A "Super" Atom Bomb

Hydrogen Bomb (From: www.xtimeline.com)

"For Super was a bomb which might well be a thousand times as powerful as that which had razed Hiroshima to the ground. Unlike the ordinary atomic bomb it was an 'open-ended weapon,' of unrestricted range.

Such a bomb could be constructed only if the powerful natural processes taking place in the interior of the sun were successfully reproduced on earth. Quantities of energy were perpetually being released in that flaming heavenly body by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. The forces liberated were incomparably more powerful than those let loose in uranium fission...

[A group of nuclear physicists meeting at UC Berkeley, lead by Robert Oppenheimer,] indicated the possibility of a fusion of this kind, the logical next step after the fission bomb...

One of the questions to be considered was peculiarly sinister. The possibility had been mentioned at Berkeley that once the thermonuclear processes had been set in motion by the explosion of a bomb, they might affect the atmosphere and the waters of the earth. An irresistible global chain reaction might be released by the Super, which would transform the entire planet in a short time into a flaming and dying star." (265-266) --Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists