How would you go about destroying the Earth?

[loinburger]

So? How would you do it?

I'm not talking about any half-assed measures like "wiping out all multi-cellular life on the Earth" or "covering the Earth in a cloud of radioactive dust" or anything like that. I'm talking about the real deal -- transforming the Earth into a cloud of stellar dust, or at the very least into a new Asteroid belt.

[Boris Godunov]

Id convince Bush that Putin had once tried to assassinate his cousin. I'd then watch the nukes fly.

[monkspider]

I would put several hundred pounds of TNT in the Moon's core so that it will collide into the Earth, knocking it into the Sun.

[red_jon]

I would position an idiot war mongerer and a spineless suck-up as leaders of the US and UK and cause WW3.

Bet no-one's thought of that

[Az]

Hmm, I would think a lot, and find an asteroid that would be the right mass, and will get the right trajectory after the right push. Then, I'll use the entire nuclear aresnal of the earth, if needed, to give it the right push in the needed direction.

Then, the asteroid will collide with earth, and earth will be destroyed.

Ta-da.

[loinburger]

Boris and jon: I said "no half-assed measures" with the idea being that a nuclear war is most decidedly half-assed.

I like monk's idea, except that I'm not sure how putting TNT in the moon's core would knock it off course.

[Boris Godunov]

If a nuke war blew up the whole planet, there'd be nothing half-assed about it.

[loinburger]

Sure, but we don't have enough nukes for that. We probably couldn't even level the Rockies with the world's combined nuclear arsenal, let alone vaporize the entire planet.

I suppose we could always build more nukes, but imagine how frightfully inefficient that would be.

[Az]

A nuke war wouldn't blow up the entire planet.

It would blow up the surface, perhaps, but that's nothing.

It takes a 20Mega tonn charge to transform a mountain into a crater.

Earth is humongous in comparison to any mountain, and there are only around 10000 nukes, or so.

[Sandman]

Create a truly enormous hydrogen bomb, with a size measurable in cubic kilometres. If the explosion doesn't erase the Earth, with 'luck' it could leave behind a black hole. The physicists on the board will probably say that that won't happen, however.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by loinburger
Im not sure TNT in the moon's core would knock it off course.

The details can all be worked in due time, of course.

[loinburger]

I suppose you could always try detonating them all in the center of the earth, but I'd imagine that the nukes wouldn't fare too well when they're encased in molten nickel...

[red_jon]

I would build a giant lasoo and use it to pull a black hole towards the Earth.

[General Ludd]

Use lots of slave labour and mining camps to slowly dig up the earth and launch the debris into space with small rockets. Long and painful, but it wouldn't destroy the earth completely.

[Boris Godunov]

Well fine then.

Under the aegis of a blandly-named, inconspicuous but somehow fantastically wealthy global aerospace corporation, i'd win numerous contracts to deploy satellites, both for governments and private organizations. However, each satellite would be part of a secret super-weapon. Upon activation, the satellites would come together like a giant transformer, becoming a space station with a massive super-laser which would be capable of disintegrating the planet. From the space station, I'd hold the world ransom for $100 Trillion Dollars.

I'd then fly out into deeper space, destroy the Earth with the laser anyway to prevent anyone from following me, and then go off with my horde of wealth to--

Oh. ****, nevermind.