🚀 go-pugleaf

Excerpts from netnews.alt.destroy.the.earth: 29-Oct-92 Stick with what
we know.... by Ronald William Ely@andre 
> But what's wrong with trying the obvious.  NUKE IT!  How many
> nuclear weapons would we need to fry the entire surface of the planet?

Nuclear annihilation would merely destroy all life AS WE KNOW IT, but
not the possibility of life in general.  It seems we're forgetting how
stubborn life actually is.  Think about it:  there are certain forms of
bacteria which, as you're reading this, are floating merrily about in
boiling sulfur.  Somehow, somewhere, life would continue.  The world
ecosystem is just too large and too unbelievably complex to destroy in a
piecemeal nuclear process.  What if some life forms that happen to avoid
ground zero mutate into beings which feed off radiation?  For them, the
wasteland would be a virtual paradise...food a plenty and very little
competition for it.

Now, let's redefine our goal.  Are we out to destroy all the life on the
earth, or destroy the earth ITSELF...the big, huge,
however-many-kilograms ball of rock we're sitting on??  If the former,
granted, nuclear bombs would work with an efficiency of about 95%.  But
hey, if we're going to do it, let's be sure and do it right!  Let's not
settle for less than 100% doom. If we choose the latter goal, we're in a
whole new ball park.  Obviously, the challenge of destroying the entire
planet is much greater than just killing off organisms.

Here's my $.02:  I think the answer lies in supercollapsed matter. 
Black holes, ya know.  We could achieve the construction of a black hole
in at least a couple of different ways (all of which, btw, are
technologically way out compared to where we are now, but hey, we have
all the time in the world!)
            1)  After perfecting nuclear fission, we isolate a chunk of
                the heaviest stable element known (by then we should have
                synthesized element 114, which, according to the periodic
                table, should be stable enough to last for more than a
                millisecond).  We bombard the chunk with other heavy
                nuclei, maybe some other heavy "fundamental" particles,
                in an attempt to transmutate it into a heavier isotope.
                We do this until we reach the limit of our accelerators.
                Then, we detonate the resulting heavy glob with the largest
                thermonuclear or neutron bombs available, which would
                presumably be a few orders of magnitude greater than those
                of today.  If the conditions at the heart of the detonation
                are just right, *pow*...instant mini-black hole.  Initially,
                it would be much, much smaller than an atomic nucleus, but
                it would have PLENTY of matter nearby to feed on.  It would
                sink through the ground, oscillate through the earth's core,
                and finally destroy the earth from the inside out, like a
                huge, satanic microwave oven.

            2)  After years colonizing space, we gravitationally manipulate
                large chunks of matter in the outer solar system (where the
                kinetic energy of revolution is the lowest) to wind up in
                a region of space small enough to reach critical mass.  Now,
                this may very well imply most of the comets in the Oort
                Cloud and maybe an outer planet or two, but all it would take
                would be one BIG gravitational disturbance.  So the objects
                come together, we prod 'em along with a few large-scale
                nuclear chain reactions, and *pow*.  Just tow that sucker
                to the inner solar system and there you go.

Hey, let's not forget Nemesis, the death star.  There's always hope (or
is there?).  

Joe