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February 20, 2005 2:57 PM

How to destroy the Earth. (via MoFi)
posted by moonbird (43 comments total)

Well, I won't bother with any of the unfeasible ones, of course.

[this is good]
posted by Wolfdog at 3:05 PM on February 20, 2005

Highly amusing.
posted by bowline at 3:11 PM on February 20, 2005

Funny.
posted by interrobang at 3:11 PM on February 20, 2005

Great find!

"Save the planet? Don't worry about the planet. The PLANET is doing fine. WE'RE the ones who are in trouble."
-- George Carlin
posted by psmealey at 3:11 PM on February 20, 2005

Finally, a use for gay marriage!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:11 PM on February 20, 2005

Wonderful.
posted by flaneur at 3:27 PM on February 20, 2005

I've got half a mind to flag this very dangerous post for being problematic, distasteful or illegal. I mean, come on, people - you can't destroy the earth! That's where I keep all my stuff!!!
posted by Guy Smiley at 3:45 PM on February 20, 2005

MWAHAHAHAHA... MWAHAHAHAHA.. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!
posted by c13 at 3:53 PM on February 20, 2005

There has to be an easier way.
posted by CaptMcalister at 4:03 PM on February 20, 2005

Where's the one where you build a supercomputer that hacks reality and simply erases the Earth? Earth's final resting place = the big bit-bucket in the sky. Timeframe = next 20-100 years. Feasibility = 0/10 to 10/10 depending on who wrote the Big Firmware.
posted by localroger at 4:30 PM on February 20, 2005

10. Eaten by von Neumann machines

You will need: a single von Neumann machine

Does it make me a tremendous geek if I laughed quite hard at this?
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:32 PM on February 20, 2005

Why is this funny? What sustains us on this earth is an ecosystem that is proportionally much thinner than the condensation of your breath on an apple. This is what environmentalists refer to when they speak of destroying the planet. If a social worker were to tell you that constant sarcasm towards your child will destroy him, and an engineer measured his height, weight, and vital signs, then pronounced him as alive as ever, would it make for a good laugh?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 5:26 PM on February 20, 2005

Why is this funny?

It's called "dark humor"
posted by vacapinta at 5:35 PM on February 20, 2005

Yeah, weapons-grade pandemonium, this is clearly an anti-environmentalist rant, not a parody of comic book super-villian plots.

Remember, nothing is funny. Ever.
posted by dirigibleman at 5:35 PM on February 20, 2005

EVER!
posted by chrisroberts at 5:39 PM on February 20, 2005

would it make for a good laugh?
Depends on his delivery.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:45 PM on February 20, 2005

I thoroughly enjoyed that. Thanks.
posted by cedar at 5:54 PM on February 20, 2005

You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

I guess I missed this comic book super-villain plot.
Did I say nothing is funny? Do my posts indicate I am without humour?
I simply asked why you find this funny.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 6:05 PM on February 20, 2005

this is brilliant. and hi-larious.
posted by dorian at 6:10 PM on February 20, 2005

That's where I keep all my stuff!!!

Oh man, love The Tick. But they really need to release a DVD. I thought the MPAA was supposed to be milking this whole release-old-shows-as-over-priced-collector's-items-because-people-will-buy-them thing to death.
posted by panoptican at 6:26 PM on February 20, 2005

Why is this funny? What sustains us on this earth is an ecosystem that is proportionally much thinner than the condensation of your breath on an apple.

I think that when people speak of destroying the earth, they really mean making it uninhabitable for the human race. It's pure human arrogance to think that we could destroy all life on earth.

"It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily."

Now, I want you to admit that it's funny. Do it. Admit that it's funny RIGHT NOW. Don't make me come over there.
posted by recurve at 6:46 PM on February 20, 2005

If a social worker were to tell you that constant sarcasm towards your child will destroy him, and an engineer measured his height, weight, and vital signs, then pronounced him as alive as ever, would it make for a good laugh?

It would be weakly funny.

It would be a good laugh if then I said something like "See, you stupid shit, it doesn't destroy you at all" and he exploded.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:58 PM on February 20, 2005

*sigh*

i see that my instincts were correct in posting this on mofi and not here....

you guys could suck the fun out six flags...

i think i wasted five dollars.
posted by sexyrobot at 7:06 PM on February 20, 2005

Bonus points to anyone managing to take out the entire solar system.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:09 PM on February 20, 2005

My favorite method from alt.destroy.the.earth was constucting a voodoo doll out of a globe and dropping it down an elevator shaft.
posted by Scoo at 7:34 PM on February 20, 2005

i think i wasted five dollars.

Whatever. 13+ folks say they love the thing, one person doesn't like it, and you dis the whole site for "sucking the fun out" of a post. God, you've got a strange way of reading a thread.
posted by mediareport at 7:39 PM on February 20, 2005

Oh man, love The Tick. But they really need to release a DVD.

They did, a couple years ago. I have it.
posted by intermod at 7:43 PM on February 20, 2005

Oh and thanks moonbird, great post.
posted by intermod at 7:43 PM on February 20, 2005

Beautiful.

Of course, the bastard's left out the most feasible option, presumably because the diabolical forces wet-ops teams of alt.save.the.earth are holding his nearest and dearest in a covert holding facility in Vladivostok. This is, of course, the acceleration of the Earth's rotation until it either becomes too radically deformed to be considered a planet or, more ideally, breaks up into pieces. Luckily, the maintainers of the alt.destroy.the.earth FAQ are not so easily intimidated by these short-sighted cronies of the status quo.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 8:19 PM on February 20, 2005

I miss alt.pave.the.earth.
posted by Vidiot at 8:27 PM on February 20, 2005

Heh. I've been lurking here for a long time, but I finally registered... mostly just to comment on this.

