As eight billion people stumbled into the new year, a heavy question weighed on the minds of a scattered few: If I was made entirely of chocolate, which would I eat first? My feet or my hands? Others were burdened by an even more pressing issue: How can I obliterate the entire population of the earth?

Ominous? Perhaps. But suspicions of super-villainy aside, consider the speculation's artistic value.

Every summer at the movies, landmarks are wiped out by meteor-illogical disasters, kindergartners contract a superflu from their classmates, aliens descend from the heavens to exterminate us, and sometimes the entire planet explodes without much warning.

INT. WAREHOUSE DAY
The chase ends amidst a tangle of steaming pipes, the detective standing over the alien interloper. Bats twitter overhead.

DETECTIVE FRANK LIEBOWITZ
Thought you had us that time, didn't you, Squiddy?

SQUID BEAST FROM PLANET SIGMA CENTAURI
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

DETECTIVE FRANK LIEBOWITZ
What's so funny, squidfac...

EXT. OUTER SPACE DAY
The earth explodes.

Maybe you've never thought about ways to obliterate the earth's population. Maybe your days are full of baking and polite telephone conversations with the lady who sweeps up the church after Sunday mass. Perhaps, right after you finish reading this, you're going outside to hug a squirrel and offer him some life-coaching.

I'm currently writing something that necessitates a planet-wide extermination as part of the premise. When you spend the better part of a day considering your destructive options with pure, literary intent, you amass a growing collection of really bad ideas. Here's a sampling from the discard pile.

Heads Will Roll
Celine Dion is cloned and sings a duet with herself. Everyone listening to the global broadcast grabs their ears like jug handles and wrench their heads free from their bodies. At bowling alleys, some people throw their heads to pick up a spare.

The Great Flood
At the world's largest pudding factory, which is really just a massive spigot atop a natural pudding geyser that taps the earth's molten, delicious core... shoddy carpentry results in structural collapse. Everyone on the planet drowns.

WCRY: The Dehydration Station
Someone has a really bad day and they cry about it to some friends. The friends tell other friends this sad story, and so on, until a big budget movie adaptation is made, allowing everyone else to hear the story. At the mere mention of this sad story, people burst into tears, unable to control their sadness. They dehydrate en masse, and are blown to dust by a strong wind.

Turn Out the Lights
That light switch in your house that doesn't do anything when you flick it on, flick it off, flick it on, flick it off? It's connected to the pilot light in a dormant furnace that will cleanse the earth's surface with fire. You ignite the flame on a Tuesday night, sometime between watching the news and being scorched to glowing embers.

Irony Deficiency
In a move to rid the earth of toxic waste and landfills, all garbage is lashed together into a big ball and blasted into outer space. During the ensuing celebration, the earth is struck by an enormous ball of garbage launched from a distant planet a million years earlier. Their party went off without a hitch.

Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! Twenty years after issuing their overt threat against humanity, Michael Stipe and R.E.M. detonate their doomsday device. What's great, is it starts with an earthquake, and then spirals into mostly gibberish. Lenny Bruce is not afraid, because Lenny Bruce is already dead. Pretty much every other idea involves giant gophers, quick dry cement, and cast members from St. Elmo's Fire.

You might think Rob Lowe could outrun one while wearing shoes made of the other. But you'd be wrong.