List of planet killers

In science fiction, a planet killer, planet buster, or similar variations on that meaning, is a fictional object or device capable of either destroying an entire planet or otherwise rendering it uninhabitable^[1] - a variety of a doomsday device. Examples of such devices include the Death Star from the Star Wars film franchise, the "Doomsday Machine" seen in the original Star Trek television series or the atomic powered stone burners from Frank Herbert's Dune books.

The term "planet-buster" has also come into use with reference to major natural disasters such as significant asteroid impact events.^[2]

Contents 1 Overview 2 Planet killers in fiction 2.1 Film and television 2.1.1 Andromeda 2.1.2 Babylon 5 2.1.3 Lexx 2.1.4 DC Comics 2.1.5 Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis 2.1.6 Star Trek 2.1.7 Star Wars 2.1.8 Other film and television 2.2 Literature 2.2.1 Dune universe 2.2.2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2.2.3 Other literature 2.3 Games 2.3.1 Halo series 2.3.2 Sins of a Solar Empire 2.3.3 Warhammer 40,000 2.3.4 Other games 2.4 Anime and manga 2.4.1 Dragon Ball Z 2.4.2 Kiddy Grade 2.4.3 Sailor Moon 2.4.4 Gall Force 2.4.5 Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love 2.4.6 "Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers)" 2.4.7 Eureka seveN 2.5 Other media 3 Secondary literature 4 Science journalism 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Overview

Planet killers function in a variety of ways depending on the series. Weapons such as the Death Star and the titular ship in Lexx use a directed energy weapon capable of obliterating a planet in moments. In the game Spore, the planet killer is an antimatter bomb that is inserted in the center of the planet, causing the planet's center gravity to give away and split into countless fragments. Other weapons, such as the Shadow Planet Killer in Babylon 5 and Covenant warships in the Halo series, render a planet uninhabitable. The Shadow Planet Killer does so by firing missiles which burrow into the planet's core and detonate, causing planet-wide volcanic activity which renders the planet lifeless. Covenant warships use plasma weapons to superheat the surface of the planet creating a situation where the planet is "glassed". The crust is turned into a glass like substance rendering it uninhabitable. In Star Blazers, missiles that can destroy a planet (and even a star) with a single hit exist.

Some devices can destroy entire star systems. Nova bombs in Andromeda, the Sun Crusher and Centerpoint Station in the Star Wars novels, and Dr. Tolian Soran's trilithium torpedo in Star Trek Generations, are all capable of causing a supernova, obliterating every planet in the solar system.

Planet killers in fiction

Film and television

Andromeda

• All Commonwealth warships were equipped with a limited stock of "Nova-bomb" warheads for their missiles, one of which is sufficient to cause a star to nova, thus destroying its planets.

Babylon 5

• Babylon 5: The Lost Tales - Centauri Superweapons, hinted at by a dream sequence set 30 years into the future that Sheridan experiences. While only NYC is destroyed in the scene, it is implied that all of Earth gets wiped out.
• Shadow Planet Killer
• Vorlon Planet Killer
• Mass Drivers used by the Centauri against the Narn homeworld in the episode The Long, Twilight Struggle
• Starships and orbital platforms were supposedly also capable of laying waste to a planet, such as the Shadow Battlecrab, a Minbari Sharlin Cruiser, the Narn-Drazi fleet that leveled Centauri Prime, and the Global Orbital platforms in Earth orbit.

Lexx

• The Lexx - Capable of entirely destroying planets.
• The Foreshadow - predecessor of the Megashadow. Reduces the surface of Brunnis-2 into molten slag, using a large scale version of the "Black Pack" weapon often seen in the LEXX series.
• The Megashadow - Annihilates an Ostral-B asteroid base and the surrounding field in a single shot.
• Mantrid Drones - They consume all forms of matter (including planets) to replicate themselves.

DC Comics

• In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the Quantum Eigenstate Device (QED) is a planet-killing or possibly universe-killing weapon.
• Most cosmic beings and even some heroes or villains have the power to destroy a planet.

Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis

• A tainted Zero Point Module can explode with enough energy to destroy a portion of a solar system.^[3]
• Project Arcturus, an abandoned Ancient project capable of extracting energy from the Stargate universe, would create exotic particles with unpredictable properties and would overload to actually destroy approximately 5/6 of a solar system.
• The Stargates themselves are composed of Naqahdah, and, if caused to detonate, would cause considerable damage.
  • Anubis's Ancient weapon that charges a Stargate powerfully enough that it explodes.
  • A wormhole passing through a star is capable of introducing super-heavy elements into it, thus destabilizing fusion processes and changing, possibly catastrophically, the climates of planets orbiting it.
  • P3W-451 has fallen into a black hole; an in-bound wormhole to its stargate propagates the gravitational influence back to the dialing gate. Initially this caused time distortion effects near the gate, but as P3W-451 got closer to the black hole objects were pulled into the gate, as of Exodus a gate dialing from a star would exert such a pull that it could not only remove matter from the star, but do so fast enough to cause it to go supernova. The effect of dialing from a planet at this point was not described.
• The Dakara Superweapon in the Temple of Dakara can return all matter in its range to its component molecules. Its range is normally limited to Dakara and its surrounding space, however the wave will propagate through the wormhole of an active Stargate (unimpeded by either iris or Goa'uld shield technology) and expand on the far side to cover the planet's surface, but unlike Dakara itself, the wave will not propagate into orbit. Ba'al however modified the Dakara Stargate, using a 'hack' of the DHD's correlative update function to dial every Stargate in the Galaxy simultaneously, turning the weapon from a strategic threat to a Galactic scale superweapon against all planets within the Milky way Stargate network.
• A Tauri Mark 9 Naqahdah-enhanced nuclear weapon has a "Multi Gigaton" yield.
• Anubis's mothership, powered with the Eye of Ra as well as four other "eyes", in "Full Circle"
• Goa'uld System Lord Sokar used a fleet of Goa'uld Hatak Class Motherships to terraform the moon Ne'tu to serve as his prison.
• The Asgard managed to destroy Halla by causing Halla's sun to become a black hole.
• The Asgard destroyed their home planet, to commit mass suicide, by unknown means.
• The Replicators have spread across the surface of an entire planet and converted everything on it into replicator blocks.
• The Ori Priors can turn planets into Point Singularities (Black Holes) to power their supergates, and did so twice.
• The Tok'ra have shown to possess Thermonuclear Induction explosives capable of burrowing to a planet's core and igniting a reaction to which the planet would explode; as shown when they used it to destroy Netu. "The Devil You Know"
• Gadmeer terraforming ship - see Genesis device below.

Star Trek

• Genesis Device (a terraforming project; not really intended as a weapon but if used against an existing biosphere it will destroy it in favor of a new one)
• Species 8472 starships
• The Doomsday Machine
• Krenim temporal incursion ship: capable of erasing entire civilizations as if they never existed
• General Order 24. Starfleet order for a starship to destroy all life on an entire planet
• Planetcracker weapons and sunkiller bombs (Diane Duane's novels)
• Reman warbird Scimitar: Emits a specific type of radiation that will kill every living thing on a planet in seconds
• Son'a collector (intended to strip radiation surrounding a planet thus rendering it uninhabitable)
• The Crystalline Entity that would feed by stripping planets of all organic life.
• The Xindi superweapon
• Tox Uthat (A weapon from the future that would stop all fusion operations in a sun)
• Trilithium torpedo. Used by Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek Generations to stop all the fusion reactions in a star, causing it to go nova, much like the Tox Uthat.
• Nomad. A small spacecraft resulting from the combination of two unrelated craft that was able to "sterilize" entire planetary populations (The Changeling).
• Red Matter. A material capable of creating black holes. It could be used as a planet-killer by being injected into a planet's core, creating a black hole that imploded the planet by consuming it from the core outward. Red Matter is also potentially strong enough to consume a star. An example of a ship that used this is Spock's ship, the Logical Jellyfish. The Narada also used the supply on Spock's ship when they captured it. (Star Trek (film)).

Star Wars

• Centerpoint station (Expanded Universe)
• Galaxy Gun (EU)
• Mass Shadow Generator (EU)
• Eclipse-class Star Destroyer (EU)
• Sovereign-class Star Destroyer (EU)
• Sun Crusher (EU)
• World Devastator (EU)
• The Death Stars
• Darth Nihilus (EU)
• The Old Republic/Imperial order Base Delta Zero, also known as BDZ (EU)
• Yo'gand's Core (EU)

