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Are you crazy? The safes didn't provide security sufficient to keep spies out - some didn't even have the codes set to anything other than the default. Feynman

Are you crazy? The safes didn't provide security sufficient to keep spies out - some didn't even have the codes set to anything other than the default. Feynman strengthened the whole system. Most of the safe cracking was done in order to provide access for the owners of said safes. His activities were quite well known: would you presume to advise the corrections department at Los Alamos to hang their scientists leading their technical divisions? Additionally, he kept Oak Ridge from blowing up when he noticed the water moderated uranium was stored closely enough to be near-critical. Were he hanged, there would have been hundreds of direct deaths, and the entire effort would have been held up for months: they kept all their enriching equipment there, not to mention that it housed their enrichment experts.

mynameishere 19y ago
Were he hanged, there would have been hundreds of direct deaths Well, you're looking forward from a past point of time, and that shouldn't be done. Actually hanging someone probably wouldn't be a good idea. It depends on the circumstances: If he made it clear what he was doing, a loss of clearance would have been more appropriate. Of course, in the back of my mind are a lot of hypotheticals--using the bomb was partly strategic, ie, to scare the Soviets. That didn't work, partly because of the spying. North Korea and Red China were tragedies of the highest order, and the lost nuke secrets were a part of that game...