A military aide is always within reach of the POTUS, holding the "Presidential Emergency Satchel" or "nuclear football" containing the codes and communications to decimate nations with a moment's notice. The only key required to open the box of death is a laminated card called the "biscuit" that authenticates the president's identity using special codes. What would it take for someone to press the button?

President Harry S. Truman was the first and only president to attack a foreign enemy with nuclear weapons. In August 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first cities in the history of civilization to experience a nuclear attack. At the time, no one knew the sheer power that these weapons contained.

Albert Einstein described his role in developing the atomic bomb as "the one great mistake in my life." In his well-known 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he admitted that he helped develop the bomb out of fear that the enemy had a superior weapon. "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing." Over 130,000 people had a hand in the Manhattan Project, with most expressing deep regret for their role in altering warfare.

Robert Oppenheimer, who many call the Father of the Atomic Bomb, famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita after seeing the destruction: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." As with Einstein, Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life advocating for nuclear regulation. "If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite, or they will perish."

"We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world. We have made a thing that, by all standards of the world we grew up in, is an evil thing. And by doing so, by our participation in making it possible to make these things, we have raised again the question of whether science is good for man, of whether it is good to learn about the world, to try to understand it, to try to control it, to help give to the world of men increased insight, increased power. Because we are scientists, we must say an unalterable yes to these questions; it is our faith and our commitment, seldom made explicit, even more seldom challenged, that knowledge is a good in itself, knowledge and such power as must come with it." – K. Robert Oppenheimer