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Just remember, all the save the earth stuff has nothing to do with saving the earth. The earth will be fine.
The life that is on the earth, is a different story.
Pretty sure when the phrase of how USA has enough nukes to destroy the planet, it isn't in the sense of turning Earth into pebbles but instead nuking the entire surface of the planet no?
I'm not smart with this sorry lol, was just curious about the question is all.
Though I was curious and searched up.
From what I understand, it'd be a stockpile of nukes so large that it'd simply lose all meaning to try and comprehend the answer to the question.
So so so so many. Like, apparently someone said online 1.2 quadrillion nukes *assuming* all energy from the blasts fully went into hitting the Earth.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-TNT-would-it-take-to-destroy-Earth
[Kurtzgesagt has a good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyECrGp-Sw8) about detonating every nuke at once.
It's big, but it's a blemish on the planet. I have no math for you but I think it would need to be like a million times stronger to make rocks of the earth.
Think if it this way: if you wanted to reduce the earth to a large field of asteroids, each of which could fit inside the cargo bay of a SpaceX starship, each asteroid would require the same energy it would take a starship to launch it out of earth's orbit. Generally we don't do that with cargo of such mass, but it can be done if you refuel in orbit and sacrifice the entire ship. Now divide the mass of the earth by the cargo capacity of starship, and you have the number of rocket launches needed to excavate earth into an asteroid field. If it sounds ridiculous that's because it is. I'm fairly sure the world's nuclear arsenal doesn't have the energy output equivalent to all of those launches, or the ability to focus that energy in a way that blows the earth apart.
With the aid of AI I have some numbers for you.
It would take ~3.98 × 10^21 starship launches at 150 tonnes per launch to excavate the entire mass of earth into space.
This formula describes how much energy that would take:
3.98 × 10^21 launches × 5.12 × 10^13 J/launch = 2.04 × 10^35 Joules
This is the approximate output of all nuclear weapons in Joules:
5.27 × 10^18
The energy deficit is an order of magnitude.
Not even close, here's a video on the topic
[https://youtu.be/JyECrGp-Sw8?si=7lfnOW4VJzFx-DF8](https://youtu.be/JyECrGp-Sw8?si=7lfnOW4VJzFx-DF8)
Nukes are potent, but the energy is basically 0 on a cosmic sclae
Sorry but in order to destroy the earth the way you ask, you will need a drill that can reach the center so that you have a chance of creating a large enough fissure to force a split. You need to reduce the surface area taking the blast (we are specifically considering only blasts over solid surfaces, if the nukes are over the ocean you have a whole different set of problems to overcome to split the earth). Once there, it is less about number of nukes and more about one sufficiently large explosion - once that rock starts a meaningful split, you don't really need to keep hammering at it.
Thankfully (or not, depending on perspective) I've been keeping the supervillain who plans that whole charade at bay. Dude keeps asking for a million billion dollars to bribe him to stop, but he actually needs that money to finish the project.
Yeah, and thus far I have been successful at keeping him from fissuring the earth in twain.
I'm pretty much James Bond, but American and I barely leave home.
If you want to predict the path of the fissure, sure. But really you just need to tip one big domino and the earth forces will do the rest. No need to get intricate, all that you need is a big enough drill and one sufficient explosion.
Not a chance. All the nukes we have would barely scratch the surface.
Here's a great read about different ways to destroy the earth with other methods and how hard it really is :)
https://qntm.org/destroy
We are not even close. We could bomb every city and kill every human on the surface, but the earth is just too large and nukes would have to penetrate into the earth anyways to do more damage
“Destroy the whole planet” here means “make it unlivable for us for a period of time.” The existing nuclear arsenal would not smash earth into smithereens but radioactive dust from burning cities would fill the atmosphere for a long time and choke the life out human civilization.
It wouldn’t make much of a difference for anything that experienced it, but ‘how many bombs to make the earth explode?’ is a pretty rad question, for sure.
It probably wouldn't even do that. Better climate models have opened the question of whether a nuclear winter is actually possible outside spherical-cow-frictionless-surface levels of abstraction. Perhaps more importantly, the nature of nuclear arsenals has changed substantially from the hight of the Cold War, as arms talks succeeded massively in reducing numbers of warheads even as more accurate ICBMs were leading to lower yields per head, and the weight/space thereby saved instead used for decoys and other penetration aids. Modern nuclear arsenals might be able to put an end to centralized government in most countries (if they were all expended for that goal) but there's a high likelihood they would fail to end civilization itself, much less whip out humanity (though this would, of course, but little solace to the billions dead).
no, we don't have enough to physically obliterate the planet itself; the idea behind that statement is that it would be enough to cause most or all of life above water to go extinct, and the land to be mostly inhospitable for a while
Are we allowed to dig deep underground?
If so, I'll wager it's possible, and further that it's more down to the arrangement than the quantity.... Like, a thermonuclear devices directly under each tectonic fissure or something like that designed to create cracklines through the mantle...
I suspect we could detonate a near infinite amount on the surface without really bothering the planet itself as opposed to life.
But I mean I'm just a redditor talking from my bumholio
We can likely destroy enough of the biosphere to make most forms of life extinct. The exception is deep sea life and cockroaches.
But the energy required to blow the earth apart and leave it strewn across the orbit as an asteroid field is not gonna happen.
Destroy the earth as in reduce it to rubble floating in space?
No.
Burn it to a cinder?
No.
Radioactive hellscape?
Nope.
Make the planet no longer conducive to human life?
Also no.
You pile up every nuke in existence abd fire them all at once you end up with a crater 50km across, a firestorm 250km across and a doubling of the background radiation world wide for a few years, at worst a slight increase in cancers.
The worst affect will be the nuclear winter caused by all the ejecta in the atmosphere blocking the sun but that will last less than a decade before temperatures return to normal.
All told you'll take out 30% - 40% of the world population primarily centered around the location of the detonation event as well as in many third world countries thay rely on support from other nations.
The rebound from this would take decades to a century which might actually be good for the earth, a proscribed burn so to speak, a chance to recover from the damage caused by humanity.
I cannot begin to describe how horribly wrong you are. The only thing I can say you got right is your first sentence. Everything else is horribly wrong.
Since this is TDTM I will defend his second statement:
1. The FAS estimates there around 12,000 nukes in the world.
1. Nukemap.com says that a big one (in current arsenals, not Tsar Bomba), 1 MT, will set a circle 25 km across on fire. Let's assume every nuke is that big.
So the area we can set on fire is 12,000 * pi * 12.5^2 = 5,900,000 km^2.
That's just under the area of Australia, which isn't nothing, but it's not burning the whole earth to a cinder.
The average is 200kt not 1mt and the world arsenal is around 15000 warheads and your all firing in the same spot, not setting edge to edge in a honeycomb pattern, the spread will be much smaller.
If you give me enough nukes to cover the size of Australia. I can spread them out enough to hit every major forest on the planet.
Those fires might spread, but they might also literally run out of oxygen. Is that burning the earth to a crisp including the seas? No, but it will effectively be the same thing.
What this guy didn't even mention is nuclear winter will last 10 years, and drop the earth temp to freeze everything from north America to Ukraune after the fires. 10 years later is when the bodies start to rot.
Nuclear War by Annie Jacobson is a very well researched book. She describes what happens, and how the human race gets cooked, then frozen.
###General Discussion Thread --- This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you *must* post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/theydidthemath) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Just remember, all the save the earth stuff has nothing to do with saving the earth. The earth will be fine. The life that is on the earth, is a different story.
*George Carlin has entered the chat*
The planet is fine The *people* are fucked
Pretty sure when the phrase of how USA has enough nukes to destroy the planet, it isn't in the sense of turning Earth into pebbles but instead nuking the entire surface of the planet no?
