In her 1991 autobiography, Sylvia Anderson wrote that the Mighty Atom itself "strains credibility" while comparing the nuclear explosion in the episode's first act to the real-life Chernobyl disaster. Michael Park of the website WhatCulture expresses similar thoughts, arguing that the episode essentially "predicted" Chernobyl: "... at the height of the Cold War, this episode will have given a lot of children (and adults) sleepless nights." Media historian Nicholas J. Cull notes that like "The Man From MI.5" and "Atlantic Inferno", "The Mighty Atom" plays on themes of "nuclear weapons and wider nuclear fears in general".