You made me curious. It seems the theory is thermal, but it was never taken that seriously. Bethe called it “absolute nonsense”—interview: https://johnhorgan.o

You made me curious. It seems the theory is thermal, but it was never taken that seriously. Bethe called it “absolute nonsense”—interview: https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/oppenheimer-bethe-and-the-doomsday-hypothesis https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/oppenheimer-bethe-and-the... Here's a student paper giving a pretty thorough analysis (AFAICT): http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/chung1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/chung1/ Here's more discussion of it: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52802/where-did-one-in-a-million-chance-of-nuking-the-atmosphere-come-from https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52802/where-did-... And here (drumroll) is the original paper: https://web.archive.org/web/20200331041344/https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20200331041344/https://fas.org/s...