Exterminatus
Exterminatus is the biggest middle finger the Imperium can give to xenos and Chaos infestations on their own planets. It basically involves UTTERLY DESTROYING THE PLANET SURFACE via heavy orbital bombardment if they decide that it would be impossible to retake the planet by drowning their enemies in corpses, like they usually do.
And of course there is no kill like overkill.
Before you go into some sort of sanctimonious tirade about the morality of blowing the fuck out of an entire planet, understand the motherfucking context. A world deemed worthy of Exterminatus is one considered past the point where anything can be salvaged from it - whether because it's about to be lost to countless ravening giant insects that will zerg-rush and eat fucking everything or reality-warping omnicidal fungi that reproduce into millions of spores every time one dies and will all kill you because they think it's fun or because it will be turned into a fucking daemon-and-tentacle-rape-infested shit-pit where neither sanity nor time has any meaning. The alternative is fucking glassing a planet and trying to deny it to the enemy or ensure SOMETHING can be fucking saved. It's the last-ditch measure and it's there because the alternative sucks even fucking worse. It is the Scorched Earth strategy on a planetary scale, if you can't have it burn it, and that shits broken the back of more empires and army's than we can count.
... Or, you know, because the Inquisitor who ordered it decided he wanted one for his birthday. Oversight on Exterminatus orders is fairly nonexistent (the Imperium just declare the poor sod Excommunicate Traitoris afterwards if they don't agree. The over the top villainy of Warhammer 40k means that some fuckholes within the Imperium do get trigger happy with this, ordering an Exterminatus on worlds over things like a few of its people coming into contact with alien technology, or a small hint of heresy that would probably not require killing everything, or a loose pubic hair being in the Imperial's cereal this morning. On the bright side, these instances are few and far between, and anyone caught destroying an uncorrupted planet, either for the lulz or stupidity is seen as wasting the "Emprah's Resource, Time and Money", and is forced to explain their legitimate reasoning; though their excuse would most likely be something along the lines of "Chaos was there!" and they would proceed to get a light slap on the wrist... unless they unfortunately meet a giant, angry black dude in green. What, you're surprised that an Empire of "Space Nazis 2.0" can have actual legitimate excuses, common sense, reasoning and sensibility? You're in for a whole new series of surprises... (Joking aside. It's somewhat fluff dependent, in Seventh Retribution by Ben Counter for instance the Exterminatus is never even mentioned despite the fact that the planet got infested with half a dozen demons with great powers.They use said power to mind control thousand of civilians to use them as cannon folder against the Imperial guard, or sacrifice hundreds of innocents to raise a well known flaying demon to rec havoc. also in the Space Wolves, Spoiler alert, books we get inquisitor Volt saying he had been an inquisitor for 150 years without calling the Exterminatus even once. Even in Retribution Lord General Castor admits that the world was lost anyway.)
Deal with it. Bitching any further will rile the Commissariat. You have been warned.
Methods of Exterminatus
The Imperium has several means for dealing with hopeless infestations:
Just Shoot the Shit Out of It (Orbital Bombardment)
Saturating planets with over-sized lazor cannons larger than apartment buildings is the stereotypical way of nuking the fuck out of something you don't like. Space Marine battlebarge bombardment cannons, Nova cannons, Lance batteries and any type of HUGE lazor is often used. Examples of this include the Dark Angels destroying their homeworld, Caliban, after it was lost to heretics within their chapter AFTER SOMEONE THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HUNT FOR DINNER FOR OUR TOTALLY NON-HERETICAL AND OBVIOUSLY LOYAL BROTHERS USING THE ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT CANNONS, the Night Lords' purge of Nostramo, and during the purging of Typhon.
Virus Bombs
Virus Bombs are warheads loaded with the Life Eater virus, a biological payload that causes living tissue (plant or animal) to rot and decompose (which probably gives Nurgle a massive boner). The gist is that they release a virus that spreads by contact and causes necrosis of tissues and rapid decay of plant and animal tissues. This immediate rot causes a buildup of flammable gases, which in turn can be ignited by one of the lazors above (or any still smoldering Lho sticks, or any other source of flame), sweeping the area in firestorms. A relentless bombing of these fucking things is what reduced Tallarn from a verdant forest world to the desert hellhole it is now. They were also used by Warmaster Horus to kill off loyalists in the Traitor Legions during the Istvaan Campaign of the Horus Heresy (Life Eater virus eats through any filters and corrodes power armour till it gets to the gooey marine inside, though a Dreadnought can endure it easily). According to Amberley Vail, virus bombs are only rarely used in the "present time" because the Inquisition has figured out that every time they're used, they feed the fucking Plaguefather. Whoops.
Atmospheric Incinerator Torpedo
Atmospheric Incinerator Torpedoes are plasma torpedoes that burst in low planetary orbit and super-heat the atmosphere of a planet until all combustible material ignites. This method of Exterminatus was used on Medusa IV. Pretty much like the Virus Bomb, except it skips right to the firestorm part and directly turns the planet's surface into an endless expanse of raging hellfire.
Cyclonic Torpedoes
The primary method of Exterminatus used in the 41st millennium, these are basically nukes OD'd on steroids. These capital ship-fired warheads each generate a series of massive, self-sustaining nuclear reactions, which, when fired in bulk, fuels a much larger reaction that causes the devastation to spread and multiply, eventually glassing the entire world with a thermonuclear holocaust given a sufficient barrage. If you fire enough in the same spot it will break through the crust of a planet, causing part of the mantle to erupt out, royally buttfucking the entire planet in the process (see Fire Warrior end cinematic). Krieg is an example of a radioactive perpetual-winter world that survived multiple cyclonic torpedo strikes, though in this case it was on a much smaller scale. This was the method that probably killed Typhon, in combination with the above shoot-the-shit-out-of-it method. (Another theory holds that the bombardment is used to remove anything that might prevent the torpedo from reaching the surface.) Only the Inquisition and the Space Marines are authorized to carry cyclonic torpedoes in their warships, the former because the Inquisition has the authority to do anything, and the latter because the Imperium figures that if the Space Marines can't beat it, nothing else will.
