# Would it be theoretically possible for humans to wipe out all life on Earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 24, 2012, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824 "2012-02-24T10:37:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/21 "2012-02-24T16:30:28Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > What if we asked every last Chinese to climb on a chair, then jump down at once ? Once again, efficiency is my concern. I suggest we just ask ten people from Houston instead. > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > What about nuclear winter? Wouldn’t that kill everything eventually? Including the bacteria 2 miles down? Maybe not immediately, but after a few years/ decades/ centuries? As **Tom Scud** points out, not all creatures derive their energy from the sun, including those extremophile bacteria living at depth. Radiation from [salted bombs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salted_bomb) would kill most things on the surface, but I doubt the radioactive products would seep far enough into the ocean beds and water table to kill everything. Some organisms are very resistant to radiation, a [water bear](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_bear) can withstand a thousands times the dose that would kill a human. Also bear in mind, some bacteria can lie dormant when frozen for thousands of years. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/22 "2012-02-24T16:33:20Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I’m thinking some kind of self-replicating nano-machines. You’d probably need more than one kind, including something that could eat through those 2 miles of rock and somehow replicate and power itself from the minerals.. Yah, I’d go with the gray goo scenario as our best bet. The programming would be a stone bitch, but with time I reckon we could make sure the “bottle of chemicals” was big enough to encompass the oceans. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/23 "2012-02-24T17:06:53Z")
> [@Stately\_Greek\_Automaton](#): > > Whether we have the technology capable of doing this or not, I’m not sure, but wouldn’t a few (hundreds, thousands, more?) mass drivers set up to dig and shoot off soil, rock, etc. be the best way to do it? I suppose it’d take quite a long time, but if time isn’t an issue… In order to work it’d have to happen instantaneously. Otherwise, between the spinning of the Earth,a nd the rotation around the sun, and the systems movement within the galaxy, you’d be pushing in an entirely different direction a nano-second after you started. Continuous movement would be wasted and only the tiniest fraction of your effort would be actually achieving the thrust you wanted. what if we put all our efforts into building pumps that would throw sewater driectly into the air? We could also make a lot of passive lenses aimed at the ocean surfaces to evaporate water. The idea would be to get enough water vapor into the air to force a very quick change in climate. We’d need another approach to the extremeophiles at the sea evtns and in the polar icecaps (what’s left of them) but overall I think we’d have a shot at it. By pumping we’d be creating clouds with salt in them, which would rain death on the freshwater landscape as well. That salt would eventually leah dow and take out the lowest level bacteria. Again, the question becomes, can we do it faster than life can adapt to the change? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/24 "2012-02-24T17:17:52Z")
Life. Don’t talk to me about life… ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/25 "2012-02-24T17:44:48Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I’m thinking some kind of self-replicating nano-machines. You’d probably need more than one kind, including something that could eat through those 2 miles of rock and somehow replicate and power itself from the minerals. Well, if you want to go down the sci-fi route, why not just build a Death Star? Or pick your weapon of choice from this [list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_killer). > [@davidm](#): > > Would some kind of aberrant crystal work? Sort of like Vonnegut’s fictional ice-9. There is some speculation that a [strangelet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet) might might behave in this manner, but it’s not known if large stranglets are stable. > [@TruCelt](#): > > what if we put all our efforts into building pumps that would throw sewater driectly into the air? If you pump a lot of water into the air, all you’ve created is a big fountain. Nearly all of the water is going to fall straight down again. A much more efficient way of making clouds would be to detonate a string of h-bombs under the oceans. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/26 "2012-02-24T19:21:29Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Difficult to be certain the asteroid’s going to be big enough to do that, and we only get one try. Why do we only get one try? We could (even with current levels of tech, if we didn’t give a damn about costs and such) set up a steady stream of rocky, fiery death to rain down on the planet below. All we’d have to do is time the engines on the asteroids to go off in the right delayed sequence to do the nudging out of orbit, and to keep coming until we’re pretty sure they hit mantle all over. Around 50 10km+ impactors should do it…and there are 10 000 of those suckers out there. ---
