J. Robert Oppenheimer, sometimes called the father of the atomic bomb, described the moment that the bomb went off in a 1965 interview on a program called The Decision to Drop the Bomb: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the end of scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multiarmed form and says, ‘Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that one way or another.
