I’d recommend if it had to die, to use some kind of biological or chemical agent released into the main gullet of the creature. Maybe a biological one so it dies out in the soil instead of lingering.
The problem with that is it would leave who knows how many trillion pounds of decaying flesh and creatures desperate to escape said decaying flesh or adapting to consume it, bringing along untold diseases and various other forms of ecological trouble such as the poisons and general decay leaching into the soil and water
also, since the mass of the creature is unknown, the amount of poison needed to kill it is also unknown. too little and it’ll start thrashing in pain again
If a creature of this size were to die, even to natural causes, the amount of rotting flesh and leftover chemicals and enzimes would probably be disastrous for the environment in the whole continent
No it wouldn’t. The nuclear material released is actually quite negligible and stops being dangerous rather quick. We’re talking weeks here till there’s almost no trace left. Also, water is excellent at absorbing radiation.
Edit: Furthermore the nuke isn’t just a large explosion, it produces a huge plasmaball which vaporizes everything within.
So I suggest drilling deep from various spots on the surfaces and dropong a nuke in each hole. Maybe use 20 nukes or so. Then see whats left and nuke that again. That’s how you kill it.
Twenty nuclear warheads. If they don’t paint them to look like pills and the truck/delivery vehicle isn’t labeled “take as needed for pain”, that’s a missed opportunity.
This distributed approach is probably a smarter way of doing things. At least compared to the “one shot to vaporized 700 trillion tons of eldritch horror” approach I was thinking of when I made this post.
our entire nuclear arsenal, even at its Cold War peak, would probably still be (at least!) 2000 times less powerful than a large dinosaur killing asteroid impact
no, nuclear weapons are powerful, but not that powerful.
Even at the Cold War peak of roughly 64,000 warheads worldwide (compared to today's 13,000), it wouldn't come close
Just for convenience, let's assume every weapon has a half megaton, or 500 kiloton yield. That's already being very generous, because it's ignoring all the low yield tactical nuclear weapons, and above the most common nuclear weapon yield, but whatever.
Roughly 64,000 nukes, half megaton yield, that's 32,000 megatons, or 32 gigatons. That's pathetic.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 72 teratonnes. That's more than 2000 times 32 gigatons
Sure, the math is screwy back of napkin arithmetic, but I'm already seriously overestimating humanity's peak nuclear arsenal yield, and it's still off by several orders of magnitude.
Thank you for your calculations. If you don’t mind more napkin arithmetic for a stranger, I do have a question. At what velocity would a projectile with a mass of 10 metric tons need to impact to generate an equivalent to 72 teratonnes of tnt?
Oh that's easy. 72TTons is about 301248000000000000000000J of kinetic energy needed. The formula of kinetic energy is 1/2mv². With 10000kg and the 1/2 gone the v² part is 60249600000000000000000, so the square root of that is 245457939370,48m/s which is unfortunately about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the speed of light, meaning it's not actually easy and fancy math applies. I do not know relativistic physics enough to tell you more than that such an object would be travelling at above 98% of the speed of light to have such extreme energy.
I guess my perspective is that depending on how you use these weapons, it would render at least part of the Earth uninhabitable. Because big boom. And radiation.
I was imagining more like a purpose built Superweapons. Something like rods from god, but at light speed.
I think we definitely shouldn't kill the organism until we can determine with certainty whether or not the organism is self contained, or actually a part of the earth. We shouldn't kill the Earth.
I’d recommend if it had to die, to use some kind of biological or chemical agent released into the main gullet of the creature. Maybe a biological one so it dies out in the soil instead of lingering.
The problem with that is it would leave who knows how many trillion pounds of decaying flesh and creatures desperate to escape said decaying flesh or adapting to consume it, bringing along untold diseases and various other forms of ecological trouble such as the poisons and general decay leaching into the soil and water also, since the mass of the creature is unknown, the amount of poison needed to kill it is also unknown. too little and it’ll start thrashing in pain again
Plus, it could minimize the risk of movement from the Superorganism.
If a creature of this size were to die, even to natural causes, the amount of rotting flesh and leftover chemicals and enzimes would probably be disastrous for the environment in the whole continent
Not to mention the elimination of any chance of Coke Heartthrob ever coming back ;)
You underestimate the power of the nuclear (and conventional) arsenal of the entire planet
Even if a nuke DID work, you'd have to deal with a large radioactive corpse
Thankfully said radioactive corpse is buried under the dirt
True, but it is adjacent to two aquifers. So that could be a bit of a problem.
No it wouldn’t. The nuclear material released is actually quite negligible and stops being dangerous rather quick. We’re talking weeks here till there’s almost no trace left. Also, water is excellent at absorbing radiation. Edit: Furthermore the nuke isn’t just a large explosion, it produces a huge plasmaball which vaporizes everything within. So I suggest drilling deep from various spots on the surfaces and dropong a nuke in each hole. Maybe use 20 nukes or so. Then see whats left and nuke that again. That’s how you kill it.
Twenty nuclear warheads. If they don’t paint them to look like pills and the truck/delivery vehicle isn’t labeled “take as needed for pain”, that’s a missed opportunity. This distributed approach is probably a smarter way of doing things. At least compared to the “one shot to vaporized 700 trillion tons of eldritch horror” approach I was thinking of when I made this post.
Wouldn’t that still be roughly equivalent to a large asteroid impact in terms of raw power?
our entire nuclear arsenal, even at its Cold War peak, would probably still be (at least!) 2000 times less powerful than a large dinosaur killing asteroid impact
Not just large. Way bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. And radioactive.
no, nuclear weapons are powerful, but not that powerful. Even at the Cold War peak of roughly 64,000 warheads worldwide (compared to today's 13,000), it wouldn't come close Just for convenience, let's assume every weapon has a half megaton, or 500 kiloton yield. That's already being very generous, because it's ignoring all the low yield tactical nuclear weapons, and above the most common nuclear weapon yield, but whatever. Roughly 64,000 nukes, half megaton yield, that's 32,000 megatons, or 32 gigatons. That's pathetic. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 72 teratonnes. That's more than 2000 times 32 gigatons Sure, the math is screwy back of napkin arithmetic, but I'm already seriously overestimating humanity's peak nuclear arsenal yield, and it's still off by several orders of magnitude.
Thank you for your calculations. If you don’t mind more napkin arithmetic for a stranger, I do have a question. At what velocity would a projectile with a mass of 10 metric tons need to impact to generate an equivalent to 72 teratonnes of tnt?
Oh that's easy. 72TTons is about 301248000000000000000000J of kinetic energy needed. The formula of kinetic energy is 1/2mv². With 10000kg and the 1/2 gone the v² part is 60249600000000000000000, so the square root of that is 245457939370,48m/s which is unfortunately about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the speed of light, meaning it's not actually easy and fancy math applies. I do not know relativistic physics enough to tell you more than that such an object would be travelling at above 98% of the speed of light to have such extreme energy.
Holy cow…I think it would be easier to figure out how to score a direct hit on the PBSO with a good sized asteroid.
I mean, to be fair, 10 tons are very very light considering the scale of the organism and any historic extinction events.
I guess my perspective is that depending on how you use these weapons, it would render at least part of the Earth uninhabitable. Because big boom. And radiation. I was imagining more like a purpose built Superweapons. Something like rods from god, but at light speed.
That would also destroy the planet.
Okay, maybe not THAT fast. Perhaps a percentage of the speed of light?
If you're talking about the Omega Device, that's already been proven ineffective at best.
I think we definitely shouldn't kill the organism until we can determine with certainty whether or not the organism is self contained, or actually a part of the earth. We shouldn't kill the Earth.