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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ Fifty hydrogen bombs will absolutely not sterilize a planet. That wouldn't even be enough to drive humanity extinct. Best it could do is set us back 5,000 years. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 20:24
  • $\begingroup$ @EthanManess Agreed. Robert should say "5 billion hydrogen bombs, each terratonne". After all, that isn't much harder. I think that would even boil the oceans. Earth's oceans take 10^27 J to boil (roughly). A KT is 4*10^12 J; need 10^15 KT of nukes to boil a planet's oceans. (TT is 10^9 KT, a billion of them is 10^18 KT, so a 100x safety factor). We could already build TT nukes; making a TT nuke factory in their system seems plausible. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 20:55
  • $\begingroup$ I was thinking of destroying mankind. You couldn't kill the microbes found five miles underground, even with billions of hydrogen bombs, but I doubt that the aliens would find them a threat. My solution would wipe out the entire chain that starts with photosynthetic plants, but mushrooms would probably survive. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 22:26