“Don’t Worry—It Can’t Happen”, 1940-05-01 (; backlinks; similar):
…Early last summer, in the midst of all this research, a chilly sensation began tingling up and down the spines of the experimenters. These extra neutrons that were being erupted—could they not in turn become involuntary bullets, flying from one exploding uranium nucleus into the heart of another, causing another fission which would itself cause still others? Wasn’t there a dangerous possibility that the uranium would at last become explosive? That the samples being bombarded in the laboratories at Columbia University, for example, might blow up the whole of New York City? To make matters more ominous, news of fission research from Germany, plentiful in the early part of 1939, mysteriously and abruptly stopped for some months. Had government censorship been placed on what might be a secret of military importance?
The press and populace, getting wind of these possibly lethal goings-on, raised a hue and cry. Nothing daunted, however, the physicists worked on to find out whether or not they would be blown up, and the rest of us along with them. Now, a year after the original discovery, word comes from Paris that we don’t have to worry.
…With typical French—and scientific—caution, they added that this was perhaps true only for the particular conditions of their own experiment, which was carried out on a large mass of uranium under water. But most scientists agreed that it was very likely true in general.
…Readers made insomnious by “newspaper talk” of terrific atomic war weapons held in reserve by dictators may now get sleep.
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