this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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True, it would be difficult to completely turn Earth into a lifeless rock, but I think humans are up to the task.
There are plenty of things we can't kill and, in fact, live on things we might use to kill them. Extremophiles that live in environments nothing else can. Bacteria that live off gamma radiation. We would have to dedicate ourselves to ridding all life on purpose to kill everything. We would have to live long enough to be the last things to kill if that was the goal.
Eh I doubt it. Every single nuke ever built combined still doesn't come close to the power of the Chicxulub asteroid (the one that killed the dinosaurs) and even that impact didn't come close to eliminating all life on Earth. Unless someone accidentally compresses a mountain into an artifical black hole or something there probably is no way to wipe out all life on Earth.
Mars was once habitable but lost it's magnetic field, wiping it's atmosphere. Venus was once habitable but taken over by a runaway greenhouse effect.
I'm not saying they ever had life or that we're going to suffer the same fate, but it's definitely possible to wipe a planet clean.
Demagnetization 2024, We Can Get There™
Conservatoves would unironically do this to own the libs.