I used to worry about the end of the world

[Bucket]

...Until I saw this page.

Number of times the earth has been destroyed: 0

[Quasar]

Actually more and more scientists now believe that's technically false. A new and very consistent theory on the origin of the Moon calls for an almost Mars-sized planetesimal striking a larger priomordial Earth and literally shattering it into pieces, which rapidly recoalesced into a slightly smaller Earth and what is relatively speaking a rather large satellite (there are larger ones in our solar system, but they are all dwarfed by their gas giant planets).

This theory is capable of explaining various bizarre qualities of the Earth-Moon system that none of the previous conjectures, such as a gravitational capture or an ejection from within Earth itself could even come close to dealing with.

Anyway, if this DID happen, Earth technically has been more or less destroyed once :) And that is, of course, not counting lesser events such as global ice ages, meteor strikes, and even possibly gamma ray bursts that are either known or are thought to have affected the entire planet in catastrophic manners in the past.

[VileSlay]

technically the earth hasn't been destroyed as per that theory. yes, a planetary body was destroyed, but was it earth yet? if you look at the theory, planetX hits planetY, making planetZ.