with aradius of about nine millimetres, which will thenproceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.Feasibility rating: 2/10. Highly, highly unlikely. Butnot impossible.Comments: Getting closer!Source: The Dark Side Of The Sun, by Terry Pratchett.It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is anage-old science fiction mainstay which predatesPratchett by a long time, he was my original sourcefor the idea, so that's what I'm putting.OverspunYou will need: some means of accelerating the Earth'srotation.Accelerating the Earth's rotation is a ratherdifferent matter from moving it. External interactionswith asteroids might move the Earth but won't have asignificant effect on how fast it spins. And certainlyit won't spin the Earth fast enough. You need to buildrockets or railguns at the Equator, all facing West.Method: The theory is, if you spin the Earth fastenough, it'll fly apart as the bits at the Equatorstart moving fast enough to overcome gravity.To do this the Earth will need to be spinning veryfast indeed. Currently it rotates completely on itsaxis once every 24 hours. You'll need to spin it fastenough to perform a complete rotation once every 84minutes.Comments: This assumes that the Earth won't distort asit spins faster, which it will - the poles willflatten and the Equator will expand. It's alsocompletely unknown what will happen once the rotationactually reaches the kind of speed we're looking athere. Will a ring of matter spontaneously lift offfrom the Equator and expand outwards? Will lumps ofmatter fly off at a tangent? If they do, will theycome back down again? Will some other exchange ofangular momentum occur to slow the planet down? Theonly thing we can be sure of is that Earth will notsimply just fly apart into pieces. It'd take somecomputer modelling to find out what would actuallyhappen.Earth's final resting place: presumably, various lumpsof matter expanding away from each other.Feasibility rating: 3/10. Improbable, difficult,messy, and possibly not even workable.Source: This method suggested by Matthew Wakeling.Blown up by matter/antimatter reactionYou will need: 1,300,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatterAntimatter - the most explosive substance possible -can be manufactured in small quantities using anylarge particle accelerator, but this will take someconsiderable time to produce the required amounts. Ifyou can create the appropriate machinery, it may bepossible - and much easier - simply to "flip" 1.3trillion tonnes of matter through a fourth dimension,turning it all to antimatter at once.Method: This method involves detonating a bomb so bigthat it blasts the Earth to pieces.This, to say the least, requires a big bomb. All theexplosives mankind has ever created, nuclear or non-,gathered together and detonated simultaneously, wouldmake a significant crater and wreck the planet'secosystem, but barely scratch the surface of theplanet. There is evidence that in the past, asteroidshave hit the Earth with the explosive yield of fivebillion Hiroshima bombs - and such evidence isdifficult to find. It is, in short, insanely difficultto significantly alter the Earth's structure withexplosives. This is not to mention the gravityproblem. Just because you blasted the Earth apartdoesn't mean you blasted it apart for good. If youdon't blast it hard enough, the pieces will fall backtogether again under mutual gravitational attraction,and Earth, like the liquid metal Terminator, willreform from its shattered shards. You have to blow theEarth up hard enough to overcome that attraction.How hard is that?If you do the lengthy calculations you find that toliberate that much energy requires the completeannihilation of around 1,246,400,000,000 tonnes ofantimatter. That's assuming zero energy loss to heatand radiation, which is unlikely to be the case inreality: You'll probably need to up the dose by atleast a factor of ten. Once you've generated yourantimatter, probably in space, just launch it en massetowards Earth. The resulting release of energy(obeying Einstein's famous mass-energy equation,E=mc2) should be sufficient to split the Earth into athousand pieces.Greg Bear's novel, "The Forge Of God", contains aninteresting refinement of this technique. Here, theantagonist instead generates antimatter in the form ofa "slug" of anti-neutronium - superdense materialmassing a billion kilograms per cubic centimetre. Thisis fired into the Earth's core. Neutronium passesthrough ordinary matter as easily as a ball fliesthrough the air, so the anti-neutronium slug doesn'tannihilate immediately; rather, it builds up aprotective sheath of plasma around it as it plungesdownwards towards the Earth's core. It's then followedup by a slug of regular neutronium, which also fallsinto the core, at a time calculated to meet the firstslug head-on at the exact centre of the Earth, wherethey annihilate themselves, and soon afterwards, theEarth itself. Highly space-efficient, and with theadded bonus of all the energy being released at theEarth's core, where it can do the most damage. In thebook, the antagonists simultaneously detonate nuclearwarheads in certain oceanic trenches, to weaken thecrust and allow the planet to be blown apart moreeasily.Earth's final resting place: A second asteroid beltaround the Sun.Comments: trembling writes, "I still think thatantimatter is crazy s**t, i.e. wouldn't want it on myflapjacks"Feasibility rating: 5/10. Just about slightlypossible.