# Destroying Actors and ALL their children

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429>\
**Category:** World Creation\
**Tags:** Destroy, Destroy-Actor, unreal-engine, Physics, question\
**Created:** [June 4, 2021, 8:04pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429 "2021-06-04T20:04:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sebrk](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@sebrk](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/sebrk)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2021, 8:04pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429/1 "2021-06-04T20:04:40Z")

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The most basic thing ever. Removing actors and their children regardless of hierarchy. Seems to be practically impossible in UE? I cannot for the life of me think of why this would be the case.

Even in the World Outliner one has to select the Parent and then right-click-\>Select All Descendants for this task to happen. How can I do this programmatically in BP? I have tried everything but nothing gets rid of it all.

As a sidenote I cannot bind any events because I do not know the structure of the Datasmith-file I’m importing. There can be any amount of levels and sub-Actors. There has to be ONE way of doing this?

As an example: in Unity3D world you simply destroy the parent and all children will go at the same time. Logical and simple. Why not in UE?

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**Author:** ![sebrk](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@sebrk](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/sebrk)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2021, 8:05pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429/2 "2021-06-04T20:05:20Z")

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Also Epic, I think you can add a bit more resources to the AnswerHub. It fails half of the time to even load.

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**Author:** ![ViceVersa](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@ViceVersa](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/ViceVersa)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2021, 12:37am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429/3 "2021-06-13T00:37:36Z")

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Unreal is different from unity.  
the “children” you refer to in the hirerarchy are not “child actors”, they are actors attached to the root of the first actor.  
to reference them in blueprints use Get attached actors on the “parent”

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**Author:** ![sebrk](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@sebrk](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/sebrk)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2021, 8:07am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429/4 "2021-06-13T08:07:54Z")

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I’ve tried that but it only ever gave me the first level och attached children. My structure is unknown so would have to make an overly complicated recursive lookup when I know there is an internal representation (because the editor can select all children). I find it weird that this is the case.

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**Author:** ![Saishy](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@Saishy](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Saishy)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 9:25pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/destroying-actors-and-all-their-children/484429/5 "2021-11-24T21:25:26Z")

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this does not work in a packaged build, getattachedactors will only work in editor :c