If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later.

But they didn't think about that. They don't mention that they thought that they were working on something that could literally end humanity.

And the thing is, we didn't even use the bomb to win against the Nazi.

That the bomb was a good decision or not is a hard debate that I still think about sometime.

But there was not that much debate reported from the people building it.

Oppenheimer recalling the Trinity test:

It brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

I'm sure those scientists thought about it and discussed it among themselves, but they were in a super top secret lab in the middle of nowhere. Not much opportunity to leave an historical record of what they thought (letters highly censored, etc).

The Feynman biography cover in length the what happened, but it doesn't mention much debate about this.

> If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later.

Yes, however the point is moot if your adversary hits you with it before you are finished.

Pacifists get shot first.

You are creating a false dichotomy, between pacifism and the use of a doomsday weapon. There are other options. And we actually won against the nazi without using the bomb.

Now given the cold war event, I can't say for sure if the bomb was a good or a bad thing.

But's saying "we had no choice" is a really dangerous way of putting things.

Smart people can be really dumb.

Yep -- Los Alamos. You should read "Surely You're Joking," by the way. It's worth it just for the story about finding a hole in the fence, then walking in the guard gate and out the hole again and again until someone noticed.

It's one of those rare books where you laught while reading it. The whole reason he ends up in Brazil is just so relatable to me, pricesily because it's absurd and so realistic at the same time.

I have the book, but I don't think I got to the Los Alamos part ;)

Thank you for wasting my time ;-). That story was in "Los Alamos from Below," which may not have been part of "Surely You're Joking." Feynman was a fascinating guy and an excellent writer, even if he was a bit too young to be a serious player in the Manhattan Project. By the way, if you're interested in physics, these are about as good as it gets: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/