Two-Stage Cyclonic Torpedoes
In the two-stage torpedo, a melta charge activates first to allow the weapon to burrow into the planet's crust and down to the core. The second stage thermonuclear charge then goes off, causing the planet to break apart Death Star style. This is really the only way to deal with Necron Tomb Worlds since, due to their tendency to make everything subterranean, they aren't overly bothered by the other methods which devastate the surface but leave the planet as a whole mostly intact. Talos of the Night Lords used a smaller version of these when a Genesis Chapter strike cruiser tried to hide behind a moon. So he blew a continent-sized hole through the moon, and watched the loyalist ship get torn apart as a new asteroid field got shotgunned into space.
Smashing It with a Fucking Moon
This method involves radically altering the orbit of a nearby moon or large asteroid and placing it on a collision course with the planet, and therefore requires the use of several Mechanicus voidships. This method was used to destroy Phaenon Prime when the Virus Bomb failed to wipe out the planet's corruptive influence. It was also used during the Horus Heresy by renegade Iron Hands commander Autek Mor to destroy the World Eaters recruitment world of Bodt. Needless to say, this pretty much fucking annihilates the planet in question. Despite its flair and effectiveness, the Administratum vehemently requests that Imperial commanders avoid this method whenever possible, because it's stupidly expensive -- it can take weeks or even months for the moon or asteroid in question to actually strike the planet, which costs rations and sublight fuel while the ships sit around doing fuck-all; orbital bombardments only cost about one days worth of rations and fuel, plus the ammunition, which comes out to be less expensive.
Release the Krourk
Krourk Ogryn are known as the most brutal, powerful, and primitive tribe of Ogryn in the Imperium (and that's saying something). They are so well-known for their frightening savagery in close combat that they're considered a solid match for Orks, and are also known for being so primitively stupid that the Imperial Guard can't even teach them to use traditional Ogryn weapons like ripper guns. Their reputation is so fearsome that it has gotten to the point where deploying thousands of these things is considered a crude method of Exterminatus amongst Imperial commanders, given that they'll attempt to kill anything within visual range, friend or foe.
Non-Imperium Exterminatus
Several factions outside the Imperium do things similar to the Imperial Exterminatus (adding any examples from the lore would be greatly appreciated). However, most of them don't use these methods often. Some examples:
Craftworld Eldar
The Craftworld Eldar have some respect for life (and not nearly as many WMDs left as they had before) so they don't do it often. Didn't stop them from purging all life in the Octarius system to clean up Kryptmann's mess, though. The most well-known Eldar engines of planetary destruction are called Blackstone Fortresses, which are ancient weapons they designed to fight the C'tan. To put it simply, think of a large spaceship with a Distort weapon (like the ones the Wraithguard have) the size of a continent. During the Gothic Wars, three Blackstone Fortresses combined their power to destroy an entire star system.
Dark Eldar
The Dark Eldar also don't have many WMDs (if any at all), since they see more benefit in keeping the inhabitants alive to ensure a regular supply of hapless victims. If they do feel like killing off an entire planet, though, they'll probably just steal that solar system's sun. They also use a psychic doomsday device they invented called The Fireheart to implode a planet's core. The Kabal of the Dying Sun has devices that extinguish stars, while Vect keeps black holes in his back pocket to troll people.
Necrons
The Necrons have lost many WMDs, but may have several more just waiting to be awakened. (Maybe the Necrons are more trigger-happy with Exterminatus than the Imperium, but they're better at ensuring there's no witnesses). One of their most notorious Exterminatus-tier machines was the World Engine, which was a planet-sized vessel equipped with the largest gauss weapon known to man. It looked like the combination of a Death Star, Unicron and a Forerunner Shield-World all rolled into one. A flying rape-machine of ungodly proportions, it took a coalition of several Space Marine chapters and the entire Imperial fleet of the Vidar Subsector to destroy it. For some reason, it had shields that could withstand the bombardment of an entire navy, yet it was vulnerable to a ship impacting at sufficient velocity. (Although it is possible that the shields weren't designed to deflect speeding projectiles the size of battle barges.)
Maynarkh dynasty deploy a peculiar device that cause supecharged solar flares that incinerate day sides of ALL planets in a system. Granted, it only exterminates rougly one half of each planet, but if they want to finish the job all they need is to wait half a day cycle and fire it again. Unfortunately for the survivors, Maynarkh Necrons are more interested in making a planetfall and skinning them alive.
Maybe under certain circumstances, if the Necrons wanted to destroy a world, they could just unleash a particularly powerful Transcendent C'tan shard on it without a Tessaract Vault. Though it would most likely escape and be nearly impossible to return to Necron control, it would achieve the same effects. Also, the Tombworld of Thanatos has a giant hologram map of the galaxy known as the Celestial Orrery, and if you were to destroy a star on it, the real life counterpart would go supernova. However, the Necrons don't really use it (since they're more about conquering planets than destroying them). Instead they just treat it like a giant bonsai tree.
Tyranids
Like this needs explaining. The entire fucking purpose of their existence is sapping planets of all life, water, air and biomass, leaving only a lifeless rock ball. They are walking Exterminatuses. (Exterminati? Whatever.) See the Tyranids' page for details on their style of assrape on the planetary scale.
Orks
In theory, the Orks could develop an Exterminatus-size weapon (as much by accident and luck as by design); they grab an asteroid, put engines and weapons and armor on it, fill it with Orks, and then ram it full speed into a planet. It wouldn't matter if it turned out to function as a giant transport or just a suicide missile; it generates tremendous amounts of lulz and serves its purpose of making a big boom, which is all the Orks are concerned with. This haphazard design and construction process would limit the amount of these contraptions the Orks could build (if any). In general, however, Orks want to avoid wiping out everything on the planet from orbit, as it would leave them with nothing to fight on the ground.