Other film and television

• In John Carpenter's sci-fi film Dark Star, intelligent and philosophically capable "Exponential Thermostellar Bombs" are used to destroy "unstable planets" which might threaten future colonization.
• In the Mel Brooks feature film spoof Spaceballs, the Spaceballs' starship, Spaceball One, is capable of transforming into "Mega Maid", a robot maid in the shape of The Statue of Liberty holding a giant vacuum cleaner, which can suck the air from an entire planet and thus make it uninhabitable.
• In the film The Chronicles of Riddick, the Necromongers cull potential recruits from planets and kill all those who remain on the surface by executing their "Final Protocol", a series of gravity-based weapons that flatten everything on the surface of the planet, save for the series of monuments that produce them.
• Hugo Drax's space station in Moonraker, which launches poisonous globes that would have wiped out mankind.
• The Pirate Planet in Doctor Who. Additionally, the Daleks and TARDISes have both been shown to be capable of moving planets, and would thus be capable of relocating a planet into a star, nova, black hole, or other inhospitable location that would destroy it. Daleks have also been stated to have been responsible for the destruction of The Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, though at other points in the series the impression is given that the world has, rather, been removed from reality. In Planet of the Dead, the Swarm is shown to annihilate all life on a planet's surface. In The End of the World, technology is shown holding the Earth together and preventing the sun from exploding, and thus the Earth is destroyed simply by deactivating this technology. In various episodes, The Doctor and his companions manage to stop threats that would destroy the Earth or other planets, with the indication that those threats are valid.
• "Q Bomb" from Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
• Unicron, a robotic, predatory planet from the animated feature film, The Transformers: The Movie. Unicron is a rarity among the Planet Killers on this list in that he is one of the few which is sentient and can act and think for himself.
• In the Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot," Fry blows up a planet with a planet blowing-up machine. Also in Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, a weapon is used in a duel between Bender and another robot Calculon called a "Planetary Annihilator". Throughout there is also numerous references to Professor Farnsworth's doomsday devices which are hinted at being powerful enough to destroy planets or more.
• In the British sci-fi series The Tomorrow People, an alien race known as the Thargons have a weapon known as a "Ripper Ray" which is allegedly capable of destroying a planet.
• In the Kurt Russell film Soldier, one portable explosive device nicknamed a Planet Killers is used, devastating the planet.
• In the Roger Corman film Battle Beyond the Stars, the evil Sador's mothership has a planet killing superweapon called the Stellar Converter, which seems to have the effect of superheating the core of the planet causing a delayed explosion where it incinerates from the inside/out.
• In the TV series Earth: Final Conflict, the Jaridians have a planet killer and have destroyed thousands of Taelon-occupied planets including their homeworld. The video archive of all the planets destroyed one after another is seen by William Boone but at the time he doesn't understand what it is until the circumstances are explained to him later by Da'an.
• In the science fiction feature film The Core, Project DESTINI was designed as a tactical weapon, but had the unforeseen effect of ceasing the rotation of the Earth's magnetic core, causing catastrophe, and threatening to end all life on Earth, unless the rotation could be restarted.
• In the science fiction feature film Men in Black II, Serlena's ship is seen making vengeful blasts on searched planets, causing an icy one to shatter and another to implode.
• Several attacks used in the manga/anime franchise Dragon Ball, such as the Death Ball technique as used by Frieza to destroy Planet Vegeta, are capable of destroying a planet.
• The Displacement Engine in the TV series Farscape is a device which employs a wormhole to draw a large mass of fusing plasma from the core of a star, and then deploys it against a target. The device is described as being able to destroy a solar system.
• A major plot of the series Farscape is that the knowledge of wormholes contained in the head of John Crichton can be used to create a planet-killing weapon; in Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars Crichton finally builds and activates such a weapon to show that it is much worse; it is in fact a galaxy-killer. Under threat of everyone being consumed by the weapon, he convinces the Peacekeepers and Scarrans to pursue peace negotiations in return for him turning it off.
• The Hand of Omega in the TV series Doctor Who can be used to destroy planets, as demonstrated on the Dalek homeworld Skaro.
• The Osterhagen Key allows UNIT to destroy the world in The Stolen Earth on Doctor Who.
• In the German TV series Raumpatrouille, a weapon called Overkill was used to destroy an object the size of a planetoid. The explosion seems to be strong enough to destroy a planet as well.
• Blue-colored bomb with small red spheres floating around inside. Consisting of a 3-dimensional matter shell and an 9th-dimensional matter inside. Featured in Supernova (2000).
• In the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove, the Doomsday Machine.
• The Drej Mothership in the animated feature film Titan A.E., destroyed the planet Earth.
• In the French animated TV series Once Upon a Time... Space, the androids of the planet Yama use ships that connect themselves to form a much larguer one, that fires a laser with enough firepower to destroy a planet.
• In Spaced Invaders the D.O.D. (Doughnut Of Destruction) is an ring-shaped device which the aliens claim would destroy Earth but leave them unharmed as they would be in the center of the blast. Upon activation the device fails to detonate, but instead falls apart having been improperly assembled.
• The Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator In the classic Bugs Bunny short Haredevil Hare in 1948. Marvin the Martian wanted to use it to blow up Earth because, as he said, "It obstructs my view of Venus". The explosive was in the form of a small red stick that resembled Dynamite that was screwed into a large telescope-like machine.
• The 'Sun Harvester' in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This is hidden inside one of the pyramids in Egypt and uses the Matrix to power up, destroying the sun to turn it into energon.
• In the Tokusatsu Kaiju Film Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster, King Ghidorah attacked Venus (Mars on the English dub), leaving the planet uninhabitable. A variant version of King Ghidorah from the Rebirth of Mothra film trilogy sees the creature wiping out all dinosaurs on Earth, effectively acting as a Planet Killer in this respect, though life returns to the planet, and is eventually dominated by humanity. King Ghidorah. like Unicron (listed above), stands out from others on this list for being a living creature, something few other planet killers on this list have in common with it.

