Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a gold
Speaker 2: fashioned barn burner of a stuff you Should Know type topic.
Speaker 1: Woo whizbang Chuck.
Speaker 2: This was somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently.
Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, you know, I think you and
Speaker 1: I had both been aware of this story. But we
Speaker 1: did get a recent suggestion from David Departcher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, David Parcher, I think just a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago sent in the suggestion and look at the timing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about another David, that is David Hahn, the Nuclear Boy Scout.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those where we owe a
Speaker 1: huge debt to a single human because this story was
Speaker 1: may have just gone fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized
Speaker 1: local news paper item if it hadn't have been found
Speaker 1: by a gentleman named Ken Silverstein, who ended up writing
Speaker 1: a very large piece in Harper's Magazine and then a
Speaker 1: book called The Radioactive Boy Scout colon the True story
Speaker 1: of a boy in his backyard nuclear reactor, so big,
Speaker 1: thanks to Ken. A lot of this came from your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and shout out also to the journalists from the
Speaker 2: Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group
Speaker 2: that just as a public good like investigate stories and
Speaker 2: then turn around and give them to news outlets. And
Speaker 2: apparently that's how Ken came across the story and began
Speaker 2: researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for
Speaker 2: it at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and three because we have to count David Hahn,
Speaker 1: the Michigan teenager who in the nineties managed to create
Speaker 1: a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house.
Speaker 1: It is a story that is interesting and amazing but
Speaker 1: also very sad in its ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it
Speaker 2: took Patty and Ken Han to reproduce and create David Hahn.
Speaker 2: So we're at five people now that we need to thank.
Speaker 1: All right, So David was born October nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: That's a year you were born.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I was just a couple months older than him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and look what this guy did. Yeah, what have
Speaker 1: you ever done?
Speaker 2: Thanks for that?
Speaker 1: You gotta hit podcasts. You're not sweating it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sweating.
Speaker 1: When he was a little And we say this because
Speaker 1: it very much figures into the end of David's story.
Speaker 1: It's very sad. But his mother, Patty was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: depression and paranoid schizophrenia, was hospitalized through his early childhood
Speaker 1: off and on, and she would eventually take her own
Speaker 1: life in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that we'll play into the story later on.
Speaker 2: But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So
Speaker 2: too does David's father, Ken, who we mentioned. He's person five.
Speaker 2: We need to thank Patty and Ken got divorced, I
Speaker 2: think when David was really little, like maybe a toddler,
Speaker 2: and Ken ended up marrying a coworker. Person number six
Speaker 2: we need to thank Kathy missing. Ken and Kathy were
Speaker 2: both engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place
Speaker 2: in the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan, specifically
Speaker 2: later on, in a subdivision called Golf Manor as we'll see.
Speaker 2: But so David lives with Ken and Cathy, and then
Speaker 2: on weekends he goes and stays with his mom, Patty
Speaker 2: and her boyfriend. Person number seven who we need to
Speaker 2: thank Michael Polassic, and they're the ones I believe who
Speaker 2: lived in golf Manor and under by all accounts, like
Speaker 2: David lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until he was ten that his life found
Speaker 2: its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about it,
Speaker 2: for your life to find its purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by the way, if you live in golf Manor,
Speaker 1: hold your emails, we know you're in Commerce Township.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for that. I think his dad lived
Speaker 2: in Clinton Township.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably like where I lived in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: It's like all these old townships just run together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it looked like on the map.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the person we really need to thank this
Speaker 1: is number eight.
Speaker 2: Person eight.
Speaker 1: Is, like you mentioned, when David was ten years old,
Speaker 1: his step mom's father, so I guess his step grandfather
Speaker 1: if you count that as a thing. He was also
Speaker 1: an engineer at GM. He gave a little David a
Speaker 1: book called the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and little
Speaker 1: David was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular
Speaker 1: with the stories of Mary and Pierre Currie and their
Speaker 1: radium discovery and the glow. I think the glow of
Speaker 1: that whole thing really enthrall this young guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions
Speaker 2: kind of looked had the same look as like those
Speaker 2: Ripley's Believe it or not. Yeah, comic strips almost totally
Speaker 2: something that would appeal to a kid that age are
Speaker 2: a little older. You can find it online in its
Speaker 2: entirety as a PDF. And I looked at that illustration.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what he saw, and it's actually
Speaker 2: black and white that glows to some lines coming off
Speaker 2: of a beaker or whatever.
Speaker 1: But imagination, my friend, for.
Speaker 2: Some reason, it enthralled him so much so that within
Speaker 2: two years of receiving that book, he was devouring his
Speaker 2: father's chemistry textbooks at age twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he was. I mean, these were books that
Speaker 1: were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.
Speaker 1: At the age of fourteen, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself,
Speaker 1: which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is
Speaker 1: very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he
Speaker 1: brought wanted to make his own fireworks boy scout camp,
Speaker 1: so we brought some powdered magnesium. It ended up catching
Speaker 1: on fire and ruined a tent. So what else. He
Speaker 1: tried to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he overdosed on Kantha's anthen, which I can't remember
Speaker 2: which one which episode that came up in, but it's
Speaker 2: a pigment that turned your skin orange from the inside out.
Speaker 2: And that's what he did. He was trying to come
Speaker 2: up with a self tanning method that didn't use any
Speaker 2: kind of UV radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no comment, but he was that kind of dude.
Speaker 2: He would just turn up at like a Scout meeting
Speaker 2: or something bright orange and be like, yeah, too much
Speaker 2: Cantha's anthen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind
Speaker 1: of kid who essentially destroys his bedroom because he's doing science.
Speaker 1: The walls were wrecked, the carpet was stayed, they had
Speaker 1: to move the carpet out. Eventually, his dad was like, listen,
Speaker 1: this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got
Speaker 1: to move into the basement first of all, and when
Speaker 1: we're not here, you can't be in here either. They
Speaker 1: took away equipment, they took away some chemicals, and finally
Speaker 1: they said, all right, this is out of hand. You
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. So they said, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: do it, like every divorce kid says, I'll do it
Speaker 1: at the other.
Speaker 2: Parents house, that's right, And so he did. He ended
Speaker 2: up setting up a lab in his mom's potting shit
Speaker 2: and golf manor in commerce township. And this is where
Speaker 2: the story really starts to kind of take off, because
Speaker 2: his dad was getting really worried that his son was
Speaker 2: basically creating and selling drugs, like that's what he was
Speaker 2: doing with his chemistry experiments, and so like they would
Speaker 2: he and his stepmom would drop in in the library
Speaker 2: when he was supposedly there to see if he was there.
Speaker 2: Like they really did not trust this fascin with chemistry,
Speaker 2: which I mean, I can understand if your kid blows
Speaker 2: himself up a couple of times, you're like, what are
Speaker 2: you doing exactly here?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if he knew that David went
Speaker 2: and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed
Speaker 2: or not and just was like, it's fine as long
Speaker 2: as side of my house. I'm not sure. I've never
Speaker 2: seen that either way. But one thing that he did
Speaker 2: do to try to be like, okay, I think you're
Speaker 2: creating drugs. You're probably on them, you may or may
Speaker 2: not be selling them. None of those seem to be true.
Speaker 2: From what I can tell. You need to become an
Speaker 2: eagle scout. And he pushed his son to become an
Speaker 2: eagle scout.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's exactly what he did, as we will
Speaker 1: later find out. But when it came to time per
Speaker 1: merit badge selection, he said, I want the one that
Speaker 1: says atomic energy, and the scout master said, I think
Speaker 1: he told the writer of the book, no one had
Speaker 1: ever chosen that before in the history of the troop, right,
Speaker 1: So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Coxceine
Speaker 1: and Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's one
Speaker 1: of the worst students we've got. I can just picture
Speaker 1: Brian Cox saying that that no one's ever tried for
Speaker 1: this badge before. But it was a legit badge. It's
Speaker 1: kind of funny that it existed. It's different now, as
Speaker 1: we'll see. But in nineteen sixty three they introduced the
Speaker 1: atomic energy badge. It came with a pamphlet that they
Speaker 1: created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to
Speaker 1: have a lot of really useful information. Almost like a
Speaker 1: starter kit on how to like source radioactive elements in
Speaker 1: the real world. Yeah, and how to get your own
Speaker 1: reactor going.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the projects you could do was to
Speaker 2: build your own Geiger Counter. Like it was serious stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so legit that, Like I said, the boy
Speaker 1: Scouts would eventually change that badge. I think probably because
Speaker 1: of what happened with David in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: They replaced it with the Nuclear Science Badge.
Speaker 2: Yes, so he's still working on the original, the Atomic
Speaker 2: Energy Badge from nineteen sixty three. Right, Oh, yeah, So
Speaker 2: he's just devouring this. He's having the best time. He
Speaker 2: visits a hospital ward to learn about X rays, which
Speaker 2: is part of the Merit Badge certification. The thing that
Speaker 2: really changed things, though, Chuck, is he decided just these
Speaker 2: things the Merit Badge was having him do. Like one
Speaker 2: of the things was draw a diagram of a fission reaction,
Speaker 2: or build a model of a nuclear reactor, but a
Speaker 2: model like a cardboard model basically, or paper machine, or yes,
Speaker 2: or I will create my own nuclear reactor in my
Speaker 2: mom's potting shed. He decided he was so psyched about
Speaker 2: atomic energy that he wanted to do it. Himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I guess you do the model and
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, that wasn't so hard. Let me see
Speaker 1: if I can do it for real. And he wanted
Speaker 1: to build, and you know, this shows that he was
Speaker 1: a kid. I think. I don't think this was to
Speaker 1: cause harm. He wanted to build a neutron gun, and
Speaker 1: the way I just for my research this is speculation.
