I happened to hear people saying that the nuclear fusion bomb tests could set the atmosphere on fire. I have some serious doubts about that - but I have no facts.
Nuclear fusion reaction requires $15*10^{6}$ kelvins to start. If we produce such temperature in "open air" would the atmosphere become a fuel for further fusion? Shouldn't the whole thing just be torn apart by its terrible pressure?
Answer
From what I have read in "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" Teller was the first one to express this concern before the Trinity test. Also quoting from: http://www.sciencemusings.com/2005/10/what-didnt-happen.html
Physicist Edward Teller considered another possibility. The huge temperature of a fission explosion -- tens of millions of degrees -- could fuse together nuclei of light elements, such as hydrogen, a process that also releases energy (later, this insight would be the basis for hydrogen bombs). If the temperature of a detonation was high enough, nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere would fuse, releasing energy. Ignition of atmospheric nitrogen might cause hydrogen in the oceans to fuse. The Trinity experiment might inadvertently turn the entire planet into a chain-reaction fusion bomb.
Robert Oppenheimer, chief of the American atomic scientists, took Teller's suggestion seriously. He discussed it with Arthur Compton, another leading physicist. "This would be the ultimate catastrophe," wrote Compton. "Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than run a chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind!"
Oppenheimer asked Hans Bethe and other physicists to check their calculations of the ignition temperature of nitrogen and the cooling effects expected in the fireball of a nuclear bomb. The new calculations indicated that an atmospheric conflagration was impossible." Bethe apparently then convincingly showed that the atmosphere would not be set on fire by a nuclear bomb.
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