The fear of setting the planet on fire with a nuclear weapon

Abstract

In “Inside the Third Reich,” a memoir by Albert Speer, the former minister of armament of Nazi Germany recalls an exchange he had with the physicist Werner Heisenberg and Adolf Hitler: “Heisenberg had not given any final answer to my question whether a successful nuclear fission could be kept under control with absolute certainty or might continue as a chain reaction. Hitler was plainly not delighted with the possibility that the earth under his rule might be transformed into a glowing star.