Speaker 1: But it didn't seem like he was like I want
Speaker 1: to build a neutron gun to try and like blow
Speaker 1: up the city that I live in.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 1: It seemed more like a kid who was really into
Speaker 1: science and sci fi and chemistry and wanted to make
Speaker 1: a little pew pew gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think neutron gun is a it's a misleading term.
Speaker 2: I can't get the Nintendo Duck Hunt gun out of
Speaker 2: my head whenever I hear neutron gun. But really, what
Speaker 2: a neutron gun is, at least the one that David made.
Speaker 2: It's a block of lead with a cavity carved out,
Speaker 2: and you put radioactive material in the cavity and then
Speaker 2: cover it over with like aluminum foil, and then you
Speaker 2: just point the aluminum foil side of that block of
Speaker 2: lead at what you want to irradiate, and then you
Speaker 2: try to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That
Speaker 2: seems to be the sum total of his goals. He
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to build a bomb, he wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: sell plutonium to the Libyans, he wasn't doing anything like that.
Speaker 2: He just wanted to see if he could start a
Speaker 2: nuclear chain reaction, this thing that had fascinated him since
Speaker 2: he was ten years old. And so we set about
Speaker 2: doing that with help from this eagle scout merit badge pamphlet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the whole thing that much more nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also by adopting a persona as a professor,
Speaker 1: because he starts writing into organizations, trying to get information,
Speaker 1: trying to get materials, trying to get schematics. He said
Speaker 1: he was Professor Hahn that taught at his high school,
Speaker 1: Chipawa Valley High School.
Speaker 2: Oh goat and chipmunks are they? I don't know.
Speaker 1: And over the next few years, basically and apparently you know,
Speaker 1: he he applied himself. He didn't apply himself in school.
Speaker 1: He was smart, but he was failing almost failing out,
Speaker 1: basically barely passing, like the math and English exams needed
Speaker 1: to graduate eventually. But that is to say these letters
Speaker 1: had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem
Speaker 1: like they were written by a professor. But people bought it,
Speaker 1: and before you know it, he's like corresponding as a
Speaker 1: professor to these adults.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these adults are just totally into this correspondence.
Speaker 2: They're really enjoying helping this who they think a high
Speaker 2: school physics teacher learn the stuff he's looking for about
Speaker 2: nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids. Right,
Speaker 2: So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate
Speaker 2: about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a professor rather than a high school student. But other
Speaker 2: than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal.
Speaker 2: Yes. So one of the people that he corresponded with,
Speaker 2: I think he corresponded with him the most, was named
Speaker 2: Donald erb e Erb and he was the guy who
Speaker 2: was the head of the department that produces isotopes. If
Speaker 2: you need isotopes, you can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Speaker 2: This is not you, but like, if you are in
Speaker 2: some sort of industry that uses isotopes, and this herb
Speaker 2: will be like, I got you, I got you covered.
Speaker 2: For some reason, they come in these little baggies with
Speaker 2: like card suits printed all over him. It's weird. That's
Speaker 2: an herb kind of touch.
Speaker 1: It's so nice.
Speaker 2: But he was. He worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Speaker 2: and nobody helped David Hahn more than Donald erb did
Speaker 2: again unwittingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So should we take a break.
Speaker 2: We should?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I was about to keep going, but
Speaker 1: let's take a break, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 2: By the way, Chuck, it's the Chipewa Valley, Big Red,
Speaker 2: which appears to be a giant cardinal. If you ask me,
Speaker 2: that was a that was a missed, missed opportunity. Chipmunks,
Speaker 2: chip chipmunks, the rabbit chipmunks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it, all right. So when we left off,
Speaker 1: David han was getting serious about building this uh nuclear reactor.
Speaker 1: He needs material to do that, so and we should
Speaker 1: point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous.
Speaker 1: It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it,
Speaker 1: but he like he had a lead shield that he
Speaker 1: worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left
Speaker 1: his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house, so.
Speaker 2: It was like it was driving shoes, but in a
Speaker 2: potting show he was building a breeder reactor.
Speaker 1: Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2: I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes
Speaker 2: of Frasier.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that.
