The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices 340
Ostracus writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting summary of some of the best fictional doomsday devices. These devices have featured heavily in movies, television, and fiction; their list includes favorites from Dr. Strangelove to Futurama. What devices have they missed? "By the time Futurama's sci-fi satire hit the scene, creator Matt Groening had the doomsday-device shtick down. Case in point: the Spheroboom. This highly explosive space/time-bending device isn't just the prized jewel of the show's mad scientist, Professor Farnsworth. It also destroys anyone/anything not wearing a 'Doom-proof Platinum Vest.'"
Wired slideshow (Score:5, Informative)
It's a Wired slideshow, on 8 separate pages. If you value your time, don't even bother to RTFA. If you don't value your time, please try to find an "all on one page" version for the rest of us.
Re:Wired slideshow (Score:5, Funny)
If you value your time, don't even bother to RTFA
What an odd thing to post to Slashdot
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If you value your time, don't even bother to RTFA
What an odd thing to post to Slashdot
Some people are just NOT connected to reality anymore...
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Maybe we should get a "Stupid (useful) things to do with fictional doomsday devices" discussion. You know, condense it.
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to be fair, there's a thumbnail gallery that lets you jump to any page you want. also, since each device description comes with a large image or a YouTube video, it's probably better that they are put on separate pages for users with older powerful computers or netbooks/smartphones/PSPs/etc., which do not have a lot of memory.
besides, it's not really a slide show as it doesn't have a JavaScript timer that automatically flips to the next slide. it's just a paginated list. and it isn't presented in a tiny pop
Not only that but... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a thinly veiled Quantum of Solace promo. Because, there are not enough of those already.
From TFA:
Love affair-turbulent-popular-James Bond-love-feel safe-exhilarating.
PAUSE
The opening of Quantum of Solace on Friday-nostalgic-fun.
Subliminal much?
Thats not what I see (Score:3, Funny)
doomsday turbulent danger cynicism world-ending disasters apocalyptic
opening of Quantum of Solace on Friday catastrophic fear doomsday extinction-bringing
ICE-9 (Score:5, Insightful)
ice-9 [wikipedia.org]: Maybe not intended to be a doomsday device, but it sure turned out to be one!
Re:ICE-9 (Score:5, Informative)
Again, not strictly a doomsday device, but nevertheless, the Lazy Gun [wikipedia.org] is the most ingenious weapon ever inventerised!
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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The shiny, candylike button. Can he hold out!
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Since you already beat me to mentioning that particular one, I put forth my other favorite, the Von Neumann machines, aka Berserkers [wikipedia.org] as another fictional doomsday device.
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I really liked Saberhagen's Berserkers. A lot of the short stories were cool (though there were a couple that were just silly). But I haven't read any of them in a loooong time.
Thanks for the reminder. I'll have to go back and read some of these again.
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I also liked Saberhagen's Sword series as well (well, at least the first several; I don't think I have read them all). He wrote great fantasy in addition to scifi.
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Sorry to reply to myself, but make sure you start with the first book; the books are confusing in the way that they are named (see the wikipedia entry for a good explanation of order).
Re:ICE-9 (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but who can honestly say they haven't read Cat's Cradle? I think that's an automatic revocation of geekness.
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Indeed - Another soul has received his vin-dit and will soon become a part of our karass, with Cat's Cradle as our wampeter. Sure, Bokonism may be largely comprised of foma, but it's a welcome escape from the slashdot granfaloon.
The new-convert's guide [wikipedia.org]
Thank God for Cold Fusion (Score:2)
.... what was that?
AAAARRRRRGGGH!!!!! Zerg!
KABOOM!!!!!
Damn it, always lose my Science vessel when I need it the most.
MEGA MAID! (Score:4, Funny)
mega maid/spaceball one has to be the single most potent weapon in the universe.
it is literally breathtaking.
Ren & Stimpy - History Eraser Button (Score:4, Funny)
The History Eraser Button from Ren and Stimpy, Hands Down.
Don't Touch It!!
You Fool.
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Getting back to Ren and Stimpy, The Watchmen's brain monster looks a lot like the brain monsters from the Ren and Stimpy episode "Marooned" [tripod.com].
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You can't link to tripod images offsite, if your referral header is missing or not from the site, you get their logo instead.
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You can't link to tripod images offsite, if your referral header is missing or not from the site, you get their logo instead.
