Etydhv

First issue is that your system has so many "fail-safes" that a false positive is pretty much guaranteed to trigger a launch well before anyone has time to even discuss how to reduce emissions, much less, see any such plans through. If just one of your 6144 sensors malfunctions, or a solar flare messes with a signal, or XYZ corp doesn't get the memo in time and launches a satellite anyway, etc.

Second issue with this plan is that many governments already have anti-ballistic technologies. While most governments are rather hush-hush about the effectiveness of these systems, my bet is that you'll nuke all the 3rd world countries while the US, China, etc will probably detonate all your weapons in the upper atmosphere. There will be some significant environmental damage, but some nations might see this more as an opportunity to eliminate competition than a threat to their own safety.

Third issue with your plan (and this is the kicker), is that you will be unable to make that many nukes without someone noticing. The hardware and materials to make nukes is very specific and closely monitored by governments all over the world. Chances are, you will be discovered before your first satellite makes it to space, and WAY before you can deploy 256 gigatons worth.

So, how to make this plan work better?

To counter the 1st problem, you should consider having your loyal servants receive a notification if anything is out of order and if a set number of them agree that there is a true-positive, then they order the attack. If the governments of the world believe your system will kill them even if they do what you say, they will defy you no matter how small their odds of success.

For the second problem, don't arm your satellites. Make an actual array of communications satellites, and towers, fiber optic cabling, etc. An actual com gird will not arouse suspicion nearly as much as orbital nukes, but having control of it will be important. Instead of an orbital strike, you place a nuke in every major city around the world which can be detonated by your private network of highly redundant communications systems. Also, this means your nukes are way easier to hide; so, there is no need to detonate them all at once. If the USA does not cooperate, just blow up New York. World governments are still just as clueless about where your other nukes are; so, you still hold leverage to improve the world without destroying it. Also, this means you can work with smaller payloads. No need to buffer your arsonal with a bunch of extra warheads to account for what will be shot down, just do one nuke per city, each one only as big as it needs to be. This will mean a smaller nuclear program footprint to arouse suspicion, and less environmental damage if you have to make examples of a few cities.

For the last problem, your mega-corporation needs to invest in technologies that are LIKE a nuclear arms program, but not. You can't just hide the fact that you are enriching tons of uranium to make bombs, but perhaps, you could be enriching tons of uranium to make power plants, while cooking the books to ALSO be enriching tons of uranium to make bombs. By eliminating the need for guidance systems, heat shields, complex programming, and other components of ballistic missiles, your activities will look mostly benign. You could not do this alone, but if you position some of your 100 loyal folks in the right places in your supply, finance, and inspection chains, they could make stuff disappear while making everything look like it all adds up. This would give you a much better, though be it still small chance of going unnoticed.

Yes, nations who are stupid enough to allow a thousand of what are obviously nuclear missile platforms (I mean those things are big) to be placed into LEO do deserve to be manhandled this way. However...

I can see at least one scenario: the evil overlord's systems fail to work as planned. The reasons are numerous:

1. Someone building these nukes realized how they'd be used and sabotaged one... or more...




2. A henchman has a change of heart but knows the only way to foil EO's plans is to push the button.




3. A henchman turns on EO and demands he acquiesce to HIS demands or else he pushes the button.




4. Multiple henchmen turn, threaten EO and each other, and one of them pushes the button.




5. The worst possible case: because it's very difficult to TEST such a system (in order to test it you have to build it and then use it and then deploy another one), then there are terrible bugs in the software and hardware that may spell a worse disaster than total annihilation: a partial annihilation that causes the slow and very painful death of humanity.




6. A variation of #5 is that, due to the inability to test the deployed system, any number of problems prevent it from being able to carry out its mission, with the result that maybe Costa Rica gets nuked, and the rest of the world is suddenly united in a fervor to eliminate the EO and his apparatus post haste. Fast forward to a new fascist world empire or something, and we're back to misery, but we're not dead, and the EO is dead (if lucky) or alive and very unhappy.

Well it's a long shot but parts of Earth could survive if some of the nukes are intercepted. Missile defense systems using counter missiles, bullets or lasers are plausible, and the kind of thing that would be a government secret. Stopping all the nukes is unlikely but possibly the USA/China stops all/most of the nukes heading for them leading to partial survival. Nuclear winter would still be a factor but easier to survive than being nuked.

Alternatively secret government attack satellites might be in orbit and could possibly destroy several of your satellites prior to launch. Stopping all of the satellites is once again probably impossible but taking down some seems plausible.

