# Ending the world...on a budget **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 8, 2018, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670 "2018-10-08T21:31:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/21 "2018-10-10T01:49:47Z")
[Firesign]You’ve got The Plague.[/Firesign] First thing I thought of when I saw this thread title, and it looks like I’m far from the only one to think along those lines (albeit without the Firesign Theatre twist). ---
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/22 "2018-10-10T12:52:09Z")
How much would it cost to design a plaque? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just arm 1.5 billion people with a firearm and 100 rounds of ammo? Especially if you could give them out all at once. There has to be some crazy people out there who would just start randomly firing, then it should snowball from there. I suppose one could also get some black market nukes and launch them from inside Russia, China, and North Korea, that should cause some fun. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/23 "2018-10-10T13:27:27Z")
1. A nice virus to shut down the internet 2. Something to wipe out cellular communication 3. A small dirty bomb, or better yet a small conventional nuclear bomb, smuggled into and detonated in North Korea ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/24 "2018-10-10T15:54:51Z")
A genetic change to viruses that spreads rapidly and un-levels the playing field causing most bacteria to die. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/25 "2018-10-10T18:26:35Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I once speculated about the possibility of a disease as destructive as HIV and as contagious as the common cold. I don’t know what the rate of natural immunity is, but if 99% of the population died off, the remaining 1% certainly could not sustain our civilization. Not our civilization, but 1% of world population could certainly sustain _a_ civilization. Picking a conveniently populous place out of a hat: Los Angeles county had a population of about 1% of the current population around 1890. They were not hunter-gatherers. I think the trick to ending the world on a budget is to leverage the existing expensive ways to end the world: nuclear weapons. You just have to foment a big enough conflict between nuclear powers that the nukes start flying. ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/26 "2018-10-10T19:04:34Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I think the trick to ending the world on a budget is to leverage the existing expensive ways to end the world: nuclear weapons. You just have to foment a big enough conflict between nuclear powers that the nukes start flying. I totally agree. I wonder if the best way to force the issue to to destroy food or water sources of the U.S. or China. Massive crop fires in the bread basket or large petroleum spills into the Missouri/Mississippi/Ohio rivers and similarly in China. Spoiling a couple of rivers in California would work for nuts, vegetables and fruit but not sufficient for energy content. Something to greatly decrease the availability of food and/or water and force economic issues into a fast response. U.S. or China need to invade a neighbor or other country to secure food/water supply- and force a domino effect of anger and saber rattling to activate a nuclear launch… by North Korea at \_\_\_\_\_\_\_. So an army of 1000 people to drive around lighting fires and exploding open pipelines. and maybe putting some toxins into the water and dairy supplies to spread fear. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/27 "2018-10-12T17:39:38Z")
Going around lighting wildfires is an extremely cost-effective way of causing tremendous amounts of damage. I’m not sure that it’s enough to actually start a nuclear war, though. How do you convince the US/China that the other is the one lighting the fires? It’s also kind of a once-a-decade plan. 1000 arsonists could burn a sizable part of California, but I’m not convinced that they’d destroy enough crops or homes to put us on a war footing. Also, they’d start to get caught. And then after that, all those areas that burned down won’t burn again for years. ---
**Author:** ![Sasquatch\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@Sasquatch\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sasquatch_1)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/28 "2018-10-13T01:26:06Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > One type of pathogen that could cause significant damage is a generalized form of blight that kills off a majority of the planet’s plant life. It would cause a chain reaction of mass death throughout the food chain causing mass starvation among humans leaving the survivors vulnerable to a more specific pathogen. Something similar, engineer a microbe that tastes bad, eats bacteria, uses oxygen but can survive on 5%, and can live in water at any temperature/salt content. Dump in the ocean and wait. If you want to get fancy, use/create new DNA coding for it, to reduce the likelihood of ocean viruses learning to use it/kill it. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670/29 "2018-10-13T01:51:33Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Perhaps we could calculate the 9 billion names of God? Isn’t that a bit of overkill for the OP? As I remember it, when the monks finished generating all the names, the stars themselves started going out… Given speed of light considerations, those stars had to stop shining before the project even started. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ending-the-world-on-a-budget/822670.md?page=1)