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500. Of course,if it does prove possible to manufacture antimatter inthe sufficiently large quantities you require - whichis not necessarily the case - then smaller antimatterbombs will be around long before then.Sucked into a giant black holeYou will need: a black hole, extremely powerful rocketengines, and, optionally, a large rocky planetarybody. The nearest black hole to our planet is 1600light years from Earth in the direction ofSagittarius, orbiting V4641.Method: after locating your black hole, you need getit and the Earth together. This is likely to be themost time-consuming part of this plan. There are twomethods, moving Earth or moving the black hole, thoughfor best results you'd most likely move both at once.See the Guide to moving Earth for details on how tomove the Earth. Several of the methods listed can beapplied to the black hole too, though obviously notall of them, since it is impossible to physicallytouch the black hole, let along build rockets on it.Earth's final resting place: part of the mass of theblack hole.Feasibility rating: 6/10. Very difficult, butdefinitely possible.Earliest feasible completion date: I do not expect thenecessary technology to be available until AD 3000,and add at least 800 years for travel time. (That's inan external observer's frame of reference and assumingyou move both the Earth and the black hole at the sametime.)Sources: The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, byDouglas Adams; space.com.Comments: It's clear that dropping the Earth into asingularity is massive overkill. A reasonably stronggravitational field, such as might be associated withany body between Jupiter and a neutron star, would besufficient to rip the Earth apart via tidal forces.These possibilities are dealt with further down.Meticulously and systematically deconstructedYou will need: a powerful mass driver, or ideally lotsof them.Method: Basically, what we're going to do here is digup the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost thewhole lot of it into orbit. Yes. All six sextilliontonnes of it. A mass driver is a sort of oversizedelectromagnetic railgun, which was once proposed as away of getting mined materials back from the Moon toEarth - basically, you just load it into the driverand fire it upwards in roughly the right direction.We'd use a particularly powerful model - big enough tohit escape velocity of 11 kilometres per second - andlaunch it all into the Sun or randomly into space.We will ignore atmospheric considerations. Comparedwith the extra energy needed to overcome air friction,it would be a relatively trivial step to completelyburn away the Earth's atmosphere before beginning theprocess.Alternate methods for boosting the material into spaceinclude loading the extracted material into spaceshuttles or taking it up via space elevator. All thesemethods, however, require a - let me emphasize this -titanic quantity of energy to carry out. Building aDyson sphere ain't gonna cut it here. (Note: Actually,it would. But if you have the technology to build aDyson sphere, why are you reading this?)Earth's final resting place: Many tiny pieces, somedropped into the Sun, the remainder scattered acrossthe rest of the Solar System.Feasibility rating: 6/10. If we wanted to and werewilling to devote resources to it, we could start thisprocess RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk leftin orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, wealready have done.Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At abillion tonnes of mass driven out of the Earth'sgravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.Source: this method arose when Joe Baldwin and Iknocked our heads together by accident.Pulverized by impact with blunt instrumentYou will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bitof a swing to it... perhaps MarsMethod: Criminal, really, that this blindingly obviousmethod was overlooked for so long. Essentially,anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough.ANYTHING. The concept is simple: find a really, reallybig asteroid or planet, accelerate it up to somedazzling speed, and smash it into Earth, preferablyhead-on but whatever you can manage. The result: anabsolutely spectacular collision, resulting hopefullyin Earth (and, most likely, our "cue ball" too) beingpulverized out of existence - smashed into any numberof large pieces which if the collision is hard enoughshould have enough energy to overcome their mutualgravity and drift away forever, never to coagulateback into a planet again.A brief analysis of the size of the object requiredcan be found here. Falling at the minimal impactvelocity of 11 kilometres per second and assuming zeroenergy loss to heat and other energy forms, the cueball would have to have roughly 60% of the mass of theEarth. Mars, the next planet out, "weighs" in at about11% of Earth's mass, while Venus, the next planet inand also the nearest to Earth, has about 81%. Assumingthat we would fire our cue ball into Earth at muchgreater than 11km/s (I'm thinking more like 50km/s),either of these would make great possibilities.Obviously a smaller rock would do the job, you justneed to fire it faster. Taking mass dilation intoaccount, a 5,000,000,000,000-tonne asteroid at 90% oflight speed would do just as well. See the Guide tomoving Earth for useful information on manoeuvring bighunks of rock across interplanetary distances.Earth's final resting place: a variety of roughlyMoon-sized chunks of rock, scattered haphazardlyacross the greater Solar System.Feasibility rating: 7/10. Pretty plausible.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 2500, maybe?Source: This method suggested by Andy KirkpatrickComments: Earth is believed to have been hit by anobject the size of Mars at some point in the distantpast before its surface cooled. This titanic collisionresulted in... the Moon. You can download a simulatedvideo of the impact from this page. While theMars-sized object in question obviously didn't hitEarth nearly as hard as we're proposing with thismethod, this does serve as a proof of concept.Many useful planetary facts can be found here.Frazzled by solar plasmaYou will need: an extremely large, heat-insulatedring, lots and lots of wire, lots and lots ofelectricityMethod: Anybody who knows anything about the Sun, orhas at least seen the opening titles of Star Trek:Voyager, knows that the Sun frequently erupts withhuge rings of plasma called coronal rings and evenhuger rings of plasma called prominences. These, andsunspots, are caused by changing magnetic fields. Bigprominences can break apart and cause coronal massejections, bursts of plasma which erupt into space andwhich can occasionally reach the Earth itself, wherethey can disrupt radio communications and causeblackouts.Place