Physicist Wade Ormont has serendipitously stumbled on a hitherto unsuspected variety of nuclear fission involving iron that could "blow the entire crust [of the world] off with one big poof," a discovery he agonizes on whether to report.

There is no danger of any other researcher beating him to the punch, as the find was accidental, based on a quirk of physics to which no current theory points, and is unlikely to be arrived at independently by someone else.

His discovery would make production of a weapon based on its principles so easy as to render universal holocaust inevitable, as at some point some petty country would be bound to engage in nuclear blackmail and destroy the world.

After they maliciously vandalize his house, Ormont comes to the realization that he truly hates the human race, and these examples of it in particular, and can only be happy if they are made to pay.

"[8] Avram Davidson, who had grown disappointed with de Camp's short stories on the grounds that they played great ideas for laughs, found this tale of "an embittered scientist who—with good reason—hates the whole human race" the "sole exception ... it is so authentic-sounding that one could scream.