Literature

Dune universe

• Obliterators used by Honored Matres in Frank Herbert's Chapterhouse: Dune (1985) and later sequels by other authors are capable of combusting the entire atmosphere of a planet, and ultimately its full surface.
• Stone burners, a type of nuclear weapon which could potentially destroy a planet by burning into and destroying a planet's core.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

• Vogon Constructor Fleets

Vogon civil services are not only able to demolish entire planets, but have means and cause to do so regularly (to create and maintain hyperspace by-passes). The Earth falls victim to one such fleet in the beginning of the story to make way for a hyperspace expressway.

The radio and book versions of the story refer to demolition beams, though the mechanism is not shown distinctly in the 2005 film.

There is also the ultimate weapon designed by Hactar (a giant space-borne computer). It is a very small bomb that when activated will join the heart of every major sun with the heart of every other major sun turning the universe into one gigantic hyperspatial supernova. The weapon was designed for a race of extinct aliens but was taken up again by the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit so as to wipe out all other life in the universe and permit them to be the only remaining inhabitants.

Other literature

• The Inhibitor machines from Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series of novels, were capable of consuming worlds over time to convert to copies of themselves, or to create weapons capable of utilizing stars to destroy planets e.g. venting stellar core material in a collimated beam to burn away planetary crusts. In the same series, the "Greenfly" machines, developed by humans as terraformers, instead go rogue and start eating planets by reducing them to their atoms and rebuilding them into more such machines, as well as numerous domes filled with vegetation.
• The Spacer nuclear reaction intensifier in Isaac Asimov's Robots and Empire (1985)^[4]
• Stephen Baxter's Moonseed: a virus-like microscopic object (or substance made from it) that transforms substances into more copies of itself - and thus consumes Venus and then the Earth by doing so. (Baxter has also employed geomagnetic storms (see Sunstorm) and larger universal constructors (see Evolution) as planet killers.)
• In Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, the Xelee have a handgun-sized weapon capable of destroying stars and neutron stars. Also, at one period, the Xeelee built giant dyson shells around every single star in the Milky way, causing life around those stars to cook to death.
• The glass clock built in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Thief of Time, was effectively a doomsday device. Although its intended effect was to permanently freeze time on an entire world, rather than outright destroying it.
• The Neutronium Alchemist (Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy)
• Quantumbusters in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga
• At least six methods in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman saga:
  1. "super-atomic bombs"
  2. rendering a planet "loose" (inertialess) and directing it into a star
  3. a "nutcracker", maneuvering two loose planets to crush a third
  4. a "negasphere," an antimatter planet^[5]
  5. "Nth space planets" from other dimensions which travel at superluminal speeds and can be used to ram planets or stars (creating supernovas) - there was even the worrying possibility that these could cause the Big Crunch in zero time
  6. a "sunbeam", a way of concentrating most of a sun's energy output into a narrow beam—this one a defensive-only weapon against nutcrackers and negaspheres
  • Of these, the Nth-space planet is considered the most lethal as its speed and inter-dimensional nature leaves no means to defend against it; this knowledge precipitates the final battle in Children of the Lens.
• Device Ultimate in The Xenocide Mission
• In Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the seven suns, the ongoing war between the Faeros and Hydrogues see entire suns having their cores frozen.
• In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, the MD (Molecular Disruption) Device, or "Little Doctor", generates a field inside in which it is impossible for atoms to coexist in a molecule. The field propagates in a chain reaction, and essentially destroys all matter until it reaches pure space. This was intended for ship to ship combat, but was eventually used to destroy an entire planet.
• In E. E. Smith's The Skylark of Space series various planet-killers are used or discussed. Throwing planets and moons out of orbit, incredibly high-yield atomic or copper bombs, near-instantaneous dematerialization of physical objects and the teleporting of close to fifty billion stars in order to wipe out a Galaxy-wide alien civilization are all used.
• In Greg Bear's The Forge of God, alien aggressors inject two high-mass weapons made of neutronium and antineutronium into the Earth which orbit the Earth's core until they meet and annihilate, destroying the planet.