your ring in as low an orbit over the Sun as youcan manage. Now run an extremely powerful electricalcurrent around the rim of the ring. High schoolphysics will tell you that this will cause a powerfulmagnetic field passing through the middle of the ring.Carefully steered, you can use this ring toartificially induce a gigantic prominence and eject amuch, much larger-than-average discharge of coronalplasma towards Earth. It'd probably be too much toexpect just one carefully aimed CME to destroy theplanet completely, but you can repeat the process overand over again, burning off layer after layer untilthe planet is gone.Factors you will have to contend with include heatdamage to your ring, targeting, and heat dissipationas the coronal plasma spreads out and crosses the gulfbetween the Sun and the Earth. You will want to fireas much plasma as you possibly can and focus it astightly as you possibly can on the Earth. You couldconsider using other rings in higher orbits to focusthe plasma after it's first ejected from the Sun, andfurther rings as relay stations en route. And theserings need to be BIG. Hundreds or thousands ofkilometres across.Earth's final resting place: Cooling lumps of matter,spread across the greater solar system.Feasibility rating: 7/10. Excitingly plausible, thoughimpossible with current space technology.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 3000.Source: This method suggested by "Thane".Eaten by von Neumann machinesYou will need: a single von Neumann machine, whichsubsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminiumand silicon, the major elements found in Earth'smantle and core. A von Neumann machine is any devicethat is capable of creating an exact copy of itselfgiven nothing but the necessary raw materials.Theoretically, if it will be truly a von NeumannMachine, then its size doesn't matter: it can be anysize from microscopic to planet-sized (though if youhave the technology to take a body the size of theMoon apart and make a machine out of it, you have thetechnology to take the Earth apart and leave it inpieces), but it seems that miniature, molecular-scalenanobots, capable of building other nanobots and/ordedicated nanobot factories (nanoassemblers) would bethe best way to go. It need not even be mechanical;all living things are technically biological vonNeumann machines. Scott Lujan writes, "Throughprocesses of directed evolution, perhaps beginningwith diatomaceous microbes (capable of siliconprocessing) and choice natural subterraneanextremophiles (can respire, i.e. oxidize, variousheavy metals or live at extreme pressures and heats),one could conceivably create a strain of lithovoresthat would process earthly matter."Method: Once you have your von Neumann machine built,release it into the ground under the Earth's crust andallow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as itcreates a second von Neumann machine, then they createtwo more, then they create four more. As thepopulation of machines doubles repeatedly, the planetEarth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten upand turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions ofmachines.Technically your objective would now be complete - nomore Earth - but if you want to be thorough, then youcan command your VNMs to hurl themselves, along withany remaining trace elements, into the Sun. Thishurling would have to be achieved using rocketpropulsion of some sort, so be sure to include this inyour design. If you find yourself unable to design aVNM strong enough to stay intact at the core, you mayneed to do this in stages; consume a layer of theplanet, launch into space, repeat.Earth's final resting place: the bodies of the VNMsthemselves, then a small lump of iron sinking into theSun.Feasibility rating: 8/10. So crazy it might just work.Earliest feasible completion date: Potentially2045-2050, or even earlier.Source: 2010: Odyssey Two, by Arthur C. ClarkeHurled into the SunYou will need: Earthmoving equipment.Method: Hurl the Earth into the Sun, where it will berapidly melted and then vaporized by the Sun's heat.Sending Earth on a collision course with the Sun isnot as easy as one might think; even though you don'tactually have to literally hit the Sun (send the Earthnear enough to the Sun (within the Roche limit), andtidal forces will tear it apart), it's surprisinglyeasy to end up with Earth in a loopy elliptical orbitwhich merely roasts it for four months in every eight.But careful planning can avoid this.As far as energy changes are concerned, this method isinferior to the next one.Earth's final resting place: a small globule ofvaporized iron sinking slowly into the heart of theSun.Feasibility rating: 9/10. Impossible at our currenttechnological level, but will be possible one day, I'mcertain. In the meantime, may happen by freak accidentif something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocksEarth in precisely the right direction.Earliest feasible completion date: Via act of God: 25years' time. Any earlier and we'd have already spottedthe asteroid in question. Via human intervention:given the current level of expansion of spacetechnology, 2250 at best.Source: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, by GrantNaylorTorn apart by JupiterYou will need: Earthmoving equipment.Method: Hurl the Earth into Jupiter, where it will betorn apart by tidal forces.Moving the Earth out to Jupiter is much the same asmoving the Earth in towards the Sun, the most obviousdifference being your choice of vectors. However,there is another important consideration, and that isenergy. It takes energy to raise or lower an objectthrough a gravity field; it would take energy topropel the Earth into the Sun and it would take energyto propel it into Jupiter. When you do thecalculations, Jupiter is actually rather preferable;it takes about 38% less energy.Earth's final resting place: lumps of heavy elements,torn apart, sinking into the massive cloud layers ofJupiter, never to be seen again.Feasibility rating: 9/10. As before, impossible at ourcurrent technological level, but will be possible oneday, and in the meantime, may happen by