Holy shit, what year is it?! I think I accidentally stepped through a time portal or something...
Skynet (Score:2)
The Doomsday Machine - Star Trek - missing one (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, for me that is the grand daddy of SciFi doomsday machines (apart from Pandora's box) Scared me silly at 8 years old to think that thing might be out there somewhere
Doomsday machine clip [youtube.com]
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knew it had to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
/. had for long been one of the last holdouts against this type of "journalistic" garbage.
glad to see you lasted so long, guys. sad to see you give in and publicize this useless junk.
articles like this with absolutely no substance at all don't belong here. i may as well just go look at reddit or fark for this type of stuff.
Re:knew it had to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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You make it sound like reddit is way worse than here. I don't really see it. Anything that makes it on slashdot, I usually saw on reddit two days before. Of the other stuff on reddit that doesn't make it on slashdot, sure, some of it is drivel, but some of it is interesting and frankly should make it on slashdot. And you should be able to skim over the drivel easily enough, no? I like the idea of editors for quality control in theory, but let's face it: the editors here don't do even the most rudimenta
Monty Phyton (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Monty Python (Score:2)
Just ask an alien... (Score:5, Funny)
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Good call, but at least get the nomenclature right.
"Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator" [tvacres.com]
Call it the wrong thing and there won't be "an Earth-shattering KABOOM!"
At least we know now why the Martians were so keen on securing the last supply in the universe of illudium phosdex [wikipedia.org].
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Good call, but at least get the nomenclature right.
"Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator" [tvacres.com]
Call it the wrong thing and there won't be "an Earth-shattering KABOOM!"
Good point on the nomenclature. I stand correcte..(KABOOM!)
Re:Just ask an alien... (Score:4, Funny)
Ahem, that would be a Pu-236 Explosive Space Modulator.
Perhaps you bought the cheap Acme version?
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
3 Taco Bell burritos and a six-pack of Old Milwaukee. Devastation on a cosmological scale.
sounds more like devastation on a colonological scale...
Mass Driver (Score:4, Interesting)
In Babylon-5 Harlan Ellison came up with mass drivers [wikia.com] as an immoral weapon of mass-destruction on a planet-wide scale. The idea is that you grab nearby asteroids and bombard a habitated planet with them at very high speed. Not only does it indiscriminately kill the population, but the dust kicked up prevents proper plant growth over the entire planet for years, perhaps decades.
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Re:Mass Driver (Score:4, Informative)
And before that in 1966 there was The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" [wikipedia.org] during the war between Luna and Earth. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were even earlier examples.
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The Loonies [wikipedia.org] were using mass-driver bombardment (albeit from the Moon) in 1966.
I don't know if that's the first occurrance of orbital bombardment by mass driver in SF history; I'm trying to do a quick Google survey between interruptions, but I'm not making any progress. (Too many interruptions, too little "between".)
Wow, I need more coffee... (Score:2)
Am I the only one to read that subject line as, The Best Functional Doomsday Devices?
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You don't need more coffee, you need less Haskell.
Shadow planet killer... (Score:2, Interesting)
The best doomsday device has to be the Shadow planet killer. Why? Because jms forecast cloud computing could destroy the world *years* before RMS came out with the idea. ;)
The toxic waste pipe... (Score:3, Funny)
...behind Dr Fred Edison's mansion.
"I feel like I could... like I could... 'Take on the world!'"
Skynet? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Too bad no mention of Doctor Who. They had a universe-destroying threat at least once every season. This year, in "Journey's End" Davros has created a "reality bomb" which cancels out the electrical field binding atoms, reducing the whole of creation to nothingness.
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HHGTTG (Score:5, Insightful)
The Ultimate Weapon, designed by Hactar, the computer built by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax.
How could you forget the Krikkit Wars [wikipedia.org]?
Hands Down Best FICTIONAL Doomsday Device... (Score:2, Informative)
MISSING OPTION! (Score:2)
Oh, sorry, I thought this was a /. poll.
Didn't we have one just like this a couple of weeks ago? I'll just have to settle for Dupe! then.
Vista (Score:2, Funny)
Large Hadron Collider (Score:2)
Not fictional in and of itself, but as a doomsday device it is.
Lemarchand's box (Score:2)
Eve Online (Score:2)
The Amarr Titan unleashes JUDGEMENT [youtube.com]
What? (Score:3, Funny)
No Happy Fun Ball?
