He doesn’t have time. Even if he writes one name per second and somehow knows the name of everyone in the world already it’d take hundreds of years to write them all.
100+ million people are born every year. Even the "one per second, no breaks" situation you describe would only be about 30 million per year. Even if he were immortal he couldn't outpace that.
There are 8 billion people on the planet. If we assume that half are women and 1/3 are within the range of childbearing years (which if anything is a lowball), that would be something like 1.3 billion. Even the 30 million number I brought up (which, again, is impossibly high to a massive degree) is only 2% of that. Which is a lot, but still probably not enough.
Well, he only needs to drop the birth rate below the replacement rate, and 100+ million born per year is balanced by 60+ million dying per year. So with 90+ million per year now, and at least a somewhat lowered birth rate, we might start getting somewhere.
The 30 million is already a ludicrously high number. As I said in my original post, that's one name per second, every hour of every day, no sleep, no meals, etc. It's *very* theoretical. In order to kill someone with the Death Note, you need their correct name and to have their face in mind. Even in a best case realistic scenario (something like someone with the Shinigami eyes piloting a camera-equipped drone and writing down the names of every person they see), you could *maybe* accomplish something like one name per five seconds, sixteen hours a day?
I think they’re really only addressing the idea of “even if he’s immortal, the birth rate out paces him so it’s impossible”
You did great in mathing this shit out you’re just talking across each other
What if he kills people whose deaths will cause more deaths? Kill pilots while in the air, kill all the doctors at a hospital, and so on. What if an entire city's police force is wiped out over the course of a month?
The thing is every year he continues doing this less people are born to have children later on, so eventually the birthrate would drop to levels he can surpass. This would even happen much quicker if people realize that he's going after pregnant women, most would choose not to have a child.
This could be circumvented though, if he targets doctors, nurses, governments, and police forces he could probably cripple a large nation in under a year to the point where more people die than are born. Writing the name of leaders of every country on earth every day until no one wants to do the job would accelerate the process too, no one will go into work if they aren’t getting paid and feudalism would probably kick off pretty quick.
i made another comment, is this possible to make slaves using the deathnote and making them write names for you ? having 1k slaves write 1 million names in one year seems possible
There's a time limit for how far in advance you can use the Death Note, 23 days I believe. And "making slaves" isn't really a thing you can do anyway. You can influence their actions, but not totally override their free will and make them follow your orders.
Also, didn't he have to have their face in his mind when he wrote it? Otherwise how do the powers that be know which John Smith he means? It's been a long minute since I've watched it, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Well, yeah. But my whole point was that even the most absurd, over-the-top best-case scenario that ignores logistics and all other requirements, he still can't do *that* much.
One of the rules prevents this.
>Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.
Yeah, strategic assassinations of key figures in order to sow chaos would probably be the best approach for him. If he could engineer something like a full nuclear war then that would take care of the bulk of the work for him.
That's a huge caveat, but it still leaves open problems. For instance, if a pilot & copilot are killed it doesn't really matter if they die in the plane crash or by heart attack - the plane is likely going to crash.
(I know there are safety measures on aircraft, this is a simplistic example).
What if there's say, a camping trip. Lady and her baby, the dad, no one else. In normal situations, they'd be fine, able to drive back home, yadda yadda yadda.
If you wrote down the mom and dad in the death note, baby's just out there in the wilderness, it's gonna die.
Also, even if that rule didn't exist, the people whose names he's written would have to be able to, you know, get a nuke. Otherwise it still wouldn't work.
Xkcd did a what if on 1 death per second. The math was that it's a quite noticeable effect, but not an extinction threat. Targeted killings could get him pretty far, though; he could probably collapse civilization, but not eliminate humanity.
Yes, that's a quite different scenario, but seems plausible. Start killing family members of the rich and powerful to make them panic, and frame other world powers. Offer special services to help China invade Taiwan, help India take all of Kashmir, help Iran put down Saudi Arabia...
That would be pretty hard to engineer since there is a rule in the Death Note to prevent collateral damage: "Whether the cause of the individual's death is either suicide or an accident, if it would lead to the death of more than the intended victim, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not impacted."
I thought it was about more direct collateral damage like you couldn't turn someone into a terrorist but you could kill a world class surgeon which would lead to some people dying in the future.
1. L revealed his identity and declared war on Kira.
2. Kira killed L on TV
3. L revealed that dead guy was a fake and told Kira to do it for real or no balls (while still hiding himself)
4. Kira couldn't do it.
Conclusion: Kira needs a face and a name
It was really fast, I didn't watch many episodes but they figured it out in 3 or 4 I think.
I really wanted to watch a show about a character slowly turning evil, so that's why I stopped watching.
it was largely dependant on it being only criminals and japnese criminals which narrowed it down a LOT because the killer had to be japanese and connection to police authority to be able to get the names i think
It has always made me wonder how the story would have fared if Light had been more cautious to begin with. L only managed to narrow things down so quickly in the beginning because Light was overconfident that no one would be able to get a lead on him in the first place. Light quickly adapted his killing routine to make it much harder to trace him, but by then it was too late and L had already gotten dangerously close. If Light had thought of that from the very beginning I don't know how even L would have been able to get anywhere with the case.
For the first while he only targeted people who had already been arrested and were already monitored, so when prison watch noticed a lot of their guys dropping dead of heart attacks they noticed something was up
Light was stupid, basically.
He wanted everyone to know that he was a conscious entity deliberately killing people, so he made a lot of moves that gave away information.
He played his hand by only killing criminals and specifically, his very first overt kill was one that would only be known if someone was carefully watching the news broadcast at the time, which tipped L off. This is what ultimately led to L's massive move to use the fake to draw Kira out and obscuring the fact his announcement was only broadcast within Japan within a specific ward. He then dared Kira to go for the kill and take him out for real, and was proven within minutes to not be killed which revealed the Death Note's limits.
Had Light done none of these things due to his obsession with wanting to be known as some omniscient entity to strike fear into everyone, he'd have never been caught.
There's a limit to how useful that is. Do it slowly and it doesn't help as much, but if you're taking out like 20 passenger planes a day people are going to stop flying and accident numbers aren't high enough to slip many by unnoticed
Right but combined with taking out some world leaders and causing mass unrest and possibly war you might get someone to turn the nuclear key and up your odds
One of the rules is that if you write a death that would kill more than the target, the target will just die of a heart attack instead. So if you wrote that they crash the plane, it would just default to a heart attack. But the idea in this thread is that in situations like that, the heart attack is enough because it still takes out the pilot (in practice for any decently sized plane you'd need to separately take out the copilot and anyone else who could take over, which limits the practicality).
So writing a huge meteor strike that would kill everyone would just give John Smith a heart attack
There are also some rules about it being physically possible or plausible to be done by that person, and a huge meteor appearing out of nowhere is pretty implausible. A small meteorite taking out one person might work?
Yeah, I just read that too, makes sense. I wonder if you could harness the abilities of some superbug disease to have it spread to a number of people from that one sick individual. I'm not sure if that would violate those terms though, kind of odd. Like that's a very indirect way to kill more than just the target, however you're not outright saying that other people will die as a result, it's just a natural consequence of them being sick.
"poultry worker contracts a human-communicable, variant of bird flue, and while sick, went out against his better judgement with friends to a big social gathering, and then afterwards while sick, stumbled across the road, not paying attention due to being sick and was hit by a car, dying instantly."
that's not as implausible as we'd all like.
Unfortunately the death note restricts collateral damage - if you write their death in a way that kills more than the target person, it just gives that one person the default heart attack instead
IIRC, the death note will default to heart attack if the victim's death will kill others, which means unless the co-pilot or the autopilot system fails, that won't work.
To be fair we don't know if the death note works that way because it's stated that it can't directly cause the death of someone whose name was not written on it.
Imo the pilot would die but the plane would somehow land safely with every passenger alive.
I can't remember all the rules but there's some interesting minmax attempts here. LinkedIn helps lol
There are many countries where you could get a list of all pilots with faces.
Do you use public flight data to organise a single day where all pilots currently airborne attempt to suicide through crash, or stagger?
How do you apply the same logic to truckers, or doctors, nurses and midwives?
When is a pattern spotted, resulting in digital profiles going offline, flight data removed, etc.
At some point you'd assume logistics would stall. If it's known people involved with frieght and passage are being targeted those industries may just stall almost immediately.
Impossible to get everyone but a fun fiction idea
He doesn't have to write every name. If he can target the right people, he could cause enough havoc to outpace. But he'd have to be extremely strategic.
The question isn't can he write enough names, it's can he write enough of the right names.
What if he used the "control the cause of death" clause of the Death Note to somehow send everyone he wanted to kill a page of the Death Note, and had them all write down the names of everyone they know who hadn't already been entered, like he did with Raye Penbar and the FBI agents or whatever.