freak accidentif something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocksEarth in precisely the right direction.Earliest feasible completion date: As before, via actof God: 25 years' time. Any earlier and we'd havealready spotted the asteroid in question. Via humanintervention: given the current level of expansion ofspace technology, 2250 at best.Source: Mitchell Porter suggested this method.Fall-back methodsIf your best efforts fail, you needn't fret. Nothinglasts forever; the Earth is, ultimately, doomed,whatever you do. The following are ways the Earthcould naturally come to an end. (They're no longer infeasibility order since it reads better this way.)Bear in mind that none of these will require anyactivity on your part to be successful.Total existence failureYou will need: nothingMethod: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle yourthumbs as, completely by chance, all200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly,simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note:the odds against this actually ever occuring areconsiderably greater than a googolplex (1010100) toone. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read:scientifically laughable) probability-manipulationdevice may be employed.Current feasibility rating: 0/10. Even if you look atthe significantly greater probability of the Earthrandomly rearranging itself into separate two planets,this is utter, utter rubbish.Whipped by a cosmic stringYou will need: a cosmic string and a whole lotta luckMethod: Cosmic strings are hypothetical 1-dimensionaldefects in spacetime, left over from earlier phases ofthe universe, somewhat like cracks in ice. They arepotentially universe-spanning objects, thinner than aproton but with unimaginable density - one Earth massper 1600m of length! All you need to do is get acosmic string near Earth, and it'll be torn apart,shredded, and sucked in. Probably the entire rest ofthe solar system would be too.Earth's final resting place: String.Feasibility rating: 1/10. Mind-bogglingly unlikely.Even if cosmic strings do exist, which they may not,there are probably only about ten of them left in theENTIRE UNIVERSE. And they can't be steered, unless youhave godlike powers, in which case you might as wellchuck into the Earth in the Sun and have done with it,so you're relying entirely on luck. This. Will. Never.Happen.Source: this method suggested by Dan Winston.Written off in the backlash from a stellar collisionYou will need: another star. White dwarf is good, butwe're not fussy.Method: Crash your star into the Sun.The interactions between the two stars in this veryviolent stellar event will cause more fusion to occurinside the Sun than normally does in 100,000,000years. The result is not unlike a supernova explosion,though slower - a staggering amount of matter andenergy is released outwards, burning the Earth to acrisp and firing it into interstellar space at best,completely incinerating it at worst.Earth's final resting place: burnt pieces.Feasibility rating: 4/10. This is listed under naturalmethods because there is absolutely no way you canmove a star. Well, there are ways and means, but ifyou can move a star, why not move the Earth into thatstar? And the chances of this happening - evenconsidering that in two billion years' time the MilkyWay is going to collide with Andromeda - are very,very slim. Calculations suggest that the number ofactual stellar collisions that are likely to occur inthat exchange will be SIX. Six chances in about ahundred billion.Hmm. That's actually pretty high for this list. Makeit 5/10.Source: This method suggested by Eric Thompson.Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stageYou will need: patienceMethod: Simply wait for roughly 5,000,000,000 years.During its natural progress along the Main Sequence,the Sun will exhaust its initial reserves of hydrogenfuel and expand into a red giant star - swallowing upMercury, Venus, Earth and Mars in the process.Earth's final resting place: Boiling red iron in theheart of the Sun.Feasibility rating: 8/10. The problem here is thatcurrent scientific theories predict the Earth willprobably survive. The increasing solar wind combinedwith the Sun's decreasing mass will result in theEarth gradually moving out to a wider, cooler, saferorbit.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 5,000,000,000CrunchedYou will need: considerably more patienceMethod: Our universe is rapidly expanding in alldirections. It will likely continue to do so for avery, very long time. After that time, if the densityof matter in the universe is greater than a certaincritical value, the universe will slow to a stop dueto mutual gravitational attraction, and collapse backtogether again, in a reversal of the Big Bang calledthe Big Crunch. Conditions during the Big Crunch willbe similar to those during the Big Bang: mind-bogglingheat, matter ripped to subatomic particles,fundamental forces such as gravitation andelectromagnetism merging back together, that sort ofthing. Yes, Earth would be destroyed. So would therest of the universe. A tiny sphere of iron standslittle chance against conditions like that.Earth's final resting place: Quark-gluon plasma? Pureenergy? Part of the next universe? Honestly, I don'tknow. But it won't be a planet anymore.Feasibility rating: 8/10. Plausible. Assumes that theBig Crunch will actually occur at all, which iscurrently in question.