In recent years, though, it’s become possible to gamify the role of planetary engineer even without access to a billionaire’s financial resources. In a response to Musk’s “Nuke Mars!” tweet, for example, one user suggests that Musk collaborate with the popular post-apocalyptic video game franchise Bethesda to “make fallout 5 on mars.” Musk responds “I’d play that game,” and even more tellingly, “guess I sort of am already.”
If “planetary engineering” sounds more like something you might expect to encounter in sci-fi movies or video games, then you aren’t alone. But even so, geomorphic solutions to climate change-both on Earth and beyond it-are now becoming an increasingly prominent topic of discussion for academics, fiction writers, and even politicians. Despite Musk’s enthusiasm, it’s worth noting that scientists have pointed out the difficulty and maybe even sheer impossibility of sustained terraforming efforts-with or without nuclear weapons. In August 2019, he wrote a tweet reiterating an explosively simple plan: “ Nuke Mars!” As others have explained, the point of such a plan rests in the hope that detonating nuclear weapons on the frozen poles of Mars could release enough carbon dioxide and water vapor to create an atmosphere capable of heating the planet to livable temperatures. The idea of terraforming Mars-that is, initiating geochemical shifts to produce an Earth-like, livable atmosphere-has been a prominent component of Musk’s business agenda since at least 2015.
Well before pandemics and viral infection were mainstream topics, the infamously outspoken Elon Musk urged his followers to prepare for a different kind of biological transmission: human life on Mars.