How to destroy Earth?
Author
I was thinking in a sci-fi game in wich you fly a spaceship inside the solar system. The setting is late 21st century with colonies spreading across the planets.
After some thought I realized that Earth would become a problem since it's overpopulated and all factions live there so the action would end up focussing there. So I decided to destroy it and leave the factions each in a diferent location.
So it comes, how to destroy it?
A)World war III or IV
B)Asteroid impact (too cliche)
C)Black hole impact altering the orbit
D)The aliens did it and then left
E)A focused radiation stream killed everyone
F)The planet mysteriously vanished
G)Supervolcanic explosion
H)A virus
If anyone comes up with a more original doomsday please comment
How about the breakthrough that enabled general space travel caused a black hole and ate up the planet over time?
#include <earth.h>int main(int n, char **args){ Earth *EarthInstance = new Earth; while(Earth->run()) { if(Earth->IsException()) break; } delete EarthInstance;}
Whatever it was, it was so horrible that no one ever talks about it. All you know is that after "the event", the earth became a dead planet and no one travels there any more.
It was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Actually, I like Hodgman's idea. You don't always have to explain everything :)
Actually, I like Hodgman's idea. You don't always have to explain everything :)
How about:
I) Global Warming/Climate Change
J) The Large Hadron Collider at CERN created tiny black holes that all amassed at earth's core, causing catastrophic gravitational and magnetic anomalies
K) Massive asteroid strikes the moon, causing large amounts of debris to sit in orbit around earth - thus making travel in and out of earth's orbit difficult and causing an ice age at the surface due to reduced sunlight - I don't think Hollywood has done this one yet!
Alex
Edit: Love Hodgman's idea :)
I) Global Warming/Climate Change
J) The Large Hadron Collider at CERN created tiny black holes that all amassed at earth's core, causing catastrophic gravitational and magnetic anomalies
K) Massive asteroid strikes the moon, causing large amounts of debris to sit in orbit around earth - thus making travel in and out of earth's orbit difficult and causing an ice age at the surface due to reduced sunlight - I don't think Hollywood has done this one yet!
Alex
Edit: Love Hodgman's idea :)
You could make it a tangent plot point. Make it a wasteland that's interesting to visit, if just for the mutants. Destroy it during the events of the game. Give it some shock value.
The Civil War of Humanity began when the colonies on Earth's moon and Mars declared independence. Tired of exporting their wealth to support Earth's "fat and lazy billions", they believed that as rulers of their own destiny they could grow faster and eventually reach out for the stars. Six months after the secession notice, United Nations troops entered the provisional government buildings in New Washington and Hale Crater. The temporary colony leaders were executed and indefinite martial law imposed.
Other ships were seen on low energy orbits targeted at the asteroid mining centres and the Jupiter moons. It quickly became apparent that Earth was preparing to install direct rule on all of the colonies. The various factions amongst the colonies and settlements were forced to band together against the technological and numerical superiority of the UN; only their experience of non-terrestrial conflict allowed them to hold any ground at all.
Three years of bitter -- and deadly -- conflict filled the system. Popular support for the colonial cause ran high; many of the people in the colonies left exactly to escape Earth's oppressive control.
The Earth government, meanwhile, was increasingly desperate. Trapped between their own population's indifference to what they saw as an unimportant conflict and their own knowledge that the supply of vital materials from space was the only thing preventing mass famine.
The harder Earth's forces pressed on the colonies, the more the colonists militancy grew. Eventually someone pushed an asteroid out of orbit and towards Earth.
It could have been intended as a warning to the joint government of Earth. It could have been intended to deny them enough resources to continue to prosecute the war. It could have been intended to stir up resistance against the conflict on Earth itself.
But whoever pushed the asteroid, picked the wrong kind. Instead of a stony asteroid which would have largely broken up and caused a lot of light and noise but not much damage, the asteroid contained a metallic core. Maybe it was deliberate, but no-one can believe that. It had to have been a terrible accident.
The impact evaporated a significant portion of the Indian Ocean as well as vapourising the ocean floor and blasted mantle material both into orbit and to rain down across the planet's surface. Billions died almost instantly from the blast, billions more in the hours of ocean waves and earthquakes that followed. And when the smoke from continental fires combined with the dust and water vapour, billions more starved in the years that followed as the temperature plummeted. Just four million survivors from the Earth were rescued by the combined best efforts of the colonists.
No-one knows the true intention of the attack because the perpetrators were never found, never made a statement, were never heard from in any way.
Twenty years later, the crime is still a shared guilt amongst the colonies. Shared guilt and shared suspicion. No-one likes the idea that the murderers of 14 billion earthmen still walk hidden amongst them...
As always, there's someone on the internet who have thought about it before: How to destroy the Earth. [smile]
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