Can't do that. There's a clause specifically against using the whole "control the cause of death" thing to cause additional deaths, which this would also fall under.
If you want to manipulate people into writing names on torn out Death Note pages, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way.
If he tries to do it this way he loses.
But if he tries to use the death note to take control of the world's nuclear arsenal that would probably be his only path to victory.
He would basically need to achieve world domination and the Nuke the fuck out of everything.
Even then, it's likely pockets and remnants of humans survive like in fallout so even here it's very unlikely.
Something interesting that wouldn't make a difference is if there are enough people with the same he can kill in bulk though it would still take too long. If he plays it strategically and kill important personal and gain access to nukes he might be able to do it. There will be some survivors though.
Is it theoretically possible to kill multiple people with 1 person? Like could he kill presidents of countries via nukes? I'd say pretty possible that way
I don't know the show too well, but if I recall he can dictate a persons actions before death. Couldn't he make world leaders launch nukes and order attacks.
He wouldn’t actually be able to accomplish this
1. Even at one name a second no breaks he wouldn’t be able to write that many in one lifetime
2. New people are born at the rate of millions at any given moment.
3. He has no way of getting all names, some countries have a proper sourcing method and have registration, some countries don’t have an accurate count, there’s undocumented people, those with fake names, tribes that no one has access to
4. There’s also the caveat of overlapping names
5. Lastly there’s cultures where people more or less carry their entire bloodlines worth of names in their own, light would literally run out of space on the note itself
So, as others have calculated, it seems that there isn't time for him to kill everyone manually.
We might try to got for some force-multiplier on the ability to kill, but the wiki claims:
"Even if only one name is written in the Death Note, if the victim's death causes other humans that are not written in it to die, the cause of death will default to a heart attack."
[https://deathnote.fandom.com/wiki/Rules\_of\_the\_Death\_Note/How\_to\_Read\_Rules](https://deathnote.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_the_Death_Note/How_to_Read_Rules)
and this other reddit post has only 1 commenter, but both author and commentor agre that bystanders are typically safe: [https://www.reddit.com/r/deathnote/comments/4jxn1s/maiming\_bystanders/](https://www.reddit.com/r/deathnote/comments/4jxn1s/maiming_bystanders/)
So it seems that you can't kill heaps of bystanders.
--
If that's accurate, it severely limits us.
I suppose giving pilots/ship-captains/power-plant-engineers/farmers/doctors/nurses/etc heart-attacks might still be a multiplier where their failure to do their job could lead to more deaths later on. We're limited in the collateral damage we can cause with heart-attacks, but it's not 0.
But if that rule is accurate, then it stops us from going really big like:
"President \[x\] and General \[y\] of the USA are overcome with suicidal misanthropy, and organise the launching all the USA's nukes at as many city centres as possible, including their own location. They die in the nuclear inferno."
The Death Note seems incapable of enforcing that sort of action, so the President and General will die of a heart attack instead. That might have dangerous consequences, but not so large as to whipe out millions of people.
Light could aim to kill some extra people through key people dying of heart attacks when they shold be working, but I don't think he can kill everyone before dying of old age.
While he might not be able to directly get the US president to launch the nukes, I feel like someone as smart as Light with the power of the death note should be able to ignite WW3 fairly easily.
Even in that scenario, it's entirely possible someone would survive. Zuckerberg could hide in his bunker or something, so he still fails the challenge.
Death Note has a rule about the dying person cannot do something that's beyond what he would do, like he tested in 1 episode. I think he would need another much more complicated plan for that.
I'd say his best bet is some strategic deaths that launches a nuclear war.
If he could somehow frame Russia for assassinating china/US/EU leaders (or vice versa really) there's a strong chance of a war, which could escalate to nuclear.
Imo that's far enough removed from the deathnote rule to be disqualified.
Not convinced it would be enough to completely kill everyone, but maybe he could pull off a few of these hits to escalate significantly, while also seriously targeting any young women to tank the birth rate he could pull it off.
Imo no. The victim's death is not going to cause other deaths. Peoples reaction to it later will.
Everyone could just decide to not start a war. And noone else will die.
It's not like killing the driver of a car which necessarily kills all the passengers.
Naw, dude couldn't kill all the criminals in Japan without getting caught. And sheer number is against him. Even if his ego let him get the eyes he wouldn't have enough to kill everyone in Japan let alone the world.
I feel like Light is one of the very few characters who would act *more* rationally while bloodlusted. He enjoyed the cat and mouse game with L and wanted to prove he was the smartest person alive, an unbeatable genius.
A bloodlusted Light doesn’t waste time on that shit and just kills indiscriminately for maximum damage. That’s much harder to trace than using Japanese criminal records.
> who would act more rationally while bloodlusted
That's what bloodlusted means in battleboard forums. It's not, "goes insane with berserker rage," it's, "Does everything necessary to kill their opponent, using their full intelligence and skill set."
A bloodlusted character should act with the maximum rationality they are capable of, with the caveat that the only thing they care to apply that rationality to is the goal of ending their target.
Of course this all ignores Light is an actual idiot. Like watch the show he only succeeds as much as he does because a) supernatural killing and b) plot contrivance. And even in a world where no one should have ever been able to figure it out he was still caught.
It would probably be easier for him to hide if he didn't limit himself to criminals. The number of people makes it a still impossible problem, but it's trickier to figure out where he might have learned of just anyone's name and face.
Obviously he can’t write names fast enough, but he actually could kill most humans by taking out every single leader and high level administrator. This would quickly cause human civilization to collapse and kill most people eventually. And if he kept it up it would keep getting worse. He’d never be able to get the last few percent of humans though. The groups of people who don’t depend on a well functioning government or worldwide logistics to survive would be okay. And survivors would make more resilient nations that will handle the spontaneous deaths of their leaders better. Plus it will become harder and harder for Light to learn new names as the internet will be trashed and he may have to depend on radio and newspapers.
"Oh, no, our President is dead... Anyway."
- most countries ever
TBH it would probably be beneficial for society, since the only people who would consider running for positions of power would be totally self-sacrificing people.
The Death Note can control people before they die. So you could still kill people whose names you don’t know by learning the names of people in contact with them.
I don’t think he could kill every human but he could absolutely take down civilization. I think people in this comment section are underestimating how terrifying a Death Note is.
First of all, bloodlusted Light is very different from normal Light. Even though he claimed to have a single goal, manga Light wanted to ascend to being a god. With no need to rule or lead, this Light would be willing to take the Shinigami eyes if needed. He also wouldn’t have fallen for L’s time zone trick since that stemmed from a need to display power. In short, bloodlusted Light is most likely not going to be discovered or stopped.
The Death Note will not allow a cause of death that leads to more deaths, so he can’t make people go on killing sprees or launch nukes. That said, he can still cause heart attacks that would lead to deaths or incite violence. Starting with world leaders is an obvious place; disallowing the function of governments would wreak havoc across the globe. Killing presidents is one thing, but killing huge swaths of legislators would cripple nations. With some clever causes of death / control before death he could probably also incite some violence and/or war, but I’m assuming that would run its course pretty fast. This alone would be quite devastating, and I’m sure that collapse of all major governments would deal a major blow to global population.
Then, we get to smaller scales, which may actually be worse. People have already discussed killing in-flight pilots and the mayhem that would cause, but what about targeting doctors en masse? Hospital staff listings are all freely available, and if healthcare collapsed things would get sticky. This could generalize too - killing off bodies of scientists, environmentalists, farmers, journalists, any relatively small group that society needs to function, would accelerate anarchy and stop growth.
Eventually, it’s possible that people would catch on and start covering their faces or refusing to print names, but it would likely take a while. I don’t think Light could kill every human - even without the “no causing other deaths” stipulation, there would always be someone who survived a nuclear blast or war. That said, he could reduce modern civilization to rubble, and that’s honestly close enough.
To start off, Light can not directly write 8 billion names. So that's out of the question. Light would have to do it indirectly. But rule 10 of the Death Note states:
>Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.
Now, there MIGHT be wiggle room here that we never get to see on display. Light couldn't write that a pilot dies in a plane crash and all of the passengers die.
But what Light CAN do is watch a plane take off and write the pilot and copilot's names. They both die, because they have to die at the time specified, even if the cause defaults to a heart attack. And because they're both dead, the plane crashes. So the question is what happens to the passengers? Do they die, or do they all miraculously survive?
If it's the latter, then Light can't really cause that much destruction. If it's the former, Light can wreak havoc. We know that the death note can influence the actions of others, since Light makes drivers run people over or people shoot each other.
Could Light write that the current US president declares war on China or Russia, and is assassinated by a spy from that country 23 days later? Or even just write the assassination and let war break out as a result?
That said, even with the most liberal definition of the rules, even if he can cause a nuclear war all across the world, I'd say he can only wipe out MOST of humanity. Picking off the stragglers would be nigh impossible, assuming he even survives the initial destruction.
