what was the feared runaway nuclear reaction from Oppenheimer?

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Can someone explain the feared runaway nuclear reaction that Oppenheimer presented Einstein in the film? The one where detonating a nuke would’ve exploded the whole world?

Wouldn’t that scenario require many orders of magnitude more energy than the output of the what the first (or current) nuclear weapons were capable of?

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

I’d like to add that the final line of the movie “I believe we did” when he was disscussing the posibility of a runaway reaction with Einstein is a reference to a belief that inevitably nukes will be used to destroy the world. Not from a chain reaction, but because ultimately nuclear war will occur. 

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