**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:** [February 24, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/27 "2012-02-24T22:22:47Z")
I’d suggest that OP lower his goal. Wiping out only terrestrial vertebrates would be quite difficult, but far FAR easier than wiping out all life. > [@Kobal2](#): > > Difficult to be certain the asteroid’s going to be big enough to do that, and we only get one try. I say we build giant rocket engines to propel the Earth ever so slightly off its orbit and into the Sun. It’s the only way to be sure. The problem is that “ever so slightly off its orbit” doesn’t get you to the Sun, but just to an ever so slightly different elliptical orbit. I don’t want to hijack this thread, but it would be interesting to explore what change might be wrought by a deliberate asteroid collision if mankind were, say, to give that his highest priority for the next century. It mightn’t be overly hard to cause a major extinction event, but to change the orbit of the Earth significantly would be difficult. You might want to start by aiming the asteroid not at the Earth, but at Mars or Moon to use its gravitational energy as a slingshot… ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/28 "2012-02-24T22:40:38Z")
I think a link to this site might be in order; > **[How to destroy the Earth @ Things Of Interest](https://qntm.org/destroy)** > > Preamble > Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe. > You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down... Perhaps the most efficient way to destroy all life on the Earth would to start by severely damaging Mercury first. Using the ample sunlight available at that planet you make a huge, thin-film aluminium mirror, just light enough to balance on the solar light pressure; this mirror would be effectively weightless, so you could position it behind the Earth relatively easily, and use it to boil the crust down to a depth of two kilometres or more. This would kill everything on the planet- maybe some bacteria would escape in the vapour, but technically they wouldn’t be on Earth any more… ---
**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:** [February 24, 2012, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/29 "2012-02-24T22:46:38Z")
I wonder if, using all available nuclear weapons complete with the cobolt jackets and placed in every super volcano region on earth, if that would do the trick? Could you actually set off a super volcano using enough nuclear weapons? Would the cobolt jacket be able to poison the earth to the several miles of depth needed to wipe out all life? I still think the asteroid method would be the best bet, but I wonder if that would be an alternative. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/30 "2012-02-24T22:55:51Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Why do we only get one try? We could (even with current levels of tech, if we didn’t give a damn about costs and such) set up a steady stream of rocky, fiery death to rain down on the planet below. All we’d have to do is time the engines on the asteroids to go off in the right delayed sequence to do the nudging out of orbit, and to keep coming until we’re pretty sure they hit mantle all over. Around 50 10km+ impactors should do it…and there are 10 000 of those suckers out there. Yes. But if we mess it up for some reason, get the math wrong and the asteroids crash down but turn out to be juuuust short on mass and/or speed to melt the crust (or the trajectory wasn’t right and we only manage glancing hits) ; then _we_’re most certainly dead while life, tragically, goes on. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/31 "2012-02-25T00:19:55Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Never mind that this is a lunatic idea that would never happen–. . . :mad: Lunatic?! **LUNATIC,** they call me?! Fools! I’ll destroy them all! Why, I’ll wipe out all life in the Galactic Quadrant!!! That’ll show 'em how sane I am! BBBWWWAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/32 "2012-02-25T00:24:00Z")
> [@Alka\_Seltzer](#): > > Well, if you want to go down the sci-fi route, why not just build a Death Star? Or pick your weapon of choice from this [list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_killer). Or you can go straight to the [source!](http://www.villainsource.com/)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/33 "2012-02-25T00:31:32Z")
All we need is something that can shoot stuff into space. Just keep loading stuff into the space shooter, until we’ve ejected enough mass to change the planet’s trajectory/speed/rotation. I bet if we put our minds to it, we could do it! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/34 "2012-02-25T00:38:14Z")
Seriously, I think 93 years under a Cobalt Thorium G Doomsday Shroud would do for all surface-dwelling or air-breathing life not in a mineshaft. Dunno how it would affect the fish. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/35 "2012-02-25T00:44:17Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The thing only within our power that _might_ work would be inducing massive climate change, like a runaway greenhouse that goes all the way to Venus conditions; but it’s my understanding that’s probably impossible to pull off. > > Now, given more time to develop our technology we almost certainly _could_ destroy all life on Earth; an obvious way to do so would be to hit it with a big enough asteroid that the surface is rendered molten. I recently read a science-fiction book who’s title and author I can’t recall had the scenario where the Chinese arrange to drop an asteroid in the Atlantic to damage ‘The West’. Unfortunately they miscalculate the size of the asteroid and drop one large enough to create a global extinction level event. I had no idea how plausible this scenario is in the near term. I’ve never believed that humanity has the capacity to wipe out human life by nuclear means _(cobalt salted bombs maybe)_ never mind destroy all life or crack the planet in half which seem to be popular conceptions of the idea. ---