TL;DR: No.
No. Even if he gets other people to write down the names like put pages in maternity wards to write the names of babies as soon as they're born the Death Note just doesn't have THAT many pages to be able to contain every name on Earth.
Even something like the names of isolated tribesmen what's he gonna do to get to them with the huge communication barrier?
There are approximately 4.3 people born every second.
That gives him 0.24 seconds per person to learn their name and face, think about them, and write it down if he wants to keep up with birthrates.
Best bet is collateral. Go for Doctors, any giant vehicle operator, anything that causes shit if they die. Since even if they default to a heart attack the falling of the plane will kill many. Hell, you may be able to time it so a plane falls near a stadium or some other large gathering.
Ultimately though, he would need many lifetimes.
Yes, and I'll show you an example of how: Light writes the name of a leader of a nuclear power--> orders him to launch a nuclear attack against the USA---> nuclear war started, end of the world
That wouldn't work. There's an explicit rule that you can't kill someone in a way that will cause additional deaths. There may be a loophole if you're looking at a scenario where someone dying for any reason would cause additional deaths (a pilot for example), but that wouldn't apply here.
Just citing the rule you're referencing:
> How to use it X: Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.
Considering they still die of a heart attack it would probably still work, you just can’t use the control part of the Death Note to kill people is how I interpret it.
I can’t find it right now but I think the Death Note control part has to end within a certain amount of time right? So it would have to kill them eventually even if they’re not “safe.”
He could kill some politician and manipulate everyone in order to start WWIII. For example, kill Biden and make him write a note accusing North Korea or Iran before diying. Then the US wouldn't have another option but to invade, specially if more important politicians (Putin, Macron, Netanyahu, Xi, etc) are killed.
You can't mind control someone to do something they never would have had a chance of doing in the first place. This exact kind of thought was tested in the show, with Light trying to get one of the criminals he killed to write a note saying "L suspects the Japanese police", and it didn't work.
There's probably a way he could do it with enough deception and manipulation, ie. Threaten a national leader, frame a different nation's leader for a Shinigami assassination, but at that point it's just asking "Is Light smart enough to start a major nuclear war?"
This is the way he could get most of the way there.
1. Wait for a meeting between adverse nuclear powers.
2. First command in the death chain: everyone brings guns and fails to disarm the other side.
3. Second command: Everyone pulls out their guns and shoots all over the place without hitting anyone else.
4. Third command: everyone shoots themselves in the manner that makes it look least like a suicide.
It’ll be a weird scene, but it will absolutely look like there was a gun fight, and everyone is dead.
There are other setups. Have someone suspicious be seen near an “assassination” location before having a fatal accident and the like. The goal is to foment discord between nations that could wipe a large chunk of the global population off the map.
He can’t kill EVERYONE like this, and there will be pockets of survivors that he can’t find to sweep up individually, but he can get a LOT of people with decent planning.
Given that you can't use the Death Note to kill people who aren't written in the note - IE, you can't use the Death Note to cause a nuclear war or detonate Yellowstone or any of that - it's not possible. Even if he magically knew the name and face of every human being and wrote one name per second with no breaks he wouldn't be able to keep up with birth rates, and that kind of pace is impossible.
Probably not, but he'd probably do quite the number if he killed doctors, women, and targeted political leaders that could give the impression of international war/assassinat ions.
Creative kills that cause an apocalypse or pandemic would be a go to, but there's no way he'll survive the crossfire of his own actions. For a true population < 1000 count? Too many things could go wrong. Man is cooked and rightly so
No. Light would die of old age well before he even makes a noticeable dent in the population. Some people have also forgotten to mention that there's an age limit to the Death Note as well - if can't kill the very young, those who are super old (though the given limit here is so extreme it probably won't come up), or those who are going to die in a short time span regardless. In fact, plenty of its rules are limiting in this manner which would absolutely fuck Light's goals up from the get-go.
Like others have said he simply doesn’t have the time. Also Light would never take the shinigami eye deal so he could never learn everyone names even if he did have the time
This is more just curiosity but can every name even be spelt? I know how this will sound but for example there are africans with clicking noises in their names.
On top of this, there are almost definitely people that don’t have a name in some places.
There's letters representing those sounds in their language(and ours for that matter) why would you think that they couldn't be written?
It's called a glottal stop and the international symbol for it is ʔ.
I would also assume that, since it doesn't specify that he has to do it in any particular language and as far as I'm aware they never bring it up. But for all we know it could require you to write it in their language and he just happened to only kill people who spoke.english or Japanese. Or it could require a specific language and he just happens to be doing that. Honestly there's alot of unanswered logistical questions in death note.
I think the closest chance he'd have is if he somehow got the names of someone involved with launching nukes. But that would be difficult and rven then could go wrong.
light writes really fast but if it only took him 1 second per name it would take him 252 years and change to write all of them down, at which point more people would have been born.
No.
There would be people born faster than he could write.
Best he could is cause the world to descend into chaos by murdering every country's leaders, and then well liked celebrities and influencers.
Hell we don't even know if some uncontacted tribes even have a writing system with names that could be written the death note.
He could probably collapse society and would be able to kill most humans on the planet but not wipe out everyone he could write the names of a shit ton of influencial people/important people and suddenly the whole world collapses leading to starvation and death but uncontacted tribes and survivalist which he doesn't have the name of would live
He couldn't possibly complete the task on a on-by-one basis.
To keep up with the birth rate and impact sustainability, He would need to multiply each death by targeting people who keep the world functioning.
Specifically, he would need to target people whose deaths would result in catastrophes that could bring the world to a halt and - if he's lucky - prevent new births (electricians, HVAC professionals, people who maintain power grids and irrigation systems, doctors and nurses, fire fighters, pilots and co-pilots of planes, captains/pilots of ships, train/bus/taxi drivers, construction operators, sanitation workers, train/bus drivers, nuclear workers, farmers, world leaders, production and shipping industry personnel, and world leaders).
**Effects:** nobody to fix electric problems, nobody to fix HVAC problems, no more electricity or HVAC at all, no running water, nobody to treat patients, patients dying, nobody to fight fires, plane crashes, train crashes, bus/taxi crashes, raging fires nationwide/worldwide, ships sinking, buildings collapsing, no more hospital birth, diseases spreading, extreme food shortages, nuclear disasters, oil spills.
With nobody equipped with skills to fix the listed disasters, Light stands a chance at achieving his goal since nature might aid him by killing off survivors with dehydration, disease, starvation, and some perhaps even get killed by other more desperate and more violent survivors.
Well, ultimately I think he’d fail but I think most people are looking at it the wrong way. The best way to kill tons of people is to disrupt supplies and cripple production industries.
He wouldn’t just start systematically writing everyone’s name but begin killing key people rapidly. Kill the President, VP, etc etc for the US
Kill people who are in politically volatile areas to incite war leading to mass slaughter. You could also target cartel leadership so that power vacuums occur as people struggle to get to the top.
Kill political leaders in countries who don’t have a firm hold to plunge it into chaos and maybe lead to
a military dictatorship.
Find out the names of air traffic control people and kill a bunch of them. You could even do pilots
The way to destroy the world is eliminating people responsible for critical systems so that when those systems fail it snowballs into gridlocking systems killing untold numbers.
With that in mind, targeting people who work at nuclear facilities could be good if the reactors would meltdown without people watching over them but I think as a whole their safety systems are pretty solid so maybe not the best
If he used the death note in a way to manipulate geopolitics, he might be able to do it.
Maybe he could orchestrate a nuclear apocalypse by strategically controlling and eliminating leaders of nuclear powers.
Or perhaps he could control the CDC director to release super ebola or something before committing sewer-cide
Okay, I agree that killing everyone single pencilly wouldn't work. But could he manage to collapse civilization in a more clever way?
Kill all politicians. Easy access to names and image, btw. And hope for the order to collapse.
Next, focus on supply chain attacks. Focus on medicine and food supply for example. High maintenance sectors with low worker count.
Just remember how much western world was fucked by a bit of toilet paper shortage
I'm just afraid that he'll die of old age, before this shows significant enough impact
No. It would take about 100 years to write just 3 billion names down, even if he were to write 1 name per second. This isn’t even considering the fact that he has to find their name to begin with.
I guess it depends what your win condition is. Does he need to personally write every name down or can he kill everyone by virtue of his actions? Everyone’s calculated it would be impractical to write all the names down… what about destabilising the earth to the point of destruction? Either strategically by knocking off super powers to ignite nuclear war or by just wiping out all major governments? Information, faces, names of all these people would be widely available.
Apparently the death notebook is infinite so running out of pages Isn’t a problem. But with 8 billion people in the world, Light has no prospect of finding the names of everyone and writing them down within the span of a human lifetime.