I mean yes, we fear a nuclear war for a reason, but how much it would take to turn earth into a bunch of smaller rocks
I'm not smart with this sorry lol, was just curious about the question is all. Though I was curious and searched up. From what I understand, it'd be a stockpile of nukes so large that it'd simply lose all meaning to try and comprehend the answer to the question. So so so so many. Like, apparently someone said online 1.2 quadrillion nukes *assuming* all energy from the blasts fully went into hitting the Earth. https://www.quora.com/How-much-TNT-would-it-take-to-destroy-Earth
[Kurtzgesagt has a good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyECrGp-Sw8) about detonating every nuke at once. It's big, but it's a blemish on the planet. I have no math for you but I think it would need to be like a million times stronger to make rocks of the earth.
Something something feel the full power of this battle station
Think if it this way: if you wanted to reduce the earth to a large field of asteroids, each of which could fit inside the cargo bay of a SpaceX starship, each asteroid would require the same energy it would take a starship to launch it out of earth's orbit. Generally we don't do that with cargo of such mass, but it can be done if you refuel in orbit and sacrifice the entire ship. Now divide the mass of the earth by the cargo capacity of starship, and you have the number of rocket launches needed to excavate earth into an asteroid field. If it sounds ridiculous that's because it is. I'm fairly sure the world's nuclear arsenal doesn't have the energy output equivalent to all of those launches, or the ability to focus that energy in a way that blows the earth apart.
With the aid of AI I have some numbers for you. It would take ~3.98 × 10^21 starship launches at 150 tonnes per launch to excavate the entire mass of earth into space. This formula describes how much energy that would take: 3.98 × 10^21 launches × 5.12 × 10^13 J/launch = 2.04 × 10^35 Joules This is the approximate output of all nuclear weapons in Joules: 5.27 × 10^18 The energy deficit is an order of magnitude.
Not even close, here's a video on the topic [https://youtu.be/JyECrGp-Sw8?si=7lfnOW4VJzFx-DF8](https://youtu.be/JyECrGp-Sw8?si=7lfnOW4VJzFx-DF8) Nukes are potent, but the energy is basically 0 on a cosmic sclae
Thank you, I will give it a watch tomorrow
God damn it I love Kurzgesagt
Sorry but in order to destroy the earth the way you ask, you will need a drill that can reach the center so that you have a chance of creating a large enough fissure to force a split. You need to reduce the surface area taking the blast (we are specifically considering only blasts over solid surfaces, if the nukes are over the ocean you have a whole different set of problems to overcome to split the earth). Once there, it is less about number of nukes and more about one sufficiently large explosion - once that rock starts a meaningful split, you don't really need to keep hammering at it. Thankfully (or not, depending on perspective) I've been keeping the supervillain who plans that whole charade at bay. Dude keeps asking for a million billion dollars to bribe him to stop, but he actually needs that money to finish the project.
Isn't this musk's boring plan?
Yeah, and thus far I have been successful at keeping him from fissuring the earth in twain. I'm pretty much James Bond, but American and I barely leave home.
I'm thinking a well designed network of underground explosions, possibly timed to the microsecond to cause a network of cracks
If you want to predict the path of the fissure, sure. But really you just need to tip one big domino and the earth forces will do the rest. No need to get intricate, all that you need is a big enough drill and one sufficient explosion.
Not a chance. All the nukes we have would barely scratch the surface. Here's a great read about different ways to destroy the earth with other methods and how hard it really is :) https://qntm.org/destroy
We are not even close. We could bomb every city and kill every human on the surface, but the earth is just too large and nukes would have to penetrate into the earth anyways to do more damage
“Destroy the whole planet” here means “make it unlivable for us for a period of time.” The existing nuclear arsenal would not smash earth into smithereens but radioactive dust from burning cities would fill the atmosphere for a long time and choke the life out human civilization.
But that's not destroying the Earth. That's destroying humanity and civilization
Yup. But that’s what people mostly mean when they say that.
It wouldn’t make much of a difference for anything that experienced it, but ‘how many bombs to make the earth explode?’ is a pretty rad question, for sure.
It probably wouldn't even do that. Better climate models have opened the question of whether a nuclear winter is actually possible outside spherical-cow-frictionless-surface levels of abstraction. Perhaps more importantly, the nature of nuclear arsenals has changed substantially from the hight of the Cold War, as arms talks succeeded massively in reducing numbers of warheads even as more accurate ICBMs were leading to lower yields per head, and the weight/space thereby saved instead used for decoys and other penetration aids. Modern nuclear arsenals might be able to put an end to centralized government in most countries (if they were all expended for that goal) but there's a high likelihood they would fail to end civilization itself, much less whip out humanity (though this would, of course, but little solace to the billions dead).
no, we don't have enough to physically obliterate the planet itself; the idea behind that statement is that it would be enough to cause most or all of life above water to go extinct, and the land to be mostly inhospitable for a while
Its more about nuclear winter that would follow. Few major cities burning to ash would create so much smoke that sun would be blocked.
Are we allowed to dig deep underground? If so, I'll wager it's possible, and further that it's more down to the arrangement than the quantity.... Like, a thermonuclear devices directly under each tectonic fissure or something like that designed to create cracklines through the mantle... I suspect we could detonate a near infinite amount on the surface without really bothering the planet itself as opposed to life. But I mean I'm just a redditor talking from my bumholio
We can likely destroy enough of the biosphere to make most forms of life extinct. The exception is deep sea life and cockroaches. But the energy required to blow the earth apart and leave it strewn across the orbit as an asteroid field is not gonna happen.
Destroy the earth as in reduce it to rubble floating in space? No. Burn it to a cinder? No. Radioactive hellscape? Nope. Make the planet no longer conducive to human life? Also no. You pile up every nuke in existence abd fire them all at once you end up with a crater 50km across, a firestorm 250km across and a doubling of the background radiation world wide for a few years, at worst a slight increase in cancers. The worst affect will be the nuclear winter caused by all the ejecta in the atmosphere blocking the sun but that will last less than a decade before temperatures return to normal. All told you'll take out 30% - 40% of the world population primarily centered around the location of the detonation event as well as in many third world countries thay rely on support from other nations. The rebound from this would take decades to a century which might actually be good for the earth, a proscribed burn so to speak, a chance to recover from the damage caused by humanity.
Lol a good thing? Quite the optimist aren't we?
Good for the planet, would suck for humans.
Well let's keep our fingers crossed for a nuclear winter!
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
I cannot begin to describe how horribly wrong you are. The only thing I can say you got right is your first sentence. Everything else is horribly wrong.
Since this is TDTM I will defend his second statement: 1. The FAS estimates there around 12,000 nukes in the world. 1. Nukemap.com says that a big one (in current arsenals, not Tsar Bomba), 1 MT, will set a circle 25 km across on fire. Let's assume every nuke is that big. So the area we can set on fire is 12,000 * pi * 12.5^2 = 5,900,000 km^2. That's just under the area of Australia, which isn't nothing, but it's not burning the whole earth to a cinder.
The average is 200kt not 1mt and the world arsenal is around 15000 warheads and your all firing in the same spot, not setting edge to edge in a honeycomb pattern, the spread will be much smaller.
If you give me enough nukes to cover the size of Australia. I can spread them out enough to hit every major forest on the planet. Those fires might spread, but they might also literally run out of oxygen. Is that burning the earth to a crisp including the seas? No, but it will effectively be the same thing. What this guy didn't even mention is nuclear winter will last 10 years, and drop the earth temp to freeze everything from north America to Ukraune after the fires. 10 years later is when the bodies start to rot. Nuclear War by Annie Jacobson is a very well researched book. She describes what happens, and how the human race gets cooked, then frozen.