Destroy The World

I was just wondering how big and explosion it would take
and where it is to destroy earth (or a earth like planet).
Maybe nukes (100 megaton) inside borer machines and
stick them in the earths core them set off the nukes.
An ideas?

Well, go back to 1985. Gather up all the strategic and tactical thermo/nuclear weapons NATO and the U.S.S.R. had (including nuclear torpedoes), about two trillion tons of TNT, and the world's stockpiles of chemical/biological weapons as icing. Detonate it all at once in one location about 2 miles under the seafloor of the Mariana Trench, and the world will explode at twice the power of a supernova.

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo
Well, go back to 1985. Gather up all the strategic and tactical thermo/nuclear weapons NATO and the U.S.S.R. had (including nuclear torpedoes), about two trillion tons of TNT, and the world's stockpiles of chemical/biological weapons as icing. Detonate it all at once in one location about 2 miles under the seafloor of the Mariana Trench, and the world will explode at twice the power of a supernova.

i'm not doubting that it would destroy the world, but twice the power of a supernova? i highly doubt that, and will do so until i see a wbsite stating that.

well what matters how strong it is. It would destroy th earth maybe not right away but give it some time and nothing could live however i would have made two explosions one in the trench and one someplace else.

[edit on 3-7-2004 by WestPoint23]

This will sound odd, but I think the earth is a lot bigger and tougher than you give it credit for. Even though water is not compressible, you'd still lose a lot of the blast upward. You'd definitely make history, and quite possibly end HUMAN life. But certainly not crack open the earth or anything. Look at the crater in the Yucatan, for and idea of the shock that the terran biosphere can sustain . . .

Now, to me, the question gets interesting when you phrase it as "how could you wreck the habitable parts of the planet with a much smaller discharge?"

Supposedly, The ice shelf in McMurdoe Bay in Antartica is the only thing holding back billions of tons of ice. Antartica is actually two continents, covered with a massive glacier. If not for the mt. formation at the bay, the whole shelf would quickly flow int the south seas, killing diatoms and all sorts of important plankton. Not enough to cease oxygen manufacture, but enough to permanently chill and desalinate the world's oceans. Massive fish kills would cripple world economy and many human food supplies (especially in Asia).
The world sea level would rise about 60 ft. in a week or so.
Monsoonal weather systems would be totally screwed up.
Coastal areas (where 90% of the world's population lives) would have to be evacuated.
The petroleum depots in the Persian Gulf, North Sea, Venezuelan coast, Alaska, and Louisiana would be uselessly submerged, if not actively spewing literally oceans of crude oil. So much for industrialization.

So, if this whole scenario is rt, only a few hundred or maybe just dozen bombs would acheive the same effect as in the Marianas.

I pretty sure the facts would concurr with dr_strangecraft. We are much more infinitesimal than our imaginations would like us to be. Killing many of the higher land life forms, seems possible, the larger ocean critters im not so sure about. A super Nova is a HUGE explosion. The Sun, I believe about a million volumes of Earth is insufficiently large to produce a Nova or a Super Nova.
sweatmonicaIdo, you have a great imagination. Someday if people or their evolved corallaries live long enough they may be able to create Novas. Lets hope they only keep the potential for such destruction to use against threatening forces. I could imagine that you might be able to obliterate an entire Universe provided you knew enough about its underpinnings. We aren't quite there yet.

The interesting question is if someday artificial Universes can be created, with your own designer physics. I want to be first in line for one of those.

One way of destroying a planet is to crash another moon or planet into it at a sufficiently high speed.

Read 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" to understand why we living in an unprotected gravity well are very vulnerable to people living on the high ground (zero or low G space). All they have to do is start dropping rocks towards us.

An easier way to ruin our planets livability is simply to nudge it out of its orbit. It will either fall into the Sun or drift out into space freezing to the super cold temp of deep space.

Originally posted by slank
sweatmonicaIdo, you have a great imagination.

I suppose some people take EVERYTHING seriously.

Yeah my best guess would be to stick lots of nukes deep underground. Deep underground. That or use the force of a lot of nukes to send Earth hurtiling towards the sun (i think most of these theroies were in movies).

The earth was hit with a planet the size of mars traveling at several miles per second and she is still here. Granted evrything would be dead but earths on tough moma none the less. Plus we got a moon out of the whole thing

Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo
Well, go back to 1985. Gather up all the strategic and tactical thermo/nuclear weapons NATO and the U.S.S.R. had (including nuclear torpedoes), about two trillion tons of TNT, and the world's stockpiles of chemical/biological weapons as icing. Detonate it all at once in one location about 2 miles under the seafloor of the Mariana Trench, and the world will explode at twice the power of a supernova.

Dream on. (and check your numbers)

Even an impact of "planet killer" can only make small dent to earth and energy released in those impacts is thousands of gigatons.


Here's data about nuclear stockpiles:
www.nrdc.org...
As you can see biggest amount of warhead was about 65 000, I would think average yield was propably around 200 kT (absolute maximum would be around 1MT) which makes total yield about 13 GT.


Use this to calculate impact of different size objects:
For example comet like Hale-Bob: Diameter 50 km, density porous rock, speed 50 km/s, well other you can sure select yourself, except forget that water density from target (these wouldn't even notice 10 km of water), distance is just for that you see do you end in the crater or how deep in ejecta you're buried.
www.lpl.arizona.edu...

Yeah it looks like an impact on the surface could annilate life on earth but destroying it would take a massive explosion inside the Earth. But we would definatly have enough nukes to do the job.

Yeah thanks guys but what about completly destroying earth
like at least 5 pieces

Well we could always build a giant "laser" and mount it on a space station the size of a small moon. I personaly would like to call it a "Death Star"or something like that. Just my wild imagination.

Originally posted by cyberdude78
Yeah it looks like an impact on the surface could annilate life on earth but destroying it would take a massive explosion inside the Earth. But we would definatly have enough nukes to do the job.

You mean Armageddon-movie?
There's so much errors in it that it could be called bull#.

Originally posted by slank
An easier way to ruin our planets livability is simply to nudge it out of its orbit. It will either fall into the Sun or drift out into space freezing to the super cold temp of deep space.

That would require even more energy than "leveling" surface with nuclear bombs.

What i ment by huge impact was maybe set off a lot of nukes and then you get nuclear winter. See anilating all life on Earth is no problem. The Soviets probably would have done it if we ever invaded them.

Originally posted by E_T

Use this to calculate impact of different size objects:
For example comet like Hale-Bob: Diameter 50 km, density porous rock, speed 50 km/s, well other you can sure select yourself, except forget that water density from target (these wouldn't even notice 10 km of water), distance is just for that you see do you end in the crater or how deep in ejecta you're buried.
www.lpl.arizona.edu...

Thank you for this FABULOUS link, E_T! I keep playing with it and playing with it for hours.

Too bad I cannot pick the location. A planetoid striking the center of the Pacific is a lot less impressive than a much smaller one that hits, say, a major port or industrialized area.

Thanks for the vitamins for thought.

Originally posted by RogueX
Well we could always build a giant "laser" and mount it on a space station the size of a small moon. I personaly would like to call it a "Death Star"or something like that. Just my wild imagination.

The death star thats classic.
What about the ice shelf that could break off? I never knew antarctica was 2 continents.

As for blowing the whole planet up.. how about pushing a few asteroids toward the planet ... and a moon or 2..