omnicide

English

Etymology

From omni- (“all”) +‎ -cide (“to kill”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

omnicide (uncountable)

1. The total extinction of the human species as a result of human action. Most commonly it refers to human extinction through nuclear warfare, but it can also refer to such extinction through other means such as global anthropogenic ecological catastrophe.
   • 1995, Richard Rhodes, chapter 27, in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb:

     How extraordinary that Curtis LeMay believed for the rest of his life that the United States “lost” the Cuban missile crisis and the Cold War. If John Kennedy had followed LeMay's advice [to bomb Cuba and take out the missile sites], history would have forgotten the Nazis and their terrible Holocaust. Ours would have been the historic omnicide.

Related terms

• omnicidal

See also

• genocide
• autogenocide
• speciecide

References

• Somerville, John. 1981. Soviet Marxism and nuclear war : an international debate : from the proceedings of the special colloquium of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy. Greenwood Press. Pg.151
• Goodman, Lisl Marburg and Lee Ann Hoff. 1990. Omnicide: The Nuclear Dilemma. New York: Praeger.
• Landes, Daniel (ed.). 1991. Confronting Omnicide: Jewish Reflections on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Jason Aronson Publishers.

Further reading

• “omnicide”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “omnicide”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “omnicide”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.