Speaker 2: Yes, you've seen driving shoes. People wear them and they're
Speaker 2: totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out
Speaker 2: of your car. But it's like, if your car is
Speaker 2: so nice, you take off your outdoor shoes and put
Speaker 2: on your driving shoes that never leave your car, and
Speaker 2: that way you don't get car dirty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have seen them. I guess
Speaker 1: I just you have. You did?
Speaker 2: They're like they look kind of like a cross between
Speaker 2: the loafer and a moccasin. And then the dead giveaway
Speaker 2: is the tread on the bottom comes up the back
Speaker 2: of the heel as well. Because of the position that
Speaker 2: your foot is in when you're driving, it gives you grip.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna have to look this up. You've
Speaker 1: seen them all right, all right, so that's amazing. Fifty
Speaker 1: two years old never knew about this.
Speaker 2: I was only probably forty when I learned about it,
Speaker 2: So I don't feel bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. So he starts looking for materials, and
Speaker 1: these are just a few sort of stories about he
Speaker 1: would go about that he wanted some amoricium two forty
Speaker 1: one for this neutron gun. In the booklet that he
Speaker 1: got from the Boy Scouts said you can get the
Speaker 1: stuff in smoke detectors. So he tries to steal them
Speaker 1: from the Boy Scout camp, got caught and sent home early.
Speaker 1: Then he writes smoke detector companies saying I need a
Speaker 1: bunch of these things for a school project. Eventually one
Speaker 1: company sold him one hundred broken ones for one hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Couldn't figure out how to find this amoresium, so got
Speaker 1: in touch with another smoke detector company. It was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: here's where you find it, and was able to extract
Speaker 1: amorsium enough to like weld together with a blowtorch.
Speaker 2: Yes, So remember I was talking about. The neutron gun
Speaker 2: is a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out
Speaker 2: and then you put your radioactive material in the cavity
Speaker 2: of lead. No radioactive material, that's right, Amrisium is I
Speaker 2: looked up why it would be in smoke detectors. Did
Speaker 2: you see why? No, it's really interesting just for a second.
Speaker 2: So a marisium it because of its radioactive decay. It
Speaker 2: creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions that
Speaker 2: are are moved across like this metal plate. And there's
Speaker 2: a constant movement of ions that this americium is creating
Speaker 2: from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with
Speaker 2: those ions, it actually breaks that flow. That flow is
Speaker 2: detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off.
Speaker 2: Isn't that just so bizarre. That's how your smoke detector works.
Speaker 1: And that's how they still work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, there's still a marisium in smoke detectors today.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you said he built his own Geiger counter. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was this one or if he
Speaker 1: ended up getting the other one, but he would drive
Speaker 1: around Upper Michigan with this Geiger counter on, just looking
Speaker 1: for naturally occurring uranium out in the world. And then
Speaker 1: eventually he's like, this isn't working out, so he got
Speaker 1: a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and
Speaker 1: sourced uranium.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, he had that Geiger counter mounted to his
Speaker 2: dashboard and apparently anytime he drove he had it turned on.
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's what you gotta find this stuff.
Speaker 2: And he actually did find some stuff called pitch blend
Speaker 2: and it's a source of low grade uranium and he
Speaker 2: tried to extract it, but he couldn't purify it enough. So,
Speaker 2: like you said, he was like, well, just buy some
Speaker 2: pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia that he heard about,
Speaker 2: either from the pamphlet or from Donald or one of
Speaker 2: the two.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another thing he did was the little mantle like
Speaker 1: the little mesh sacks that you tie on to a
Speaker 1: gas lantern. He bought thousands of those because they have
Speaker 1: little tiny amounts of thorium two thirty two, and so
Speaker 1: you know, he buys that of these from surplus stores,
Speaker 1: buys thousands of dollars in lithium batteries to extract lithium.
Speaker 1: So he's been very you know, I think, showing a
Speaker 1: lot of initiative at least how to find this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like he's using is his after school
Speaker 2: job money to buy one thousand dollars in lithium batteries
Speaker 2: to purify the thorium that he got from the gas
Speaker 2: lanterns that he purchased and extracted it from. Like, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine how much time and effort this took. And
Speaker 2: by the way, he did purify that thorium pretty well.
Speaker 2: I saw that he got it to nine thousand times
Speaker 2: the level found in nature of radioactivity and about one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy times the level that you would need
Speaker 2: a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess.
Speaker 1: He also went around, of course, where you're going to
Speaker 1: find old, dangerous radioactive things, junk yards and antique shops.
