What is Destroy Earth?
Destroy Earth is a collaborative, massively multiplayer experiment in planetary demolition. Users work together to remove the entire volume of Earth, one cubic mile at a time.
Inspiration
This project is inspired by Sam Hughes' legendary essay "How to destroy the Earth" on qntm.org, which explores various theoretical methods to actually destroy our planet (not just wipe out life, but physically disintegrate the whole thing).
We're implementing Method #8: Meticulously and systematically deconstructed — using mass drivers to slowly remove material from the planet and fling it into space. In the original essay, this requires mass drivers capable of launching material at escape velocity, running continuously for thousands of years.
You are the mass drivers. Every click removes another cubic mile from existence.
How does it work?
The Earth is divided into a grid of cells using Web Mercator projection. Each cell represents a wedge of the planet from the surface to the core. When you click, you remove exactly 1 cubic mile of material from that wedge.
Because cells near the poles represent smaller surface areas, your clicks dig deeper there. Near the equator, cells are larger, so you'll need more clicks to make the same progress. This normalization ensures every click removes the same physical volume.
The Math
- Earth radius: 6,371 km
- Earth volume: ~1.08 trillion cubic km
- Volume per click: 1 cubic mile (~4.17 cubic km)
- Total clicks needed: ~259 billion
- Grid resolution: 32,768 x 32,768 cells (at reference zoom level 7)
Data Sources
Elevation data comes from GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans), providing both ocean depth and land elevation. Country boundaries are from Natural Earth.
Technical Details
The server uses Node.js with uWebSockets.js for high-performance real-time updates. Chunk data is stored on disk and cached in memory. Updates are batched into 1-second "ticks" to handle up to 1,000 concurrent users per chunk.
Created By
Destroy Earth is a project by 200 Monkeys, an indie game studio.
Contact: Eric Lanz — [email protected]