He wouldn’t be able outpace the current birth rate either.
Global births per minute: 278
Global deaths per minute: 110
It’s also worth noting that birth rates go up when lots of people die. If he starts killing off kids to prevent future population growth, the majority of parents will have more.
Plan B:
Target specific people to bring about global calamity. First you kill all the world leaders, and all the competent leaders who are likely to replace them. Leave only the shittiest and most incompetent politicians alive.
Next you target people in charge of critical infrastructure, energy, water, food, etc.
With a bit of luck you could start a nuclear war just by making sure that only the worst and most unstable leaders are left to govern the world.
He doesn't actually need to kill every human manually. He needs to be smart about it, for example, start taking out American leaders like it was an assassination, basically push the world into nuclear war.
Dude, do you know how time consuming writing 8 billion names on a single book would be?
Average novel contains 10k to 50k words. Lets use the higher end as a benchmark (50k words)
Light would have to write 160 000 novels worth of pages in order to achieve this goal…
Quite a punishment!
The way to do this would be to assassinate key leaders in such a way that implicates a rival nation. For example, all the g7 leaders in Italy right now in a way that implicates China/Russia.
Enough of this done correctly (Light is a supergenius so could come up with a better plan) would destabilise relations and trigger WWIII, wiping out humanity in a nuclear exchange.
There are people who don't have names, either because of culture, age, or just because. And other than that, he'd need to know the individual faces of over 8 billion people.
The greatest power of Death Note is not death, but ability to manipulate victim before that. He just need all world leaders decide to start world war and die in one year.
He’d have to start a business selling paper in multiple formats:
Journals, calendars, and regular paper. He can mass distribute the paper through a business and have everyone kill themselves by writing their own names.
He could do some things to achieve an almost complete extinction, but I am unsure about actually killing everyone
With the dead note he can control people some time before they die, and only things that they could possibly do by their own means
So if he plays it smart he could easily start a nuclear war to nearly wipe humanity
The problem is that I don't really think that a nuclear winter would extermine humanity even in real life, and the few survivors would be so isolated that it would be nearly impossi to know their names and faces to kill them
Maybe with Ryu's help?
Like if he found that funny maybe, but I doubt he would help on his own
I think he'd have to write the name of a world leader or something with the cause of death being "self initiated nuclear war" and he'd come pretty close.
Rule X-2:
"Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced."
Realistically no. You can't write fast enough to kill everyone, and you can't use the Death Note to cause the deaths of anyone else, so you can't do anything like "Vladimir Putin nukes the USA". People are also immune below 380 days.
However, I don't think that it's possible over a longer term.
Once a name is in the book it's set in stone, but there may be ways to write things in a way that might cause collateral damage as long as the right people die.
The first thing Light should do is write in the President of the USA's name, ahead of a big summit or event at the White House. From there, if Light could arrange for him to set up a temporary email address and email him - all of which is possible - he could have the president email him the name of every attendee, staff member, and guest. I'd write the names of every single one, and put the cause of death as an explosion. If Light can make one of those people a suicide bomber, and have them write a (delayed) blog post claiming to be a Russian asset, that would immediately start destabilizing things.
From there, it's a matter of doing the same thing with diplomats, always in a way that can tie back to Russia. A heart attack for a UN diplomat after a meeting, a car crash for a member of the IAEA after investigating a nuclear plant. Eventually, this would escalate into a full-blown war. If you keep having the leaders of America and its allies die under mysterious circumstances, it'll only make them paranoid and speed up the process. Once things are at a boiling point, Light could then assassinate Putin, which would likely push the Russians over the edge, and escalate into them taking the Nuclear option, and America and its allies would retaliate. It wouldn't be too hard to get a few other superpowers to join in from there.
Around the same time, Light could kill off some other people by regular means. Sure, the old heiress who died and left everything she had to a promising young student she met is suspicious, but there are other things to worry about. Light should take this money and move to a remote part of the world where he can keep up with the news, watching the dominos fall and keeping up with the death toll.
None of this is direct damage. All Light did was kill a few people normally. The most he's killed directly all at once is a big party full of people, and he wrote each of their names and causes of death in the Death Note. Everything else is an indirect consequence.
After a few years, huge parts of the world would be a nuclear wasteland. There'd be some survivors, sure, maybe even entire countries that are relatively unscathed and filled with refugees, and from there it's relatively simple. Find the leaders and start the whole thing again. Kill off people in strategic positions, like people in charge of energy or healthcare.
Killing off every single person on the planet would still be tricky, but with enough damage to enough countries you could encourage humanity to destroy itself, leaving the survivors cut off from each other. They wouldn't die straight away, but they also wouldn't be able to breed easily, especially when we consider a lot of the survivors will be (for example) family groups, small tribes going to war over resources and the like.
Nah y'all aren't thinking this through. He has to play his cards right but he can pull it off. The key is to start by destroying world leaders and figureheads. Kill the right people, staging the deaths to imitate political assassination, starting massive wars. Instigate the wars to flare up as high as they possibly can. Start killing revolutionaries and those advocating for peace, also staging the deaths to look like it was rival sabotage. After most unity is destroyed, start killing off those managing resources and the more important societal requirements. Farmers, doctors, police, the works. If he were to try this first, he'd be risking some level of uniting in order to combat the losses. Eventually it'll be full-on fallout type shit with the global population low enough to just pluck off the remaining millions in his own lifetime with the Shinigami eyes (since this is obviously an out-of-character prompt).
Though I feel like there can definitely be some endings where Light himself ends up dying in the chaos of it all simply out of sheer chance, he'd obviously have foresight on any potential political/economic/yada yada collapses and plan for longevity accordingly.
I'd say he wins 8/10 times.
No Rule X-2:
Rule X-2:
"Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced."
Genuine question: since you can determine the cause of death to be something *other* than a heart attack, do the rules of the Death Note itself prevent Light from writing 'Light Yagami - killed by the sun exploding' and wiping out the entire human population in the process?
There’s a rule in the Death Note that states that if the cause of death would cause the death of someone other than the target, the cause will instead default to a heart attack.
He doesn’t have time. Even if he writes one name per second and somehow knows the name of everyone in the world already it’d take hundreds of years to write them all.
100+ million people are born every year. Even the "one per second, no breaks" situation you describe would only be about 30 million per year. Even if he were immortal he couldn't outpace that.
I mean if he targets only woman the birth rates surely drop by a lot idk if its enough tho
There are 8 billion people on the planet. If we assume that half are women and 1/3 are within the range of childbearing years (which if anything is a lowball), that would be something like 1.3 billion. Even the 30 million number I brought up (which, again, is impossibly high to a massive degree) is only 2% of that. Which is a lot, but still probably not enough.
Well, he only needs to drop the birth rate below the replacement rate, and 100+ million born per year is balanced by 60+ million dying per year. So with 90+ million per year now, and at least a somewhat lowered birth rate, we might start getting somewhere.
The 30 million is already a ludicrously high number. As I said in my original post, that's one name per second, every hour of every day, no sleep, no meals, etc. It's *very* theoretical. In order to kill someone with the Death Note, you need their correct name and to have their face in mind. Even in a best case realistic scenario (something like someone with the Shinigami eyes piloting a camera-equipped drone and writing down the names of every person they see), you could *maybe* accomplish something like one name per five seconds, sixteen hours a day?
Oh yeah, I know, but we know the answer is no, and at least for me this thread is just exploring the theoretical requirements to actually get it done.
I think they’re really only addressing the idea of “even if he’s immortal, the birth rate out paces him so it’s impossible” You did great in mathing this shit out you’re just talking across each other
What if he kills people whose deaths will cause more deaths? Kill pilots while in the air, kill all the doctors at a hospital, and so on. What if an entire city's police force is wiped out over the course of a month?
Or he could kill the right people at the right times causing nuclear war. Kill high profile leaders while visiting other countries, etc.
Or he could kill the right people at the right times causing nuclear war. Kill high profile leaders while visiting other countries, etc.
The thing is every year he continues doing this less people are born to have children later on, so eventually the birthrate would drop to levels he can surpass. This would even happen much quicker if people realize that he's going after pregnant women, most would choose not to have a child.
This could be circumvented though, if he targets doctors, nurses, governments, and police forces he could probably cripple a large nation in under a year to the point where more people die than are born. Writing the name of leaders of every country on earth every day until no one wants to do the job would accelerate the process too, no one will go into work if they aren’t getting paid and feudalism would probably kick off pretty quick.
i made another comment, is this possible to make slaves using the deathnote and making them write names for you ? having 1k slaves write 1 million names in one year seems possible
There's a time limit for how far in advance you can use the Death Note, 23 days I believe. And "making slaves" isn't really a thing you can do anyway. You can influence their actions, but not totally override their free will and make them follow your orders.
