# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/41 "2018-07-31T12:18:29Z")
Most cost effective, I think, would be to engineer a particularly potent bacteriophage. Aren’t genetic scientists getting close to this ability? The virus would only need to target one or two bacterial types, e.g. rhizobacteria, essential for higher life. In any scenario I’m afraid some bacteria and higher forms would survive. If plans required on-going destructive measures, the complete collapse of civilization might prevent execution. Still, eliminating a few major classes of organisms, e.g. the mammals, might be doable. Will this satisfy OP? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/42 "2018-07-31T22:03:56Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#): > > 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. We don’t even know if this has managed to kill all life on Venus, let alone that it would do it here where life has had a few extra billion years to entrench. How would your plan kill, oh, say all of the life 10 or 20 kilometers underground? Or in the upper atmosphere (where life on Venus might still be holding on)? Even if you could recreate the exact same environment that is on Venus here on Earth I don’t think you’d kill everything. And, of course, it’s gonna be a bit harder to do, since the Earth is further away (as well as several other factors that Venus enjoys that the Earth doesn’t have). No, you need to drop something big on the planet going really, really fast. Maybe figure out a way to shift Mercury in it’s orbit at just the right time and place to send it into the Earth. Or one of the really big moons or asteroids with a few gravity assist boosts in speed to get it up to a decent speed before crashing it into the planet. ---
**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 31, 2018, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/43 "2018-07-31T23:04:21Z")
You’re right, I didn’t plan for the life 20km underground. The only solution is to throw the Earth into the Sun somehow. How can we do this? Gravitational slingshot. One carefully aimed pebble thrown into the right part of our solar system could disrupt the orbit of a slighter bigger rock, which in turn moves a larger rock, which moves an astroid, which moves a bigger astroid, and so on until a small moon is moved in such a way as to move a bigger moon until planets are singing their way across the solar system before finally catapulting the Earth into the Sun. Pretty straight forward really. I’ll let others do the maths. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/44 "2018-08-01T18:28:46Z")
The gravitational and kinetic energies that must be converted in the amplifying slingshots to cause a major collision are stupendous. Yes, you can in principle use a cascade of slingshots to achieve high amplification but _huge_ precision would be needed. (Errors would accumulate. And the orbits might take a while to line up — did OP impose a deadline?) BTW, you desscribed an eight-ball combination, like in pool? When the topic comes up in _How will we deflect the asteroid?_ threads a consensus (not me though!) seems to agree even a one-ball combo is very hard to do. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/45 "2018-08-01T18:54:47Z")
Two Orion spacecrafts one “north” and the other “south” of the earth, each using half of humanity’s nuke arsenal, crashing into each pole at the same time at maximum speed? ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/46 "2018-08-01T19:36:31Z")
Watching the devastation of the wildfires in California, it got be thinking. If there is mass nuclear exchange using most of the world’s nuclear weapons, won’t the explosions ignite fires that will spread far beyond the blast radius of the bombs? Couldn’t these fires cause as much structural damage as the blast themselves? I can’t imagine there would be much firefighting infrastructure left intact after a nuclear exchange. I admit even this scenario would not be world ending. ---
**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:** [August 1, 2018, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/47 "2018-08-01T20:53:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Frodo** : > > Two Orion spacecrafts one “north” and the other “south” of the earth, each using half of humanity’s nuke arsenal, crashing into each pole at the same time at maximum speed? That’d give you at most the same total energy as just setting the nukes off on Earth, actually much less because an Orion drive is really inefficient, and even of the energy you delivered most would just be wasted in sending a lot of debris away _really_ fast. And even setting them all off on Earth, spaced for maximum dispersal, wouldn’t even remotely come close. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/48 "2018-08-01T21:55:56Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > Watching the devastation of the wildfires in California, it got be thinking. If there is mass nuclear exchange using most of the world’s nuclear weapons, won’t the explosions ignite fires that will spread far beyond the blast radius of the bombs? Couldn’t these fires cause as much structural damage as the blast themselves? I can’t imagine there would be much firefighting infrastructure left intact after a nuclear exchange. I admit even this scenario would not be world ending. The asteroid that ended the Cretaceous period was about 100 teratones of TNT or over 1 billion Hiroshimas. ---
**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:** [August 1, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/49 "2018-08-01T22:32:23Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The gravitational and kinetic energies that must be converted in the amplifying slingshots to cause a major collision are stupendous. Yes, you can in principle use a cascade of slingshots to achieve high amplification but _huge_ precision would be needed. (Errors would accumulate. And the orbits might take a while to line up — did OP impose a deadline?) > > BTW, you desscribed an eight-ball combination, like in pool? When the topic comes up in _How will we deflect the asteroid?_ threads a consensus (not me though!) seems to agree even a one-ball combo is very hard to do. My tongue was in my cheek when I described it. Without doubt we don’t have anywhere close to even a fraction of a percent of the ability to do this. Yet. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2018, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/50 "2018-08-01T23:30:36Z")
It would be far easier to terraform Mars to support life. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/51 "2018-08-02T12:11:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That’d give you at most the same total energy as just setting the nukes off on Earth, actually much less because an Orion drive is really inefficient, and even of the energy you delivered most would just be wasted in sending a lot of debris away _really_ fast. And even setting them all off on Earth, spaced for maximum dispersal, wouldn’t even remotely come close. Damn, you are right, It would look cool as hell from the moon though… ---
**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:** [August 2, 2018, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/52 "2018-08-02T12:51:37Z")
[Now, if you replace the starships with _planets_…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Lensman) ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/53 "2018-08-02T12:58:08Z")
The earth has survived extinction events of catastrophic proportions in the past and bounced back fabulously. As awful as we are, once the earth rids itself of us, it will be just fine. Creation is a work in progress. I personally believe that, because of humanity’s fatal flaws, it is ultimately doomed to the same fate as its predecessors such as the Neanderthal. I just don’t think we can “cut the mustard” in terms of being the ultimate in intelligent life on this planet, in being the species that takes us to the limits of our solar system and beyond. ---
**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:** [August 2, 2018, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/54 "2018-08-02T13:02:24Z")
The fate of the Neanderthals was to get their butts kicked by us. Who do you think is going to kick our butts? We’ve already eliminated all of the likely contenders (like the Neanderthals and the Floriensians). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/55 "2018-08-02T16:50:13Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Who do you think is going to kick our butts? Cats. As soon as they evolve opposable thumbs, so they can open cat food without our help, we’re doomed. > [@](#): > > We’ve already eliminated all of the likely contenders (like the Neanderthals and the Floriensians). Right, Floriensians, also known as hobbits. We’d better be sure there isn’t some undiscovered community of them somewhere, or it’s inevitable that a hero will arise among them and, with the aid of a magician, a mostly useless sidekick, and a romantic love interest, defeat the evil human empire. Happens every damn time. ---
**Author:** ![Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delicious)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2018, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/56 "2018-08-02T18:13:04Z")
Ok, turns out that aardvarks are bigger and less amenable to being killed than i first anticipated. I’m going to vote no on the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/57 "2018-08-03T09:46:40Z")
[quote=“mbh, post:40, topic:818667”] Discussion of the effects of detonating a nuclear bomb in the Marianas Trench: [/QUOTE] All that’s going to do is piss off Mariana. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/58 "2018-08-03T13:08:10Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > All that’s going to do is piss off Mariana. We’re only going to do it for 20 minutes… ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2018, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/59 "2018-08-03T22:44:16Z")
20 minutes, then a sudden burst? That will really infuriate her. ---
**Author:** ![eastcheap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8491ac/32.png) [@eastcheap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eastcheap)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2018, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667/60 "2018-08-06T05:38:53Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Only a total crustal meltdown is going to get all of those. It’s at least been hypothesized that life has survived even that, with some particularly hardy bugs hanging out in orbit until things cooled off. So however you go about it, you don’t want any orbital-velocity ejecta. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-humans-destroy-the-planet/818667.md?page=4)