/Any new launch of anything from Earth to space will trigger the nukes from launching faster then it will take even the fastest of modern rockets to cover the distance between the atmosphere and my satellites/

What's that behind you?

Your satellites are watching vigilantly for threats from below. But there are lots of satellites already out past Earths orbit. Lunar reconnaissance satellites, Indian moon missions, solar explorers and so on.

In this scenario, a militia of satellites is drafted into service, gathered under the guidance of two Indian astronauts on their way back from the moon. This ragtag bunch of misfits quietly assembles behind the nukes and then on the signal, wipes them out before they have a chance to react.

Just push the red button

You don't care if the population of earth obeys you or is destroyed, so just push the Launch button and be done with it. The world's nations have been asleep at the wheel to let you amass a nuclear arsenal greater than the combined force of every country on earth, and to then put them into orbit on "telecommunication satellites" that are many times larger than any other communication satellite ever launched. You have everything you need to destroy the planet, so just do it already - what are you even waiting for?

Leave the Planet

A possible solution is to send as many people into space as possible to avoid the impending nuclear destruction. They might not even need to leave Earth’s orbit, just get above the nuclear explosions.

Your best option for this is likely an SSTO (single stage to orbit) spacecraft, essentially a space plane. I believe Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has plans to develop space planes for commercial purposes. A government could easily commandeer their spaceplanes and use them to ship people into space.

Although, i doubt you would be able to get many people off the planet and, even when you did, where would they go? The ISS is doomed and wouldn’t be able to hold enough people anyway. You could possibly leave people on the moon and sort things out later.

Underground Bunkers

A traditional but effective way of dealing with aerial (or orbital this case) bombardment is to get people underground. Essentially you have nuclear missile facilities, like the one in Switzerland, where the population goes in the event of a nuclear attack. This way, whilst the surface is being destroyed, a significant portion of the world population will survive the attack, far more than 0.01% you anticipated (though regrettably, those in less developed countries, such as many countries in Africa, are significantly less likely to survive).

Fight Fire With Fire

So you have thousands of nukes orbiting the planet? They are just sitting ducks up there: their trajectories are easily predictable, you have no way of communicating with them to move them (which you admitted to yourself) and there is no mention of them having any RCS thrusters or the like to dodge an incoming missile.

Whilst your satellites may be able to detect any missiles fired at them from earth, that is hardly an issue. Small, heat-seeking counter-missiles can be fired from everywhere on Earth as soon as you fire your nukes. Triggering the sensors wouldn't even matter at that point, the payload has already been fired. The idea is that these counter-missiles would detonate your nukes well before they hit the ground and, because of the size of your nukes, the nuclear explosion is likely to cause a domino effect, destroying the rest of the payload and the satelite that fired those nukes.

Doing this to the first missile you fired from every satellite could save billions of lives. 1024 missiles is not a lot relative to the entire world’s weaponry. Also, they don’t even have to be large or powerful missiles, just a small explosion to trigger the nukes that you fired. Whilst the population of Earth may have to worry about a nuclear winter, at least many people have survived and your plan has been foiled.

Operation: Smokescreen

Whilst you mention your sensors will never fail, perhaps this can be used against you. It may be possible to trick your sensors or blind them. Using emitters, it may be possible to replicate the signal the satellites are receiving which prevents them from detonating. Doing this to all the satellites in the world could buy humanity some time, you can now no longer control when they do or don't fire, it doesn't matter anymore if your henchmen stop the signal, the satellites are still receiving the same signal from other emitters, nullifying your control.

Alternatively, you could also trick the sensors into believing nothing has been fired from earth by relaying a false signal to the sensors. Its essentially the equivalent of placing a photograph in front of a CCTV camera. Again, this would buy people more time to deal with the satellites.

Call Your Bluff

If your goal is to become the ruler of Earth and everyone and everything in it, you aren’t actually going to fire the missiles.

Okay so lets assume you aren’t bluffing and you actually fire the missiles, everyone and everything on Earth is killed and destroyed. Now what?

You are now the king of dead world. An irradiated, uninhabitable wasteland of a planet. No architecture exists, no life exists, everything has been annihilated by your hand. What was the point? There is no one rule, no governments to control, no wealth to accumulate, there is nothing. If your goal was to rule the world then you have failed, there is nothing left to rule. Your failure will haunt you for as long as you live and will be evident long after you’re gone, the husk of a planet you left in ruin will remain there, lifeless, for the rest of its days.

Humanity can simply call your bluff, you will not destroy the world because you stand to gain nothing by doing so.