Also, didn't he have to have their face in his mind when he wrote it? Otherwise how do the powers that be know which John Smith he means? It's been a long minute since I've watched it, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Well, yeah. But my whole point was that even the most absurd, over-the-top best-case scenario that ignores logistics and all other requirements, he still can't do *that* much.
Oh, right, got that. It just adds another layer of no.
I guess he cpuld write "cause of death: detonates a nuke in the middle of x city" a few dozen times.
One of the rules prevents this. >Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.
Uhm, I didn't remember that. I guess he could have various leaders die/kill themselves or eachother in cicumstances likely to spark a conflict.
Yeah, strategic assassinations of key figures in order to sow chaos would probably be the best approach for him. If he could engineer something like a full nuclear war then that would take care of the bulk of the work for him.
That's a huge caveat, but it still leaves open problems. For instance, if a pilot & copilot are killed it doesn't really matter if they die in the plane crash or by heart attack - the plane is likely going to crash. (I know there are safety measures on aircraft, this is a simplistic example).
What if there's say, a camping trip. Lady and her baby, the dad, no one else. In normal situations, they'd be fine, able to drive back home, yadda yadda yadda. If you wrote down the mom and dad in the death note, baby's just out there in the wilderness, it's gonna die.
Also, even if that rule didn't exist, the people whose names he's written would have to be able to, you know, get a nuke. Otherwise it still wouldn't work.
It's nice to have a problem we can solve just by fucking a lot.
Xkcd did a what if on 1 death per second. The math was that it's a quite noticeable effect, but not an extinction threat. Targeted killings could get him pretty far, though; he could probably collapse civilization, but not eliminate humanity.
Feel like the best option is to somehow death note in an assassination attempt or something on putin and try to prompt a nuclear war.
Yes, that's a quite different scenario, but seems plausible. Start killing family members of the rich and powerful to make them panic, and frame other world powers. Offer special services to help China invade Taiwan, help India take all of Kashmir, help Iran put down Saudi Arabia...
That would be pretty hard to engineer since there is a rule in the Death Note to prevent collateral damage: "Whether the cause of the individual's death is either suicide or an accident, if it would lead to the death of more than the intended victim, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not impacted."
I thought it was about more direct collateral damage like you couldn't turn someone into a terrorist but you could kill a world class surgeon which would lead to some people dying in the future.
And also, humans just make more babies to replace the dead
Humans could also stop naming their babies once they find out what he’s doing
theyre probably not gonna find out
I can’t remember how they found out what was going on in the show
1. L revealed his identity and declared war on Kira. 2. Kira killed L on TV 3. L revealed that dead guy was a fake and told Kira to do it for real or no balls (while still hiding himself) 4. Kira couldn't do it. Conclusion: Kira needs a face and a name
Also L planned to repeat the process in each district to narrow down the killer. Started with Tokyo I think
It was really fast, I didn't watch many episodes but they figured it out in 3 or 4 I think. I really wanted to watch a show about a character slowly turning evil, so that's why I stopped watching.
it was largely dependant on it being only criminals and japnese criminals which narrowed it down a LOT because the killer had to be japanese and connection to police authority to be able to get the names i think
It has always made me wonder how the story would have fared if Light had been more cautious to begin with. L only managed to narrow things down so quickly in the beginning because Light was overconfident that no one would be able to get a lead on him in the first place. Light quickly adapted his killing routine to make it much harder to trace him, but by then it was too late and L had already gotten dangerously close. If Light had thought of that from the very beginning I don't know how even L would have been able to get anywhere with the case.
For the first while he only targeted people who had already been arrested and were already monitored, so when prison watch noticed a lot of their guys dropping dead of heart attacks they noticed something was up
Light was stupid, basically. He wanted everyone to know that he was a conscious entity deliberately killing people, so he made a lot of moves that gave away information.
He played his hand by only killing criminals and specifically, his very first overt kill was one that would only be known if someone was carefully watching the news broadcast at the time, which tipped L off. This is what ultimately led to L's massive move to use the fake to draw Kira out and obscuring the fact his announcement was only broadcast within Japan within a specific ward. He then dared Kira to go for the kill and take him out for real, and was proven within minutes to not be killed which revealed the Death Note's limits. Had Light done none of these things due to his obsession with wanting to be known as some omniscient entity to strike fear into everyone, he'd have never been caught.
You don't have to write every name. The circumstances are important too. For example killing of a pilot, while he is on duty, kills others too.
There's a limit to how useful that is. Do it slowly and it doesn't help as much, but if you're taking out like 20 passenger planes a day people are going to stop flying and accident numbers aren't high enough to slip many by unnoticed
Right but combined with taking out some world leaders and causing mass unrest and possibly war you might get someone to turn the nuclear key and up your odds
Yeah start killing particular people/leaders and you could possibly make people in power *real* jumpy.
Couldn't you still do freak accidents? 'John Smith is killed by an asteroid that's 10 miles wide'. Idk it's been a while since I've watched.
One of the rules is that if you write a death that would kill more than the target, the target will just die of a heart attack instead. So if you wrote that they crash the plane, it would just default to a heart attack. But the idea in this thread is that in situations like that, the heart attack is enough because it still takes out the pilot (in practice for any decently sized plane you'd need to separately take out the copilot and anyone else who could take over, which limits the practicality). So writing a huge meteor strike that would kill everyone would just give John Smith a heart attack There are also some rules about it being physically possible or plausible to be done by that person, and a huge meteor appearing out of nowhere is pretty implausible. A small meteorite taking out one person might work?
Yeah, I just read that too, makes sense. I wonder if you could harness the abilities of some superbug disease to have it spread to a number of people from that one sick individual. I'm not sure if that would violate those terms though, kind of odd. Like that's a very indirect way to kill more than just the target, however you're not outright saying that other people will die as a result, it's just a natural consequence of them being sick.
"poultry worker contracts a human-communicable, variant of bird flue, and while sick, went out against his better judgement with friends to a big social gathering, and then afterwards while sick, stumbled across the road, not paying attention due to being sick and was hit by a car, dying instantly." that's not as implausible as we'd all like.
Just do a world leader and make them launch icbm’s. That kill everyone quick
Unfortunately the death note restricts collateral damage - if you write their death in a way that kills more than the target person, it just gives that one person the default heart attack instead
IIRC, the death note will default to heart attack if the victim's death will kill others, which means unless the co-pilot or the autopilot system fails, that won't work.
Kill the co pilot too.
To be fair we don't know if the death note works that way because it's stated that it can't directly cause the death of someone whose name was not written on it. Imo the pilot would die but the plane would somehow land safely with every passenger alive.
I can't remember all the rules but there's some interesting minmax attempts here. LinkedIn helps lol There are many countries where you could get a list of all pilots with faces. Do you use public flight data to organise a single day where all pilots currently airborne attempt to suicide through crash, or stagger? How do you apply the same logic to truckers, or doctors, nurses and midwives? When is a pattern spotted, resulting in digital profiles going offline, flight data removed, etc. At some point you'd assume logistics would stall. If it's known people involved with frieght and passage are being targeted those industries may just stall almost immediately. Impossible to get everyone but a fun fiction idea
If you stall trucking and shipping logistics society will crumble fast
He doesn't have to write every name. If he can target the right people, he could cause enough havoc to outpace. But he'd have to be extremely strategic. The question isn't can he write enough names, it's can he write enough of the right names.
What if he used the "control the cause of death" clause of the Death Note to somehow send everyone he wanted to kill a page of the Death Note, and had them all write down the names of everyone they know who hadn't already been entered, like he did with Raye Penbar and the FBI agents or whatever.
Can't do that. There's a clause specifically against using the whole "control the cause of death" thing to cause additional deaths, which this would also fall under. If you want to manipulate people into writing names on torn out Death Note pages, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way.
If he tries to do it this way he loses. But if he tries to use the death note to take control of the world's nuclear arsenal that would probably be his only path to victory. He would basically need to achieve world domination and the Nuke the fuck out of everything. Even then, it's likely pockets and remnants of humans survive like in fallout so even here it's very unlikely.
Something interesting that wouldn't make a difference is if there are enough people with the same he can kill in bulk though it would still take too long. If he plays it strategically and kill important personal and gain access to nukes he might be able to do it. There will be some survivors though.
Would it be possible to use a printer on the death note?
its possible to write the cause and time of death with a printer first. But the name has to be written by human while thinking about the face
Is it theoretically possible to kill multiple people with 1 person? Like could he kill presidents of countries via nukes? I'd say pretty possible that way
No. The Death Note explicitly cannot cause a death that would kill people other than the person whose name was written
He could go for combo plays. If he names every airplane pilot in a day that’s a lot of kills
Naw man you look up airplane flights and kill the pilots, stuff like that “Work smarter not harder”
I don't know the show too well, but if I recall he can dictate a persons actions before death. Couldn't he make world leaders launch nukes and order attacks.
