Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Sometimes, [[The End of the World as We Know It]] just isn't enough. If you really want to end the world, why not destroy the whole planet—tear the very ground from under everyone's feet?

Some series prefer to have this as the final goal of the [[Big Bad]], with the heroes racing to stop him. In other series, there's no way to stop the Earth Shattering Kaboom, and the subsequent storylines focus on the actions of the few survivors as they try to carry on, seek revenge or simply live with the fact that their home has been completely obliterated.

 

 

 

The villain archetype who wants to cause this is called the [[Omnicidal Maniac]]. Alternatively, if he does it by accident (or just doesn't know ''why'' he'd do it), he's the [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds]].

 

Oh, and if somehow if some part of planet still remains, and someone settles on that, then it becomes [[Shattered World]]. See also [[Why You Should Destroy the Planet Earth]].

 

Contrast [[Genesis Effect]], where planets are created instead of destroyed.

{{examples}}

* ''[[Gunbuster]]'' goes past mere planetary destruction with the Black Hole Bomb, a weapon capable of destroying the core of the galaxy. One of the weapon's components? The planet Jupiter. (Quick! Blow up Jupiter!)

** I think a certain pair of moronic monarchs from ''[[Heroic Age]]'' could help you out with that one.

** {{spoiler|The Earth}} almost gets shattered into a million pieces, when the Grandmother decides it's time to get rid of the Mu for good.

* ''[[Gurren Lagann]]'' has {{spoiler|planets being ''thrown'' at the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann.}} And that's ''nothing'' compared to the [[Final Battle]]: {{spoiler|'''GALAXIES THEMSELVES BECOME WEAPONS!'''}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* Comic books like this trope as a sufficiently worthy threat for the best heroes to deal with. The most famous is probably [[Galactus]] of the [[Marvel Universe]], a gargantuan being who literally [[Planet Eater|eats planets]].

** While there is some debate over what ''actually'' happens if Galactus succeeds in eating, the zombies who ''ate'' his dimensional double definitely create massive rubble.

* [http://www.ghira.mistral.co.uk/bombs.gif This strip] by [[Quino]].

* In ''[[Starslayer]]'', Torin mac Quillon comes into possession of a weapon that can implode a sun into a black hole. He ends up using it.

 

* In Chapter 10 of ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3140820/10/Chronicles_of_the_Crusade_Book_2_The_Long_Road Chronicles of the Crusade: The Long Road]'', Captain Gideon and the crew of the ''Excalibur'' detonate the Mark IX inside of Enceladus so that Kathenn can be destroyed. They later remark that Sheridan would be pissed that he wasn't the one who pushed the button to detonate it.

* This happens several times throughout ''[[Reunions Are a Bitch]]''.

* In ''[[Keepers of the Elements]]'', [[Big Bad|Radcliffe]] does this to Zenith by taking out its central power core.

* During the course of ''[[Thirty Hs]]'', Harry kills the fuck out of at least two planets, and Dumblecop kicks another planet in half.

 

== Film ==

* One of the most famous Planet Killers is the Death Star from ''[[Star Wars]]'', and of course, poor Planet Alderaan to supply the Kaboom. Later on in the movie, the Death Star gets its ''own'' Earthshattering Kaboom (okay, space station the size of a small moon, close enough).

** The second (and larger) Death Star gets its own as well in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]''.

* In ''[[Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.]]'', the Daleks planned to detonate a bomb which would remove the Earth's core.

* A Q-Bomb is used to crack Planet OM-1 in ''[[Starship Troopers (film)|Starship Troopers 3: Marauder]]'', though the sight wasn't enough to distract General Dix Hauzer from snogging Captain Lola Beck (seeing as we're talking about [[Ms. Fanservice|Jolene Blalock's]] luscious lips I can't blame him).

* The [[John Carpenter]]'s ultra low budget film ''[[Dark Star]]'' featured a starship crew whose job was to traverse the Galaxy, using "Exponential Thermostellar Bombs" to destroy planets that might someday threaten human colonies. For twenty years. On the ragged edge of terminal boredom.

* In ''[[Godzilla vs. Destoroyah]]'', it's revealed that Godzilla's heart is basically a nuclear reactor. When Birth Island erupts and exposes Godzilla to a bed of radioactive materials, he absorbs too much and begins to undergo meltdown. Unfortunately, his self-destruction will also take most of the planet with him, sending scientists and the military scrambling for a way to prevent it. Things get more complicated when Destoroyah arrives on the scene, making Godzilla's meltdown occur faster and become more powerful due to his rage at Destoroyah's actions.

