Now that's a spicy meatball!

 

A term used to refer to a character, weapon, or entity that can destroy a planet. By "destroy", it is usually meant to scatter the planet's mass beyond the limits of gravitational attraction. Planetbusters are generally considered to be the type of characters that can easily solo most other universes, such as the members of the Holy Shonen Trinity as well as most other single planet universes.

Characters that can destroy stars/star systems, galaxies, or universes are usually not referred to as planetbusters, since that would be like calling a H-bomb a "buildingbuster".

The term "planetbuster" is somewhat of a misnomer, since there are many different types of planets that come in many different sizes and masses. As it is used in the OBD, it generally refers to the ability to destroy at least an earth-sized planet of the same mass. As it happens, there is a formula for determining how much energy is required to scatter a body beyond the power of gravity to pull it back together. For the earth, that amount of energy is at the minimum 2.24xE32 joules.

To give you some idea of how absurd that is: Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever detonated, had 50 megatons of explosive power. If we wanted to destroy earth, it would take approximately 1 quadrillion Tsar Bombas, at the bare minimum.

Planetbusting is hardcore shit, kids.

Because of the variation in planetary sizes and masses, the OBD has three general categories of planet busting. The first has been described above: destroying Earth, which would require energy of about 57.3 zettatons of TNT. However Earth is not the only kind of planet out there. To differentiate somewhat, there are two other categories of planet busting.

Small: Equivalent to destroying Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system. This would require energy of around 433 exatons.

Large: This describes the ability to destroy large gas giant planets. The benchmark for this is 2.7 yottatons - the energy required to destroy Uranus, the least massive gas giant in the solar system.


Planetbusters from various fictions:

- A good number of Saint Seiya characters
- A great number of Tenchi Muyo! characters
- Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders
- Burning/Meltdown Heisei Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Destroyah
- Culture ships
Dragon Ball characters (Saiyan saga and up)
- Many ships and technologies from Doctor Who
- DC, Image and Marvel Herald level characters
- Ebemon, Lucemon Fallen Mode, and a few others from Digimon
- Alkanphel from The Guyver
- Many Bastard!! characters
- Serpentera from Power Rangers
- Several Warhammer 40,000 technologies and Greater Daemons (and some other high tiers as well)
- Some Sailor Moon characters
- Nipponverse characters
- The DePlanetizer from the Ratchet & Clank video games
- The Death Star, and several other superweapons along with some Sith Lords from Star Wars
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann mechas
- Yuri Hyuga and Meta-God from Shadow Hearts

Characters that have been mentioned or claimed to be planetbusters when they are not:

- Sousuke Aizen from Bleach
- Enel from One Piece
- Sensui and most Yu Yu Hakusho characters

See also:

Citybuster
Destructive Capacity
- Gravitational Binding Energy
Life Wipers
Starbuster