Tom Clancy: "Shiva" virus (Score:4, Interesting)
In his novel, Rainbow Six, eco-terrorists design a virus which will wipe out all of humanity and plan to release it by spreading it at the Olympics. The athletes will take it back home to the host country, where it will multiply and kill everyone (except for the ecoterrorists, of course, who will live in a biosphere).
It's a nasty concept, made all the worse because it's not unachievable.
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No, you're overdesigning.
"powerful enough to be 100% deadly in adult healthy people"
Causing infertility would be enough, and killing only a fraction of healthy people would cause society to collapse and allow any other disease to help finishing the job. Just remember that you don't need to kill everyone in the first year.
"impossible to detect until the patient has less than 24 hours left to live"
You don't care how long they last after the detection, what you want is a long period between the start of contag
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If you'll remember from "Rainbow Six", the bad guys solution to that was to drop their little "improved Ebola" off at the Olympics, then when people started dying from it all over the world, to announce that they'd been working on a vaccine for Ebola, and offer said vaccine to the world.
Alas, the "vaccine" was really just an Ebola virus culture intended to ensure that everyone got the disease....
Exterminate! (Score:4, Interesting)
Has everyone forgottten the Dalek Reality Bomb [wikia.com] which was designed to destroy the entire Universe?
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Ah, the threefold man is coming!
(giggle, giggle)
Davros is locked in the basement.
It's the DoctorDonna.
Am I bovvered, though?
Osterhagen Key (Score:3, Interesting)
From the end of the fourth season of the revived Doctor Who . . . The Osterhagen keys, when enough are presented at disparate sites, unlock the detonator to a set of nuclear devices implanted in the Earth's crust. Its purpose is to terminate the entire planet if the suffering of humankind is a fate worse than death.
The Best? (Score:2)
Maybe the headline should have been "the worst"?
In any event, nature will take care of things sooner or later.
Good news, everyone! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good news, everyone! (Score:4, Funny)
I suppose I could part with one of my doomsday devices and still be feared.
"Doomsday is tomorrow" (Score:2)
(For you rugrats out there, read what I'm talking about here on imdb [imdb.com] and then check out this amazing fan trailer [youtube.com] created years later.)
The Q Bomb (Score:2)
Mile-High global Tidal Waves from "The Abyss"? (Score:4, Interesting)
(Mental Note: Do not piss off the deep sea dwelling aliens... Check!)
The best doomsday weapon is....GUILE, bitches. (Score:5, Insightful)
The best doomsday device, is not necessarily the one you have, but the one your enemy THINKS you have.
Be afraid (Score:4, Funny)
http://home.jps.net/~lsnyder/12_tick.html [jps.net]
Infinity Ball, The: The Infinity Ball is a fearsome device used by the Hey Empire. It resembles a sideways 8 ball and doesn't look menacing at all. It is powerful though. The ball has telekinetic powers, is extremely fast, and squeaks when it moves. It even has hyperspace technology built in. The Whats are extremely afraid of the Infinity Ball. They were chased across the universe by the little engine of destruction. When The Tick destroyed the Hey's attempts of bringing forth a universe ending cataclysm, he was attacked by the Infinity Ball. The ball crashed into the heroes chest, falling to the ground after impact. The most devastating weapon in the Hey's arsenal proved to be less devastating then it was once believed to be. In fact, it was pretty lame.
Lincoln Child (Score:2, Interesting)
Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Period. Best doomsday device ... if you're a webmaster who's website contains a page that's featured on /.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! (Score:2, Funny)
Star Crash (Score:2)
Anyone remember the godawful movie "Star Crash"? The doomsday device was called "The DOOM Machine". No, really, I'm serious. The bad guy pronounced it with caps and all.
Unicron? (Score:3, Interesting)
I like planet eaters!
Stephen Baxter had some good ones (Score:2)
In the novel Manifold, Time it's discovered that Venus once supported life, but the planet was encircled in superconducting electromagnets and its molten core "spun down", causing the loss of its magnetic field and hence its oxygen atmosphere.
Not really a device, but the photino birds weren't very good for the universe either.
Best fictional doomsday theories (Score:5, Insightful)
Peak Oil, Global Warming, New World Order, 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. :)
Galactus (Score:2, Interesting)
mcdonalds (Score:2, Offtopic)
no enders saga? (Score:3, Interesting)
No Ice 9 ? (Score:2)
Ice Nine [wikipedia.org] always struck me as the ultimate doomsday device ...