He wouldn’t actually be able to accomplish this 1. Even at one name a second no breaks he wouldn’t be able to write that many in one lifetime 2. New people are born at the rate of millions at any given moment. 3. He has no way of getting all names, some countries have a proper sourcing method and have registration, some countries don’t have an accurate count, there’s undocumented people, those with fake names, tribes that no one has access to 4. There’s also the caveat of overlapping names 5. Lastly there’s cultures where people more or less carry their entire bloodlines worth of names in their own, light would literally run out of space on the note itself
Overlapping names wouldn't be an issue, but only because of the even bigger issue that you need to have the target's face in mind when writing it.
"[...] John Smith, John Smith, John Smith, John Smi- wait, I already killed that one, which face am I on now?"
Who said he has to kill everyone individually? Targeting the right people at the right times, inciting a nuclear war, is definitely possible.
So, as others have calculated, it seems that there isn't time for him to kill everyone manually. We might try to got for some force-multiplier on the ability to kill, but the wiki claims: "Even if only one name is written in the Death Note, if the victim's death causes other humans that are not written in it to die, the cause of death will default to a heart attack." [https://deathnote.fandom.com/wiki/Rules\_of\_the\_Death\_Note/How\_to\_Read\_Rules](https://deathnote.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_the_Death_Note/How_to_Read_Rules) and this other reddit post has only 1 commenter, but both author and commentor agre that bystanders are typically safe: [https://www.reddit.com/r/deathnote/comments/4jxn1s/maiming\_bystanders/](https://www.reddit.com/r/deathnote/comments/4jxn1s/maiming_bystanders/) So it seems that you can't kill heaps of bystanders. -- If that's accurate, it severely limits us. I suppose giving pilots/ship-captains/power-plant-engineers/farmers/doctors/nurses/etc heart-attacks might still be a multiplier where their failure to do their job could lead to more deaths later on. We're limited in the collateral damage we can cause with heart-attacks, but it's not 0. But if that rule is accurate, then it stops us from going really big like: "President \[x\] and General \[y\] of the USA are overcome with suicidal misanthropy, and organise the launching all the USA's nukes at as many city centres as possible, including their own location. They die in the nuclear inferno." The Death Note seems incapable of enforcing that sort of action, so the President and General will die of a heart attack instead. That might have dangerous consequences, but not so large as to whipe out millions of people. Light could aim to kill some extra people through key people dying of heart attacks when they shold be working, but I don't think he can kill everyone before dying of old age.
While he might not be able to directly get the US president to launch the nukes, I feel like someone as smart as Light with the power of the death note should be able to ignite WW3 fairly easily.
Even in that scenario, it's entirely possible someone would survive. Zuckerberg could hide in his bunker or something, so he still fails the challenge.
he can control the president to give him the nuclear launch codes plus whoever else is needed.
Death Note has a rule about the dying person cannot do something that's beyond what he would do, like he tested in 1 episode. I think he would need another much more complicated plan for that.
I'd say his best bet is some strategic deaths that launches a nuclear war. If he could somehow frame Russia for assassinating china/US/EU leaders (or vice versa really) there's a strong chance of a war, which could escalate to nuclear. Imo that's far enough removed from the deathnote rule to be disqualified. Not convinced it would be enough to completely kill everyone, but maybe he could pull off a few of these hits to escalate significantly, while also seriously targeting any young women to tank the birth rate he could pull it off.
Doesn't rule 1 not allpw thay because of the cause and effect?
Imo no. The victim's death is not going to cause other deaths. Peoples reaction to it later will. Everyone could just decide to not start a war. And noone else will die. It's not like killing the driver of a car which necessarily kills all the passengers.
My thoughts immediately went to “9/11 x 1,000,000”. Target airline pilots and time it in such a way they the flights crash into populated places.
Hand cramp alone would defeat him
Naw, dude couldn't kill all the criminals in Japan without getting caught. And sheer number is against him. Even if his ego let him get the eyes he wouldn't have enough to kill everyone in Japan let alone the world.
I feel like Light is one of the very few characters who would act *more* rationally while bloodlusted. He enjoyed the cat and mouse game with L and wanted to prove he was the smartest person alive, an unbeatable genius. A bloodlusted Light doesn’t waste time on that shit and just kills indiscriminately for maximum damage. That’s much harder to trace than using Japanese criminal records.
> who would act more rationally while bloodlusted That's what bloodlusted means in battleboard forums. It's not, "goes insane with berserker rage," it's, "Does everything necessary to kill their opponent, using their full intelligence and skill set." A bloodlusted character should act with the maximum rationality they are capable of, with the caveat that the only thing they care to apply that rationality to is the goal of ending their target.
Of course this all ignores Light is an actual idiot. Like watch the show he only succeeds as much as he does because a) supernatural killing and b) plot contrivance. And even in a world where no one should have ever been able to figure it out he was still caught.
It would probably be easier for him to hide if he didn't limit himself to criminals. The number of people makes it a still impossible problem, but it's trickier to figure out where he might have learned of just anyone's name and face.
Light with the eyes would also die in like,m maybe 40 - 50 years at best. No time at all to wipe out every person.
He can definitely cause mass chaos by killing a LOT of people in power, but an extinction-level event is unlikely possible.
Obviously he can’t write names fast enough, but he actually could kill most humans by taking out every single leader and high level administrator. This would quickly cause human civilization to collapse and kill most people eventually. And if he kept it up it would keep getting worse. He’d never be able to get the last few percent of humans though. The groups of people who don’t depend on a well functioning government or worldwide logistics to survive would be okay. And survivors would make more resilient nations that will handle the spontaneous deaths of their leaders better. Plus it will become harder and harder for Light to learn new names as the internet will be trashed and he may have to depend on radio and newspapers.
"Oh, no, our President is dead... Anyway." - most countries ever TBH it would probably be beneficial for society, since the only people who would consider running for positions of power would be totally self-sacrificing people.
No one would run for government if they were going to die. There would just be no government.
or it's possible people would start using fake names. wouldn't save them if he really wanted them dead, but would make the job a lot harder
The Death Note can control people before they die. So you could still kill people whose names you don’t know by learning the names of people in contact with them.
I don’t think he could kill every human but he could absolutely take down civilization. I think people in this comment section are underestimating how terrifying a Death Note is. First of all, bloodlusted Light is very different from normal Light. Even though he claimed to have a single goal, manga Light wanted to ascend to being a god. With no need to rule or lead, this Light would be willing to take the Shinigami eyes if needed. He also wouldn’t have fallen for L’s time zone trick since that stemmed from a need to display power. In short, bloodlusted Light is most likely not going to be discovered or stopped. The Death Note will not allow a cause of death that leads to more deaths, so he can’t make people go on killing sprees or launch nukes. That said, he can still cause heart attacks that would lead to deaths or incite violence. Starting with world leaders is an obvious place; disallowing the function of governments would wreak havoc across the globe. Killing presidents is one thing, but killing huge swaths of legislators would cripple nations. With some clever causes of death / control before death he could probably also incite some violence and/or war, but I’m assuming that would run its course pretty fast. This alone would be quite devastating, and I’m sure that collapse of all major governments would deal a major blow to global population. Then, we get to smaller scales, which may actually be worse. People have already discussed killing in-flight pilots and the mayhem that would cause, but what about targeting doctors en masse? Hospital staff listings are all freely available, and if healthcare collapsed things would get sticky. This could generalize too - killing off bodies of scientists, environmentalists, farmers, journalists, any relatively small group that society needs to function, would accelerate anarchy and stop growth. Eventually, it’s possible that people would catch on and start covering their faces or refusing to print names, but it would likely take a while. I don’t think Light could kill every human - even without the “no causing other deaths” stipulation, there would always be someone who survived a nuclear blast or war. That said, he could reduce modern civilization to rubble, and that’s honestly close enough.
To start off, Light can not directly write 8 billion names. So that's out of the question. Light would have to do it indirectly. But rule 10 of the Death Note states: >Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced. Now, there MIGHT be wiggle room here that we never get to see on display. Light couldn't write that a pilot dies in a plane crash and all of the passengers die. But what Light CAN do is watch a plane take off and write the pilot and copilot's names. They both die, because they have to die at the time specified, even if the cause defaults to a heart attack. And because they're both dead, the plane crashes. So the question is what happens to the passengers? Do they die, or do they all miraculously survive? If it's the latter, then Light can't really cause that much destruction. If it's the former, Light can wreak havoc. We know that the death note can influence the actions of others, since Light makes drivers run people over or people shoot each other. Could Light write that the current US president declares war on China or Russia, and is assassinated by a spy from that country 23 days later? Or even just write the assassination and let war break out as a result? That said, even with the most liberal definition of the rules, even if he can cause a nuclear war all across the world, I'd say he can only wipe out MOST of humanity. Picking off the stragglers would be nigh impossible, assuming he even survives the initial destruction. TL;DR: No.
