Every Bond Villain Plan, Ranked By Insanity

The Plan: From his giant space station orbiting high above the earth, industrial tycoon and eugenicist Hugo Drax seeks to wipe out the entire human race using a deadly toxin engineered from a rare orchid. Once the planet is cleansed of inferiors, Drax and his master race will return and repopulate the world.

How Crazy Is It? It's beyond crazy. A truly ridiculous movie like Moonraker needs a truly ridiculous plot powering it, or the whole thing is just a slog. Drax's neo-Nazi genocide scheme makes the grade. Oh, it makes no sense at all, and is totally unfeasible. But since when has anything related to James Bond, particularly Bond in the '70s, needed plausibility to be good? 

The Plan: Anarchist shipping kingpin Karl Stromberg steals two nuclear submarines from the UK and Soviet Union. He plans to use their missiles to nuke the superpowers, who will blame each other and finish the job. He's also constructed a massive underwater city to house the new society that will arise from the ashes of the world he's destroyed, riding out World War III safely under the sea.

How Crazy Is It? A total rehash of the "get the superpowers to nuke each other" plot of You Only Live Twice, Stromberg's genocidal scheme falls apart not because of Bond (well, there's that), but because of one simple bit of science: water isn't fallout-proof. The radiation from thousands of nukes would almost certainly poison the oceans and make his undersea city uninhabitable. Oops. 
 

The Plan: Genetically engineered by the Nazis and employed by the KGB, super-rich industrial guy Zorin plots to detonate a huge bomb under a key junction in California's fault lines, flooding Silicon Valley and leaving him as the world's sole manufacturer of microchips.

How Crazy Is It? Strip away the trappings and Zorin's scheme is really just the same "rich guy makes more money" plot that other Bond baddies employ. But it's those ludicrous trappings that make Zorin's scheme a Hall of Fame Bond villain plot in terms of insanity.

Zorin is certifiably nuts, killing his henchmen in droves and spouting quips like a madman. His scheme doesn't just involve destroying one fault with a bomb, it involves destroying the biggest fault with a nuke. It's got an Amazonian hit-woman, a mad Nazi scientist, rigged horse races, international assassins, and a fight above the Golden Gate Bridge. Evil plans don't get much crazier.

Of course, in the real world, Zorin's scheme would actually have zero chance of success, because microchips aren't actually made in Silicon Valley, they're made overseas using cheap sweatshop labor. But in the Bond world, it's cracking mad. 
 

The Plan: An anonymous Asian empire (ie, China) hopes to provoke World War III between the U.S. and Russia, and employs SPECTRE to orchestrate the theft of their space capsules using a volcano rocket base in Japan. They'll blame each other, out come the nukes, and not-China-but-totally-China will be victorious.

How Crazy Is it? Utterly. It also doesn't make a ton of sense. Why would not-China assume that they won't be affected by the fallout from a nuclear war? What kind of post-nuclear horror world would they be dominating? And what does SPECTRE get out of the whole thing? Money? Power? Status? Absolutely nothing?

The Plan: SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld returns with a scheme to send 12 brainwashed ladies from his Alpine lair out into the world to unleash germ warfare that will sterilize all grains and livestock. He also seeks amnesty for his past crimes, hoping to be recognized as a count.

How Crazy Is It? Extremely - but to what end? Blofeld goes to a ton of effort, building a mountain lair, training another private army, getting plastic surgery to change his look, and brainwashing a dozen women - just to make cows and wheat infertile so the world will let him off the hook. It's a complex and creative plan that entails a lot of work for very little reward. 
 

The Plan: Ernst Stavro Blofeld gives it one last try with a complicated scheme to smuggle diamonds out of Amsterdam to a giant laboratory in Las Vegas, where he's building a satellite that will use the diamonds to focus a super laser with which to hold the world ransom. Blofeld also uses clones and plastic surgery to disguise himself.

How Crazy Is it? It's several shades of crazy, but shockingly banal at the same time. By the time Diamonds are Forever rolls around, Blofeld and SPECTRE have held the world ransom so many times that it's like holding the world ransom doesn't mean anything. Also, Blofeld's plan is crazy expensive. A huge laser, diamonds, clones, hordes of henchmen, and a satellite aren't cheap. Does this plan even ensure Blofeld will recoup his expenses? Why not just horde your stolen diamonds and corner the global market? Or make some monetary hay with the whole cloning thing?