• L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth (1982) features a device^[6] which, when activated, causes all matter it touches to break down into its constituent molecules. This device was used on a moon, which was consumed faster than ships based on that moon could launch.
• In the Gor novel series by John Norman, specifically Tribesmen of Gor, the alien Kurii deploy a weapon, apparently housed in a small space craft, to the eponymous planet. If it had been put to use, it would have to have rendered the planet uninhabitable not only to humans, but also to the Priest-Kings, who were sheltered deep inside a mountain range.
• Nova Bombs (Starship Troopers)
• Relativistic projectiles (Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski's The Killing Star)
• The Electron Pump (Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves). Not precisely a weapon per se; the destruction it produces is a side effect (albeit one the creators are aware of and consider acceptable, since it will also produce a great deal of usable energy).
• The Dahak-class Planetoid-of-the-Line (David Weber's Heirs of Empire trilogy)
• Two of David Weber's books; The Armageddon Inheritance, and The Shiva Option, feature inhabited planets destroyed by the impact of asteroids or moons on deliberately modified intersecting orbits.
• S.T.A.R Platforms (The Blank Horizon), originally used for faster than light communication by artificially generating a molecule-sized wormhole, are capable of focusing over 1000 km square of a stars surface output into a beam a little over 2 cm wide, reaching temperatures in excess of 4.2 billion degrees, which could theoretically cut a planet apart and combust its atmosphere. This is never put into practice however, as the platforms are self-destructed to prevent them from being captured and used against their creators.
• In the Looking Glass series by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor, the alien Dreen possess an explosive powerful enough to destroy planets, and the alien black box starship drive will generate a field capable of destroying entire star systems if exposed to high voltage electricity.
• The Demolio is a bomb which can shatter planets in Brian Herbert's Timeweb Chronicles.
• The Supernova (Matthew Reilly's Temple)
• Arkon-Bombs from the Perry Rhodan Books "ignite" all matter near it to burn away in a fission like effect. This can not be stopped but it is not very fast, giving the chance to evacuate the planet.
• Ice-nine in the novel Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut is a solid form of water at ambient temperature. It causes the end of the earth when some of it falls into the ocean, causing a chain reaction that transforms all the water on Earth into ice-nine.
• Quark bombs in the novel Lord from the Planet Earth by Sergey Lukyanenko. A group of radical cultists from another planet wanted to destroy Earth with a quark bomb, but are foiled by the protagonists.
• The Q-bomb, a prototype doomsday device that could destroy the world if triggered in The Mouse That Roared, a 1955 novel by Irish American writer Leonard Wibberley.
• In Chris Walley's Lamb Among the Star novels, a polyvalent fusion bomb is capable of rendering a planet inhospitable due to radiation if detonated in a solar system. Project Daybreak was intended to inject one into the core of a star, with an estimated blast radius of several dozen light-years.
• In M. Andrew Sprong's book Haley Cork and the Blue Door two forms of planet killers are employed. In one case the Enemy uses an anti-mercury bomb to destroy half of the planet's population in order to blind the sensors of its guardian moon. In another, Haley, as a personified biomechanical weapon, teleports billions of copies of herself using quantum foam technology to the same exact location in order to convert herself into a blackhole and destroy the Enemy's planetary armada.

Games

Halo series

• UNSC NOVA Bomb (a group of nukes clustered around a core that forces the fissionable material together, magnifying the explosion)

• Covenant Warships (starships equipped with plasma weapons used to vitrify (commonly called glassing) the surface of a planet)

The Halo installations themselves only kill sentient life, leaving planets and their biospheres-as well as any creature without sufficient biomass to support The Flood-otherwise intact.

Sins of a Solar Empire

• Novalith Cannon (the TEC's super weapon), while does not destroy a planet, can wipe out an unprotected colony in one shot. even the best-fortified do not survive the second round.

Warhammer 40,000

• Abaddon the Despoiler's ship, Planet Killer destroys planets through a concentrated beam that bores through a planet's crust causing a catastrophic eruption of planetary material.
• C'tan (the Necron's Gods)
• Necron Fleets
• Tyranid Hive Fleets
• The Imperium's means of carrying out an order of Exterminatus, including:
  • Virus Bombs. These contain a mutating virus which cause basic chemical bonds in organic and some non-organic materials to break, causing these materials to "liquify".
  • Cyclonic Torpedoes
  • Orbital Bombardment
• One Blackstone Fortress can destroy a planet
• Three Blackstone Fortress or more can destroy a star

