Ways to destroy the world

[assault]

 

As in Mechanon 3000 from Galactic Champions? Aka Deathstar Mechanon?

 

Darn tootin'.

 

The idea was nicked from Brainiac, of course, but it's a great idea.

[SteelCold]

Think bigger like Transformer's Unicron.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Initiate a global freeze; kickstart the next ice age. The fun part about this is whatever enormous machinery would be required could be disguised as a plan to "reverse global warming" and by the time the truth is revealed it's far too late. 

[Greywind]

Take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[SteelCold]

Create a dozen Mechanons for every nation on Earth.

[mrinku]

Create a dozen Mechanons for every nation on Earth.

 

I really pity Vatican City and Monaco... Bit of a break for China and India, though.

 

Ice age/Nuclear Winter scenarios are a bit lame for Mechanon, since that is only likely to disrupt civilisation. Lots of people will die, but it's not going to wipe out the species or send us back to the stone age. More likely to act as a positive pressure to drive the numerous survivors forward technology wise - which Mechanon would NOT want.

[death tribble]

Create a dozen Mechanons for every nation on Earth.

 

I really pity Vatican City and Monaco...

Also Luxembourg, Andorra and Lichtenstein

[death tribble]

Another way to destroy the world is to elect someone to power who has no political experience.

 

Too soon ?

[DShomshak]

 

Any thoughts? Things that have worked for you?

You've already gone through the list of world-destroying (or at least Humanity-Destroying) plans from my "Megavillains!" article in Digital Hero?

 

Dean Shomshak

[Greywind]

Put humans on it.

[SteelCold]

Build a massive teleportation device that would send all organic/living matter of the planet into the heart of the sun or deep space.

[Cassandra]

Activate a broadcast energy device that has the effect of teleporting everyone living being off the planet to another reality, and destabilizes the sun.

 

(Based on The Quiet Earth)

[mrinku]

Oh! Big one...

 

Build a device to counter the Earth's magnetic field; maybe use the magnetic field of the Earth in a mirror dimension that has the same, but reverse polarity, exposing both worlds to the sun's unprotected fury. (Would also confuse some migrating animal species, but that's just a bonus.)

 

Might take a little while to work, but not if timed with a big solar flare.

 

The dupes are aware of the big flare, and think that they're working to double the magnetic field to protect the Earth. They're expecting the other planet to be toasted, which is why the project must remain secret.

[Durzan Malakim]

Since Mechanon is working through catspaws, I'd suggest he provides his dupes a new augmented-reality/virtual-reality item that explodes in popularity. The device can be anything, but if you're looking for ideas I suggest the Wingman glasses from the novel After On. They are basically just a Google Glass upgrade linked to an AI. The dupes believe the glasses slowly brainwash and make their wearers more compliant, which they can do, but Mechanon would obviously have the override codes to transform people into full on borg-cyber-zombies. Who doesn't love a good old-fashioned zombie apocalypse?

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Ice age/Nuclear Winter scenarios are a bit lame for Mechanon, since that is only likely to disrupt civilisation. Lots of people will die, but it's not going to wipe out the species or send us back to the stone age. More likely to act as a positive pressure to drive the numerous survivors forward technology wise - which Mechanon would NOT want.

 

You're not thinking cold enough. 

[freakboy6117]

One really creepy one for me would be trapping everyone in temporal stasis no one dies but the world is destroyed plus if your heroes are the only ones unfrozen the visuals would be epic battling villains around frozen statues of everyday life.

 

Equally a mystical doomsday weapon might enhance the power of a gorgon or basilisk to turn all life on earth to stone.

 

Equally a grey goo nanotech event would be pretty awful an unseen cloud of nanotech just dissolving everything into component atoms/more nanotech

 

I actually used that as the basis for an even more unpleasant end of the world and the basis for an evil alien civilization.

 

The wraith are one of two remnants of a extremely powerful and peaceful alien civilization experts in nanotechnology. there homeworld was threatened by a massive gamma ray pulse that would turn their world into a radioactive cinder destroying all life and every great work of their civilization. they decided to use their nanotech to break down the planet digitize it and then reconstruct it once the danger was passed.

 

Unfortunately they made one fatal error the wraith the last criminal of a society that had eradicated crime the last psychopath of a society that had cured madness and the last being to be digitized.

 

What should have been a perfect digital utopia until the world was rebuilt after the danger had passed was turned into a literal hell where the population of that world where tortured for a subjective eternity by infinite iterations of a single deranged mind.

 

Now the wraith is spreading nanospore craft tiny densely packed craft filled with replicator have been launched to spread across the cosmos infesting planets slowly corrupting the world with terror and violence before unleashing the nanoswarms to consume them and trap every living being in an eternity of torment.

