Changes

:...nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it.  They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must have glared upon any intelligent mind. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing.  There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape.  Every sort of passive defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by this tremendous increase on the destructive side. Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it; it was revolutionising the problems of police and internal rule. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city.

:...nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it.  They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must have glared upon any intelligent mind. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing.  There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape.  Every sort of passive defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by this tremendous increase on the destructive side. Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it; it was revolutionising the problems of police and internal rule. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city.

His description of how the "atomic bombs" were supposed to work was pure gobbledegook. Nevertheless, his formulation of the problem as being one of speeding up the process of natural radioactive decay was intriguing to [[Leo Szilard]], who acknowledged the book as an inspiration for his discovery or invention of the nuclear chain reaction.

His description of how the "atomic bombs" were supposed to work was entirely incorrect. Nevertheless, his formulation of the problem as being one of speeding up the process of natural radioactive decay was intriguing to [[Leo Szilard]], who acknowledged the book as an inspiration for his discovery or invention of the nuclear chain reaction.

Wells' 1919 nonfiction book, ''The Outline of History,'' was an influential best-seller.

Wells' 1919 nonfiction book, ''The Outline of History,'' was an influential best-seller.