* The beginning of ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]] II'' shows Sarleena destroying planets she passed by.

* In the end of ''[[Transformers: Dark of the Moon]]'', {{spoiler|Cybertron collapses in on itself when the Autobots destroy Sentinel's Space Bridge.}}

* Lars von Trier's ''[[Melancholia]]'' revolves around the destruction of Earth by collision with an immense rogue planet (though there's not a lot of suspense about it, as the world's fate is revealed up front in the opening sequence).

 

* The Douglas Adams book ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' starts with the Earth being demolished to make way for a hyperspace expressway.

** And then ratchets it up at the end of the series by {{spoiler|destroying every Earth in every alternate dimension ever.}}

*** [[Fridge Logic|Then why are we still here?]]

*** [[Fridge Horror|They're not finished yet.]]

* In [[Dan Simmons]]'s ''[[Hyperion]]'' saga, the Earth has been destroyed a long time ago, but not before mankind had colonized a major part of the known universe. It later turns out that it wasn't destroyed, only hidden by some [[Powers That Be|Higher Power]].

* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s ''[[Ender's Game]]'' involves the "Little Doctor" device, which is indeed capable of blowing up a planet, and is used for that purpose near the end of the book. In the sequel ''Children Of The Mind'', a second such disaster is narrowly averted.

** The device is nicknamed the "Little Doctor" because it's actual name is the Molecular Disruption device, abbreviated MD, which is also the abbreviation for "Medical Doctor". It works by creating an energy field that prevents atoms from clinging together. The field's strength and area of effect is related to how much mass the target has. The effect spreads from atom to atom in a chain reaction. This means that the weapon requires the same amount of energy to be used against a single ship as it does an entire planet.

*** The weapon's range isn't actually that great, which means that any ship using it against a planet is on a suicide mission, as the field from the planet's destruction will get anything in orbit. Of course, the ships using it in the first book had 70-year-old equipment, so it's possible that later developments upped that range.

** In Weber's ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' stories, pretty much everyone has the ability to do it, but no one does because of the "Eridani Edict." Anyone indiscriminately bombarding planetary targets will themselves meet the same fate, when everyone else in the galaxy turns around and does the same to them.

* In the novel ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'', the Terran Federation develops the Nova Bomb. It is used on planets that are heavily occupied by bugs and of no strategic importance to the Federation.

** Heinlein originally used the term "nova bomb" in the 1953 version of his short story "Gulf". It was a theoretical bomb that could destroy the entire Earth.

* In Greg Bear's ''The Forge of God'', {{spoiler|Earth was blown up after (a) being shot with one giant neutronium bullet and one giant anti-neutronium bullet that met and exploded '''and''' (b) having vast quantities of hydrogen extracted from the oceans and turned into hydrogen bombs. Talk about overkill!}}

** {{spoiler|Actually, not really overkill at all. Unlike many other examples here, this one involved just a little more boom than the gravitational binding energy of the Earth. The explosion took a realistic several minutes. To make something explode as fast as, say, [[Star Wars|Alderaan]] takes several orders of magnitude more energy.}}

* ''[[Battlefield Earth|Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000]]'', in both the book and movie, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler detonates {{spoiler|the Psychlo homeworld by teleporting a nuclear device to the planet}}.

** It should be noted that {{spoiler|the nuke}} is a plain old one (very old, actually). It's the way {{spoiler|nuclear radiation}} interacts with the {{spoiler|Psychlos' breath-gas}} that causes the big boom.

* [[Matthew Reilly]]'s ''Temple'' has the Supernova - a nuke capable of vaporising one third of the Earth's mass and knocking the rest out of it's orbit around the sun. {{spoiler|There's 3 of them}}

* The oldest and still canonical example of this in the ''[[Perry Rhodan]]'' universe is the Arkon bomb, a reasonably portable device capable of causing a runaway nuclear chain reaction that will destroy the planet it is planted on over the course of only a few days. The arguably most destructive weapon ever built by Terrans, the Hyperinmestron, was used only three times in the series and only once for actual military purposes—it's capable of blowing up a star, and that first use resulted in side effects that caused supernovae and other general chaos and devastation throughout the center of the Andromeda galaxy.

* ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'' by [[Roger Zelazny]] includes shattering "worlds", supposed to contain multiple planets, in the course of the battles of the gods.

** And in the [[Ciaphas Cain]] novel ''Caves of Ice'', a bomb that was placed in a mine that was flooded with millions of gallons of highly volatile promethium resulted in a gigaton range explosion that obliterated a mountain range and caused a shockwave that could be felt from ''orbit''. Despite that, they're still not certain whether or not the explosion destroyed the Necron tomb hidden below the mine.