Speaker 1: So he would take that Geiger counter into a junk
Speaker 1: shop or an antique store and he would walk around
Speaker 1: until something lit up, like radium paint if you remember
Speaker 1: our I think it was pretty excellent podcasts on the
Speaker 1: Radium Girls, and he would find like radium paint in
Speaker 1: an old clock.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he found a vial of paint just tucked
Speaker 2: away inside of one and that then he really had
Speaker 2: his radioactive material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped
Speaker 2: it up and built a second gun. He'd also from
Speaker 2: corresponding with Donald Herb, gotten even better at creating a
Speaker 2: neutron gun that was going to be useful in creating
Speaker 2: a nuclear reaction. He also found that when he used
Speaker 2: the radium on I think the thorium that he purified,
Speaker 2: he was trying to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding
Speaker 2: thorium with neutrons. That's what he was trying to do.
Speaker 2: He found that the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like
Speaker 2: it was supposed to, so he contacted Donald RB and
Speaker 2: Donald ERB said, your neutrons are too fast. You got
Speaker 2: to slow him down. One of the best ways to
Speaker 2: slow him down is tritium. And he said, well, where
Speaker 2: would I find tritium? And apparently they use tritium to
Speaker 2: make the glowing sites on gun scopes and gun sights.
Speaker 2: So he ordered I think dozens of gun sights from
Speaker 2: Miller catalogs from stores, and then he would scrape the
Speaker 2: tritium off and then send them back and say, I
Speaker 2: need this site repaired. There's no tritium on it, and
Speaker 2: they would put more tritium on it and send it back,
Speaker 2: and he just created a new pseudonym and send that back.
Speaker 2: And that's how methodical that kid was.
Speaker 1: So this is all kid stuff. He's like fourteen, fifteen
Speaker 1: years old. Eventually he turned seventeen, and he says, all right,
Speaker 1: I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor.
Speaker 1: It's called a tiny breeder reactor. They've been around since
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties when the US developed them, when
Speaker 1: we were you know, sort of the beginning of the
Speaker 1: age of trying to use nuclear power for electricity, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, these little tiny breeder reactors might be
Speaker 1: a good way to extend the supply of fuel or something.
Speaker 1: It never quite worked out that way. I think they're
Speaker 1: still working on that kind of thing in Russia and China,
Speaker 1: but it never really went off the ground. But it
Speaker 1: was enough to inspire David to think that maybe I
Speaker 1: can build a small thing like this in my mom's
Speaker 1: potting garage or potting shed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular
Speaker 2: reactor is that you in a regular reactor, you just
Speaker 2: use fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With
Speaker 2: the breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but
Speaker 2: it also creates more fuel and you end up with
Speaker 2: more fuel than you started with. I saw it liken
Speaker 2: to leaving your house or the car with the half
Speaker 2: a tank of gas and when you return home the
Speaker 2: tank is full. That's kind of like what it does.
Speaker 2: And yet they just could never get it to work.
Speaker 2: But that's what he was trying to do. And the
Speaker 2: reason why is because you start with uranium two thirty eight,
Speaker 2: and that's the most abundant uranium found in nature.
Speaker 1: That's right. So he doesn't have enough uranium, matter what
Speaker 1: kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction for
Speaker 1: normal reactors. So he says, maybe I can at least
Speaker 1: do something like it. Seemed like he became sort of
Speaker 1: obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind of
Speaker 1: nuclear reaction himself, got a blueprint from one of his
Speaker 1: dad's textbooks, took that emericium in the radium from his
Speaker 1: neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum, shaving some beryllium,
Speaker 1: wrap that up in aluminum foil, and basically you have
Speaker 1: yourself a very small reactor core right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he created an atomic pile like the first one
Speaker 2: that FORMI created in Chicago, but on a much much
Speaker 2: smaller scale. But it worked like it worked. He created,
Speaker 2: like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it started a
Speaker 2: nuclear chain reaction and it started to take off actually
Speaker 2: pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got that Geiger counter and he's measuring this
Speaker 1: thing like on a daily basis, and he's like it's
Speaker 1: actually growing, like it's getting more radio active in here.
Speaker 1: I imagine he was thrilled and also possibly a little
Speaker 1: bit like Matthew Broderick in wargames where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, like what have I done here, such
Speaker 1: that he was worried and took it apart.
Speaker 2: He did. Apparently he could detect it from five houses
Speaker 2: down the street. And I looked up pictures of Golf
Speaker 2: Manner and I mean their yards are decent size, so
Speaker 2: five houses away is a pretty good distance to be
Speaker 2: able to pick up his nuclear reactor in his mom's
Speaker 2: potting shed with his Geiger counter. And at that big
Speaker 2: sideyards there, yeah, lots of big side yards. No zero lines, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. No, this is Golf manner Man that
Speaker 2: we're talking about. So he took it apart and he
Speaker 2: just kind of distributed the different parts to try to
Speaker 2: drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed and
Speaker 2: he kind of went about his life after he disassembled
Speaker 2: his reactor. He'd achieved his goal, but apparently he had
Speaker 2: a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars.