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 42,000,000,000,give or takeSource: Shields and Nick Snell both suggested thismethod.Ripped asunderYou will need: about half as much patienceMethod: Recent experimental results seem to show thatthe expansion of the universe is not slowing as onemight imagine it would. In fact, the expansion isaccelerating. It's a bit early to say with confidencewhy this is happening, though phrases like "darkmatter" and "phantom energy" pop up pretty frequently,but anyway, it's conjectured that if the ratio w ofdark energy pressure to dark energy density in theuniverse is negative enough (buh?), then the universewould expand, accelerating in its expansion until itwas ripped apart at the seams. To quote Wikipedia'sentry: "First the galaxies would be separated fromeach other, then gravity would be too weak to holdindividual galaxies together. Approximately threemonths before the end, solar systems will begravitationally unbound. In the last minutes, starsand planets will come apart, and atoms will bedestroyed a fraction of a second before the end oftime." Cool, eh?Earth's final resting place: HAH! If I knew that, Iwouldn't need aftershave.Feasibility rating: 10/10. Likely. Assumes the Big Riptheory is correct, which it probably is, but might notbe.Earliest feasible completion date: AD 20,000,000,000,assuming w = -3/2 (could vary)Source: a theory proposed by Robert R. Caldwell, MarcKamionkowski, and Nevin N. Weinberg in February 2003.Read it here (PDF warning! Also, dense, difficultphysics!). Brought to my attention by Jonah Safar andnanite.DecayedYou will need: all-surpassing patienceMethod: If the Big Crunch doesn't happen, and the BigRip doesn't happen either, then we come back to thethird option: the Big Chill. For this, the universewill just expand, forever. The laws of thermodynamicstake over. Every galaxy becomes isolated from itsneighbours. All the stars burn out. Everything getscolder until it's all the same temperature. And afterthat, nothing ever changes in the universe. Foreternity.A lot can happen in an eternity. Protons, for example,while incredibly stable, are believed to eventuallydecay like any other particle. So simply wait for aperiod of time of the order of1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000years, and roughly half of the constituent particlesof Earth will have decayed into positrons and pions.If that's still too much like a planet for you, youcould wait for another 1036 years, leaving only aquarter of the original Earth. Or wait even longer.Eventually there will be as little of Earth left asyou wish.Earth's final resting place: Miscellaneous positronsand gamma radiation (pions decay almost instantly intogamma ray photons) scattered thinly across the entireuniverse.Comments: It's interesting to compare this method withthe one right at the top (total existence failure).What we are essentially doing here is almost exactlythe same thing, only instead of expecting everyparticle to disappear at once, we are waitingpatiently for a significant proportion of them todisappear, one at a time, over the course of anunimaginable period of time. Essentially we've comefull circle. The scientific theories involved are thesame, it's just the time scale being considered whichchanges the feasibility rating from "astoundinglyimprobable" to:Feasibility rating: 9/10. If all else fails, this onewould be essentially unstoppable...Earliest feasible completion date: AD1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000Source: This method suggested by Joseph VerockOther, less scientifically probable ways that Earthcould be destroyedExistence negated via time travelYou will need: a time machine, heavy rock-movingequipment/explosivesMethod: Using your time machine, travel back in timejust over 4,500,000,000 years to shortly (i.e. a fewbillenia) before the formation of the Earth. What youshould find in its place is a young Sun and anaccretion disc formed of the dusty/rocky material thatwill later become our Solar System. Find the patch ofmaterial that is likely to condense into the Earth.Now blow up, split apart and otherwise stir up thematerial so that it never gets a chance to cometogether and form the Earth. Return forwards in timein several hundred-million-year jumps, repeating theprocess each time so that no planet of any kind everforms at roughly 1 AU from the Sun. If you make anerror, simply go back in time and try again.If your time machine is more resilient, or you don'tmind dying, you could consider going further back intime. The further you go, the less you need to changethe universe to prevent the Earth ever forming. Goback to a few billionths of a second after theuniverse began and just by being there you'llcompletely alter the face of the universe to come...although it was pretty hot back then...Earth's final resting place: When you finally returnto the present day, you will be left with a largishasteroid belt where Earth should be. Alternatively,you may find that the matter has been assimilated intothe bodies of other planets or the Sun.Comments: This method relies on fictional technologyand has no basis in real events or scientific theory.Time travel in this way is almost certainlyimpossible.My good friend Rob rightly informs me that this courseof action does not strictly speaking "destroy" theEarth - there is no actual destruction event in whichthe Earth goes from existing to not existing. What oneends up with instead is a universe in which the Earthdoes not and never did exist.Destroying Rob proved remarkably easy.Engulfed in supernovaYou will need: some means of inhibiting nuclear fusionreactionsMethod: Simply cause the Sun to suddenly halt all itsnuclear fusion reactions, thereby collapsing and thenexploding with enough energy to momentarily outshinethe entire rest of the galaxy. This promises to be oneof the most efficient and spectacular ways to destroythe Earth, so if you have the necessary skills andmachinery, then I would recommend this over most othermethods.Earth's final resting place: a smear of vaporized ironmoving across the universe at roughly 5% of the speedof light.Comments: Once again, this method relies entirely onnon-existent technology.Source: The Songs Of Distant Earth, by Arthur C.ClarkeDestroyed by GodYou will need: GodMethod: Far be it from me to dictate whether God doesor does not exist, but if he did, and was omnipotent,then no doubt he could destroy the Earth at a merethought if he should decide to. Of course, thequestion arises of how we persuade him to do this.One suggestion - should Judaic mythology turn out tobe correct - is finding and killing one or more of theLamed Vav Tzadikim, 36 righteous men whose role inlife is to justify the purpose of mankind in the eyesof God. If even one of these is missing, it is saidthe world would come to an end. Practically speaking,it would probably be easier to wipe out humanity thanto find one these individuals, who do not themselvesknow who they are.Comments: It is of course entirely possible that themeans God would choose to use to destroy the Earthwould be a natural, non-miraculous event such as oneof those listed above.Earth's final resting place: potentially any form,anywhere.Mike Trainor writes, "Just because we don't have thetechnology to destroy the planet doesn't mean no oneelse in the universe does. What you need to do is topoint our most powerful radio-telescope transmittersat likely solar systems and taunt them. 