Other games

• Hammer of Dawn in the Gears of war Series could wipe out the entire civilization with a few shot.
• Khaak Mothership (X²: The Threat)
• Heartless (Kingdom Hearts series) (Actually a race of creatures that devour, not only the hearts of men, but also of worlds, thus destroying them)
• Mycon Deep children (Star Control 2)
• The Omega System (Xenosaga)
• Apocalypse-class Interplanetary Missiles (StarCraft)
• Tiberium in the Command & Conquer franchise slowly eats the earth turning it into tiberium.
• Atmospheric deprivation missiles in Homeworld are used by the Taiidan (or Kushan, depending on the player's choice of race), while (unknown to them) the Mothership was held up by raiders on the outskirts of the system. Afterwards, the northern hemisphere was blackened and fires were visible from high orbit. In Homeworld 2, the main antagonists (the Vaygr) attempt to use similar technology in the final mission - one of the mission's objectives is to intercept the missiles before they reach their target. However, the planet is not 'killed' after one missile strike; each missile kills approximately half of the current surviving population, and the mission is failed if too many slip by (it takes approximately 5 to fully depopulate the planet). The T-MAT Motherships and the Progenitor ship, the Sajuuk, are also considered as Planet Killers.
• Black Sun (Supreme Commander), an extremely powerful laser weapon that utilizes a gate network to target and burn multiple planets in a single firing. Fired from the Black Sun facility located in Hawaii.
• Mechanoid motherships (Rifts)
• Jenova in Final Fantasy VII, a parasitic being which drains life from any planet that it lands on. Described by Vincent Valentine as being "Heaven's Dark Arbiter."^[7]
• Meteor (Final Fantasy VII); it should be noted that the intention of its caller in the game required the Planet to survive.
• Protoss Warships (StarCraft)
• Shivan Juggernaut Sathanas could, as a group, create a gigantic ripple in the subspace field surrounding a star, causing the star to become unstable and go nova, ostensibily destroying all planets in the system.(FreeSpace 2)
• Shivan Super Destroyer Lucifer used three "flux cannons", which are more popularly known as "beams", to obilterate the surface of an entire planet, rendering it invulnerable. However, in the cutscene, the Lucifer used only one, which could release an expansive blast which could burn away a small fraction of a planet. (Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War)
• Star Generator (Space Quest 1)
• Stellar Converters (Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares), plasma cannons of immense size and power that are capable of tearing straight through virtually anything in the line of fire.
• The Kilrathi Dreadnought Sivar (Wing Commander: The Secret Missions)
• TCS Behemoth and the Temblor Bomb (Wing Commander III)
• Terror Star, a parody of the Death Star (although a fully funtional star killer)from Galactic Civilizations
• The "Iron Helix" (used to destroy Calliope if you fail the mission)
• The "Nova Bomb" in X-COM: Interceptor - this was a missile carried on fighters which, rather than being used against a planet directly, was fired at the star inside the system. According to in-game details, the Nova Bomb slowly accelerates to light speed and burrows itself into the core, causing the star to go supernova, completely destroying the whole system. After the Doomsday Weapon built by the aliens is located (on the other side of a black hole), the player is told that it can only be destroyed with a Nova Bomb. The technology was considered so dangerous the scientific community asked for all knowledge of the bomb to be stricken from records so it would not fall into the wrong hands.
• The "Weak nuclear force decoupler" from Perfect Dark (Nintendo 64)
• The Space Colony ARK's Eclipse Cannon from Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog
• The Utwig Bomb (Star Control 2)
• The Alphacore (Omega Boost)
• The Ancient Planetary Bombardment Platforms (Homeworld 2)
• The Biologic Space Labs research station in Metroid Fusion (Game Boy Advance) is equipped with a self-destruct system capable of destroying a planet within its blast radius. In addition, the planet Zebes was equipped with a planetary self-destruct mechanism in Super Metroid (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
• The Black Egg and Mulligan artifacts (Starflight)
• The Crest of Annihilation (Star Ocean: The Second Story) (this device completely obliterates a planet, but it is allegedly powerful enough to wipe out the entire known universe)
• The Death Egg from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic & Knuckles, a parody of the Death Star and a caricature of Dr. Robotnik. Armed with two ion cannons (supposedly) forming the "eyes" on the "face", it is damaged and repaired throughout the early Sonic the Hedgehog series.
• The Sa-Matra from Star Control 2.
• The Galactic Implosion Device (Total Annihilation)
• The 'PlanetBuster Maximus' in the video game Ratchet & Clank, a skyscraper-sized bomb "capable of reducing an entire planet to subatomic particles". There was another device named 'The DePlanetizer', referred to as "The most powerful laser ever invented". It consisted of a giant football field-sized platform with a large rotating laser cannon on the bottom and a giant red button on the top. It served as an arena during the final fight with Chairman Drek.
• The 'RYNO4ever in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction was a weapon so dangerous it was made illegal for sales.
• The Ragnarok space station is capable of destroying anything off of the face of the Earth. (Mega Man Zero)
• The Moon Dagger from Terminal Velocity. This largue warship used a huge missile that cycled on the target a Fussion Transference Wave, whose effects are described as similar to what a sawed-off shotgun causes to a human.
• The trih xeem in the Marathon Trilogy. Name literally means, "early nova."
• The Void (Super Paper Mario) (this consumes worlds completely, leaving bleak, endless white plains in their place)
• Vegnagun in (Final Fantasy X-2) can be seen instigating the destruction of Spira in a "bad ending".
• Smoke's Destroy-The-Earth fatality and Grey-Goo ending (Mortal Kombat)
• Planet Busters of (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) destructive power ranges from destroying a city to a continent depending on their power source. When used, these weapons increased the chance of the planet's native life seeking to annihilate humanity. In the novelizations, four Gravitational singularity powered Planet Busters used by the Believer's trigger such an event.
• Cannon Seed (Galaxian 3)
• Sorcery Globe (Star Ocean: The Second Story) disrupts a planets 'Expel's' orbit and causes it to crash into Energy Nede.
• Planet Buster in Spore (Space stage), a superweapon feared by all, capable of destroying an entire planet with a single blast. Using it near another empire is considered to be an act of war.
• The USG Ishimura in Dead Space, a deep space mining vessel that extracts minerals from a planet by ripping away large chunks of the crust, and the other planet cracker vessels built after it. The Ishimura herself is said to have cracked 34 planets during her 62-year service. Also, the pre-Ishimura space stations used to "harvest" Titan.
• The Parasite Machine that sucks energy from the Earth's core in Urban Assault
• In Mass Effect, mass accelerators are the primary weapon design, ranging from small arms to multi-kilometer capital ship cannons. One weapon's projectile was powerful enough for a glancing blow to result in a large rift on a planet's surface, comparable to Valles Marineris. Also, various planet-grade WMDs are listed: nuclear weapons of varying yield, asteroids and space stations, and invasive species. Mass Effect 2: Arrival DLC offers the penultimum of kinetic weaponry: an asteroid equipped with a faster-than-light drive can match the power of a supernova; that's how much damage it takes to destroy a mass relay.
• The Giant of Bab-il in Final Fantasy IV is teleported to the Blue Planet/Earth for the express purpose of annihilating all life on the planet.
• In Final Fantasy V, Exdeath unleashes the power of the Void on the world; Neo-Exdeath (an amalgamation of Exdeath and all the creatures trapped in the Rift) clearly implies that the Void could destroy all life in the universe.
• In Final Fantasy IX, Kuja destroys everything within his homeplanet with a Ultima spell.