* In the ''[[Nights Dawn Trilogy]]'', the scientists studying the ruins near the habitat Serenity crap themselves when they realize that the planet of this ancient alien civilization was ''actually destroyed'', as in reduced to large chunks of rock floating around space. This reaction is largely provoked by the fact that the ''best'' that their technological advances so far, which include light-speed warping, anti-matter bombs, living thinking Bitek space vessels and habitats (Serenity is actually one of these), and techno-telepathy, have only made it as far as being able to [[Depopulation Bomb|completely screw with the surface of a planet and destroy its climate and ecology]]. It gets worse, because for reasons unknown, this ancient alien race apparently ''[[Cyanide Pill|did it]] [[Starts with a Suicide|to themselves.]]''

* In the 1932 novel ''When Worlds Collide'' by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, a Jupiter-sized rogue planet drifts into the Solar System on a direct course for Earth with a result one character compares to tossing a walnut in front of a cannon at the instant the cannon is fired.

* [[Robert Westall]]'s ''[[Urn Burial]]'' has this happen to the home planet of the [[Eldritch Abomination]]s in the backstory; blown up with superweapons by the alien whose grave the human hero finds while herding sheep.

 

** In "A Piece of The Action", the Enterprise is able to knock out the entire population of Sigma Iotia with the main phasers on "stun", the lowest setting.

*** Not the entire population, just everyone "in a one-block radius of [Kirk's] coordinates." And only the ones who were outdoors.

** And of course the planet killer from the episode "The Doomsday Machine".

** In the season finale episode "Journey's End," {{spoiler|the Daleks}} prevent {{spoiler|Martha Jones}} from using {{spoiler|the Osterhagen Key doomsday device}}. Just as well.

** And in ''The Pirate Planet'', the eponymous planet destroys other worlds by materialising around them, stripping them of their resources and shrinking them down to the size of a basketball, after which they are displayed in the captain's trophy room.

** It's the plan in ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S6/E01 The Dominators|The Dominators]]''.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' destroyed at least two dozen planets in its fourth season, when the Vorlons and the Shadows both went, "Oh, now it's ''on'', bitch!", culminating in the entire Earth solar system getting blown up a million years in the future. But it didn't end there, either, as yet more planets were destroyed in the sequel movie, ''A Call to Arms''. Strangely enough, the Earth has come to the brink of planetary destruction three different times, and averted it each time. Lucky, much?

*** In fact, in one of his interviews he stated that unusual readings inside the sun were being caused by millions of jump gates (portals into hyperspace) being opened, which would be channeling available hydrogen out of the star and shrinking its mass. Not fun.

* The Showtime series ''[[Odyssey 5]]'' started with the world blowing up, and had five astronauts, who had survived because they were on the titular Odyssey space craft at the time, getting sent five years into the past to prevent it.

* Probably named for Heinlein, the series ''[[Andromeda]]'' had Nova Bombs. How powerful were they? Well, the Andromeda carrying 40 of them was enough to send resident badass and proud warrior race guy Tyr into a fit because it was enough firepower to conquer an empire. The bombs cause stars to go super-nova, and can be volley-fired into black holes to turn them into white holes.

** ''[[Stargate Universe]]'' blows up a planet in the first episode through a combination of an unstable radioactive core, plugging a Stargate into said core and dialing it to a ship billions of light-years away, and having the Lucian Alliance bombard the base.

*** And then, in the season finale, the situation gets reversed - it's a Lucian Alliance base planet getting attacked/destroyed by Earth forces.

* While not actually ever used for its intended purpose, missiles with the power to blow up a planet are known to exist in [[Power Rangers]]. In ''[[Power Rangers in Space]]'' it took one of them to take out the [[Dimension Lord]] [[Big Bad]] [[Man Behind the Man]]. He was stabbed in the back with it by [[The Starscream]].

** And it's notable that being hit with said missile ''didn't kill him''. It took Darkonda hitting him with a ''second'' Planet Killer to destroy him for good, and he still survived long enough to [[Taking You with Me|take Darkonda with him]].

*** And [[Power Rangers Wild Force|the one time it did]], the [[Rookie Red Ranger]] rammed his motorcycle into it and blew it up.

 

== Music ==

* The video for [[Frankie Goes to Hollywood]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUnvI3CA Two Tribes].

* On the cover of the album ''Fragile'' by [[Yes]].

* On the cover of the [[Self-Titled Album]] ''Boston'', by [[Boston (band)|Boston]].

 

 

** Most of these methods usually leave a dead ball of rock, however. Except the Planet Killer; that really ''does'' blow up planets. And then we get to the Blackstone Fortresses...