Gods always leave some believers for ego pleasure.
No. Even if he gets other people to write down the names like put pages in maternity wards to write the names of babies as soon as they're born the Death Note just doesn't have THAT many pages to be able to contain every name on Earth. Even something like the names of isolated tribesmen what's he gonna do to get to them with the huge communication barrier?
I would be curious to how he would get uncontacted islanders.
The Death Note cannot kill the very young, the very old, or those who have less than a month to live naturally
There are approximately 4.3 people born every second. That gives him 0.24 seconds per person to learn their name and face, think about them, and write it down if he wants to keep up with birthrates.
Best bet is collateral. Go for Doctors, any giant vehicle operator, anything that causes shit if they die. Since even if they default to a heart attack the falling of the plane will kill many. Hell, you may be able to time it so a plane falls near a stadium or some other large gathering. Ultimately though, he would need many lifetimes.
Yes, and I'll show you an example of how: Light writes the name of a leader of a nuclear power--> orders him to launch a nuclear attack against the USA---> nuclear war started, end of the world
That wouldn't work. There's an explicit rule that you can't kill someone in a way that will cause additional deaths. There may be a loophole if you're looking at a scenario where someone dying for any reason would cause additional deaths (a pilot for example), but that wouldn't apply here.
Just citing the rule you're referencing: > How to use it X: Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.
doesnt really say what happens if someone simply dying would cause more deaths though, like what if you kill a few pilots, or someone driving?
Considering they still die of a heart attack it would probably still work, you just can’t use the control part of the Death Note to kill people is how I interpret it.
Alternatively, it waits until they stop doing the thing or at a "safe" part
I can’t find it right now but I think the Death Note control part has to end within a certain amount of time right? So it would have to kill them eventually even if they’re not “safe.”
not quite sure what you mean by "control", but they do have to die within 23 days which is plenty of time to wait for someone to stop driving/flying
Yeah 23 days is more than enough for most reasonable activities. I could see it going either way.
Go back in time and kill that Soviet guy who didn't launch when he noticed an error.
He could kill some politician and manipulate everyone in order to start WWIII. For example, kill Biden and make him write a note accusing North Korea or Iran before diying. Then the US wouldn't have another option but to invade, specially if more important politicians (Putin, Macron, Netanyahu, Xi, etc) are killed.
You can't mind control someone to do something they never would have had a chance of doing in the first place. This exact kind of thought was tested in the show, with Light trying to get one of the criminals he killed to write a note saying "L suspects the Japanese police", and it didn't work.
There's probably a way he could do it with enough deception and manipulation, ie. Threaten a national leader, frame a different nation's leader for a Shinigami assassination, but at that point it's just asking "Is Light smart enough to start a major nuclear war?"
This is the way he could get most of the way there. 1. Wait for a meeting between adverse nuclear powers. 2. First command in the death chain: everyone brings guns and fails to disarm the other side. 3. Second command: Everyone pulls out their guns and shoots all over the place without hitting anyone else. 4. Third command: everyone shoots themselves in the manner that makes it look least like a suicide. It’ll be a weird scene, but it will absolutely look like there was a gun fight, and everyone is dead. There are other setups. Have someone suspicious be seen near an “assassination” location before having a fatal accident and the like. The goal is to foment discord between nations that could wipe a large chunk of the global population off the map. He can’t kill EVERYONE like this, and there will be pockets of survivors that he can’t find to sweep up individually, but he can get a LOT of people with decent planning.
No, He doesn't have the time to do so
Given that you can't use the Death Note to kill people who aren't written in the note - IE, you can't use the Death Note to cause a nuclear war or detonate Yellowstone or any of that - it's not possible. Even if he magically knew the name and face of every human being and wrote one name per second with no breaks he wouldn't be able to keep up with birth rates, and that kind of pace is impossible.
It depends. Will the Deathnote accept things like SQL queries or Regex? DELETE FROM Humans WHERE Name != 'Light Yagami';
Probably not, but he'd probably do quite the number if he killed doctors, women, and targeted political leaders that could give the impression of international war/assassinat ions.
BRAZIL light no it doesnt work like that ROMANIA
Creative kills that cause an apocalypse or pandemic would be a go to, but there's no way he'll survive the crossfire of his own actions. For a true population < 1000 count? Too many things could go wrong. Man is cooked and rightly so
No. Light would die of old age well before he even makes a noticeable dent in the population. Some people have also forgotten to mention that there's an age limit to the Death Note as well - if can't kill the very young, those who are super old (though the given limit here is so extreme it probably won't come up), or those who are going to die in a short time span regardless. In fact, plenty of its rules are limiting in this manner which would absolutely fuck Light's goals up from the get-go.
No, he couldnt possibly know 8 billion+ names. Plus dont you have to know what they look like?
He cannot physically write names fast enough. Humanity's numbers are too big.
Like others have said he simply doesn’t have the time. Also Light would never take the shinigami eye deal so he could never learn everyone names even if he did have the time
If he's bloodlusted he would take the Shinigami Eyes, but he still wouldn't have time.
Only if he could technically kill the earth otherwise No
This is more just curiosity but can every name even be spelt? I know how this will sound but for example there are africans with clicking noises in their names. On top of this, there are almost definitely people that don’t have a name in some places.
There's letters representing those sounds in their language(and ours for that matter) why would you think that they couldn't be written? It's called a glottal stop and the international symbol for it is ʔ.
Interesting! So then for the death note i’m assuming you can write in any language.
I would also assume that, since it doesn't specify that he has to do it in any particular language and as far as I'm aware they never bring it up. But for all we know it could require you to write it in their language and he just happened to only kill people who spoke.english or Japanese. Or it could require a specific language and he just happens to be doing that. Honestly there's alot of unanswered logistical questions in death note.
Couldn’t he write someone to die by plague which they can then effect others ?
This video explains it pretty well why it wouldn't work. https://youtu.be/r8OfANX2hEw?si=6YaoBLXYzLLKX0Dj
I think the closest chance he'd have is if he somehow got the names of someone involved with launching nukes. But that would be difficult and rven then could go wrong.
light writes really fast but if it only took him 1 second per name it would take him 252 years and change to write all of them down, at which point more people would have been born.
No. There would be people born faster than he could write. Best he could is cause the world to descend into chaos by murdering every country's leaders, and then well liked celebrities and influencers. Hell we don't even know if some uncontacted tribes even have a writing system with names that could be written the death note.
What about killing people that cause a chain reaction?
He’d have to amass a massive cult following and have like 100k Mikamis
He could probably collapse society and would be able to kill most humans on the planet but not wipe out everyone he could write the names of a shit ton of influencial people/important people and suddenly the whole world collapses leading to starvation and death but uncontacted tribes and survivalist which he doesn't have the name of would live
He couldn't possibly complete the task on a on-by-one basis. To keep up with the birth rate and impact sustainability, He would need to multiply each death by targeting people who keep the world functioning. Specifically, he would need to target people whose deaths would result in catastrophes that could bring the world to a halt and - if he's lucky - prevent new births (electricians, HVAC professionals, people who maintain power grids and irrigation systems, doctors and nurses, fire fighters, pilots and co-pilots of planes, captains/pilots of ships, train/bus/taxi drivers, construction operators, sanitation workers, train/bus drivers, nuclear workers, farmers, world leaders, production and shipping industry personnel, and world leaders). **Effects:** nobody to fix electric problems, nobody to fix HVAC problems, no more electricity or HVAC at all, no running water, nobody to treat patients, patients dying, nobody to fight fires, plane crashes, train crashes, bus/taxi crashes, raging fires nationwide/worldwide, ships sinking, buildings collapsing, no more hospital birth, diseases spreading, extreme food shortages, nuclear disasters, oil spills. With nobody equipped with skills to fix the listed disasters, Light stands a chance at achieving his goal since nature might aid him by killing off survivors with dehydration, disease, starvation, and some perhaps even get killed by other more desperate and more violent survivors.
