Via Bruce Schneier’s blog, this link to a pretty comprehensive and very amusing discussion of various methods to completely destroy the earth. Not cause massive damage, or human extinction, but actually destroy the ball of rock upon which we live.
Fortunately, it’s not easy:
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.
Holy shit!
You’re alive, and blogging, and you called my wife the other day!
Happiness abounds!
I come here faithfully, every fucking day, waiting for new posts, and look! This is one! I’m so happy!
5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000
Five septillion nine hundred seventy three sextillion six hundred quintillion tons.
Damn. That’s a lot of iron!
BTW, welcome back. I was also faithful in the daily checks…
Yes, yes, I’m back, and I take heart in knowing of the daily checks… 🙂
Just think: _two_ whole readers!
I could make excuses for my long absence from blogging (and blog reading, for that matter), but it’s really not relevant.
I was going through old email, and found this site. jrh, what the hell is this? 🙂