*** There are many methods of Exterminatus, and while it is true that most of them just leave a dead rock, Two-Stage Cyclonic torpedoes indeed cause a Planet-Shattering Kaboom

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Star Ruler]]'' allows players to bombard planets until they break up - usually by shooting giant railgun slugs the size of Cyprus at a sizable fraction of the speed of light.

** And then there's the DSM, or Directed Spatial Manipulator, a super-weapon so powerful it can only be fired manually, which is capable of blowing up planets, and even suns.

* ''[[Defender]]''.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' deals with the destruction of several worlds by [[The Heartless]], {{spoiler|which are reformed, just as they were before they were destroyed, at the end of the game.}}

* The Covenant in ''[[Halo]]'' "glass" planets - they blast them from orbit until the surface has melted into a glasslike substance.

** The UNSC NOVA bomb. To elaborate, it is a cluster of nine nukes, each surrounded by a shell that, when the bomb goes off, [[Techno Babble|briefly compresses each of the nine explosions to neutron-star density]], giving each blast a 100x boost. One is {{spoiler|accidentally set off on an Elite loyalist vessel in orbit around a loyalist world: the planet is wiped clean of life, its moon ''is shattered'', and nearly the entire fleet massed nearby is annihilated.}}

** The ARK's Eclipse Cannon was capable of destroying a planet with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. It was used twice: first to blow apart half of the moon in ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]'', and to annihilate the Black Arms Comet in ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]''.

* In ''[[R-Type]] Final'', the Giant Warship's Giant [[Wave Motion Gun]] is said to have the capability to do this.

* In the first ''[[Ratchet & Clank (video game)|Ratchet & Clank]]'' game, the villainous Drek needs to remove a planet in order to give his man-made world the perfect orbit. Drek's tool for achieving this goal is the appropriately named Planet Buster. The weapon does produce an Earth Shattering Kaboom, but not on the planet you'd expect.

* In ''[[EVE Online]]'' the storyline that heralded the Apocrypha expansion and the formation of wormholes, sympathetic reactions from the explosion of a [[Lost Technology]] device caused several distant stars in the galaxy to flare and space-time to rupture; the kaboom from one of the star flares burnt the inhabited mining world of Seylin I to a cinder.

* ''[[Ray Force]]'' ends with the explosion of the Con-Human-transformed Earth.

* ''[[Star Ocean]]''

** In the [[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time|third installment]], the Earth itself is destroyed from an attack by the Executioners. In this case, the Executioners doom many other worlds off-screen as well.

* Atrea, the world in which ''[[Aion]]'' takes place, is a hollow sphere whose inhabitants live on the ''inside'' rather than the outside. The Tower of Eternity is a large tower running through the inside of the planet which provided light to its inhibitants in lieu of a star, although the planet does still orbit a star. However, when the Tower of Eternity broke in two, the resulting explosion blew the planet into two pieces connected only by a magical field created through [[Heroic Sacrifice]].

* Can be invoked by the player in the [[Nintendo 3DS]] AR Games. When playing with the globe, all you can do is spin it around by shooting it at different angles. However, shooting it repeatedly causes it to start turning red. Should you keep shooting it beyond that state, it ''explodes'' into a million fiery pieces, leaving behind a message that says "Take care of our planet" and is accompanied by creepy doomsday-like music that shifts into a sad melody. The globe is erased from your games list and you have to buy it again to play with it again.

* In ''[[Evolva]]'', the Parasite tries this in the final level.

* ''[[Terminal Velocity]]'' features two planet killers: one the ''Moon Dagger'', that must be taken out ''before it cores the Earth'' (actual in-game text), and the other the asteroid ([[Science Marches On|now minor planet]]) Ceres that has been sent on a collision course with Earth.

 

== Web Comics ==

* The Earth exploding randomly is a constant [[Running Gag]] in the [[Sprite Comic]] ''[[Neglected Mario Characters]]''.

* The end of the War In Hell arc in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' ends with an Earthshattering Kaboom in hell, which is powerful enough to breach dimensional barriers.

** The GOFOTRON arc ends with a universe-shattering kaboom, in fact. But it's only a tiny universe.

* In ''[[Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger]]'', the Racconan Empire of the Seven Systems owns a small fleet of Stellar Lances. One of which was used to destroy a Kvrk-Chk solar system. [[Word of God]] is that the Lance operates by firing a planet-sized beam of "antigravitons" through the heart of the system's star, causing it to hemorrhage from either side, spraying the surrounding planets with white-hot stellar matter (picture a water balloon with a pinhole on either side spinning on a string).... the lawn sprinkler from Hell. If conditions are just right, it goes downhill from there, into a stellar collapse and supernova...

* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' space villain Fructose Riboflavin likes to extort cooperation from people by threatening to do this. "Remember, Galatea... threatening to blow up a planet ''always'' works." Bob is the only person who has ever [[Too Dumb to Fool|called him on it,]] realizing the fact that Riboflavin ''[[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|needed]]'' [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|Earth for his plan and so]] ''[[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|couldn't]]'' [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|blow it up,]] so the threat was an obvious bluff.

* Used [http://www.viruscomix.com/amtaham.html here] in [[Subnormality]].

* In [[Bob the Angry Flower]] it is [http://www.angryflower.com/yes.gif easy to do].

* Fractal bombs in ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire|Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire]]''.

* [[Eldritch Abomination|The Snarl]] did this to the first world the gods made in ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]''.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' had [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-02-29 Io-shattering kaboom].

 

== Web Original ==

* On [[Deviant ART]], there are "Power emoticons" that [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|take regular emoticons to the EXTREME]]. Many include a view of the Earth (or a part of it) being destroyed.

*** Technically, one of the latter by itself wouldn't do the trick. A whole *bunch* of "Zeeky Boogy Doog"s (or one broadcast all over the world), however, would and did.

* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has an dinosaur-killer-sized asteroid dropped on earth in the backstory. After the Earth partially recovers and is just starting to be recolonized by rebels against the main human government, said government sends in a fleet that blows up the moon, first by firing several small black holes through it to weaken its structure, then ramming it with a miles-long starship moving at 90 percent of the speed of light. The shattered fragments of the moon rain down on the surface of the earth, melting the top few miles of crust into a continuous layer of molten lava, boiling off the oceans, and blasting the atmosphere away. A few decades later, some nasty aliens invade, and the invasion is only stopped by using Dooms Day Devices to send the suns of the main alien homeworlds into supernova.

** Also in the Abridged Series, a running series called "Zorc and Pals" features [[Big Bad]] Zorc Necrophades and Yami Bakura discussing Zorc's plans to destroy the world. The clip from "Zorc and Pals: The Movie" in the Abridged Movie details what Zorc is going to do after he destroys the world... [[I'm Going to Disney World|He's going to Disney World.]] And then he's going to destroy it. However, he found it much too fun, so he destroyed Euro Disney instead.

* In ''[[Fine Structure]]'', {{spoiler|this is the ultimate fate of Earth during the [[Final Battle]]. Luckily humanity from the [[Alternate Universe|next universe over]] jumps in to pick up survivors.}}

 

== Western Animation ==

''Fry presses a button - a planet explodes''

Leela: "Wow! The most mundane events look almost exciting through your eyes." }}

* ''Once Upon a Time, Man'' ("Il était une fois l'homme") was a multiple nationality and educational cartoon,from 80's and about History (as a serious ''[[Histeria!]]!''). The credits were Abridged History, and future of humanity was already told [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNURUGCOQ5I at the end:] mens running away with rockets and then, Ka-boom.

* An episode of ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' had the destruction of the Earth at the end of the episode, but it's all right...everyone had already moved to Brain's papier-mache replica.

* In the ''[[Kim Possible]]'' episode "Car Alarm", Shego seems to [[Depending on the Writer|graduate to]] [[Omnicidal Maniac]] by hoping to use a rocket car she and Motor Ed stole in order to use its full powered rocket boost to destroy the planet. Ed on the other hand just wanted to use it to drive around with Shego as arm candy.

* ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'': King Triton blows up the model of the planet Earth in Ariel's lair, along with the other of Ariel's human things.

 

== Real Life ==

* The current prevailing theory of the formation of Earth's moon is that the proto-Earth was hit by another proto-planet that blasted both the proto-Earth and the impacting planet into a loose conglomeration of material, most of which reformed into the Earth and some of which coalesced into Luna, the moon Earth has today. ''Literally'' Earth-Shattering. Although there was [[Space Is Noisy|(probably)]] no Kaboom.

** It is a testament to just how hard it is to blow up a planet. Even running head long into another planet at full speed isn't going to cut it.

* It's been hypothesized that Miranda, a moon of Uranus, had been shattered by an impact and its fragments reassembled; thus explaining the patchwork of geological features on the moon.

** Insert [[Incredibly Lame Pun|rocky fragments near Uranus pun]] here.

* Discussed in the History Channel series ''The Universe'', where they point out that blowing up the planet would require hitting it with something extremely massive (i.e. another planet).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]