"Blowups Happen" is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. It is one of two stories in which Heinlein, using only public knowledge of nuclear fission, anticipated the actual development of nuclear technology a few years later. The other story is "Solution Unsatisfactory" which is concerned with a nuclear weapon, although it is only a radiological "dirty bomb", not a nuclear explosive device.
The story was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1940, before any nuclear reactors had ever been built, and for its appearance in the 1946 anthology The Best of Science Fiction, Heinlein made some modifications to reflect how a reactor actually worked.
The story made a later appearance in The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, a collection of short stories published in 1966. It also appears in his Expanded Universe in 1980, but this version is the way it appeared in Astounding without the modifications: "I now see, as a result of the enormous increase in the art in 33 years, more errors in the '46 version than I spotted in the '40s version when I checked it in '46," he writes in the introduction to the story.
The story is one of the earliest in Heinlein's Future History chronology, taking place in the late 20th century. But for another story "Life-Line", which is not particularly relevant to the Future History, it might actually be the earliest.
Read more about Blowups Happen: Plot
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