Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Difference between revisions

* David Weber and Steve White's ''The Shiva Option'' features this (in the form of anti-matter warhead barrages from fighter swarms) being used against a genocidal alien race as a regular tactic, once the good guys discovered the aliens communicated by telepathy. Kill anything over several hundred million on-planet, and the psychic hammer-blow of the mass deaths cripples anything else in-system. Given that the alien species was a lot of ancient horror clichés come to life (including [[Human Resources]] to the point of making conquered races into planetary-scale livestock ranches), I'm inclined to rule it necessary. Especially since an earlier book in the series ended with a Terran Federation ex-President sacrificing his own health to prevent the destruction of a different species' planet where only the world government was at fault.

** 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 epilogue of the expanded edition of that novel, it is noted that {{spoiler|the Martians eventually do decide to destroy the Earth; by then, however, ''humanity'' has colonized space, a lot.}}

* 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.

* 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).

 

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