# Can humans destroy the planet? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 27, 2018, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667 "2018-07-27T11:37:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/21 "2018-07-27T18:42:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **eschereal** : > > Um, do you understand scale? The nearest KBO is billions of miles away. Deflecting one of those things toward Earth in a timeframe less than millennia is unrealistic. Yup, and **senoy** admitted that it’d take millennia. If you want something done, take the time to do it right. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/22 "2018-07-27T18:42:06Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > [Moderate damage distance from a 10 megaton explosion](https://www.remm.nlm.gov/zones_nucleardetonation.htm) is about 1 mile. Assuming 10 megatons is about the average yield of a nuke, you’d get about a square mile of moderate damage zone out of each (Note that people and animals can still survive in the moderate damage zone if very lucky). So 21 000 warheads would take out about 21 000 square miles. > > Earths land surface is about 57 million square miles. And we can probably skip most of Antarctica, about 5 million sq. miles. So we’d need, roughly 2 500 times the number of nukes the world currently possess. > > The difference between this and the Gizmodo calculation is that they seem to consider everything in the light damage zone wrecked, whereas we’d need things killed outright. In practice we’d need far more nukes because we’d need to insure that random survivors don’t get together and breed back. Climate effects should help outside the tropics. And, this is what we get from our education system. No, moderate damage from a 10 **kiloton** bomb is around 1 mile. A 10 **Megaton** bomb would destroy the entire New York metro area, or at least the best part of it. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/23 "2018-07-27T18:46:43Z")
Apparently 100 nuclear explosives set off in one region would have some pretty world devastating consequences:[https://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable](https://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable) ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/24 "2018-07-27T19:50:01Z")
Outlaw human birth control … y’all will eat everything else and then die yourselves … > [@Delicious](#): > > Only one way to find out. > > I’ll start on the Aardvarks, who wants to take Adelie Penguins? We love aardwolves now? … ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/25 "2018-07-27T21:03:32Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I believe we collectively have enough nuclear warheads to clear all the lands of life and this would surely cause a massive die-off in the ocean but not leave it sterile by any means. > > There are around 15000 to 21000 nuclear warheads from what I can google. > > [https://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable](https://www.globalzero.org/blog/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-render-earth-uninhabitable) > [How Many Nukes Would It Take to Blow Up the Entire Planet?](https://gizmodo.com/5899569/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-to-blow-up-the-entire-planet) > > There may be but hopefully not some Cobalt Bombs in the Russian arsenal, these extremely high radiation producing bombs in a air blast would really devastate life on the and near the surface. > > But eventually some critters would colonize the land again after it was safer. The problem is that average nuclear warhead today is closer to 500kt than anything else on that page. According to their own calculation, they would need 336,000 weapons of this size to “destroy” land area. The FAS estimates that there are about 14,500 nuclear weapons in existence today. We we are short by 20X. Nukes are not even close. You need astronomical entity or go home. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/26 "2018-07-27T21:05:45Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > A 10 **Megaton** bomb would destroy the entire New York metro area, or at least the best part of it. How does a nuclear warhead know what are the best parts of the city? Is it reading Yelp or something? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/27 "2018-07-27T21:19:29Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > How does a nuclear warhead know what are the best parts of the city? Is it reading Yelp or something? Yelp? You are bad reviews. Let there be light. ---
**Author:** ![RayMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e495f1/32.png) [@RayMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RayMan)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/28 "2018-07-27T21:35:35Z")
Barack Obama wants to know if it’s possible to destroy the entire planet? Man, maybe the Republicans were right about him after all. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/29 "2018-07-28T00:34:50Z")