Anime and manga

Dragon Ball Z

Most of the fighting characters in Dragon Ball Z have the power to destroy a planet, with the exception of ordinary human supporting characters.

Kiddy Grade

• Geo-Sort technology has the ability to reconfigure large amounts of matter at the molecular level; thus it can not only destroy entire planets, but make hostile planets habitable through terraforming.
• The Deucalion presumably has this capability as well, since it is outfitted with Geo-Sort technology (but this is never demonstrated in the series).

Sailor Moon

One of the Outer Senshi, Sailor Saturn, can destroy an entire planet by just dropping her weapon (the Silence Glaive) with the intent to destroy, no attack calling necessary.

Gall Force

In the first 3 Gall Force movies both sides the Solnoid and Paranoid Axis forces have had both their home worlds destroyed in a war of mutual assured destruction. They plan on using the last of their planet destroyers and include the new system destroyers in their final battle plans.

Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love

In the final battle with Kain, who is apparently powerful enough to destroy a planet on his own. Washu decides to have Kiyone make use of a "Dimensional Cannon". In spite of Kiyone's protests that you shouldn't even use it on a city because it is made for taking out small galaxies.

"Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers)"

Throughout the series, movies, all adaptations, rebirth and the recent live action version is the Yamato and her fleet mates Wave motion gun capable of obliterating most moon and planetary sized objects. Also included would be the Dessler (Desslock) cannon, built on the same principle (Tachyon Compression), the Gamilon planet bombs, and the Comet empire's weapon deployed at the end of season 2.

Eureka seveN

At the end of the series, it is established that the Coralians have the ability to engulf a planet and form their own version of a planetary crust, although they did not exercise it with the purpose of making a planet uninhabitable.