I almost called plagiarism on it, but then I realized that there's a link to the writeup on E2, and it's the same guy.

FWIW, the "althorrat" referred to in that is me. Too bad I couldn't come up with anything better than pop-culture references...
posted by Target Practice at 9:01 PM on February 20, 2005

sorry, mediareport, you're absolutely right...sorry, everyone...

on a totally unrelated subject, i'm having some soup. oh look, there's a giant rat turd in it. guess i'll just eat around it. boy, that was good, think i'll have another bowl...oh look, another giant rat turd...this reminds me of that soup i read, sorry, ATE last week that had a giant humourless rat turd in it...
posted by sexyrobot at 9:28 PM on February 20, 2005

Bonus points to anyone managing to take out the entire solar system.

You can read all about it in Charlie Stross's Iron Sunrise. Well, okay, a stellar system, not the solar system, but the point remains.

I'm pretty sure the lensmen used to throw around solar systems for fun.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:51 PM on February 20, 2005

You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

I guess I missed this comic book super-villain plot.

You have got to be kidding me. You are kidding me, right? I mean, half a sentence in a web page devoted to various ways to destroy the Earth using actual physics to gauge probabilites and timescales proves to you that this is an anti-environmentalist screed and that the author doesn't take environmental concerns seriously? This is all just a little joke on dirigibleman, isn't it?

Do my posts indicate I am without humour?
Your comments in this thread do.

I simply asked why you find this funny.
I found the part where he reminiced fondly about cracking Greenpeace hippies' skulls to be particularly amusing.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:56 PM on February 20, 2005

Hey W-G P:

I'm about as rabidly enviromentalist as it gets, and I didn't see any negatives in posting this. I see it as a self-parody of sorts, the self being humanity. We've so busy destroying the livable biosphere of the Earth in a great variety of ways, why not move on to more thorough methods? At any rate, it demonstrates just how massive the planet truly is, and how impervious is it to our sci-fi scenarios of obliteration.
posted by moonbird at 10:10 PM on February 20, 2005

Maybe we could make the earth read Bakhtin until it kills itself.
posted by jessicool at 10:11 PM on February 20, 2005

I love how this is a totally whimsical and frivolous thought experiment taking empirical assumptions and scientific principles completely seriously.
posted by Lush at 11:44 PM on February 20, 2005

"Point 9. Hurled into the Sun" is actually worth trying out if you ask me. But instead of using the sun, what if we consider hurling ourselves to a bigger planet, say Jupiter. It could save us from using those tricky backspinning moves to get it to collide.

1. colonize the moon. Advantage: it's very close to home. Build a huge rocket in one of it's craters. Though it is a rocky body, it's probably to close to Earth to be useful, so instead, we launch it at the right time to Mars in order to change it's orbit.

2. Mars new orbit is sent into a near collision path with Earth. Once it's close enough, we hop off Earth, and hop on to Mars as it passes us by and colonize it. No use destroying a planet if you can't enjoy it.

3. Earth is sent into a new orbit on a collision path to Jupiter. After collision, Earth will be nothing more then another spot on Jupiter's surface.

4. Extra points for stealing one of Jupiter's moons in the process. Or getting our old one back for that matter.

Naturally, there will always be those who will protest this plan, because from an environmental point of view, the Sun is a better choice then Jupiter for disposing of the Earth. But hey, once we get the basics done with Earth, we can always try hurling Mars to the Sun once the fashion magazines have tired of it.
posted by Timeless at 12:52 AM on February 21, 2005

Reminds me of Asimov's A Choice of Catastrophes.
posted by euphorb at 3:24 AM on February 21, 2005

Douglas Adams had a similar idea - the precursor to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide was a project called The Ends of the Earth, which had the Earth destroted a different way every episode. It never got done - the first idea became the beginning of the Guide.
posted by monkey closet at 7:50 AM on February 21, 2005

NIMBY. Fortunately this little explosion was just far enough away to only light up the sky.

Not bad for an object 20km in diameter on the other side of the galaxy.
posted by Geo at 10:08 AM on February 21, 2005

intermod: that's the live-action series, not the original cartoon. I've only found one place where a guy sold or traded dvd-r's with all episodes he taped. Didn't seem very legit or legal. If you know of a release of all original episodes, I'd love to hear it.
posted by cameleon at 6:04 AM on February 22, 2005

I'm going to hazard a guess that the casual dismissal of nuclear war, cutting down rainforests and "hideous amounts of pollution" were meant as...sarcasm? I guess it needs one of these: _i

Sexyrobot, if you can't handle people occasionally trashing things that get posted, even if they are worthwhile to you and other members, then yes, you probably did waste $5. Also, your internet license has been suspended. Anyway, I'd venture to say it's more like a nasty piece of gristly chicken than a rat turd.

Under the "To be added" section, there's mention of Nikola Tesla's Earthquake Machine. While the machine isn't used in the hypothetical earth-destruction scenario, it's based on similar principles. The earth has a natural resonance, so an explosion would send a wave through the earth that would reach back to its original starting point at a diminished amplitude after a certain period of time. Tesla hypothesized that by detonating explosions at periodic intervals it would be possible to create waves so large that the earth would eventually tear itself apart. Interesting idea, but I'm not sure how he would plan to continue detonating explosives with the massive earthquakes and such happening after a while.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:21 PM on February 22, 2005