Chadwick on the inevitability of the bomb
Chadwick's 1941 realisation that the atomic bomb was not just possible but inevitable, because no idea stays peculiar to one country.
Refs: Techno inevitabilism Churchill on war as the human default
Excerpt
I remember the spring of 1941 to this day. I realized then that a nuclear bomb was not only possible — it was inevitable. Sooner or later these ideas could not be peculiar to us. Everybody would think about them before long, and some country would put them into action. …
And there was nobody to talk to about it, I had many sleepless nights. But I did realize how very very serious it could be. And I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy, I've never stopped since then. It's 28 years, and I don't think I've missed a single night in all those 28 years.
— James Chadwick, Physics Nobel Laureate and author of the 1941 British government report on the inevitability of an atomic bomb, which spurred the Manhattan Project