 

Meanwhile the nomadic caretakers Immortal survivors of the lost home world are searching for a lost backup a pure iteration of their world untainted by the wraith.

[DShomshak]

I'm really liking LL's psychic overload scheme. It's Mad Science-y, not in Mechanon's usual bailiwick (explaining why he needs a proxy to dupe other people into helping), and it's not nanobots (which I think qualify as "overused"). But the one preventing people from sleeping is a lot more innovative -- If you use a Rage Trigger, any player who's seen Kingsman will roll his/her eyes and think you're a hack for stealing from a movie that came out not long ago.

 

So maybe a psychic overload that stops people from sleeping? Or reverse it: The psychic wave puts people to sleep. Low-Ego people first, but more and more, as the heroes race to find Mechanon in a world full of sleepers. And how long until they succumb, despite their kludged-together psi shields? (Or whatever.)

 

Or, you know, go classic with a Giant Ray Machine. Maybe a device that bounces microwaves around communication satellites, building up power until the whole world cooks. For something faster, a ray tuned to interfere with nerve impulses (like the nerve disruptor from Bujold's Vorkosigan books) that just switches people off. Mechanon starts with a local test, alerting the heroes to the danger, then works to scale up to worldwide. Now there's a Kill Switch.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Era Scarecrow]

I don't suppose the flaming potato chip of DOOoOM would be one way to destroy the world?

[megaplayboy]

<snip>

 

So maybe a psychic overload that stops people from sleeping?

 

<snip>

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Yeah, I suggested this.  It's not an immediate crisis, but would cause problems within the first 3 days, and get steadily worse from there.  Basically humanity's mental and physical health would decline steadily and people would start dying within a few weeks.  

[Jagged]

Oh! Big one...

 

Build a device to counter the Earth's magnetic field; maybe use the magnetic field of the Earth in a mirror dimension that has the same, but reverse polarity, exposing both worlds to the sun's unprotected fury. (Would also confuse some migrating animal species, but that's just a bonus.)

 

That's an interesting idea. Without the magnetosphere biological life on Earth is going to get irradiated. Maybe there is some research going on to discover why Mars lost it magnetosphere, secretly funded by Mechanon.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

 

Hover text: Or you could just have a door that says 'free t-shirts,' but on the other side of it is a hole that goes to the core of Earth.

[Lord Liaden]

Yeah, I suggested this.  It's not an immediate crisis, but would cause problems within the first 3 days, and get steadily worse from there.  Basically humanity's mental and physical health would decline steadily and people would start dying within a few weeks.  

 

Or, more insidiously, the weapon prevents people from dreaming, i.e. entering REM sleep. There wouldn't be immediately noticeable physical consequences to raise a warning, but resulting mass irritability and difficulty concentrating would swiftly escalate to hallucinations or waking dream-state. (Ever see the episode of Star Trek TNG in which the crew were being telepathically barred from REM sleep?)

[Lord Liaden]

As a guiding principle for developing scenarios, I'd keep in mind that Mechanon doesn't just want to destroy humanity, but all organic life. Wiping out humanity would be a good first step in that it would eliminate his biggest obstacle, but something broader would be preferable.

[assault]

Since I'm not using 5e/6e/Book of the Machine Mechanon, I've got a bit more flexibility in characterisation.

 

The hook I am going to use: somebody is being chased by superbeings. A nice in media res start.

 

Who is being chased? At some level, it doesn't matter. They know something that makes it necessary to capture/kill them.

 

But what I might do, since I am using the "Mechanon was built by a superhero team but malfunctioned" origin, is make the original target a member of that team.

 

Naturally, that team is the original Guardians. The target would probably be someone like Marksman, Icestar or Gargoyle. None of these are hard to fake up, even without official character sheets.

 

(If you wanted to, you could use the Champions (4e or more recent), somebody like Crusader or Starburst, or any other character you feel like.)

 

What does the character know? Well, actually, they don't need to know much. Somebody has taken out the rest of their team. Everyone else is either dead or a prisoner. (Because I don't kill off characters I might want to use later, they are prisoners).

 

Why? The target doesn't know. However, we do.

 

Mechanon has worked out that the team that created him has also been (mainly) responsible for his failure to destroy organic life up until now. Naturally, he has decided to eliminate them. He has decided to work through proxies to conceal his involvement and to preserve his resources, which are, after all, committed to achieving his more important goal.

 

While he intends to eliminate the hero team, he won't do it until he collects them all. Let's face it, his brain is defective.

 

So the scenario is "rescue the Guardians. OMG it's Mechanon!"

 

His actual big plan doesn't really matter, unless the players want to pursue it. (The Guardians will handle it if the PCs don't).

 

Of course, the PCs can always fail. Oops.

 

All of this is inspired by early Ultron stories. He often focuses on destroying the Avengers, with destroying the rest of humanity relegated to step 2.