Tau Empire
While the Tau almost certainly have the technological capability to destroy entire planets (I mean, if the fucking Orks can figure it out, then the Tau definitely can), there are a number of philosophical, political, and strategic reasons that they would avoid doing this in all but the most extreme circumstances. For one, the Tau Empire is in the process of expanding, and it isn't exactly conducive to your expansion efforts to blow up perfectly colonizable worlds; thus the Tau would likely see Imperial Exterminatus orders as an egregious waste of resources. Also, the Tau are arguably the only race in the 40k universe who operate by something parodying a moral compass, so the idea of obliterating a planet and its inhabitants is likely appalling to their naive wittle sensibilities.
On the other hand, the Tau have officially declared some races (Orks, Tyranids, Dark Eldar) "lost causes" to be destroyed wherever encountered, so one could plausibly imagine a situation hopeless enough that they would sacrifice a planet to be rid of them. Still, they would probably try to at least leave the world itself salvageable and only exterminate the infesting species. There are stories of populations being sterilized or generally dispatched, which is about as mean as the Tau get; one such case was the Poctroon, who were the first sapient species they ever encountered. Their planet was ripe for colonization, and when the Tau arrived, the Poctroon all died of a 'mysterious' contagion, though the Tau obviously have admitted no diabolical fuckery.
As their expansion accelerated deeper into Imperial space, the Tau started to deploy more and more experimental technologies to both battlefields and production lines, some of which weren't properly tested. As a result, quite a few moons, planets and even stars have been accidentally destroyed by various mishaps. While such destruction sometimes happened to be advantageous to Tau forces (for example, by shattering Imperial defenses with massive tidal waves and earthquakes after the destruction of a planet's moon), they have shown no attempts to weaponize it.
Uniquely, the Tau are the only faction in 40k who still possess functioning terraforming technology (the Imperium lost it during the Horus Heresy, the Eldar lost theirs during the Fall, and Necron terraforming is an Exterminatus on its own), so they can restore exterminated planets to habitability again, provided they haven't been utterly destroyed Deathstar-style. So yes, in the Tau Empire, Exterminatus get purged by YOU!
Chaos
Being former servants of the Imperium, fleets of Chaos Space Marines often still possess the good old Imperial Exterminatus weapons, like virus bombs for the old legions, cyclonic torpedoes for more recently turned traitors, or Just Shoot The Shit Out Of It for any warband with ships in their fleet big enough to carry the guns. Occasionally they will pillage Imperial Exteminatus weapons, or else invent some of their own with technology, sorcery, daemonic shit or some combination of the three. Some Chaos guys tend to be quite inventive in finding ways to kill planets.
During one of his Black Crusades, Abaddon managed to steal or destroy all of the Blackstone Fortresses that the Imperium had in their possession. Naturally, they work just as well for Chaos as they did for the Eldar (and far better than they ever did for the Imperium). He also commissioned an incredibly huge destroyer of a spaceship, the front half of which is basically a battery of miles-long energy cannons. This "Armageddon Gun" can split a planet in half with one shot.
Uniquely amongst 40k factions, the armies of Chaos can make planets Extermintus-proof by turning them into Daemon Worlds, where the laws of physics are fucked up so hard by the power of the Warp that all weapons just cease to function on and around it, or even achieve the opposite effect by nourishing the daemon patron of the world and making him even stronger (don't even think about virus bombing a Nurgle Daemon World). Though admittedly, from literally any point of view besides that of Chaos, Exterminatus is a preferable option to Daemon World transformation, as it would just kill you, rather than damning you to the eternity of torment.
Exterminatus-style Destruction in Other Fiction
Colony Drop
The answer of the anime Gundam franchise to smashing things with a fucking moon. When it was first introduced, it involved the resident Space Nazis, the Principality of Zeon, getting around the various treaties limiting the use of WMDs by inventing a new one. They filled the atmosphere of an O'Neill Space Colony full of residents they didn't like with nerve gas, then sent it on a collision course for Earth. While the intended target was the the Federation capital in the Americas, it was diverted away and hit Australia, basically butt fucking the continent out of existence in the process and causing billions of deaths in one strike. Later "colony drops" occurred throughout the franchise. Notably, Gundam X is set on an almost uninhabitable shit-hole-of-an-Earth that's been the victim of an entire barrage of colony drops killing off 99% of the planet's human population. In terms of dedicated weapons capable wiping out a planet, those are less common. Gundam SEED had likely the most powerful with the GENESIS, a giant gun that fired beams of radiation (which could be seen even though radiation is invisible) large enough to wipe out entire fleets of ships, and a direct hit on Earth would kill all life on it.
Solo deployment of a certain rogue female space marine on a xenos or chaos infested world. Though surprisingly effective, the High Lords of Terra and even the Inquisition have yet to formally sanction Samus's use as a method of Exterminatus. She steadfastly claims that while she does leave the enemies of man as smoldering corpses, the planets, star ships, and space hulks blowing up afterwards usually isn't intentional. In fact with the planet Zebes, the destruction occurred because the of a bomb the Mother Brain triggered that destroyed the planet as a final (failed given she escaped) fuck you in retaliation for Samus reducing her to ash with her own ultimate weapon. Why anybody would include a bomb in their own base that would destroy the whole planet... it's a game made by Nintendo, don't question it.
That said, Samus has at least two confirmed cases of intentionally destroying a planet. The first was when she removed all the planetary energy from Dark Aether and took it back to its light half, and the second was when she crashed the massive Biologic Space Labs research station into SR388 to wipe out the X parasites.
- "This is the prototype NOVA Bomb, nine fusion warheads encased in lithium triteride armor. When detonated, it compresses its fissionable material to neutron-star density, boosting the thermonuclear yield a hundredfold. I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in command of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that might be listening, you have a few seconds to pray to your damned heathen gods. You all have a nice day in hell..."
- --Admiral Danforth Whitcomb's recording telling the Covenant about the NOVA bomb and the things that it does, seconds before detonation.