Speaker 2: He admitted as much in an interview later on as
Speaker 2: an adult, and he seems to have gotten caught doing
Speaker 2: that by the police shortly after he disassembled his reactor.
Speaker 2: And when the police caught him, they said, we're going
Speaker 2: to search your car, and he said, go ahead, search
Speaker 2: my car, but do not open that toolbox. That toolbox
Speaker 2: is highly radioactive.
Speaker 1: Is that a good cliffhanger for a break?
Speaker 2: I think so. Imagine the cops going what they're.
Speaker 1: Like, we got to listen to ads before we know
Speaker 1: what happens. Sorry, all right, we'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 1: So it's August almost September nineteen ninety four. That reactor
Speaker 1: is taking apart. I think you put the thorium in
Speaker 1: a shoe box. The radium in the americium was in
Speaker 1: the shed still, and the rest is in the trunk
Speaker 1: of his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said,
Speaker 1: because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels,
Speaker 1: and he said, warning that things radioactive don't open up
Speaker 1: that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should. This
Speaker 1: sounds like an ied to me and improvised explosive device.
Speaker 1: Why don't we call him the bomb squad to be safe,
Speaker 1: called in the bomb squad, they said, this whole car
Speaker 1: basically is radioactive, and all of a sudden, the Federal
Speaker 1: Radiological Emergency Response Plan is triggered, and the EPA and
Speaker 1: the FBI and the INNER and the DOE are in
Speaker 1: the state and local authorities are all like trying to
Speaker 1: not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what in the world is going on with this kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's seventeen at the time still, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, these huge agencies are like swooping down on
Speaker 2: him to figure out what's going on. The thing is,
Speaker 2: I guess they didn't think to ask the right questions
Speaker 2: or their imaginations just didn't go as far as they
Speaker 2: could have. But they seem to have in this initial
Speaker 2: questioning not really have gotten any further than his car,
Speaker 2: And he didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his
Speaker 2: actual like nuclear reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed.
Speaker 2: They didn't even know there was a potting shed at
Speaker 2: his mom's house.
Speaker 1: Really hard believe.
Speaker 2: Yes, but that's the level of questioning that this kid
Speaker 2: was subjected to. And I mean, in retrospect, you're like,
Speaker 2: are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting
Speaker 2: shed right off the bat. But if you're an FBI agent,
Speaker 2: Department of Energy agent, and you're talking to a seventeen
Speaker 2: year old kid, you're probably not going to assume that
Speaker 2: because they have this stuff and a toolbox in their car,
Speaker 2: they actually were successfully creating nuclear chain reactions in their
Speaker 2: mom's potting shed. I can kind of commiserate with that.
Speaker 1: Sure, you probably assume you just got it at radiation
Speaker 1: are pretty much so. A few months later is when
Speaker 1: they finally got an expert from the state Department of
Speaker 1: Public Health to interview David more thoroughly, and that turned
Speaker 1: up the potting shed. David's mom at this point had
Speaker 1: gathered most of the radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it, I imagine,
Speaker 1: not in a very safe way at all, probably just
Speaker 1: went in the trash can. And they still found a
Speaker 1: lot of radiation at the house and the materials there
Speaker 1: in the shed they had apparently those of vegetable can
Speaker 1: that had about a thousand times the normal back ground radiation.
Speaker 1: And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well,
Speaker 1: your house is this, Well, the potting shed at least
Speaker 1: is a superpun site.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They ended up spending sixty grand on a two
Speaker 2: to three day operation between June twenty sixth and twenty
Speaker 2: eighth of nineteen ninety five disassembling the potting shed, I think,
Speaker 2: getting some of the earth around it out of there,
Speaker 2: putting them in sealed barrels with you know, radioactive hazard
Speaker 2: symbols on it, and they sent it to the Great
Speaker 2: Salt Lake Desert where they were buried with other canisters
Speaker 2: of low level radioactive waste. His mom's potting shed is
Speaker 2: in a Great Salt Lake desert buried with other radioactive material.
Speaker 2: That's kind of neat. The real stuff though, like you said,
Speaker 2: it ended up in like the landfill nearby. There was
Speaker 2: a quote from David that I saw where he said
Speaker 2: the authorities got the garbage, and the garbage got the
Speaker 2: good stuff, in reference to what his mom and thrown away. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's some lumps of amrisium and radium sitting somewhere in
Speaker 2: the garbage pile outside of Clinton Commerce.
