- J. Robert Oppenheimer saw the first atomic bomb explode and thought, “Now I’m going to die.”
- This famous quote is not original by Oppenheimer. Lord Vishnu says in Hindu scriptures:
- Watch the moment Oppenheimer spoke the foreboding words on NBC below.
J. Robert Oppenheimer once declared himself, or perhaps the power of the atomic bomb he unleashed, “death, destroyer of worlds.” The title is dark, but it fits.
“Oh yes, that’s right,” climatologist and nuclear winter guru Alan Robock told Insider. “But it wasn’t just him.”
Oppenheimer led a team of scientists to develop the world’s first nuclear weapon in 1945, triggering what Robock calls “the greatest crisis the world has ever faced.”
The theme is their race to get the bomb before the Nazis, an effort called the Manhattan Project. ‘Oppenheimer’ by Christopher Nolan Where spooky death quotes come in.
A mushroom cloud from the Trinity nuclear test rises in the New Mexico desert.
National Security Research Center
The real Oppenheimer uttered these words during a 1965 NBC interview about the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was talking about a much smaller Trinity test in the New Mexico desert just three weeks earlier. It was the first atomic bomb explosion in history.
Watch Oppenheimer reminisce about the moment of the historic explosion in this clip from the NBC documentary.
Staring into a thousand yards and repeating long silences, the physicist says,
“I knew the world was not the same. Some laughed, some cried, and most were silent. I remembered a passage from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Lord Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince.”–Here Oppenheimer taps his knuckles on the corner of the eye, and tears appear to pool–“To do your duty and impress the prince, put yourself in your many arms and say,” I die, Become the destroyer of the world. ’ I think everyone probably thought so in one way or another. ”
The next person to speak in the documentary is Kenneth Bainbridge, the physicist who directed the Trinity Test.
He explained his sense of responsibility in a slightly different way. “When I shook Oppenheimer’s hand, I said, ‘Now we are all sons of a bitch.'”
In that scripture, God tells soldiers not to feel responsible for who lives and who dies.
The fact that Oppenheimer turned to Sanskrit scriptures at such a pivotal moment suggests, at least in part, that Hindu writings helped him understand the destructive power he was wielding on the world.
“He was obviously very attracted to this philosophy,” said Rev. Stephen Thompson, a Sanskrit scholar who taught the Bhagavad Gita. Wired in 2017.
[GeneralLeslieGroves(left)andJ.RobertOppenheimer(middlewearingfedora)inspectingtheTrinityexplosionsitein1945
National Security Research Center
In a line recalled by Oppenheimer, Lord Vishnu addresses the warrior prince Arjuna incarnated as his charioteer, Lord Krishna.
“Arjuna is a soldier, he has a duty to fight. It is Krishna, not Arjuna, who decides who lives and who dies, and Arjuna should not mourn or rejoice in what lies beyond his destiny, and should not sublimely cling to such consequences,” Thompson told Wired. “And ultimately, the most important thing is his devotion to Krishna. His faith will save Arjuna’s soul.”
Similarly, the new film tackles the question of how the United States used the atomic bomb and how much Oppenheimer was (or wasn’t) responsible for those killed by the bomb.
at NBC interviewOppenheimer argued for the justification for developing the nuclear bomb—to end the atrocities of World War II and “save countless lives”—and the hope that it would never be used.
“Overall, we tended to think that we needed to end the war, and if there was any possibility of doing so, it was the right thing to do,” he said.