How to destroy the earth

http://qntm.org/?destroy

by joss82 • 17 years ago

77 35 17 years ago

qntm.org

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

His fictional methods disappointingly lacked the Vogon method.

gjm11• 17 years ago

No they didn't. You just didn't read far enough down the page. http://qntm.org/?fictional#sec2, second item listed.

noonespecial2• 17 years ago

Weird. I swear I ctrl-F'ed that page for Vogon.

_pius3• 17 years ago

I loved this. If someone created a geeky analogue to Maxim magazine and filled it with articles like this on a monthly basis, it'd be a real hit.

riffic• 17 years ago

wired?

_pius3• 17 years ago

You know, I was thinking about that as I was typing my original comment. But no, not Wired.

I think it's close, but there's some difference in tone that'd be needed, though I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment.

rglovejoy• 17 years ago

Wired doesn't have girls posing in lingerie.

fondue• 17 years ago

If you follow the link to the advisory board you will see they confirmed the earth was destroyed last year.

There's a comments section to discuss the topic.

socratees• 17 years ago

Reminds me of one of George Carlin's show where he talks about how humans destroy planet earth. The earth is built to last, and will be there even if humanity is long gone.

d0mine• 17 years ago

s/even if/when/

roc2• 17 years ago

The problem with that entertaining quip is that when people talk about protecting mother earth they don't actually believe we're going to kill it.

They're specifically talking about preserving things we like about its current state: things we are perfectly capable of utterly destroying; places we've demonstrated our ability to render inhospitable.

So you don't really refute the argument by pointing out that the Earth will endure, or that some degenerate mutant strain of humanity might be able to scratch a pre-civilization existence out of radioactive slag.

karzeem• 17 years ago

Carlin makes that distinction, actually. The bit is about how "save the planet" is the wrong slogan and that the goal is really just to save humans.

shpxnvz• 17 years ago

The problem with that entertaining quip is that when people talk about protecting mother earth they don't actually believe we're going to kill it.

Sure, but then we aren't really talking about saving the earth at all - we're talking about saving ourselves and the things we happen to like, need, or find aesthetically pleasing. It's a purely selfish motivation which is why we like to anthropomorphize the planet itself and pretend we're concerned for something more than just ourselves. "Mother earth" couldn't care less about being saved because "she" is a big rock in space, which doesn't have feelings[1].

that some degenerate mutant strain of humanity might be able to scratch a pre-civilization existence

Hey now, we were just a degenerate mutant strain at one point too. There's no reason to think that some other mutation that survives our eventual extinction would not mature over a few million years to become a much more intelligent, peaceful and benign civilization.

1. I guess it's possible the earth does have feelings, but if so it doesn't seem likely it would care one way or the other about us.

Eliezer• 17 years ago

Is that a challenge?

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

Meh. You could roast everything on the surface with the energy of several large impactors. This would use orders of magnitude less energy than most of the methods described, and still kill every living thing on the surface. (As in everything on the surface is engulfed by molten rock, tidal waves, pressure blasts, and everyone dies in the space of a few hours.)

Lesson: leave the Earth's orbit alone, and just massively disrupt the biosphere.

tdoggette• 17 years ago

The objective here is to destroy the Earth, as specified in the article. Sure, there are lots of ways to kill everything on the planet, but it'll still be there when you're done.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

If I've already roasted/pulverized/drowned everyone, who's going to complain?

berntb2• 17 years ago

For some possible solutions to Fermi's paradox, this can easily be solved. We just build e.g. radar stations which output lots of MWs and get someone's attention... :-)

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

That's listed as item 9 in this section: http://qntm.org/?destroy#sec5

berntb2• 17 years ago

Right you are (it was without a title line, so I missed it).

Also, my way of putting it was much scarier, since we have already built lots of radar stations. :-)

diN0bot• 17 years ago

i love this guy's scifi, too.

http://qntm.org/?fiction

i first found the ed stories through scifi.reddit.com

bitwize• 17 years ago

Step 1: Procure an Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

Step 2: Make sure there are no meddlesome rabbits on your planet...

rauljara• 17 years ago

From the section, "Things which will not destroy the earth":

Gay marriage.

hugh_• 17 years ago

Well, theoretically this could result in destruction by less-plausible method number eight: "Destroyed by God".

(Of course, so could anything else, what with the ways of God being impenetrable to Man and so forth, so it's probably safest to just keep doing whatever it was you were already doing since apparently He was cool with that.)

techiferous• 17 years ago

"Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: 1"

I was expecting this to reference the event that created the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis

wkdown• 17 years ago

Check out Episode 50 of 'The Universe' -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universe_%28TV_series%29#Se...

gills• 17 years ago

I'm pretty sure my cat has a plan for this. Good thing I keep him in the house.

How to destroy the earth

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