Speaker 1: Township and what's in like a thousand years, it'll be safe.
Speaker 2: Probably something like that.
Speaker 1: I was just I don't know how long that would be.
Speaker 1: I bet somebody knows.
Speaker 2: So oh though right now.
Speaker 1: So David falls into depression after this. His high school
Speaker 1: classmates were not kind to him. Of course, they called
Speaker 1: him radioactive boy. The EPA said, Hi, we should you know,
Speaker 1: we can examine you in your body to see if
Speaker 1: you're okay. He said, no, no, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did
Speaker 1: get that Eagle Scout badge. I think the Scout leaders
Speaker 1: are like, should we really do this? But they did.
Speaker 1: They give him that Eagle Scout badge. And no, apparently
Speaker 1: that the neighborhoods, all those huge side yards came in
Speaker 1: handy because no one in the neighborhood, and no one
Speaker 1: at the home or in his family apparently ever, suffered
Speaker 1: from any kind of radiation sickness.
Speaker 2: That is so lucky. Yeah, like that is really lucky
Speaker 2: for him and for everybody, but he no one got hurt.
Speaker 2: That's just mind boggling. At this point, he went on
Speaker 2: and joined the Navy a couple of years later, and
Speaker 2: he served for several years. Was honorably discharged and ironically
Speaker 2: served on the USS Enterprise, which is a nuclear submarine,
Speaker 2: but he didn't work in any capacity near the nuclear
Speaker 2: part of the submarine.
Speaker 1: He I think he fully served his time in the Navy.
Speaker 2: He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged.
Speaker 1: No, no, No, I think I think he was discharged from
Speaker 1: the Marines. I think he like he fully served his
Speaker 1: time in the Navy. Oh, I thought they thought he
Speaker 1: was never discharged.
Speaker 2: I thought they discharged you when your time was up too.
Speaker 1: No, you just you're just done. You just like a
Speaker 1: discharge means it's time for you to go. And they're like, wait,
Speaker 1: I got three more years, and they're like, no, it's
Speaker 1: time for you.
Speaker 2: To get gotcha, Okay, I gotcha all right. So yes,
Speaker 2: in between the Navy and the Marines, he went to
Speaker 2: college and started working on an associate's degree. Like you said,
Speaker 2: he joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged, and his
Speaker 2: life was just not going the way he wanted it to.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and seven found him unemployed. His mental illness
Speaker 2: had really kind of kicked in, and toward the end
Speaker 2: of his life spoiler alert, he died at age thirty
Speaker 2: nine there was an FBI report on him where somebody
Speaker 2: had been informing on him that he was not using
Speaker 2: his meds, that he was heavily using cocaine, and that
Speaker 2: he was acting really paranoid. From what I can tell
Speaker 2: based on the FBI documents, it seems like the person
Speaker 2: informing on him seems concerned, not like they're doing it
Speaker 2: out of any kind of vengeful reason.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But when FBI showed up and interviewed him again, this
Speaker 2: is when he's in his thirties, he passed all the
Speaker 2: inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that they
Speaker 2: gave him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there were you know, there were other complaints
Speaker 1: and reports with the police that you know, he was
Speaker 1: trying to do this again, that he had a small
Speaker 1: reactor at his house. Another landlord I think, said that
Speaker 1: he had stolen some smoke detectors that they were missing,
Speaker 1: and they found them, like you know, torn apart, basically
Speaker 1: near David's garage. But they never they never found any
Speaker 1: kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff in a decade, and you know, they went
Speaker 1: and checked like where he was living, and they never
Speaker 1: found any evidence that he had at least started up
Speaker 1: any more radioactive work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Imagine during your FBI questioning, you're like, I haven't
Speaker 2: done any nuclear reactions at home for like ten years. Man,
Speaker 2: that's like that is a different chet. It's like a
Speaker 2: lifetime and age stuff. Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also
Speaker 2: give just kind of a sad note. In twenty ten,
Speaker 2: which is where the FBI's investigation of him as an
Speaker 2: adult left off based on those complaints, they noted that
Speaker 2: he was in rehab after being charged with a bunch
Speaker 2: of drug charges. So apparently the cocaine use thing was true.
Speaker 2: That was twenty ten, six years later, like I said,
Speaker 2: he was dead at age thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in the media, of course, initially there were
Speaker 1: some people that said that the radioactivity did him in
Speaker 1: or that was a factor at least very sadly, the
Speaker 1: report came back that wasn't true. But he died from
Speaker 1: combined effects of alcohol and fentanyl and ben a drill,
Speaker 1: and he suffered from mental illness just like his mom,
Speaker 1: I think, from paranoid schizophrenia and depression. And it's just
Speaker 1: a very sad to a story of the kid. He
Speaker 1: sounds like he was really smart and just wanted to
Speaker 1: try and do something really amazing, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was found dead in the bathroom at the
Speaker 2: Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died.