Ask George Carlin: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/BB0aFPXr4n4/hqdefault.jpg "George Carlin on Global Warming") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0aFPXr4n4) ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/30 "2018-07-28T00:50:54Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > [This announcement](https://qntm.org/board) by the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board (IEDAB) reports that the Earth was already destroyed in 2008, but it is possible that either it didn’t take or there was a false alarm due to some faulty instrumentation and the experiment should be repeated. There’s a number to call to let them know when the earth is destroyed: +44 115 09Ω 4127 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/31 "2018-07-28T01:32:22Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > There are around 15000 to 21000 nuclear warheads from what I can google. The Federation for American Scientists estimate gives some more detail and has total estimated world inventory at [14,485](https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/) in early 2018. The Global Zero link used interesting rounding rules (or slightly older data to be fair) but they are at least in the right ball park. Of that, ~9335 are in military stockpiles with ~3,750 deployed and ready for use right away as opposed to being in central stockpiles requiring shipping to delivery systems. The other near five thousand are retired but not yet dismantled. It’s probably worth assuming that not all the retired warheads can be returned to service quickly. The Gizmodo link is from 2012. If you look at my cite, the chart from FAS shows that being about the number of warheads for the time the story was published. Those retired weapons really are being dismantled. Estimates date pretty quickly as a result. If the US and Russia can keep up the pace captured in that period, the number goes down by over 1k warheads a year. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/32 "2018-07-28T05:02:33Z")
I think the explosion route is flawed … we’d have to kill every last cell over all the land area … just one bacterium survives and the world will be full of life again in short order … we’re vaporizing rocks and soil down five or ten feet … not enough by a wide margin … and all these explosion would have to be simultaneous, just one little gap the size of a cell or even a spore and we’ve failed … Smacking the Earth with something will take a fairly large something … and it’s been over four billion years since this happened … We need something that boils away of the surface layer say down 30 or 40 km … or a full crust turnover … perhaps something that eliminates the magnetic field … How about a great big particle accelerator that allows us to make a black hole in the Swiss Alps, turn the Earth into neutron degenerate matter … with luck we can cause a pair-instability supernova … see if we can’t bring about the Big Rip … winking the entire universe out of existence would certainly work … ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2018, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/33 "2018-07-28T06:25:36Z")
Well, there is also the Stavromula Beta dilemma. I mean, we can only assume that Arthur and Agrajag have not yet resolved the dilemma based on the fact that the Earth exists, because once they do, Earth will be erased for billions of years into the past in order to complete the bypass on schedule. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2018, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/34 "2018-07-29T22:54:49Z")
I think you’re all thinking too hard about this. All we need to do is to turn our atmosphere into something similar to Venus with its runaway greenhouse effect. That’d take care of land and sea. We’ve arguably already started this process so we probably don’t have to do much. I was going to suggest bringing CFCs back but we wouldn’t want to wipe out too many humans before the runaway properly took hold. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/35 "2018-07-30T01:50:11Z")
Earth’s greenhouse can’t run away as far as Venus’s. We’re further from the Sun, and have a lot less volatiles. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/36 "2018-07-30T02:55:38Z")
It takes a lot of work just to [sterilize a space probe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection#Decontamination_procedures). And you want to sterilize the entire earth?? Not a chance, unless you move the whole planet closer to the Sun, or build a space mirror several times the size of the Earth and focus it on the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![tampora](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9de0a6/32.png) [@tampora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tampora)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/37 "2018-07-31T00:50:56Z")
There’s no need to add energy to the Earth all at once. Why not do it gradually and shake it apart? I propose the destruction of the Earth using a network of telegeodynamic oscillators. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/38 "2018-07-31T02:28:16Z")
Do we have to _outlast_ those other pesky species? Because, if not, it seems to me all we have to do is to sit down and roll our thumbs… for a looooooong time…! ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/39 "2018-07-31T02:29:56Z")
Mother Nature has quite a few times made fairly good attempts to remove life from the planet even as far as devastating life in the oceans, and yet life remains. She has smashed it, flamed it, froze it, greenhoused it, massively poisoned it etc etc. I highly doubt man has the capacity to do more ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/40 "2018-07-31T11:38:21Z")
Discussion of the effects of detonating a nuclear bomb in the Marianas Trench: (Short version: Life in the Challenger Deep would be gone. Radioactive contamination in the ocean might cause a bit of trouble. But by and large, the planet would barely notice.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667.md?page=3)