Other media

• Buster Machine III, aka the Black Hole Bomb in Gunbuster uses the mass of a gas giant planet (specifically, Jupiter) to create a black hole which ultimately destroys the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
• Galactus, a being from the Marvel Comics Universe, specifically the Fantastic Four books, consumes planets for their energy in order to sustain himself. He is often aided in this process by one of his heralds, the most famous among them being the Silver Surfer. His name is given to Galactus Syndrome. Also, there exists a great number of characters capable of planet busting.
• In DC Comics, the Warworld is a planet killer. As in Marvel, there is a great number of characters who can destroy planets.
• The Gamilon planet bombs and Wave motion gun from the TV series Space Battleship Yamato (a.k.a. Star Blazers in the U.S.).
• Big Venus (The Big O).
• Serpentera from Power Rangers.
• Erdammeru the Void-Hound (DC Comics)
• In Getter Robo Armageddon, the protagonists manage to create a massive Getter Beam Tomahawk powerful enough to slice through planets. Likewise, in some Getter Robo manga, an entire fleet of impossibly enormous Getter Emperors exist. These super-mecha are so large, they create their own gravity field that can actually shatter planets as they pass.
• In Vandread, A special variant of harvest ship can destroy planets that are not needed by Earth anymore.
• In the Eek! The Cat episode Eek vs. The Flying Saucers, aliens called Zoltarians threaten to blow up the earth using a death ray powered by Eek's 300 pound girlfriend, Annabelle, and want to do so because Earth "obstructs our view of Uranus."
• In the Exosquad episode A Night Before Doomsday an antimatter bomb capable of destroying all life on earth is revealed and its activation by the Neosapien leader Phaeton dying of Automutation Syndrome is prevented in the episode Abandon Hope.
• In Saint Seiya a great amount of characters can destroy Planets
• In the cartoon Invader Zim, the Planet Jackers tried to feed the Earth to their sun to keep it from going out.
• In Gunbuster, Buster Machine #7 and #19 work in tandem to destroy an Earth-sized life form and a black hole which it carries in tow.
• In Gunbuster's sequel series: Diebuster, the android Buster Machine #7 splits the moon Titan in half.
• The Super Robot Mazinkaiser is said to be capable of blasting a hole right down to a planet's core with a full-powered Fire Blaster.
• The Vok second Moon (Beast Wars: Transformers) (could only destroy energon-rich worlds)
• The Annihilatrix from Frisky Dingo is designed to launch Earth into the sun..
• The Beast Planet in Shadow Raiders.
• The Desiccator in Dark Reign.
• The Ideon Sword (capable of slicing a planet in half) and the Ideon Gun (capable of cutting large swaths of destruction encompassing thousands of ships and celestial bodies) from Space Runaway Ideon. In addition, when ultimately destroyed, the resulting force caused by the detonation of its power source could potentially destroy the universe.
• The Planet and System Killers in Gall Force.
• The Dark Heart in Justice League Unlimited.
• In the Macross Saga segment of Robotech, when the entire Zentradi main fleet was brought together it could destroy the entire surface of a planet through large bombardments of its energy weapons. In Robotech continuity, the Neutron-S missile is thought to be an extremely powerful bomb, but it turns out to be a planet killer since it creates artificial singularities and hence turns any target into a black hole.^[8]
• Rave Master describes two powers capable of wiping out all life: the power of Etherion contained in the body of Elie and the being called Endless.
• The largely undescribed cascade missile in Sluggy Freelance (in the science fiction parody in chapter 24, "GOFOTRON Champion of the Cosmos"). It's designed to destroy a single planet, but it's theorized that firing it into a star could initiate a chain reaction capable of destroying all life in the entire universe.
• In the Manga Keroro Gunsou, there is a character who is related to Keroro who can destroy planets.

Secondary literature

In his discussion of the tradition of apocalyptic cinema Mitchell exemplifies what the film Doomsday Machine or Escape from Planet Earth characterizes as a "planet-buster"^[9] as belonging to the class of "Doomsday device".^[10] Secondary literature can also use terms like "planet-cracker"^[11] or "planet-busting superweapon".^[12]

Science journalism

In the field of science journalism, a 1962 article examined various means "to put an end to the world", concentrating on "Doomsday Bombs".^[13]

As astronomer Phil Plait has pointed out, the amount of energy necessary to shatter an Earth-sized planet is mindbogglingly large: "about 2 x 10³² Joules.... about as much energy as the sun puts out in a week."^[14]

See also

• Apocalyptic science fiction
• Doomsday device

References

External links

• How to destroy the Earth
• List of planet killers on Wookieepedia: a Star Wars Wiki