Doomsday Device
|
The "Doomsday
Device"
A doomsday device is a hypothetical construction — usually a weapon —
which could destroy all life on the Earth, or destroy the Earth itself (bringing
"doomsday", a term used for the end of the world).
Doomsday devices have been present in literature and art especially in the
twentieth century, when advances in science and technology allowed humans
to fantasize in a definite way about the possibility of actively destroying
the world or all life on it (or at least human life). Many classics in the
genre of science fiction take up the theme in this respect, especially The
Purple Cloud (1901) by M.P. Shiel in which the accidental release of a chemical
gas kills all people on the planet. (Weart 1988)
[The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose
some 18 km (11 mi) above the hypocenter.]
After the advent of nuclear weapons, especially hydrogen bombs, they have
usually been the dominant components of fictional doomsday devices. RAND strategist
Herman Kahn proposed a "Doomsday Machine" in the 1950s which would consist
of a computer linked to a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, programmed to detonate
them all and bathe the planet in nuclear fallout at the signal of an impeding
nuclear attack from another nation. Such a scheme, fictional as it was, epitomized
for many the extremes of the suicidal logic behind the strategy of mutually
assured destruction, and it was famously parodied in the Stanley Kubrick
film from 1964, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb. It is also a main topic of the movie Beneath the Planet of the
Apes, in parallel with the species extermination theme. Most such models
either rely on the fact that hydrogen bombs can be made indefinitely large
(see Teller-Ulam design) or that they can be "salted" with materials designed
to create long-lasting and hazardous fallout (e.g. a cobalt bomb). Such a
theme was used in a two-part episode of The Bionic Woman.
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.
A number of nations continue to maintain nuclear stockpiles in the thousands
of warheads which could be potentially used to a similar end (see, e.g., the
idea of nuclear winter). The Soviet Union built the world's only doomsday
device, known originally as the "dead hand." The Russian dead hand is designed
to launch the bulk of the country's nuclear forces in the event of a decapitating
strike, utilizing specially designed rockets carrying radio equipment. The
device may still exist under the name Perimetr.
--------------------------------------
See also:
Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth
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 rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities
of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.
Fools.
The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne
ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime
than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily.So my first
piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do not think this
will be easy.
Mission statement
By any means necessary, to render the Earth into a form in which it may no
longer be considered a planet. Such forms include, but are most definitely
not limited to: two or more planets; any number of smaller asteroids; a quantum
singularity; a dust cloud.
To make the list, a method must actually work. That is, according to current
scientific understanding, it must be possible for the Earth to actually be
destroyed by this method, however improbable or impractical it may be.
Methods are ranked in order of feasibility, with the least likely listed
first and the most likely being No. 10.
Current Earth-destruction Status
-Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: 0
-Number of plans currently in progress with the final aim of bringing about
the Earth's destruction: 0
-Number of scientific experiments currently underway with the potential to
bring about the Earth's destruction: 0
-Minimum amount of time until the Earth is destroyed by natural means (discounting
total existence failure): 25 years
-Minimum amount of time until the Earth is destroyed by artificial means:
50 years
What this guide is not
This is not a guide for those whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I
can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any
of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and
many of the methods outlined inside will take many years to even become available,
let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other
planets; indeed, other star systems.
If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong
document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are
available and feasible right now. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to
annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable
or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.
This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html
http://www.livescience.com/technology/10ways_destroyearth.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
|
|