Pretty much any faction in Halo is capable of buttfucking a planet or entire star-system from the inside out. The Forerunners, for example, pretty much turn Exterminatus into art. Their list of fucking up a Galaxy includes the following...ripping apart entire planets on what counts as "Private Security Infantry", reducing entire planets into ash with one shot of their point-defense guns on their weakest ships, flinging entire planets into Slipspace (Which reduce them to proto-matter), blowing up entire stars and solar-systems like popping candy with a single frigate, destroying entire proto-universes (We are not fucking around here) just to power up their engines and of course, the Galaxy-Busting Halos themselves. And these are just the Forerunners, god forbid if we go into 'Silentium' Flood and the Precursors which pretty much cause reality, time and alternate universes to bend over and make the likes of Tzeentch look like a four year old brat in comparison (The Precursors still managed to lose in a strait out war with the Forerunners though, although it has been stated that it was intentional in the first place and they wanted to know what 'extinction' feels like... only to use said 'feelings' to eternally torment the Forerunners...because they are Dicks like that).
So literally, when we meant that anyone in Halo could make mother nature cry, we really meant it. Yes even the UNSC have it which is coincidentally named as the "NOVA Bomb"; these are literally the Death Star in a can, no kidding. To put this in a nutshell, when the UNSC finally realized that all shit is lost and NUKE IT FROM ORBIT! is all but useless, the UNSC high command issue to drop the NOVA bomb that blows apart the planet or moon and all unfortunate bastards to kingdom-come. Made of literally nine-nukes strap together by duct-tape (Which made many in /tg/ to wonder whether the UNSC hired Macgyver to construct their "Fuck You" bomb), these bombs are the size of an SUV(one of the fairly small Unggoy specifies it was thrice his height and would've taken nine of them to hold hands in a ring around it.) It can also have a Slipspace drive attached to it, meaning that it could hit anywhere and anyone without difficulty.
The only recorded activation of a NOVA bomb happened over a Covenant-controlled planet called Joyous Exultation. It was detonated when some engineers on the Covenant supercarrier 'Sublime Trascendence' found the weapon and, disregarding the advice the grunt Kwassass gave them because he understood the message played, fixed some malfunctioning circuits. The explosion wiped out the entire fleet stationed in orbit, the only surviving ships being the ones on the other side of the planet and those that jumped just in time to avoid it, devastated the surface and shattered the nearby moon.
Another planet killer from Halo (probably the most well known besides the Halos themselves), the Covenant are known to "glass" an entire planet when they are feeling bored or being dicks about it. Similar to "Just Shoot the Shit Out of It", glassing takes longer then the other Exterminatus weapons but the results are still roughly the same. Glassing is when Covenant ships use their Energy Projector to literally burn the planets surface until it is but molten rock and ignite the atmosphere Cyclonic Torpedo style. But due to the amount of contradictions prominent in Halo, glassing can go from being barely lighting a birthday candle to turning an entire planet into a giant crystal ball. This is really up to the one leading the Covenant fleet and how long they choose to fire on the planet.
Star Wars Shenanigans
It is of no surprise that 40k's fellow fantasy-sci-fi mashup, Star Wars, has its own methods of Exterminatus; then again Star Wars does predate Warhammer 40K and Rogue Trader. However, while 40k tends to depict a small number of "tried and true" tactics, the various cultures of the Star Wars universe, not limited by technical stagnation and general awfulness, invent new methods of devastating worlds all the time. (One is actually called the World Devastator.) Easily the most iconic one is the Death Star introduced in the very first film, which is a massive battle-station the size of a moon that can blow a planet apart in a single shot. Some of the weirder/cooler ones in the Expanded Universe include:
- The World Devastators, which land on planets and consume all matter before reproducing and moving on to other planets
- The hilariously-phallic Galaxy Gun: Essentially a planet-sized railgun
- The Centerpoint Station: A giant tractor beam that can move entire planets, fire beams of energy to destroy fleets of starships, and supernova stars
- The Sun Crusher, the lovechild of an Old One's Blackstone Fortress and a UNSC NOVA bomb that, as its name implies, literally destroys suns from the other end of the galaxy.
One other idea writers came up with is noticing the superlaser on the Death Star and deciding to make smaller scale versions of it, probably the most famous case being the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer which could crack a planet's crust open with it. Even a single Star Destroyer can turn the surface of an unshielded planet to molten slag, in a matter of mere hours. The Empire even has its own version of an Exterminatus order called the "Base Delta Zero Initiative" where it orders ships to bombard a planet till surfaces is either slag or looks like the moon. Their only hindrance is Star Wars planets often have shields to deflect bombardments, hence their fondness for weapons of mass destruction.
In the original trilogy's timeline, the strategic use of these doomsday weapons to inspire fear and loyalty was referred to as the "Tarkin Doctrine," after Peter Cushing's character from the first film who funds the Death Star before being blown up on it in his moment of triumph. Abbadon, take note, for there but for the grace of your-various-dark-gods go you...
Naturally the new trilogy has a new doomsday weapon called Starkiller Base (named after Luke's surname in the earlier script), a planet the First Order turned into a bigger, immobile Death Star, that sucks out the energy from a nearby star to fire a giant planet busting gun that hits targets across the galaxy, multiple targets, without needing to near them.
Despite being a bunch of NobleBright space hippies The United Federation of Planets do have their own Exterminatus and call it something really boring because they don't like to think about the "kill everything on a planet" part. It's in the "sterilize its surface" type and each Galaxy-class ship (including the iconic USS Enterprise) can solo the job. And since all of their starships are basically just cruise liners where colorful crewmen go to have wacky noblebright adventures with their families, it really speaks volumes about Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" proverb, and just how far the Feds out-tech their neighbors. Or they would if the writers didn't fuck with the firepower with the setting constantly, so the theory is that their guns for whatever reason loses a lot of punch when not used on planets and not at specific settings.
For specific weapons capable of wiping out a planet, the most famous is the Genesis Device, a torpedo like machine designed to terraform dead planets into inhabited ones. While not designed as a weapon, it's still had lots of potential as one since it completely transforms the planet's surface, meaning any lifeforms caught in it will be wiped out. That, and in Deep Space 9 Captain Sisko used chemical weapons to wipe out a human colony, and promised to keep doing so until the head of a terrorist organization surrendered to him.