Speaker 2: And it is a sad end. I don't quite know
Speaker 2: what to make of it, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Like jam it's if he was still alive.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it would be a much
Speaker 2: different story somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he did something.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe it's the story of somebody who
Speaker 2: was just so single minded they did something that most
Speaker 2: other people would have given up on or never even attempted.
Speaker 2: And that's worth mentioning, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, absolutely, And I tried to look at other angles.
Speaker 1: I just I never saw anything like nefarious. Really no.
Speaker 2: No, either an FBI interview or a media interview, the
Speaker 2: interviewer was like, I mean, were you thinking of making
Speaker 2: a bomb or whatever? And they said they reported like
Speaker 2: he seemed to just be like that never even crossed
Speaker 2: my mind, Like, no, it's not at all what I
Speaker 2: was doing. He was just obsessed with creating a nuclear
Speaker 2: reaction and.
Speaker 1: He did it. Yeah. Well, thankfully we don't have to
Speaker 1: end it on that sad note, because Livia found this
Speaker 1: other great story of a kid named Taylor Wilson who
Speaker 1: got the radio Active Boy Scout book from his grandmother
Speaker 1: as an eleven year old science kid and operating under
Speaker 1: supervision and oversight and getting real experts to help, actually
Speaker 1: became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at the
Speaker 1: age of fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is amazing. I mean, fusion is a whole
Speaker 2: new ballgame.
Speaker 1: But yeah, fourteen and works as a nuclear physicist as
Speaker 1: an adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and supposedly, according to The Guardian, a super cool
Speaker 2: dude too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it again
Speaker 2: according to The Guardian. Oh really Yeah, that's what the
Speaker 2: Guardian said, because I guess his grandmother was giving it
Speaker 2: to him as a cautionary tale and he was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to try this miss out.
Speaker 1: Very interesting.
Speaker 2: Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the eleventh person we need to
Speaker 2: thank in this episode, Taylor Wilson being ten and Donald
Speaker 2: Irb being number nine.
Speaker 1: Right, nice work.
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about the Nuclear or
Speaker 2: Radioactive Boy Scout, David Han, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: out there, but you would be remiss in not reading
Speaker 2: Ken Silverstein's article at least, if not his book on
Speaker 2: David Hant. And while you're looking that up, we'll just
Speaker 2: go ahead and do listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right, this is from Tiffany. Hey, guys, thank you
Speaker 1: for bringing back some vivid memories from my eighth grade
Speaker 1: reading class too many decades ago to admit. But my
Speaker 1: reading teacher was also the social studies teacher, and I
Speaker 1: guess that explains where all of our reading lists included
Speaker 1: Animal Farm, Hiroshima, all applied on the Western Front and
Speaker 1: you know it The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to Ham
Speaker 1: home what we read. He would incorporate details of the
Speaker 1: book into a little imaginary coin toss he did each
Speaker 1: day to determine whether the boys or girls got to
Speaker 1: go first and walk to lunch in single file line.
Speaker 1: For the weeks we discussed the Jungle. It would sound
Speaker 1: something like this. Today's menu includes hot dogs. Call it
Speaker 1: in the air. Is it the rusty nail or the
Speaker 1: severed finger? What a great teacher. One day we noticed
Speaker 1: that half the kids in the class had an edition
Speaker 1: of the book that included this, and yes, I still
Speaker 1: remember it. Decades later. Mary had a little lamb and
Speaker 1: when she saw it sicken. She sent it off to
Speaker 1: the packing town and now it's labeled chicken. I was
Speaker 1: really hoping you guys had seen this so we could
Speaker 1: hear a recitation during the podcast, but we just did
Speaker 1: it right there, Tiffany.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, I didn't run across that.
Speaker 1: I didn't neither. That's a great ad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email and
Speaker 2: we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher.
Speaker 2: The thirteenth person we need to thank in this episode.
Speaker 2: You're number twelve, Tiffany, Can we think, Jerry? Sure? Why not?
Speaker 2: We'll go with fourteen. We could thank ourselves and just
Speaker 2: bring it up to sixteen, a nice.
Speaker 1: Even number, sweet sixteen.
Speaker 2: We're gonna make it seventeen because we want to thank
Speaker 2: you for listening, and we want to thank you in
Speaker 2: advance for getting in touch with this via email. It's
Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio.
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