How to delay atomic weapons?

Inchoate

Banned
With a pod in the 1920s or 1930s, how can one plausibly delay the production of an atomic bomb during the Second World War (or a close analogue due to butterflies), short of killing off all the relevent physicists? Is it possible to delay atomic weapons until the 1950s even whilst there is a World War ongoing? Who would need to have their careers derailed and which scientific papers would need to be doused in coffee?
 
Have the Germans decide they are too hard/too expensive/not worth the trouble. There is no Einstein-Szilard Letter meaning the US does not go all in developing atomic weapons. Research continues by the need for speed shall we say is not there.
 
Have the Germans decide they are too hard/too expensive/not worth the trouble. There is no Einstein-Szilard Letter meaning the US does not go all in developing atomic weapons. Research continues by the need for speed shall we say is not there.

Didn't they basically do that OTL, except also accused it of being "Jewish science?"
 
Didn't they basically do that OTL, except also accused it of being "Jewish science?"

It needs to happen early enough for Einstein and others to decide this is much ado about nothing and not write the Einstein-Szilard Letter. The issue isn't whether or not the German program is really a threat, if FDR thinks its a threat, there will be a Manhattan Project. If he thinks it is nothing to worry about it is a concern but not a huge one, those resources get applied elsewhere.
 
It needs to happen early enough for Einstein and others to decide this is much ado about nothing and not write the Einstein-Szilard Letter. The issue isn't whether or not the German program is really a threat, if FDR thinks its a threat, there will be a Manhattan Project. If he thinks it is nothing to worry about it is a concern but not a huge one, those resources get applied elsewhere.

Then I recommend delaying the field all together. Perhaps with the untimely death of one of the scientists (OP did say "all," not "any").
 

Inchoate

Banned
Then I recommend delaying the field all together. Perhaps with the untimely death of one of the scientists (OP did say "all," not "any").

I just feel like the deaths of all of the relevent scientists is an implausible POD (although an interesting one). Perhaps some sort of plane crash where there are a few relevant personalities onboard? Or maybe somebody's lab burns down, or they make enemies with some powerful publishers?
 
I just feel like the deaths of all of the relevent scientists is an implausible POD (although an interesting one). Perhaps some sort of plane crash where there are a few relevant personalities onboard? Or maybe somebody's lab burns down, or they make enemies with some powerful publishers?

I read a biography of Oppenheimer a few years ago, and there are plenty of turns his life could have taken to remove him from the picture.

One memorable moment was in college, when he tried to poison a professor after he was driven into a nervous breakdown. Have him succeed, or at least drummed out of school, and you probably remove one of the key men in Manhattan.
 

Inchoate

Banned
I read a biography of Oppenheimer a few years ago, and there are plenty of turns his life could have taken to remove him from the picture.

One memorable moment was in college, when he tried to poison a professor after he was driven into a nervous breakdown. Have him succeed, or at least drummed out of school, and you probably remove one of the key men in Manhattan.

Interesting. A few events like this, a series of unfortunate events, then could see the programme legitimately delayed for several years.
 

Deleted member 1487

With a pod in the 1920s or 1930s, how can one plausibly delay the production of an atomic bomb during the Second World War (or a close analogue due to butterflies), short of killing off all the relevent physicists? Is it possible to delay atomic weapons until the 1950s even whilst there is a World War ongoing? Who would need to have their careers derailed and which scientific papers would need to be doused in coffee?
An easy one would be for the Germans not to let Frisch and Peierls leave the country, so they don't then do their research and memo at Birmingham that revealed the theoretical grounds to thing a bomb was possible. No memo, the bomb is very delayed.
 
If the US never gets involved (Manhattan Project taking over Tube Alloys), at least until a year or two down the line, then no bomb will be ready by the end of WWII. With peacetime developmental rates, it's going to take much longer to get the same work done, so the first bomb could be delayed until, oh, say, 1950 with the Soviets setting theirs off a year late, closely followed by the UK and US bombs in the next year or two.
 
If the US never gets involved (Manhattan Project taking over Tube Alloys), at least until a year or two down the line, then no bomb will be ready by the end of WWII. With peacetime developmental rates, it's going to take much longer to get the same work done, so the first bomb could be delayed until, oh, say, 1950 with the Soviets setting theirs off a year late, closely followed by the UK and US bombs in the next year or two.

Why would you think that the UK would get a bomb ahead of OTL, with absolutely no development from the USA?

Won't have Klaus Fuchs passing along what he learned in the US in this TL

Personally, Tube Alloys gets cut at the end of the War. Austerity time, remember, and the UK doesn't have to keep up with the Nuclear Joneses of USA and USSR

I just don't see Stalin continuing his program with a cut Brit program and no US program.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Einstein doesn't sign the letter to Roosevelt, so the whole idea of atomic weapons takes longer to be taken seriously by the policy-makers in the United States government, or less funding is devoted to it.
 
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