How were the Manhattan Project scientists able to predict the possibility of the atmosphere igniting after using an atomic bomb, and how did they come to the conclusion that the atmosphere wouldn’t ignite?

Question

Did the non-zero risk of the atmosphere igniting increase as nuclear weapon yields got larger and larger?

Obviously a result of watching Oppenheimer.

In: 789

Answer 1

The atmosphere is full of nitrogen which could fuse during very very high temperature. Fusion of nitrogen would release energy, which means that if the energy generation from fusion would surpass the energy lost as heat radiation then the atmosphere would basically keep fusing and creating more and more energy eventually destroying the earth.

That energy balance between energy gain from fusion and energy lost from radiation was what the manhatten scientists calculated. There’s a video going into more details about the subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-Dco7xSSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-Dco7xSSU)