**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:** [February 25, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/36 "2012-02-25T00:51:02Z")
[QUOTE=Disposable Hero] I recently read a science-fiction book who’s title and author I can’t recall had the scenario where the Chinese arrange to drop an asteroid in the Atlantic to damage ‘The West’. Unfortunately they miscalculate the size of the asteroid and drop one large enough to create a global extinction level event. I had no idea how plausible this scenario is in the near term. [/QUOTE] I don’t know if it’s the books you are thinking about, but it’s part of a sub-plot in the Earth Strike/Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas. It wasn’t extinction level, but it did so much damage and killed several billion people that China becomes a pariah, never really living down the shame of having done it (even though it’s debatable in the story whether it was a rogue Chinese space navy captain or whether the Chinese government meant for it to happen and were just using a scape goat). -XT ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/37 "2012-02-25T01:00:22Z")
I think it’d be pretty damn tough. Some bacteria are extremophilic bastards like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus\_radiodurans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans) which can survive cold, dehydration, mothereffing VACUUM, and acid. In other words, even if you nuked everything, killed off plankton, tried blocking out the sun via nuclear winter, etc… certain pockets of life would adapt. There are plenty of lifeforms miles beneath the surface of the planet in the crust, too – in addition to crazy stuff living at the bottom of oceans multiple kilometers underneath the surface. What about moving the earth? Remember that earthquake that nailed Japan? [http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110312/NEWS/103120329](http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110312/NEWS/103120329) Two points here I want to repeat: 1. It caused a rupture 186 miles long and 93 miles wide in the sea floor 80 miles off the eastern coast of Japan. 2. It sped up the Earth’s rotation by 1.6 microseconds, according to NASA. My point here is that moving the Earth, too, would be no easy feat. There’s too much mass and we have conservation of momentum to consider. I think the best bet is to leverage fusion and put rockets on large asteroids or send up large vessels to use gravitational tethering – in order to change and manipulate their orbits (e.g. something from the Kuiper belt). Have the asteroid(s) slingshot around such that close proximity to Earth results in gravitational-tugs every pass. Eventually you would be able to pull the Earth into the sun. It’d still take a long time. When the sun dies it’s going to expand and engulf Earth anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/38 "2012-02-25T01:05:37Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I don’t know if it’s the books you are thinking about, but it’s part of a sub-plot in the Earth Strike/Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas. It wasn’t extinction level, but it did so much damage and killed several billion people that China becomes a pariah, never really living down the shame of having done it (even though it’s debatable in the story whether it was a rogue Chinese space navy captain or whether the Chinese government meant for it to happen and were just using a scape goat). > > -XT Found it, it was Titan by Stephen Baxter. One of the characters is looking back at Earth from Titan and she observes that the entire planet is glowing like Venus, implying that the strike has kicked-off a runaway greenhouse effect and that not only humanity but all life _(at least on the surface)_ has been destroyed. Haven’t read those other books but they sound interesting. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/39 "2012-02-25T01:31:01Z")
Are we talking about a [Class 6 Apocalypse](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypseHow) here? [Here’s](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ApocalypseHow/Class6) a list of examples, then. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824/40 "2012-02-25T11:16:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Or you can go straight to the [source!](http://www.villainsource.com/)🙂 I’m getting a malware warning when I click on that link. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Around 50 10km+ impactors should do it…and there are 10 000 of those suckers out there. That wouldn’t be nearly enough to completely melt the Earth’s crust, which is what would be required to completely sterilise the planet. To give people some idea of the scope of the problem, it’s estimated that most of the biomass on the planet might be in the form of bacteria living under the surface. It’s all about energy budget at the end of the day. What’s the maximum amount of materiel an all out effort could move about the solar system. With current technology, the answer is “very little”. > [@eburacum45](#): > > Using the ample sunlight available at that planet you make a huge, thin-film aluminium mirror, just light enough to balance on the solar light pressure; this mirror would be effectively weightless, so you could position it behind the Earth relatively easily, and use it to boil the crust down to a depth of two kilometres or more. It’s a nice idea, but it also falls foul of the energy problem. Could we actually move this much mass around the solar system? The mirror would have to be thousands of times the size of the Earth, and would be subject to gravitational forces. It would be too big to fit stably at a Lagrangian point, and energy sources would be required to keep it in position. I think we should be bow to the inevitable, and limit our noble efforts to killing all life on the surface and the seas. Salted bombs are my weapon of choice, but I’m not sure of the best manner to deploy them. I’m toying with the idea of ejecting most of the sahara into the upper atmosphere. Or I might try the same trick with an ocean. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-theoretically-possible-for-humans-to-wipe-out-all-life-on-earth/613824.md?page=3)