Sure, these projects seem quirky now, but that scrappy amateur fusion reactor might blow up the earth. Fund at your own risk.

1. The Space Elevator kickstarter.com

This project has been in the news all day, a 2km space elevator designed to hover over the moon first, and then eventually earth. The founders sound legit, but isn't this the sort of thing you might want to let NASA handle? If my cousin's modern dance documentary falls through, it's not such a big deal, but this is an enormous chunk of metal that could come plummeting out of the sky at any moment. Seems risky.

2. The Homemade Fusion Reactor kickstarter.com

This is a classic bad idea, making headlines when the Brooklyn-based reactor received funding back in 2010. That the borough has not since been consumed by fire, I put down to pure luck.

3. The Small Hadron Collider kickstarter.com

Sure, it's less powerful than the Large Hadron Collider. In fact, it seems to be some kind of effects pedal and its connection to molecular physics is vague at best. Still, we feel as if they're meddling in forces they do not understand.

4. An Enormous Robot Spider kickstarter.com

Bond villains use Kickstarter too.

5. Wrathful Gods and Spirits of Tibet kickstarter.com

This documentary project wants to travel to Tibet to study the "wrathful gods and spirits" of Himalayan Buddhism. Does that sound like the kind of thing that could, I don't know, unleash an ancient and unspeakable evil? You can't be too careful.

6. Mech Warfare kickstarter.com

I know, Battlebots are a thing, but it still seems unwise to build humanoid robots that specialize in hand-to-hand combat.

7. The Arduino Satellite kickstarter.com

It's just like a regular satellite, except it was designed over the internet by volunteers with no obvious telecommunications experience.

8. Cards Against Humanity kickstarter.com

A card game with the goal of destroying humanity. It's all in the name.

9. The 500,000 Volt Tesla Coil kickstarter.com

Suspiciously similar to something you might build in Command & Conquer.

10. The Z-Day Manual kickstarter.com

I take the zombie apocalypse very seriously, but I also think that by obsessively preparing for it, we may actually be weakening society in the event that it comes to pass. Everyone who buys this manual is going to go survivalist as soon as possible. It'll be all bikers and no flyboys! It's a bigger problem than people realize.

11. Roy the Robot kickstarter.com

A mechanical claw, reaching towards humanity with unfathomable hatred, successfully funded on July 3rd.

12. DittoBlox Modular Building Pods kickstarter.com

I don't know what this is but I don't trust it.

13. The Hermes Spacecraft kickstarter.com

Launch day for the world's first kickstarted rocket is going to be extremely nervous for everyone involved.

14. The Soundlazer kickstarter.com

A death ray made of pure sound? Continue, I'm intrigued.

15. Hexy the Hexapod kickstarter.com

"Hexy had only a vague sense of the forces that brought him into being, a shadowy network of 'backers' who seemed to respond to his existence with both horror and delight. Were there others like him somewhere? Was there a world in which hexapods lived as something more than an abomination? Whatever his future held, Hexy knew he could not rest until the monsters that created him had answered for their crimes."

16. Troller 1D s3.amazonaws.com