One of the things that the Pfhor found in the Jjaro tech cache is a weapon that roughly translates as "Early Nova". As the name suggests, it makes suns go supernova, consuming the nearest planets and burning those just outside of its reach. The Pfhor usually only use it on very serious slave revolts, and don't use often on pure military matters.
Each of the major faction in game can do this:
Protoss Glassing
Think of them as the more powerful version of the Covenant's glassing, while the Covenant only glass the crust of the planet, the Protoss glass right down to the mantle, although this is usually reserved for when complete Zerg infestation has enveloped the planet. This is usually the case because their voracious cousins have this annoying ability to burrow beneath the planet's surface, so if they just glassed the surface, any drones or larvae that survive by burrowing will be able to reinfest the planet again in short order. And all their bigger ships have a weapon that can do this. Very overpowered in their universe, but not something they like doing, since burning up valuable real-estate and cheesing off the redneck Terran neighbors isn't really their style. That being said, given everyone and his dog in a StarCraft universe have a terraforming tech, glassed planets could be restored into habitability in a matter of decades or even years, or in case of Zergs terraformed into even less habitable hellholes, since space bugs like their planets rough.
Terran Nuking
Exactly what it sounds like. The Terran carry enough nuclear missiles to wipe out an entire planet but don't do it to often since most of the fighting they get involved occurs on their planets. The only mention of this when the backstory when the Confederacy pummeled Korhal with so many missiles the whole planet is reduced to a desert lifted from Dune, but in the span between Brood War and Starcraft II the Dominion managed to undo all the damage.
Zerg Infestation
The Zerg don't have any planet killer weapons, instead they just wipe out/eat everything on planet like the Tyranids would. Unlike the Tyranids they can infest the local lifeforms to add to their numbers and can produce more troops once they establish a foothold, so they don't need any.
Xel'Naga The Xel'Naga left behind a means that could wipe a planet but so far only the Protoss seem to know how to use them. First case was a temple left on a planet call Shakarus that when using two crystal channeling psionic energies and the energy of the void created a wave that was able to wipe out the Zerg across the entire planet, and would have killed them if they didn't hide in the temple to escape the blast. Later when the setting's Big Bad Evil Guy Amon started his war against, everything, the Protoss were forced to abandon Shakarus with the Zerg controlled by Amon's Zerg/Protoss hybrids overrunning it, and with the crystals to work the temple fire off another wave they used it to blow the planet up instead.
Though the Mass Effect universe isn't known for flinging about weapons of mass destruction like certain other sci-fi universes, it does have a one or two share of destructive events and weapons. Most notably is the Mass Relay Network - This galaxy-wide system makes travel through the galaxy as easy as flying from New York to London, and is provided by the Relays themselves, who are basically unmanned space stations orbiting certain stars, who allow above light speed travel for vessels with Element Zero cores. This is not all there is to them, though - Most believe that the Relays are indestructible, but when Commander Shepard ends up having to destroy one with an asteroid to halt the Reaper's advance, the galaxy finally sees what the contained energy of these things can actually do. Long story short - The Relay explodes, destroying the entire system, including 300,000 batarian citizens. Although it does sound very impressive for a Colonial Marines-level universe, when you kind of take in the consideration that pretty much every single race in ME utterly depends on the Mass Relays (As well as being very limited in numbers) for long-distance transportation and what-not, and the fact that they're supposed to be nigh indestructible, it kind of ends up as a "Lesser of two evils" then the typical "I am taking you down with me!" scenario.
On the other hand we have the Krogan Genophage during the Krogan Rebellion, which was a genetic weapon of Salarian designed. During the Rebellion, the Turians deployed the genetic disease that makes only one out of a thousand Krogan live after birth. This could technically be considered a kind of 'Safe-Level exterminatus', but due to the Krogan breeding like rabbits and being both hard to kill and very long-lived (at least 1,000 years) and how easily they can hold a grudge, it ends up more Skubtastic then usual. In fact, the creators of the Genophage explicitly defend that the disease was never intended to be an exterminatus, just a forceful population balance (fun fact: even with only one in a thousand kids per birth surviving? The Krogan population would be going up at a steady pace if they weren't throwing themselves into death faster than they can now keep up).
As a matter of fact, unleashing the Krogan is a semi-Exterminatus, much like the Krourk above. Krogan are capable of completely using up the biosphere of a verdant world in about three or four generations, which is what started the Krogan Rebellions; the Krogan decided that they'd rather kill every other race in the universe and take all their worlds than cut down on their breeding.
No seriously. That's the name of the spell that destroys everything on whatever horrid planet the FATAL game takes place on. This being the FATAL world, it is a mercy to every inhabitant. It's even possible to cast this spell by accident which everyone hopes would happen.
Um, it's easier to list what isn't an Exerminatus worthy implement in this setting. Not only do engagements with warships often lead to planets getting blown up, it's entirely possible to build something a human can carry to do the job, most notably the singularity grenades (tied with a the Strike Legion's missile launcher for strongest human portable weapon), which create a small black hole capable of destroying a small planet, and any warship in the game worth its salt (read, almost all of them) can survive this without taking any damage and do at least much without even using any big guns, and many of the giant robots (called Frames) carry weapons at least capable of wiping out planets, while the better armed ones can outright destroy them.
The Strike Legionaries also a last resort weapon called the Ultimate Solution, a nanotech weapon stored in a ring, that's an obvious Genesis device, but like everything else in Strike Legion, it's taken up to insane degrees. Rather than just terraforming an area up to the size of a planet, this thing can affect areas up to a small star, and like Genesis Device, also wipes out anything caught its path, Legionaries included, after which the nanotech machines self-destruct. An example the use mentions a Strike Team using it turn an Imperial constructed Dyson Sphere into a black hole that wiped it, them, and the surrounding Imperial fleet. The weapon is so dangerous that only one Legionnaire per team carries one.
