  We present a simple and intuitive description of both, the Schwinger effect
and false vacuum decay through bubble nucleation, as tunneling problems in
one-dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics. Both problems can be described
by an effective potential that depends on a single variable of dimension
length, which measures the separation of the particles in the Schwinger pair,
or the radius of a bubble for the vacuum decay. We show that both problems can
be described as tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics if one
interprets this variable as the position of a relativistic particle with a
suitably defined effective mass. The same bounce solution can be used to obtain
reliable order of magnitude estimates for the rates of the Schwinger pair
production and false vacuum decay.