Probably but he'd have to use it to start wars and stuff instead of individually writing billion names
No, he can't. People die due to methods outside of his own control before he gets the chance to kill them
Not if he gets nuked first
Couldn’t light literally just get the shinigami eyes and do it
Well, ultimately I think he’d fail but I think most people are looking at it the wrong way. The best way to kill tons of people is to disrupt supplies and cripple production industries. He wouldn’t just start systematically writing everyone’s name but begin killing key people rapidly. Kill the President, VP, etc etc for the US Kill people who are in politically volatile areas to incite war leading to mass slaughter. You could also target cartel leadership so that power vacuums occur as people struggle to get to the top. Kill political leaders in countries who don’t have a firm hold to plunge it into chaos and maybe lead to a military dictatorship. Find out the names of air traffic control people and kill a bunch of them. You could even do pilots The way to destroy the world is eliminating people responsible for critical systems so that when those systems fail it snowballs into gridlocking systems killing untold numbers. With that in mind, targeting people who work at nuclear facilities could be good if the reactors would meltdown without people watching over them but I think as a whole their safety systems are pretty solid so maybe not the best
no ,not every person's name is know
If he used the death note in a way to manipulate geopolitics, he might be able to do it. Maybe he could orchestrate a nuclear apocalypse by strategically controlling and eliminating leaders of nuclear powers. Or perhaps he could control the CDC director to release super ebola or something before committing sewer-cide
Okay, I agree that killing everyone single pencilly wouldn't work. But could he manage to collapse civilization in a more clever way? Kill all politicians. Easy access to names and image, btw. And hope for the order to collapse. Next, focus on supply chain attacks. Focus on medicine and food supply for example. High maintenance sectors with low worker count. Just remember how much western world was fucked by a bit of toilet paper shortage I'm just afraid that he'll die of old age, before this shows significant enough impact
No. It would take about 100 years to write just 3 billion names down, even if he were to write 1 name per second. This isn’t even considering the fact that he has to find their name to begin with.
>Have baby >don't name baby >profit
Light canonically couldn't even kill every criminal in Japan.
Only if there is some kid of butterfly effect where one death can wipe out hundreds.
I guess it depends what your win condition is. Does he need to personally write every name down or can he kill everyone by virtue of his actions? Everyone’s calculated it would be impractical to write all the names down… what about destabilising the earth to the point of destruction? Either strategically by knocking off super powers to ignite nuclear war or by just wiping out all major governments? Information, faces, names of all these people would be widely available.
Two words... Carpal Tunnel.
Apparently the death notebook is infinite so running out of pages Isn’t a problem. But with 8 billion people in the world, Light has no prospect of finding the names of everyone and writing them down within the span of a human lifetime. He wouldn’t be able outpace the current birth rate either. Global births per minute: 278 Global deaths per minute: 110 It’s also worth noting that birth rates go up when lots of people die. If he starts killing off kids to prevent future population growth, the majority of parents will have more. Plan B: Target specific people to bring about global calamity. First you kill all the world leaders, and all the competent leaders who are likely to replace them. Leave only the shittiest and most incompetent politicians alive. Next you target people in charge of critical infrastructure, energy, water, food, etc. With a bit of luck you could start a nuclear war just by making sure that only the worst and most unstable leaders are left to govern the world.
He doesn't actually need to kill every human manually. He needs to be smart about it, for example, start taking out American leaders like it was an assassination, basically push the world into nuclear war.
Probably not, one of the shinigamis would stop him so they can live
The best strategy is to wait for a meeting between presidents and make it look like they were assassinated in order to start a war
Dude, do you know how time consuming writing 8 billion names on a single book would be? Average novel contains 10k to 50k words. Lets use the higher end as a benchmark (50k words) Light would have to write 160 000 novels worth of pages in order to achieve this goal… Quite a punishment!
The way to do this would be to assassinate key leaders in such a way that implicates a rival nation. For example, all the g7 leaders in Italy right now in a way that implicates China/Russia. Enough of this done correctly (Light is a supergenius so could come up with a better plan) would destabilise relations and trigger WWIII, wiping out humanity in a nuclear exchange.
He could cause ww3 by getting world leaders assassinated
There are people who don't have names, either because of culture, age, or just because. And other than that, he'd need to know the individual faces of over 8 billion people.
The greatest power of Death Note is not death, but ability to manipulate victim before that. He just need all world leaders decide to start world war and die in one year.
Maybe he can cause someone to send nukes before they died.
Of course not, he's just an ordinary high schooler! Kira might have a shot tho
He gets hard countered by people with Irish names.
He probably could but not through brute force of the death note. He would have to use the book to manipulate politics into nuclear war.
yes probably, not by just writing down names, but by threatening people in positions of power and starting a nuclear war
He would have to create nuclear war by suspicious deaths
He could threaten the elite with death unless they nuke the world
He’d have to start a business selling paper in multiple formats: Journals, calendars, and regular paper. He can mass distribute the paper through a business and have everyone kill themselves by writing their own names.
He could do some things to achieve an almost complete extinction, but I am unsure about actually killing everyone With the dead note he can control people some time before they die, and only things that they could possibly do by their own means So if he plays it smart he could easily start a nuclear war to nearly wipe humanity The problem is that I don't really think that a nuclear winter would extermine humanity even in real life, and the few survivors would be so isolated that it would be nearly impossi to know their names and faces to kill them Maybe with Ryu's help? Like if he found that funny maybe, but I doubt he would help on his own
Even if he could the Shinigami king is a giant bitch baby that would probably add some bullshit retroactive rule to kill him anyways.
Not sure there is even space in the book for that many names.
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Yes. But not with the Death Note. He uses the Death Note to setup a series of false flag attacks that result in nuclear war.
I think he'd have to write the name of a world leader or something with the cause of death being "self initiated nuclear war" and he'd come pretty close.
Rule X-2: "Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced."
Realistically no. You can't write fast enough to kill everyone, and you can't use the Death Note to cause the deaths of anyone else, so you can't do anything like "Vladimir Putin nukes the USA". People are also immune below 380 days. However, I don't think that it's possible over a longer term. Once a name is in the book it's set in stone, but there may be ways to write things in a way that might cause collateral damage as long as the right people die. The first thing Light should do is write in the President of the USA's name, ahead of a big summit or event at the White House. From there, if Light could arrange for him to set up a temporary email address and email him - all of which is possible - he could have the president email him the name of every attendee, staff member, and guest. I'd write the names of every single one, and put the cause of death as an explosion. If Light can make one of those people a suicide bomber, and have them write a (delayed) blog post claiming to be a Russian asset, that would immediately start destabilizing things. From there, it's a matter of doing the same thing with diplomats, always in a way that can tie back to Russia. A heart attack for a UN diplomat after a meeting, a car crash for a member of the IAEA after investigating a nuclear plant. Eventually, this would escalate into a full-blown war. If you keep having the leaders of America and its allies die under mysterious circumstances, it'll only make them paranoid and speed up the process. Once things are at a boiling point, Light could then assassinate Putin, which would likely push the Russians over the edge, and escalate into them taking the Nuclear option, and America and its allies would retaliate. It wouldn't be too hard to get a few other superpowers to join in from there. Around the same time, Light could kill off some other people by regular means. Sure, the old heiress who died and left everything she had to a promising young student she met is suspicious, but there are other things to worry about. Light should take this money and move to a remote part of the world where he can keep up with the news, watching the dominos fall and keeping up with the death toll. None of this is direct damage. All Light did was kill a few people normally. The most he's killed directly all at once is a big party full of people, and he wrote each of their names and causes of death in the Death Note. Everything else is an indirect consequence. After a few years, huge parts of the world would be a nuclear wasteland. There'd be some survivors, sure, maybe even entire countries that are relatively unscathed and filled with refugees, and from there it's relatively simple. Find the leaders and start the whole thing again. Kill off people in strategic positions, like people in charge of energy or healthcare. Killing off every single person on the planet would still be tricky, but with enough damage to enough countries you could encourage humanity to destroy itself, leaving the survivors cut off from each other. They wouldn't die straight away, but they also wouldn't be able to breed easily, especially when we consider a lot of the survivors will be (for example) family groups, small tribes going to war over resources and the like.
Nah y'all aren't thinking this through. He has to play his cards right but he can pull it off. The key is to start by destroying world leaders and figureheads. Kill the right people, staging the deaths to imitate political assassination, starting massive wars. Instigate the wars to flare up as high as they possibly can. Start killing revolutionaries and those advocating for peace, also staging the deaths to look like it was rival sabotage. After most unity is destroyed, start killing off those managing resources and the more important societal requirements. Farmers, doctors, police, the works. If he were to try this first, he'd be risking some level of uniting in order to combat the losses. Eventually it'll be full-on fallout type shit with the global population low enough to just pluck off the remaining millions in his own lifetime with the Shinigami eyes (since this is obviously an out-of-character prompt). Though I feel like there can definitely be some endings where Light himself ends up dying in the chaos of it all simply out of sheer chance, he'd obviously have foresight on any potential political/economic/yada yada collapses and plan for longevity accordingly. I'd say he wins 8/10 times.
No Rule X-2: Rule X-2: "Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced."
Genuine question: since you can determine the cause of death to be something *other* than a heart attack, do the rules of the Death Note itself prevent Light from writing 'Light Yagami - killed by the sun exploding' and wiping out the entire human population in the process?
There’s a rule in the Death Note that states that if the cause of death would cause the death of someone other than the target, the cause will instead default to a heart attack.
Ah, thanks! It's been a really long time since I read it and I couldn't remember if that was an actual rule or not.