Doctor Who's long history of the Earth being in danger of total destruction means it has a ton of these. The Dalek's are especially famous for them, building warships that can blow up planets (one episode they blew up a planet by repeatedly shooting it), and even if they want to take a planet without blowing it up, in the revived show they still display weapons that physically deform entire continents. The most powerful is the Reality Bomb, which doesn't seem much like a bomb since it doesn't explode, instead is sends a wave that disable the fields that hold together the subatomic particles that form atoms. Using a number planets arranged a proper order in pocket universe, the Daleks intended to use this send out a wave that would destroy everything outside the pocket universe and composed of Matter.
The Time Lords also display a number of this, including a brief mention of bombs that create black holes. The end of the Last Great Time War even involved the "Ultimate Sanction": Because the Time Lords, despite their near-omnipotent technology, were losing horribly to the war-hardened and nigh-unkillable Daleks (ala Old Ones versus the completely OP Necrons), the Lord President Rassilon decided to just say "fuck it" and ascend as a God by sacrificing all of Time Itself. Talk about using the Big Bang of the Universe just to kill a cockroach, because the Ultimate Sanction is in other words, kill the damned saltshakers by butt fucking all of Existence in ways of complete overkill that not even Chaos could comprehend. Yes, because Doctor Who is like that. Fortunately for everything existing, the Doctor, being Noblebright as he is, sabotaged the entire project and sealed Rassilon and the Time Lords in a time loop for all eternity (though the Ninth Doctor suffered a massive post-traumatic stress from damning off his own species thus his rather grimdark personality compared to the other Doctors, though he got better.)
Another super-Exterminatus occurred with the Total Event Collapse which is basically what happens if you explode the TARDIS in the Time Vortex thus tearing the entire universe sans Earth, the only way of restoration being having the Doctor imprison himself in the Pandorica and fling himself into the TARDIS explosion ala Jesus. Again, for the sake of Series continuity, the Doctor is resurrected by Amy Pond's memories. Doctor Who is like that.
Even humans join in the fun, with one episode mentioning in the future humanity has built missiles that were powerful enough to destroy an approaching spaceship the size of a larger country, aimed a planet those would wipe out all life on it.
Gurren Lagann
Exterminatus level firepower is introduced in Gurren Lagann's every increasing level of combat mid way through the series, where it turns out the Anti-Spiral, after winning its war against the Spiral races, left a system on every planet in the universe to annihilate its inhabitants in the event its populace got to a certain number, and because it wanted to drive them to the point of absolute despair, it made sure that it was as cruel as possible in doing so. In humanity's case, it consisted of slamming the moon (which turned out actually be a planet size battleship in disguise while the real moon was hidden in a pocket dimension, the Anti-Spiral is kinda of an idiot) into the Earth after a set period of time, but to be a dick it also sent hordes of killing machines to attack the Earth and pick off any survivors if they escaped.
The planet sized ship in question was also capable, along with pretty much every weapon the Anti-Spiral had ready in its pocket universe, most of which included masses of planet sized machines that throw planets and planet sized missiles. When when confronted by a galaxy sized mecha made of Spiral Energy, the Anti-Spiral created one of its own to counter it.
Armageddon spell ( Ultima series )
Simple. It is a spell that destroy the world. It serves no practical purpose other than baiting player to use it. Unless you are a dick or just stupid, do not cast it.
DC and Marvel comics
Coming tied as Sci-Fi's most overpowered and superpowered fictional Universes has xenos that can hit like Exterminatus, the most famous of these are Kryptonians. Marvel's most well known is the Celestials which are a race of ludicrously superpowered xenos that can spank the Chaos Gods like the brats they are and do what ever the fuck they please in the Warp. And that's just the Celestials, the weakest of the Marvel Cosmic hierarchy, yes you heard us right, the beings that can bitch-slap the entire pantheon of the Sky Fathers are considered as weaksauce compared to beings such as Galactus, who has to suck planets dry of life just to survive, and when he's not weak from hunger, he's among the beings who can blow up galaxies and lets remind you that Galactus is Marvel's equivalent to the Avatar of Khaine (In that they both suffer an extreme case of the Worf Effect), lets not get into the even higher echelons of the Marvel and DC cosmic pantheons, seriously if we include the biggest fishes here we are taking about Exterminatus on a Omniversal scale. Yes they are that overpowered.
Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z
When it comes to individual characters who can do this, the iconic examples are all here. While this level was technically introduced when the hero's mentor nukes the moon out of existence to stop his were-ape rampage (long story), that was back when it was a straight fantasy/comedy rather than a kung fu space opera. But the first story arc of Z featured a villain who could blow the Earth to smithereens on his lonesome, and the main villain of the arc after that was literally seven times stronger than him when it wasn't even his final form. After that, the next villain climaxes the arc by trying to blow the whole solar system away, and the final major villain in the franchise, in one of his weakest forms, was a near-mindless engine of destruction who used to wander the cosmos blowing away planet after planet after planet.
The new anime Super has gotten even crazier, with manchild gods who can blow up galaxies and possibly universes (and have assistants who are even stronger than them), and the god of all reality who can blow up all reality whenever he feels like.
And note that, by the early-middle part of the show, some of the weakest good guys were beefy enough to easily smash the Earth apart in one go if they wanted to, having explicitly done little more than meditate and work out a lot to get there.
Command and Conquer
Command and Conquer 3 revealed that the aliens, called the Scrin, who seeded the Earth with Tiberium also use it as a form of Exterminatus as the substance eventually renders the planet almost completely lifeless, making it easy to harvest. It doesn't stop them from having a military in case they encounter a threat that needs to be dealt with immediately, but we don't see them invade Earth because poor management on the part of an evil organization butchered the series final installment, cutting the Scrin out, among other things.
The level of power in Exalted means that it's very common for an Exterminatus level character or weapon to show up. Most prominent are the Deathlords as their goal is to wipe Creation out of existence are coming up with ways to do so, but while they destroyed parts of it they haven't been able to destroy all of it.
In fact, at the start of the gameline, Creation has actually tanked several just-barely-shy of Exterminatus-level events, including the Three Sphere Cataclysm that blew up 99% of the world and a massive plague that killed just about everything in the universe.
