Doomsday device
A doomsday device is a hypothetical construction — usually a weapon — which could destroy all life on the Earth, or destroy the Earth itself (bringing "doomsday", a term used for the end of planet Earth).
Doomsday devices have been present in literature and art especially in the twentieth century, when advances in science and technology allowed humans to imagine a definite and plausible way of actively destroying the world or all life on it (or at least human life). Many classics in the genre of science fiction take up the theme in this respect, especially The Purple Cloud (1901) by M.P. Shiel in which the accidental release of a chemical gas kills all people on the planet.[1]
After the advent of nuclear weapons, especially hydrogen bombs, they have usually been the dominant components of fictional doomsday devices. RAND strategist Herman Kahn proposed a "Doomsday Machine" in the 1950s which would consist of a computer linked to a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, programmed to detonate them all and bathe the planet in nuclear fallout at the signal of an impending nuclear attack from another nation. Such a scheme, fictional as it was, epitomized for many the extremes of the suicidal logic behind the strategy of mutually assured destruction, and it was famously parodied in the Stanley Kubrick film from 1964, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It is also a main topic of the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in parallel with the species extermination theme. Most such models either rely on the fact that hydrogen bombs can be made arbitrarily large (see Teller-Ulam design) or that they can be "salted" with materials designed to create long-lasting and hazardous fallout (e.g. a cobalt bomb).
In popular culture
Use of this concept has occurred several times in popular entertainment.
- In the film Dr. Strangelove, the Soviet Ambassador, upon learning that the Americans could not call back a bomber set to deliver nuclear weapons inside the Soviet Union, informs the President that Soviet Premier Kissoff had ordered the creation of a doomsday device. The existence of the device hadn't yet been announced, making it useless for its intended purpose of deterring nuclear attack.
- In the Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine, a conical planet killer goes on a planet destroying rampage, its projected path threatening "...the very heart of the Federation". Captain Kirk speculates that the machine was created as a doomsday device, and used, thus destroying its creators and then going on a random path of destruction.
- In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, a doomsday substance called ice-nine is created with the capability to freeze all the water on Earth. The creator of ice-nine is depicted as being willfully negligent of the practical dangers of his research, and it is carelessness in the handling of the substance which causes the Earth to freeze.
- In the novel Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams, the supercomputer Hactar was asked by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax to "create the ultimate weapon." When he asked them what they meant by ultimate, he was told to "look it up in the dictionary", and concluded that they wanted him to destroy the universe. Hactar, reasoning that the known consequences of setting off such a device are worse than any possible consequence of not setting it off, creates a non-functional one.
- In Robert McCammon's novel, Swan Song, the President of the United States, delusional and believing himself God fallen from heaven, decides that evil has won on Earth (after the nuclear holocaust he helped induce) and the planet must therefore be purged using the Talons of Heaven. This concept involves firing a massive payload of nuclear weapons at the poles, knocking the earth off its axis, causing massive icecap melting and subsequent flooding.
- In Futurama, Professor Farnsworth is known to possess several doomsday devices, which (ironically) infrequently come in handy for saving the universe.
- In the video game Halo, the central plot device, Halo, was designed to eradicate all sentient life in the universe.
- In the Matthew Reilly book Temple, a doomsday device consisting of a pair of nuclear warheads and the non-existent element Thyrium is capable of obliterating a large section of earth (Reportedly 1/3 of the Earth's mass). This would knock the planet out of orbit and create a cloud covering the entire planet and would wipe out the world's population.
- In the Discworld story The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, Cohen the Barbarian plans to detonate an explosive called Agatean Thunder Clay at the Hub, to show the gods how annoyed he is with them. Unknown to him, this would disrupt the Discworld's standing magical field, thereby rendering it impossible for it to exist.
- In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the "Alpha-Omega bomb" works by igniting the atmosphere.
- In the Battalion Wars universe, the Solar Empire used something called a "Doomsday Device", which focused the sun's light and heat into a beam, which they used to destroy Xylvania 's Iron Legion.
- In Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, both Death Stars can be seen as doomsday devices as it has a superlaser which can destroy entire planets.
- In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Bao-Dur creates a device called the Mass Shadow Generator. This weapon destroyed entire fleets of spacecraft as its cataclysmic explosions are too strong for anything to survive.
Use of multiple nuclear weapons causing the destruction or virtual destruction of all life on Earth as a type of doomsday scenario has been used in several fictional stories, including Nevil Shute's On the Beach and David Graham's Down to a Sunless Sea.
See also
References
- ^ Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear fear: a history of images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
External links
- The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel hosted by Project Gutenberg.
- "How to destroy the Earth" — humorous page about the difficulty in destroying the entire planet.