"A Thousand Suns" is a concept album dealing with human fears such as nuclear warfare. "On this record, the concepts blend human ideas with technology [...] Human fears, your fear of what's going to happen in the world, the music kind of references that", said Mike Shinoda on an interview with MTV. The album's title comes from the Hindu Sanskrit scripture, the "Bhagavad Gita": "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one," a quote made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer in reference to the atomic bomb.