Spore
When a race first reaches Outer-space several options on this scale become available. The most obvious is the Planet Buster, which is a missile that glasses the planet, and which any empire can buy. This is the easiest to acquire; the others you need to be of the right Empire type. A Scientist Empire has the ability to raze any cities on a planet, which means that all the sapient inhabitants die and you can recolonize the planet yourself. A Zealot Empire can simply take over the planet; the cities are all yours and you lose no infrastructure. Of course, since this isn't a grimdark world like 40k nobody will use these on you and most empires (except for the Grox, which are as close as a kid's game can get to the Necrons) will look down on you a lot if you use these. If all else fails however, a player can always just pull out their terraforming equipment and destroy the atmosphere, rendering the planet barren and uninhabitable.
Dr. Strangelove
The plot of this movie involves a soviet "Doomsday Device", an automated weapon based on a collection of 50 cobalt bombs (or salted bombs), thermonuclear devices specifically designed to irradiate cobalt and spread it all over the atmosphere. This device was designed to detect any nuclear explosions in the Soviet union and immediately trigger, spelling the end of all multicellular life on Earth.
Invader Zim
The Irken flavor is called an "Organic Sweep".
Macross Frontier
Macross Frontier introduced the Dimension Eater. It creates a massive fold fault that obliterates anything it touches. In one instance, all that remained was a planet that had been split down the middle.
IRL Exterminatus
Thermo-Nuclear Holocaust
Apparently even when we aren't in the 41st millennium we still mastered the art of royally buttfucking a planet. In this case, it's ours, and a full scale thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union would be enough to kill off humanity multiple times over. This is how Mutually Assured Destruction works, threatening each other and our own planet with Exterminatus with zero chance of survival, just so we won't begin another World War. Because we're bastards like that. The Cobalt Bombs described by Dr. Strangelove above are actually possible, though currently theoretical. Nuclear weapons designed to be deployed as bombs or missiles aren't strong enough to destroy the world with only 50 warheads, but if you don't mind not moving the weapon once it's built, the only limit on how big your nuke can get is how much material you're willing to use on it. In theory, the doomsday device of Dr. Strangelove could be achieved with a single massive bomb.
This is further worth mentioning, because automated retaliation systems that could activate nuclear weapons in response to a detected threat actually existed. The Soviet Union had the "Dead Hand" system, based off of seismic, air pressure, and EM sensors. The system was normally kept inactive, and was only supposed to be turned on during a crisis to guarantee that the Soviets would still be able to use their weapons even if their leadership were taken out by a first strike.
Some believe that elements of the Dead Hand system may have been lost or buried, and are active to this day. A ticking automated Exterminatus waiting for a signal from ageing cold-war era sensors.
An old quote from the film WarGames summarizes the game of Global Thermonuclear War/Exterminatus: The only winning move is not to play..."
An asteroid
Really, all it takes to kill everything on a planet is a big enough rock travelling fast enough. Normally it's the cloud of dusk that is kicked up into the atmosphere and blocks out the sun that does most of the work. Dinosaurs learned this the hard way. Of course this doesn't really work too well on a forge or hiveworld which is already like that. For raw destuctive force, however, the damage is a function of the speed and size of the asteroid. The former has some practical limits (though a civilization looking to weaponize this sort of exterminatus could possibly bring the rock up to relativistic speeds), but the latter can be nearly unlimited. A collision with a near planet-sized object would be more devastating than most fictional exterminatus weapons, obliterating the target world entirely. There could be any number of so-called 'rogue' planets floating in the empty spaces between stars, ready to slide into the solar system and crash in to earth, assuming humanity fails it's collective Save or Die roll for the week.
Super volcano
Works on the same principal as the asteroid, that if you get enough shit into the atmosphere you've royally fucked all life bigger than a mouse. This may not be very likely though on earth as one of the biggest volcanoes (see yellowstone park) wouldn't wipe out humanity, probably. Maybe.
SAGE Bombing
The electronic equivalent of Exterminatus, a Sagebomb is achieved by repeatedly using the SAGE tag on a thread, ergo reducing its priority. When fired in bulk by multiple users simultaneously, such barrages of SAGE are capable of dragging almost any thread screaming down to the depths of a given imageboard, where they will eventually be purged. The ultimate fate for all threads containing Furry and similar Heresy.
...Or at least that's how many fa/tg/uys think it works.
SAGE is supposed to add a "negative" response to a given thread, ergo reducing its apparent post-count. Because such a system would be easy to troll others, however, SAGE instead is used simply to reply without bumping a given thread. In olden times, SAGE did work that way supposedly, however, and was a tool of righteous wrath. Sagebombing still has an effect to the extent that once a thread passes the "autosage" limit it can no longer be bumped even by normal posts, and so even if it is still active it will still sink to the bottom of the board and into the depths of deletion; hence a large number of zero-content SAGEs will hasten the demise of the thread without bumping it in the process, although they do not actively cause the thread's departure.
The Black Death
What can be said about the Black Death or more accurately the Bubonic plague. It's killed more people then every war in human history put together,in 541–542 it killed one in four of the population of Constantinople, the cemeteries filled up, they ran of open land in the city, then the mass graves out side the city filled up, they threw the dead into guard towers, onto ships to sail the Mediterranean just to get them out of the city. food rotted in the fields and there was famine. During the 14th century the plague had a second tour of Europe killing 60% of the total population across Europe, all of Europe, Peasant, Priest, noble or criminal the Plague killed everyone. on top of that the Plague is horrifying to die of, you grow boils, your skin rots off your body, Seizures, continuous vomiting of blood, and extreme pain caused by the decay of the skin. In one of the many examples of the repercussion of the plague on the modern world, which would require an entire book to cover in full, it would not be hard to say that without the plague, Nurgle and the entire gothic aesthetic of the Imperium would not exist.
