Doomsday Devices in Fictional literature

• In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, a doomsday substance called ice-nine is created with the capability to freeze all the water on Earth. The creator of ice-nine is depicted as being willfully negligent of the practical dangers of his research, and it is carelessness in the handling of the substance, which causes the Earth to freeze.
• In the novel After Doomsday by Poul Anderson, space travelers return to Earth to find the surface of the planet blasted away. Searching among various alien races for the reason for this, one group are shown an interview with a merchant who apparently sold "crustal disruptor" devices to various nations to use as a deterrent, with the devices being triggered by a nuclear attack on the owning nation. It is thus claimed that humanity effectively committed suicide. At the end, however this is revealed as a lie created by the real culprits.
• In the novel Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams, the supercomputer Hactar was asked by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax to "create the ultimate weapon". The device was a "junction box in Hyperspace" that would "connect the heart of every major sun with the heart of every other major sun".
• In Robert McCammon's novel Swan Song, the President of the United States, delusional and believing himself God fallen from heaven, decides that evil has won on Earth (after the nuclear holocaust he helped induce) and the planet must therefore be purged using the Talons of Heaven. This concept involves firing a massive payload of nuclear weapons at the poles, knocking the earth off its axis, causing massive icecap melting and subsequent flooding.
• In the Matthew Reilly book Temple, a doomsday device consisting of a pair of nuclear warheads and the non-existent element Thyrium is capable of obliterating a large section of Earth (Reportedly 1/3 of the Earth's mass). This would knock the planet out of orbit and create a cloud covering the entire planet that would wipe out the world's population.
• In the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the Molecular Disruption Device can destroy an object, and any object near it, such as a fleet of space ships. Eventuality it is used on a planet near the Buggers' main fleet, destroying it, and ending a long war. In the sequels Speaker for the Dead and Children of the Mind the threat of the MD Device (also called "Dr. Device") looms over a human colony on a world with a newly discovered sentient species.
• In the Discworld story The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, Cohen the Barbarian plans to detonate an explosive called Agatean Thunder Clay at the Hub, to show the gods how annoyed he is with them. Unknown to him, this would disrupt the Discworld's standing magical field, thereby rendering it impossible for it to exist.
• The Tom Clancy book Rainbow Six has a plot line in which a wealthy industrialist develops an airborne virus and an "antidote" to the virus that will actually spread the effects further, and will be released during the Sydney Olympics, with the so-called antidote actually being lethal to everyone not previously inoculated by the "real" antidote, and only his group of people who have been so inoculated will be alive to repopulate the earth.
• Use of multiple nuclear weapons causing the destruction or virtual destruction of all life on Earth as a type of doomsday scenario has been used in several fictional stories, including Nevil Shute's On the Beach and David Graham's Down to a Sunless Sea.
• In the Marvel Comics Universe, the character Galactus possesses a weapon called the Ultimate Nullifier which has the power to destroy the entire multiverse (collection of all universes) until Capt. Rickey Maxwell III deactivated it.
• In the Horus Heresy series of novels, based upon the events in the Warhammer 40,000, there are many references and actual use of a space-to-ground warhead known as the Life-eater. This warhead contains an airborne virus that spreads rapidly and consumes upon living things, quickly eradicating all life in the target radius; once all life has been eradicated the virus will begin to consume itself, thus ending the virus. When the virus has destroyed itself, it leaves behind a highly flammable gas which could be used to light a fire-storm which could destroy any life that by chance survived. This weapon was barred from use by the The Emperor of Mankind because of its extreme danger and level of destruction unless by his permission, or by the order of his Warmaster; Horus. A large amount of these weapons were unleashed upon the planet Isstvan III by the Warmaster in the first open sign of his betrayal against the Emperor; the result was the slaughter of nearly all Space Marines and Imperial Guardsmen loyal to the Emperor who were serving with the Warmaster.