How to Destroy Earth (It Ain't Gonna be Easy)

Concerns have been raised, in these tense times, of the sort of information that's freely available on the Web. Information which, in the wrong hands, could be used to build instruments of destruction like bombs: pipe to nuclear.

Here's a post that sets its sights even higher:

"How to destroy the Earth"
Things of Interest (April 3, 2004)

"Preamble

"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 is 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...."

The rest of the post is a recipe for megalomaniacal malefactors with access to materials and technologies that Darth Vader's master would envy.

The first proposed Earth-destroying procedure, for example, involves "an equivalent quantity of antimatter" - that's a lot of antimatter, by the way.

The author is pretty well-informed. Although he takes quite a bit of his speculation from 'hard' science fiction (fiction that takes science seriously), there's fairly solid theoretical foundations to most of his comic-book-supervillain schemes.

And, he distinguishes between the improbable, very improbable, speculative, and practically impossible schemes.

All in all, a nicely done piece, written with (I trust) tongue planted firmly in cheek.