'Thegirly-beings in your miserable solar system couldnever destroy a planet as cool as this one...'"Thanks, Mike. We'll get SETI on it.Methods from fictionThis section got too big for its shell so I moved itto a separate page.Things which will NOT destroy the EarthGamma Ray Burst'dYou will need: a star in Earth's stellar neighbourhoodwith >40 solar masses. Such massive stars are hard tocome by; even Betelgeuse has only 20 solar masses. Thebest candidate I know of is Eta Carinae, which hasover 120 solar masses but is ~7500 light years away.Method: Gamma ray bursts are powerful, short-livedfloods of gamma ray photons. GRBs come in twoflavours, short (less than 2 seconds) and long (2seconds to about 3 minutes); the latter are believedto be caused by stellar explosions called hypernovae,hundreds of times more violent than ordinarysupernovae. Such stars are usually billions of lightyears away when they explode - the fact that we candetect them at this range should tell you enough abouthow powerful a hypernova is. So how about triggeringone locally? Any such explosion within about 20 lightyears would probably be violent enough to destroy theEarth itself.Feasibility rating: 0/10. This method was originallylisted above, but astronomer Stephen Thorsett set mestraight. It wouldn't work. Even in the titanicquantities described above, gamma rays wouldn't make adent in Earth's actual, physical structure.Sources: Lycurgus suggested this method. Furtherinformation from nasa.gov.Burned away by muon-catalyzed fusion of the oceansYou will need: a supply of muonsMethod: The theory runs like this. A muon is anegatively-charged particle somewhat like an electron.If you dump a load of muons into some hydrogen, thensome of the muons will replace the electrons in thehydrogen atoms. Because of the mass difference, thehydrogen atoms will suddenly get much smaller, causingthe hydrogen molecules to be much closer together;enough that the probability of the hydrogen nucleijust randomly fusing with each other is high.So, if you instead poured your muons into the oceans,they could cause the deuterium chemically combinedwith the water in the oceans to spontaneously beginundergoing fusion reactions. In theory, the amount ofheat/energy released by the fusion of all the water inthe world would be enough to destroy it by a good feworders of magnitude.Feasibility rating: 0/10. All known muons we knowabout decay in a few microseconds - fairly long for anexotic subatomic particle, but still too short to bepractical, so unless you can generate your muons inbulk, for free, you don't reach energy break-even, andthe fusion stops as soon as it starts instead of beingself-sustaining.Sources: Muon-catalyzed fusion was theorized in thelate 1940s by Andrei Sakharov, and brought to myattention by Jef PoskanzerComments: This method was never listed as plausible,but I put it up here anyway because the idea itself isintriguing, even if it wouldn't work.Blown up by vacuum energy detonationYou will need: some means of extracting energy fromthe vacuumMethod: Some scientific theories tell us that what wemay see as vacuum is only vacuum on average, andactually thriving with vast amounts of particles andantiparticles constantly appearing and thenannihilating each other. It also suggests that thevolume of space enclosed by a light bulb containsenough vacuum energy to boil every ocean in the world.Therefore, vacuum energy could prove to be the mostabundant energy source of any kind. Which is where youcome in. All you need to do is figure out how toextract this energy and harness it in some kind ofpower plant - this can easily be done without arousingtoo much suspicion - then surreptitiously allow thereaction to run out of control. The resulting releaseof energy would easily be enough to annihilate all ofplanet Earth and probably the Sun too.Earth's final resting place: a rapidly expanding cloudof particles of varying size.Feasibility rating: 0/10. This method was originallylisted as plausible, but Alan Thomas set me straight:there are about five different ways to calculate theenergy of the vacuum, all giving different answers.The methods which give the answers "large" or"infinite" are predicated on dodgy mathematics andalmost certainly wrong.Source: 3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. ClarkeArmageddon, as described in the Bible. Armageddon doesnot destroy the Earth, nor even everyone on it. Onethird of the human population is wiped out repeatedly(at least one third and then another third of what'sleft) but then not only does the remnant survive, butGod's people return from heaven and get to live in acity roughly the size of Brazil. This is as far fromour definition of destroying the Earth as you canreasonably get, as the planet is still there ANDpeople still live on it.Paradoxes as described in Back To The Future Part II.By definition, a paradox cannot actually come intoexistence.Ceasing all thought (if the Earth is not observed,then how can it exist?). Philip K. Dick said it best:"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it,doesn't go away."Semantics. A few people suggested exploiting aloophole in my mission statement and moving the Earthinto orbit around a gas giant, making it a moon ratherthan a planet, or hurling it into interstellar spacewhere it would become a wandering interstellar object.Yeah, yeah, very clever. Get back to work.Detonating all the nuclear weapons ever createdsimultaneously, either all at one location orstrategically placed around the globe. This willirradiate pretty much the entire globe and kill anawful