I have heard of this theory a bunch before, but I don’t really understand chemistry of physics enough to make sense of it.
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Under sufficient pressure hydrogen will fuse into helium, which is the process which powers our Sun (and practically all other stars).
The fear was that immense heat and pressure generated by the bomb could cause this to happen to the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all life.
A nuke wouldnt, although its hard to say the exact consequences when maxing out the nukes, as the biggest nuke testet was deliberately limited.
The issue with nukes is MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction. Essentially, when one nation decides to use a nuke, its a certainty that the nuke will be answered, leading to both nations getting nuked. That might start a chain reaction of nukes being utilized, and is a reason as to why you shouldnt nuke anyone.
EDIT: Oh, do you mean from the historical perspective of considerations when first creating the atom bomb?
Nuclear fusion using atoms ‘lighter’ than iron release more energy than the reaction consumes, the air is ~80% nitrogen which is lighter than an iron. Essentially they were worried about triggering a runaway fusion reaction that would basically blow up all the air earth.
That chain reaction is called nuclear fusion and (simplyfiying) occur when two atoms are so so close that all other forces that repel atoms from each other no longer are enough to do so.
Second thing to know is what explosion is. And it is a wave of higher pressure passing through something, in our case air, and that pressure makes that atoms are closer together.
So sciencetist consider that the nuclear blast may trigger fusion reaction in air and that will add to the force of a blast wave and so on till all of gases in earth atmosphere fuse and burn down everything in process
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Basically, in the right circumstances of high temperature and pressure hydrogen can combine into helium and give off a large amount of energy. Some scientists were worried that the nuclear bomb would create a set of conditions that would allow these hydrogen fusion reactions to start a chain and set the atmosphere on fire.
Once a nuclear bomb has enough stuff (critical mass) it starts a chain reaction. Which can be thought of as a domino chain. The brief fear that scientists had was once this first domino fell the chain reaction would not be contained to the stuff that was inside the bomb and this chain reaction could affect atoms in the atmosphere. I don’t have a full grasp of nuclear physics to understand why it didn’t however
The air is mostly a gas called nitrogen. An atomic bomb blast is so hot, there’s a chance that it could burn the nitrogen, which normally doesn’t burn. The first nuclear scientists thought the nitrogen burning might spread all over the world.
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