Corbomite Device (Score:2)
Corbomite [wikipedia.org] is the best fictional doomsday device EVER!
It was a fictional device x 2. It was even fictional in the fictional story.
Doc Smith Lensman Weapons (Score:3, Informative)
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Actually, the planetary negamatter bomb was first. They used it on Jalte's world, on the way to the Second Galaxy. Then the nutcracker - two normal planets with intrinsic velocities in opposite directions to crunch Jarnevon. Then the Sunbeam. Then the nutcracker with FTL planets to use on Ploor and it's sun.
That said, the best weapon Smith ever invented wasn't in the Lensman series. It was the one used by Doctors Seaton and Duquesne to destroy the Chl
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The ever more potent weapons of Doc Smith's Lensmen. First the Sunbeam, where the entire solar system is turned into a vacuum tube and the suns output is focused into a single beam. Then we have the Negasphere, a planetary sized chunk of anti-matter you toss at an enemy planet (with a tractor beam, because it's antimatter, see). The Nutcracker, two planets from another dimension, travelling in opposite directions, both exceeding the speed of light and then collided with the enemy planet in between. His ultimate weapon is so cool, I won't give it away, just in case you haven't read the books. You should read the books, if only to see who was playing with these ideas about 50 years before Lucas did Star Wars.
Look, if you're going to do a post about Lensman, you gotta do it right. You need more exclamation marks, you've got to gush constantly about how amazing it all is - and if you can work in a few words in all caps, all the better. Be sure to reiterate at every opportunity:
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You're all a bunch of wimps (Score:2)
Toss one planet into another. Or, if you *really* need Force, grab a planet from a parallel universe where the *slowest* you can go is the speed of light, and toss it back into our universe at the planet of the Evil Ploor and its sun.
It go boom....
mark
"My name is Kimball Kinnison
I lead the Lensman band
Although we're few in numbers,
Our abilities are grand.
We play with stars and comets,
Catch pl
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Let the 'suck' jokes commence.....
I bet she could suck a planet through a garden hose!
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Re:WMD Dictionary (Score:5, Funny)
"We have solid everdense that Eye-rack, heh heh heh, uh, 'scuse me, Eye-rack possesses a, er, Helo, er, Halo, Hello, er, sumthinerother. Halo my baby, Halo my darling, halo my, er, gonna bomb their asses. Gonna bomb their asses back to the, um, bombed age. Cuz' that's what happens when you threaten 'muricans with Hellos of Mass Destruction."
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I was also thinking about Farscape.
Spoiler warning: For Farscape, and Star Trek TNG (although I expect most people (who care about seeing it), have seen both by now).
In Farscape, The Peacekeeper Wars, its Wormhole doomsday weapon was capable of destroying the entire universe. Not many doomsday weapons can beat that. I suppose the only way to go beyond that, would be to also cause total destruction throughout all time as well.
The anti-time effect in the final episode of Star T
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I will run this entire PARKING LOT of '57 Cadillacs for a full year to cause global warming! AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!
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I do so enjoy the melting ice caps.
Increasing global temperatures as a trend over a period of time does not make it true.
Wait....What?
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Doomsday [wikipedia.org] is when Daleks and Cybermen appeared in the same Dr. Who Episode. Or the play The Seven Keys to Doomsday [wikipedia.org] that had Daleks in it.
But those are tame:
JOurney's End [wikipedia.org] had the Daleks steal Earth and create a Crucibleâ"the Dalek flagship 'Davros explains that the twenty-seven stolen planets form a compression field which can cancel the electrical energy of atoms. The resulting "reality bomb"'
The Daleks had a "reality bomb" that made all matter and energy break apart, except for the Dalek planet and Cru
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Well if you're gonna go for sheer exotic exuberant overkill... "negaspheres of planetary anti-mass" come to mind.
Although where the Galactic Patrol found entire planets made of organized antimatter*, I'll never figure out. That's one of those little things that "Doc" didn't even bother to hand-wave. You need to suspend disbelief with a Bergenholm inertialess drive to buy the entire hurried ending of the series.
*Not our conception of antimatter, but the older "Dirac sea" [wikipedia.org] vacuum anti-energy. But I still liked