lot of people, animals and plants, but willactually destroy very little of the planet itself.Proving that 1=0. If one did indeed equal zero, so itis reasoned, then since there is one Earth, there mustbe zero Earths... so, if one could prove it, the Earthwould cease to exist. This is specious logic. Findinga proof in mathematics does not magically change afact from being false to being true. It merelyverifies rigorously as true a fact that always wastrue. Thus, if 1=0 could be proved, then it wouldalways have been true and the Earth should never haveexisted. But Earth is still here. QED.Runaway fission at the Earth's core, as proposed byTom Chalko. It is true that while the Earth is mainlyiron, there are significant quantities of other traceelements present, including fissile materials likeuranium, thorium and - get this - radioactivepotassium which have sunk to the core where lateststudies suggest where they are indeed undergoingfission, generating heat and keeping the interior ofthe Earth warm. However, if a nuclear explosion didoccur at the core, it would be insulated from thesurface by sixty-three hundred kilometres of liquidiron.Gay marriage.General geocide strategyDestroying the Earth is not as easy as pressing a bigred button. It takes decades of hard work.PlanningWithout a plan, you have nothing. Sooner or later youWILL hit a snag and find yourself unable to continue:government agents will start lasering their waythrough your door, or you'll have your superweaponready and armed but nowhere safe to stand when youfire it, or you'll just plain run out of money. Youneed to plan for as many eventualities as you canconceive of, as early as possible. When I say early, Imean early: ideally your plan should be at least 50%complete by the time you leave high school, becauseyour career choices will be a very significant factor.You should have picked your method by this time too.(The list above isn't necessarily complete - if youcome up with a better way of your own, good luck toyou.) Once you have picked your method, STICK TO IT.Assuming, of course, that you and whatever trustedadvisors you will allow to side with you do not intendto "go down with the ship", it is particularlyadvisable to make plans for alternate livingarrangements before you embark on a course of actionwhich may result in the destruction of the Earth.Since in most cases the hypertechnology required toactually destroy the Earth is ridiculously advanced,access to an interstellar spacecraft, a space stationor another habitable planet is likely to be wellwithin your grasp, but this is not something you wantto start making assumptions about.CareersAt this point you need to make a very significantdecision: are you going to design your doomsdaymachinery (all of the above methods except TotalExistence Failure require a greater or lesser amountof machinery) yourself, or are you going to employsomebody else to do it for you? Unless you are anextremely gifted scientist and you really can destroythe Earth from your laboratory (which is notimpossible; see the Strangelet or Von Neumann Machinemethods), you're fairly likely to pick the latter.If you do decide to design (and possibly build) thisthing yourself, you'd be advised to pursue mainlysciences, with the main emphasis on physics (quantum,atomic, and astrophysics in particular), but also someelectronic and mechanical engineering, mathematics andpossibly robotics. After this, get a job working withthe technology you hope to harness, build yourdoomsday machine in your lab, and bam, you're done.If you don't decide to design your doomsday deviceyourself, and from here on, I'll assume that this iswhat you decided, then the plan becomes rather morecomplicated and your career choices will be verydifferent. Your time in secondary and higher educationwould probably be best invested studying finance,economics and politics, brushing up your management,speaking and people skills, honing your powers ofpersuasion, and learning to exude charisma. Charismais a big one. These skills will enable you tohopefully ascend to a position where you have accessto three things:money,resources andmanpower.If this is a lab project as described above thenyou'll need relatively little of all of these; enoughmoney to run a lab, resources to keep it stocked, andmanpower in the form of one or more brilliantscientists to (knowingly or otherwise) construct yourdoomsday device. That suggests that the best place toseek employment would be at a research institution forthe areas of science you hope to employ, or maybe anorganization like Boeing or NASA... failing that,found the organization yourself!If this is a big, possibly space-based project thenyou will need MUCH more to work with. You need toeither work in politics or the armed forces. Politicswould be an excellent choice. I say without cynicismthat today, of all the people in the world, thePresident of the United States of America would be theperson most likely to be able to destroy the Earthshould he decide to. If you feel you lack the abilityto make it in politics (knowledge of your weaknessesis a strength), you should join the armed forces andshoot for Supreme General or whatever the highest rankis.Nancy Lebovitz suggested religion as an alternatemeans of gaining resources, money and manpower.Religion is undeniably a very powerful force. If youcould set yourself up as a religious leader you couldpotentially gain a lot of supporters - who would bemuch more dedicated to you as a leader than a soldierwould be to his general or a citizen to hisKing/President/Supreme Dictator-For-Life. Settingoneself up as a new prophet doesn't seem to attractmuch more than scepticism in this day and age, sounless you were very persuasive, you'd probablyexperience greatest success by hijacking an existingmainstream religion for your own ends. One potentialpitfall is that there's a limit to what your followerscan provide you in terms of monetary offerings andlabour. Manpower alone is not enough. You'd still needat least one scientific mastermind, and frankly I seescientific masterminds as being among the least likelyto follow you... But this is a kink you should be