The prolific author, H.G. Wells, predicted in his novel The World Set Free that the atom had been split, generating boundless reserves of energy—what he called “worlds of limitless power”. He also postulated that world finance would be overturned when gold would be created as a byproduct of this atomic split. In his story, different nations set about building devastating atom bombs. A faulty aspect of Well’s imagination was that atom bombs, once dropped, continued to explode for years, burrowing down into the earth.