https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming#Manhattan_Project
Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale
experiment can be done—either you have a critical mass or you do not), a
man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed,
thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he
said, "It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole
atmosphere." I decided I would check it myself!
The next day when he
came for the answers I remarked to him, "The arithmetic was apparently
correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross
sections for oxygen and nitrogen—after all, there could be no
experiments at the needed energy levels." He replied, like a physicist
talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic
not the physics, and left.
I said to myself, "What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?" I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you."