ableto work out.Of course, by the time it becomes even possible todestroy the Earth, Madagascar might be the dominantsuperpower, or the whole world might be unified as asingle nation, or maybe the whole galaxy is full ofhumans, there's no such thing as money, and solidplatinum asteroids and robot workers are plentiful. Idon't know. Whatever you can manage. Anyway, once youhave everything you need at your disposal, make thecalls, submit your proposals, and set the project inmotion.Your baseAt this point you will probably need to set up somesort of base of operations. It should be at a safedistance from Earth. Lurking at least one AU out ofrange of whatever terrible destructive force you areabout to unleash is strongly recommended in mostcases, but for the supernova particularly you'll wantto put as much as a thousand light years betweenyourself and the Earth when it happens. If you have tobe physically on Earth to begin the destructionprocess (e.g. hurled into Sun, antimatter blast), thenset a countdown. Make sure the countdown timer is a)thoroughly tested and b) tamper-proof. The same goesfor your escape route offplanet.If you are currently Supreme Dictator of Earth, youcould simply announce your intentions directly to yourenslaved populace with relative impunity. If you cancome up with some really, really good reason fordestroying the Earth which people will actually agreewith - for example, you want to build a far morespacious Banksian Orbital (or many of them) instead -then getting humanity on your side will proveincalculably useful. However, as a rule, you willprobably want to keep the true purpose of your projectsecret from as many people as possible for as long aspossible.Some methods are much easier to cover up than others,and this should have been a major factor in yourinitial choice of method. If absolutely nobody apartfrom you knows the true purpose of yoursupernova-inducer until two hours after it becomes toolate to turn it off, so much the better. Despite this,you should plan for (and construct your base inpreparation for) your project to ultimately becomepublic. This could occur at any time, you might havemonths, hours or seconds to go. This is actually thebiggest potential stumbling block, and a situationyou'll have to prepare for very, very carefully.Depending on how much time your opponents have to act,how powerful they are, and whether you know they knowor not, they might make anything from a very desperatemove (launching nukes at your space station regardlessof the thousand innocent hostages on board) to a verysubtle one (invisibly manipulating you into employingone of their undercover agents in your laboratorysecurity forces). Your base will therefore need verystrict security procedures, many layers of defence,and multiple redundancy and carefully programmedemergency overrides for every system, critical or not.You'll need weapons. And doors. Heavy doors. Assumingthe worst, you personally should always be armed. Ifyour base is in space you should permanently bewearing your space suit under your clothes. In case ofbetrayal, you should be able to run the entire showsingle-handedly from your locked-down control room,from which you should of course have an escape route.You should always, always, always have an escaperoute.See also The Evil Overlord list for lots more generaladvice on building bases, planning escape routes,handling enemy incursions, and other tangentiallyrelated topics.FinallyIf the method you choose can be tried more than once(e.g. hurled into Sun, vacuum energy detonation), andyour budget will stretch, you could considerpracticing on smaller astronomical bodies and workingyour way up. For example, consider destroying Mercury,or Ceres. Don't forget to take notes on what wentparticularly well, what didn't work, what wasunnecessary, etc., just so everything goes as smoothlyas possible on the big day.Take a camera. Most of the methods listed above areincredibly spectacular and witnessing them willprobably be once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you, soremember to capture the moment.And lastly, if all your efforts fail, don't give up!Remember, nobody has ever successfully destroyed theEarth.CreditsThis whole shebang is the original concept of, writtenby and copyright © Sam Hughes. Please do not copy itand post it on your website! Just take the Preambleand provide a link here. Contributions and correctionsare courtesy of "althorrat", "ambradley", "ariels",Dave Babbitt, Joe Baldwin, Jon Burchel, "C-Dawg","cakedamber", Jon Carlson, "Cletus The Fetus","DejaMorgana", Tobias Diedrich, "Draknet", "Fieari",Matthew Fogle, Daniel Franke, Richard Freeman, AneeshGoel, "grendelkhan", David V. Gulliver, RussellHarper, Jordy den Hartog, Rudy Hasspacher, ColbyHayward, Lars Hedbor, "J", Kevin A. Janka, WyattJohnson, Zachary Jones, William Keith, Robert Kern,Douglas B. Killings, Andy Kirkpatrick, John Kniha,Floris Kraak, L. Kraven, Nancy Lebovitz, "LordFrith",Scott Lujan, "Lycurgus", Gary Martin, S. Mattison,Robert McQueen, Douglas Merrill, Craig Musselman,"nanite", Ryan O'Connell, Nick Peirson, GeorgePeterson, Mitchell Porter, Michael Pullmann,"randombit", Daniel W. Rickey, "Rikmach", "Rubyflame",Jonah Safar, John Sahr, Raj Sandhu, James Scholes,Mike Schulte, "Shields", Drake Siard, Ian M. Slater,Lucian Smith, Nick Snell, Jasper Spaans,"Starrynight", Mark Stokes, Jasmine Strong, GeoffSwift, John Tackman, "tdent", "Thane", M. Alan ThomasII, Eric Thompson, Stephen Thorsett, Mike Trainor,"trick.knee", "trembling", Daniel A. Turner,"Underblog", "Ungrounded Lightning", "unperson", ArasVaichas, Joseph Verock, Linnea W, Matthew Wakeling,Edward Welbourne, Henry White, Michael Z. Williamson,Tom Wright and "zandrews". If you would like tocontribute or correct something, reconstruct the emailaddress at the bottom of the page. Sam's Archive,including HTDTE, is hosted on ned.ucam.org, astudent-run server at Corpus Christi College,Cambridge University. Back to GeocideCopyright © Sam Hughes. Email act[ ]um@gmail.com("ini" in gap) Usual "don't try this at home" disclaimers apply. Iaccept no responsibility for the destruction of Earthor any other celestial