William Tecumseh Sherman
William, a Union commander and a tactical genius, is known for nuking a lot of pretty places like Atlanta and pwning every Confederate and Native American force he faced. He invented the total war strategy, which it is basically the earliest form of exterminatus. His "March to the sea" consisted of one massive offensive, abandoning supply lines and trying to cause as much damage as possible. The goal was a total disruption not only of the confederate's military, but of their economy and infrastructure. Crops were burned and fields salted, wells were poisoned, and everything was done so that when it came time for Sherman's troops to fall back the enemy could not use anything of the land. Telegraph lines, Rail lines, bridges and more were destroyed in massive amounts, and goods that weren't stolen for their own use were burned to prevent their use by the confederate states, even if said good has no direct military value. Even to this day the butthurt is legendary in the south. He and his troops are accused by southerners of rape, pillage, and plunder. Sherman was actually against unchecked rampages like this, keeping his campaign remarkably professional. He went out of his way in preventing civilian deaths and harshly punished any of his solders he found stealing for personal gain or sexually assaulting civilians. This means he's old-school Khorne, maintaining a sense of honor while he burns every fucking thing down to ashes. Because of his hatred for everything, he becomes the spiritual forefather of anonymous, for the fact he has shown those basement dweller the true meaning to be humans. He probably ascended to daemonhood of Khorne after his death, like pretty much all extremely badass warlords.
Nine familial exterminations
To put it simply, for your HERESY: You, Your entire family, your grandmother, your ancestors, your cats and your children are to be put to death! It is the most serious punishment created in the ancient imperial china in order to erase heresy stains at that time period. This is still being practices today in North Korea, however.
Fun Fact: One man actually managed to piss off the emperor enough that he got a ten familial exterminations.
Wiki page Deletion
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This article is bad and may or may not require deleting. Comment on the article's talk page. Reason: This is how you set an article to be deleted:: Just add "{{deletion|reason}}" somewhere on the page. |
An electronic equivalent of Exterminatus for every wiki. To delete a page, the user must mark the page for review by the mod and provide a valid reason for why the article deserves to be purged. On this wiki for example, any non-/tg/-related shit should be removed to make sure that the only content is about a /tg/ related meme, or relates to traditional games in anyway. Unlike every other exterminatus above, the information can be reclaimed if the wiki has its backup file. That been said, vandalism is pointless, as users don't need mod permission to undo someone's shit changes.
The Fall of Typhon
Good to know there's a ceremony for blowing up a planet.
"We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge.
In fealty to the God-Emperor (our undying Lord) and by the grace of the Golden Throne, I declare Exterminatus upon the Imperial world of Typhon Primaris.
I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world and consign a million souls to oblivion.
May Imperial Justice account in all balance.
The Emperor Protects."
The Words of Gabriel Angelos
It is human nature to seek culpability in a time of tragedy. It is a sign of strength to cry out against fate, rather than to bow one's head and succumb. Inevitably many will fault the hands upon the sword which felled Typhon, the Ordo Malleus. But the Inquisition merely performs the duty of its office. To further fear them is redundant; to hate them, heretical. Those more sensible will place responsibility with those who forced the hands of the Inquisition. With some fortune, they may foster this hatred into purpose, and further rule their own fate by coming to the Emperor's service.
Yet ultimately, it was I who set these events into motion, with a single blow from my hammer, God Splitter.
--Gabriel Angelos of the Blood Ravens
Fuck, that's deep. The use of a properly modified version of this quote from Dawn of War Retribution has proved highly effective in saging furfag troll threads and thus has been sanctioned by the holy /tg/ Inquisition for public use (keep it on /tg/).
Exterminatus on the Tabletop
Though not the most effective of lists, it is particularly hilarious and surprisingly fluffy to declare Exterminatus on large table games of 40k. The general gist is to simply stock up on as many large blast templates fired from off table as possible, whether via army list or stratagems. One relatively simple list is to simply take a Grey Knights army, field a single Bro-Capt. or Grand Master with an orbital Strike Relay, Karamazov (who also has one) and two troop choices (if you're playing a regular game -- if you're playing Apocalypse, you can skip the troops) Then cram in as many Techmarines as you can, give them all Orbital Strike Relays and watch the bombs drop. For the average 3000 point game, you can get Krazypants off and 20 bare-bones techies with the relays. that's 21 Strength 10 AP1 pie-plates smashing down on your opponents Baneblades, Warhounds and other special hard-as-balls to kill shit your opponents have! Also great for swarm-busting (the relays can fire D3 pieplates each per guy but at Strength 6). Picture Krazypantsoff standing on a hilltop, pointing at buildings and going "Bang.", then watching them all blow up. Of course, if the Inquisitor dies, you're fucked. So maybe just camp him in cover. But that's only if you're lame.
For those of you with enough money to field the Horus Heresy army list from Forge World, Horus can call down an orbital strike with infinite range and S10 AP1 from anywhere on the map. Now you can reenact the Istvaan III atrocities yourself!
For an Apocalypse game you can also field an exterminatus guard force. All you need is: n * 6 guardsmen (one with a vox). The list is fairly simple - Just field as many Company Command Squads with nothing but Master of Ordinance and fire away (for a 3k game its almost 38 s9 ap3 blasts a turn) Don't forget to field some epic(troll) music to laugh at your opponents face, and after the battle proceed with knocking the table down to finish with a speech gritty nuff to make Sturnn himself proud.
As of 7th edition, it's now possible to forego the FoC chart and take whatever models you want. This means you can take 15 Chapter Masters in a 2k list.
TL;DR
You fuckers just backed Chaos and now you have a daemon infestation? Your planet 'gon git raaaaaaaaaaaaaaped.
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Suffer not the Furry to live
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The E-quisition vigilantly purges the Emperor's internets of chaos taint.
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If the inhabitants of a planet remotely resembles this creature, it's guaranteed to be exterminatused upon discovery. If pictures like this are found on a thread in /tg/, it's guaranteed to be saged and trolled upon discovery
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If said inhabitants started space-faring like a certain Chakat, then you could call your local Inquisition or any Xeno manly enough to get shit done, just like the Covenant shown in the image.
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See? The Internet can even make the end of the world look sexy!
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Don't suggest bolides as a method of exterminatus.
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Although this is not a planet, it's just too B-E-A-weeaboo-TIFUL.
Vidya: