Stuff You Should Know - The Story of the Nuclear Boy Scout

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

David Hahn was a kid who was really into science. So much that he built a nuclear reactor in his mother's potting shed. And it worked. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor Vanessa Tyler welcome you to Black Land. A podcast about the ground on which the Black community stands right now from stories about salvation and loss. I love the person who had an HIV diagnosis to dreams achieved or yet unfulfilled from people who have made it. I sat down with a therapist and I began my journey to those left behind. Listen to Black Land on the I Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. I'm a cognitive scientist and I've written 10 books and hundreds of articles on topics

such as intelligence, introversion, and education. The Psychology Podcast is a place where we investigate the different ways in which we can unlock human potential. And where I get to interview some of the most extraordinary and fascinating people, and we have real conversations about what it means to achieve success and what it means to be human. Listen to the Psychology podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's your favorite throwback podcast hosts, Jessica Bennett and Susie Bannakarum here to announce a new season of our show in retrospect, which means a whole new batch of episodes diving into the pop culture moments we love

and love to pick apart from the dethroning of the first black Miss America to the legacy of a lesbian joke from four Kaftan-loving Golden Girls. Listen to In retrospect on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and this

is a gold fashion barn burner of a stuff you should know type topic. Woo! Whiz bang! Chuck, this was somebody sent this in as a suggestion recently I think, right? Yeah, you know I think you and I had both been aware of this story but we did get a recent suggestion from David Parcher. Yeah, David Parcher. I think just a couple of weeks ago sent in this suggestion and look at the timing. Yeah.

Well, thank you, David. And we're going to talk about another David that is David Hahn, the nuclear Boy Scout. And this is one of those where we owe a huge debt to a single human because this story may have just gone fairly unnoticed as a pretty localized local newspaper item. Yeah. If it hadn't been found by a gentleman named Ken Silverstein who ended up writing a very large piece in Harper's Magazine and then a book called The Radioactive Boy Scout, Colin, the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor.

So big thanks to Ken. A lot of this came from your work. Yeah. And shout out also to the journalists from the Natural Resources News Service, which is this investigative journalist group that just as a public good, like investigate stories and then turn around and give them the news outlets. And apparently that's how Ken came across the story

and began researching it. So there's two people that were responsible for it at least. Yeah, and three, because we have to count David Hahn, the Michigan teenager who in the 90s managed to create a nuclear reaction in the potting shed of his mom's house. It is a story that is interesting and amazing, but also very sad in its ending. Yeah, and technically we should thank five people because it took Patty and Ken Han to reproduce and create David Han. So we're at five people now that we need to thank.

All right. So David was born October 1976. That's the year you were born, right? Yeah. I was just a couple of months older than him. Yeah. And look what this guy did. Yeah.

I know. What have you ever done? Thanks for that. You got to hit podcasts. You're not sweating it. Oh, I know what what have you ever done? Thanks for that Hey, you gotta you gotta hit podcast so you're not sweating it. Oh, I'm sweating When he was a little and we say this because it very much figures into the end of David's story It's very sad, but his mother Patty was diagnosed with depression and paranoid schizophrenia Was hop up hospitalized through his early childhood off and on and she would eventually Take her own life in 1996. Yeah, and that will play into the story later on

But Patty remains a character throughout most of it. So too does David's father Ken who we mentioned He's person five we need to thank Patty and Ken got divorced. I think when David was really little like maybe a toddler and Ken ended up marrying a coworker. Person number six, we need to thank Kathy Misig. Ken and Kathy were both engineers at General Motors. This whole thing took place in the suburbs of Detroit, specifically Clinton Township, Michigan. Specifically, later on,

in a subdivision called Golf Manor as we'll see. So David lives with Ken and Kathy and then on weekends he goes and stays with his mom Patty and her boyfriend, person number seven who we need to thank, Michael Polacic. And they're the ones I believe who lived in Golf Manor and And by all accounts, like David lived a pretty normal childhood, just doing normal childhood things. It wasn't until he was 10 that his life found its purpose, which is pretty early if you think about it for your life to find its purpose.

Yeah. And by the way, if you live in golf manner and hold your emails, we know you're in commerce township. Yes. Thank you for that. I think his you're in commerce township. Yes, thank you for that. I think his dad lived in Clinton township. Yeah, it's probably like where I lived in New Jersey. It's like all these old townships just run together. Yeah, that's what it looked like on the map. Yeah, so the person we really need to thank.

This is number eight, person eight. Is like you mentioned, when Dave was 10 years old, his step mom's father, so I guess his step-grandfather, if you count that as a thing, he was also an engineer at GM. He gave Little David a book called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. And Little David was fascinated with science and chemistry, but in particular with the stories of Mary and Pierre Curie and their radium discovery and the glow, I think the glow of that whole thing really enthralled this young guy.

Yeah, this book was heavily illustrated and like the instructions kind of looked, had the same look as like those Ripley's Believe It or Not comic strips almost. totally something that would appeal to a kid that age or a little older. You can find it online in its entirety as a PDF. And I looked at that illustration and don't really know what he saw and it's actually black and white

that glows to some lines coming off of a beaker or whatever. But- Imagination, my friend. For some reason it enthralled him so much so that within two years of receiving that book, he was devouring his father's chemistry textbooks at age 12. Yeah. So he was, I mean, these were books that were more advanced than his age. Clearly a smart guy.

At the age of 14, he apparently made nitroglycerin by himself, which evidently isn't the hardest thing to do, but is very dangerous to do. There are other stories like he brought, wanted to make his own fireworks at Boy Scout camp, so he brought some powdered magnesium, ended up catching on fire, and ruined a tent. So what else? He tried to develop a self tanning method that didn't work out, right? Yeah. He overdosed on Cantha's Anthem, which I can't remember which episode that came up in, but it's a pigment that turns your skin orange from the inside out. And that's what he did.

He was trying to come up with a self tanning method that didn't use any kind of UV radiation. Yeah. no comment. But he was that kind of dude. He would just turn up at like a scout meeting or something bright orange and be like, yeah, too much campus, Anthony. So yeah, he's exactly that kid. He's also the kind of kid who essentially

destroys his bedroom because he's doing science. The walls were wrecked. The carpet was stained. They had to move the carpet out. Eventually his dad was like, listen, this is getting serious. You're destroying our home. You got to move into the basement, first of all. And when we're not here, you can't be in here either. They took away equipment. They took away some chemicals. And finally they said, they took away some chemicals, and finally they said, all right, this is out of hand, you can't do this anymore. So he said, all right, I'll do it like every divorce kid says, I'll do it at the other parent's house.

That's right. And so he did, he ended up setting up a lab in his mom's potting shed in Gulf Manor in Commerce Township. And this is where the story really starts to kind of take off. Because his dad was getting really worried that his son was basically creating and selling drugs. Like that's what he was doing with his chemistry experiments. And so like he and his stepmom would drop in

on the library when he was supposedly there to see if he was there. Like they really did not trust this fascination with chemistry, which I mean, I can understand, if your kid blows himself up a couple of times, you're like, what are you doing exactly here? So I don't know if he knew that David went and set up a lab in his mom's potting shed or not.

And just was like, it's fine as long as it's out of my house. I'm not sure, I've never seen that either way. But one thing that he did do to try to be like, okay, I think you're creating drugs. You're probably on them. You may or may not be selling them. None of those seem to be true from what I can tell. You need to become an Eagle Scout. And he pushed the Sun to become an Eagle Scout.

Yeah, and that's exactly what he did as we will later find out. But when it came time per Merritt Badge selection, he said, I want the one that says atomic energy. And the scout master said, I think he told the writer of the book, no one had ever chosen that before in the history of the troop. So it kind of reminds me of the Brian Cox scene in Rushmore with Bill Murray when he says he's one of the worst students we've got. I can just picture Brian Cox saying that that no one's ever tried for this badge before. But it was a legit badge.

It's kind of funny that it existed. It's different now as we'll see. But in 1963, they introduced the atomic energy badge. It came with a pamphlet that they created with the nuclear energy industry that turned out to have a lot of really useful information, almost like a starter kit on how to like source radioactive elements in the real world and how to get your own reactor going. Yeah, one of the projects you could do was to build your own Geiger counter. Like it was serious stuff.

Yeah, maybe so legit that like I said the Boy Scouts would eventually change that badge, I think probably because of what happened with David. In 2005, they replaced it with the Nuclear Science badge. Yes, but he's still working on the original, the Atomic Energy badge from 1963, right? Oh yeah. So he's just devouring this. He's having the best time.

He visits a hospital ward to learn about x-rays Which is part of the the merit badge certification The thing that really changed things though Chuck is he decided Just these these things the merit badge was having him do like one of the things was draw a Diagram of a fission reaction. Yeah, or build a model of a nuclear reactor, but a model, like a cardboard model, basically, or paper machine. Or? Yes, or I will create my own nuclear reactor

in my mom's potting shed. He decided he was so psyched about atomic energy that he wanted to do it himself Yeah, I mean, I guess you do the model and you're like hey this that wasn't so hard Let me see if I can do it for real and he wanted to build and you know, this shows that he was a kid I think I don't think this was to cause harm. He wanted to build a neutron gun and The way I just for my research this is speculation But it didn't seem like he was like I want to build a neutron gun to try and like blow up the city that I live in

Not at all it seemed more like a kid who was really into science and sci-fi and chemistry and wanted to make a little pew pew Yeah, I think neutron gun is a, it's a misleading term. I can't get the Nintendo duck hunt gun out of my head whenever I hear neutron gun. But really what a neutron gun is, at least the one that David made, it's a block of lead with a cavity carved out

and you put radioactive material in the cavity and then cover it over with like aluminum foil. And then you just point the aluminum foil side of that block of lead at what you want to irradiate and then you try to start a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction. That seems to be the sum total of his goals. He wasn't trying to build a bomb.

He wasn't trying to sell plutonium to the Libyans. He wasn't doing anything like that.. He wasn't trying to sell plutonium to the Libyans. He wasn't doing anything like that He just wanted to see if he could start a nuclear chain reaction This thing that had fascinated him since he was 10 years old and so he said about doing that with help from this Eagle Scout Merit badge pamphlet. Yeah. Yeah, totally the whole thing that much more nuts yeah, and also by adopting a persona as a professor, because he starts writing into organizations trying to get information, trying to get materials,

trying to get schematics. He said he was Professor Han that taught at his high school, Chippewa Valley High School. Ooh, go chipmunks. Are they? I don't know. They better. Okay. And over the next few years, basically, and apparently, you know, he applied himself.

He didn't apply himself in school. He was smart, but he was failing, almost failing out, basically, barely passing like the math and English exams needed to graduate eventually. But that is to say say these letters had like spelling errors and grammatical errors. It didn't seem like they were written by a professor, but people bought it. And before you know it, he's like corresponding as a professor to these adults. Yeah.

And these adults are just totally into this correspondence. They're really enjoying helping this who they think a high school physics teacher learn the stuff he's looking for about nuclear energy to ostensibly go and teach to the kids, right? So this correspondence is like genuine. The only thing illegitimate about it was that he was misrepresenting who he actually was. Yeah. A professor rather than a high school student. But other than that, everything else about it seems to be pretty neat Yeah, except for the fact that it's dangerous and illegal. Yes. So one of the people that he Corresponded with I think he corresponded with him the most was named Donald or ERB and he was the guy who was the head of the department that produces isotopes if you need isotopes

You can go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission This is not you but like if you are in some sort of industry that uses isotopes. And this herb will be like, I got you, I got you covered. For some reason they come in these little baggies with like card suits printed all over them. It's weird. That's a herb kind of touch.

That's so nice. But he was, he worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nobody helped David Hahn more than Donald Herb did. Again, unwittingly. Yeah, absolutely. So should we take a break? We should. Okay.

All right. I was about to keep going, but let's take a break and we're going to talk about his pursuit of radioactive materials right after this. podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who changed the world. Encore Jane about creating a billion-dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food

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Apple podcasts, or every listen to podcasts. My name is Rachel, and this is my new podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue. You think you know me because you've seen and heard the stories. I was most recently involved in one of the biggest reality TV scandals, Coin Scandival. I'm ready to divulge the details, and you may be shocked by what you hear. I'm here to tell my story, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've made some terrible decisions,

but I continue to learn and grow. I've chosen to protect others by keeping secrets for far too long, and I'm ready to come clean. I've taken some time away to reflect on my actions and I'm finally in a place where I can share what I've discovered about myself and some of the tools that I've learned.

As I tell my story, I will bring on guests who have knowledge and expertise on a variety of topics. Listen to Rachel Goh's Rogue on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. By the way Chuck, it's the Chippewa Valley Big Red, which appears to be a giant card null. By the way, Chuck, it's the Chippewa Valley Big Red, which appears to be a giant cardinal. Oh.

If you ask me, that was a missed opportunity. Chippewa Chippewa, the rabid Chippewa. Yeah, I love it. All right, so when we left off, David Hahn was getting serious about building this nuclear reactor. He needs material to do that. So, and we should point out that, you know, I said it was dangerous. It was dangerous. He did know this. He still pursued it, but

he like, he had a lead shield that he worked with. He threw away his contaminated clothes. He left his shoes in there and didn't take them in his house. So it was like his driving shoes, but in a potting said that he was building a breeder reactor. Do you have driving shoes? Is that a thing? I know that it's a thing from watching old episodes of Frasier. I've never heard that. Yes, you've seen driving shoes.

People wear them and they're totally unaware that you're not supposed to wear them out of your car. But it's like, if your car is so nice, you take off your outdoor shoes and put on your driving shoes that never leave your car. And that way you don't get your car dirty. I don't know if I have seen them, I guess I just, maybe you didn't.

They're like, they look kind of like across between the loafer and the moccasin. And then the dead giveaway is the tread on the bottom comes up the back of the heel as well because of the position that your foot is in when you're driving. It gives you grip. All right, I'm going to have to look this up. You've seen them. All right. All right. So it's amazing. 52 years old never knew about this.

I was only probably 40 when I learned about it. So I don't feel bad. All right. So he starts looking for materials, and these are just a few sort of stories about he would go about that. He wanted some Ammery CM-241 for this neutron gun in the booklet that he got from the Boy Scouts said, you can get this stuff in smoke detectors. So he tries to steal them from the Boy Scout camp, got caught and sent home early. Then he writes smoke detector companies saying, I need a bunch of these things for a school project.

Eventually one company sold them 100 broken ones for a hundred bucks. Couldn't figure out how to find this amerecium. So got in touch with another smoke detector company who was like, oh, well, here's where you find it and was able to extract amyresium enough to like weld together with a blow torch. Yes, so remember I was talking about the neutron gun

is a lump of lead with a cavity hollowed out and then you put your radioactive material in the cavity of lead. Now we had his radioactive material. That's right. Amerisium is, I looked up why it would be in smoke detectors. Did you see why? No.

It's really interesting. Just for a second. So Amerisium, because of its radioactive decay, it creates a flow of ions, positive and negative ions that are moved across like this metal plate. And there's a constant movement of ions that this amyricium is creating from the air around it. And when smoke interacts with those ions,

it actually breaks that flow. That flow is detected by the smoke detector, which triggers it to go off. Isn't that just so bizarre? That's how your smoke detector works. And that's how they still work? Yeah. Oh yeah, there's still a mericium in smoke detectors today. Amazing.

Yeah. So, you said he built his own Geiger counter. I don't know if it was this one or if he ended up getting the other one, but he would drive around upper Michigan with this Geiger counter on just looking for naturally occurring uranium out in the world and then eventually he was like, this isn't working out. So he got a Czechoslovakian firm that the NRC told him about and sourced uranium ore. Yeah. He had that Geiger counter mounted to his dashboard and apparently anytime he drove,

he had it turned on. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. I mean, that's what counter mounted to his dashboard and apparently any time he drove he had it turned on. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I mean, that's what you got to find this stuff. And he actually did find some stuff. It's called pitch blend and it's a source of low grade uranium and he tried to extract it but he couldn't purify it enough. So like you said, he was like, well, I'll just buy some pure uranium from a firm in Czechoslovakia that he heard about either from the pamphlet

or from Donald or one of the two. Yeah, another thing he did was the little mantle, like the little mesh sacs that you tie onto a gas lantern. He bought thousands of those because they have little tiny amounts of thorium 232. And so, you know, he buys thousands of these from surplus stores, buys thousands of dollars in lithium batteries to extract lithium. So he's been very, I think showing a lot of initiative at least how to find this stuff. Yeah, I mean like he's using his after school job money to buy $1,000 in lithium batteries

to purify the thorium that he got from the gas lanterns that he purchased and extracted it from. Like I can't imagine how much time and effort this took. And by the way, he did purify that thorium pretty well. I saw that he got it to 9,000 times the level found in nature of radioactivity and about 170 times the level that you would need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to possess. He also went around, of course, where you're going to find old dangerous radioactive things,

junkyards and antique shops. So he would take that Geiger counter into a junk shop or an antique store and he would walk around until something lit up, like radium paint, if you remember, I think it was pretty excellent podcast on the radium girls. And he would find like radium paint in an old clock. Yeah, yeah, he found a vial of paint

just tucked away inside of one and that. Then he really had his radioactive material for his neutron gun. He actually stepped it up and built a second gun. He'd also, from corresponding with Donald Erb, gotten even better at creating a neutron gun that was going to be useful in creating a nuclear reaction. He also found that when he used the the radium on I think the thorium that he purified He was trying to trigger a chain reaction by bombarding thorium with neutrons. That's what he was trying to do

He found that the thorium wasn't converting into uranium like it was supposed to so he contacted Donald herb and Donald herb said your neutrons are too fast You got to slow him down one of the best ways to slow them down is tritium. And he said, well, where would I find tritium? And apparently they use tritium to make the glowing sites on gun scopes and gun sites. So he ordered, I think dozens of gun sites from mail order catalogs from stores. And then he would scrape the tritium off

and then send them back and say, I need this site repaired. There's no tritium on it. And they would put more tritium off and then send them back and say, I need this, this site repaired. There's no tritium on it and they would put more tritium on it and send it back and he just create a new suit and him and send that back. And that's how methodical that kid was. So this is all kid stuff. He's like 14, 15 years old. Eventually he turns 17 and he says, all right, I think I want to build an actual nuclear reactor. It's called a tiny breeder reactor.

They've been around since the early 1950s when the US developed them, when we were sort of the beginning of the age of trying to use nuclear power for electricity. And they're like, well, these little tiny breeder reactors might be a good way to extend the supply of fuel or something It never quite worked out that way I think they're still working on that kind of thing in Russia and China But it never really Went off the ground, but it was enough to inspire David to think that maybe I can build a small thing like this in

in my mom's potting garage or potting shed. Yeah. The difference between a breeder reactor and a regular reactor is that you, in a regular reactor, you just use fuel and you get energy from the fuel. With the breeder reactor, you get energy from the fuel, but it also creates more fuel and you end up with more fuel than you started with. I saw it liken to leaving your house or the car with the half a tank of gas and when you return home, the tank is full. That's kind of like what it does. And yet they just

could never get it to work. But that's what he was trying to do. And the reason why is because you start with Uranium 238 and that's the most abundant Uranium found in nature. That's right. So he doesn't have enough Uran, no matter what kind it is, to create an actual chain reaction for a normal reactor. So he says, maybe I can at least do something. Like, it seemed like he became sort of obsessed just with this goal of creating some kind of nuclear reaction himself. Yeah. Got a blueprint from one of his dad's textbooks. Took that emery-cm in the radium from his neutron guns, mixed it with some aluminum shavings, some beryllium, wrapped that up in aluminum foil and

basically, you have yourself a very small reactor core right there. Yeah, he created an atomic pile, like the first one that Fermi created in Chicago, but on a much, much smaller scale. But it worked. Like it worked. He created, like you said, a nuclear reactor, and it started a nuclear chain reaction. And it started to take off, actually, pretty quickly. Yeah. He's got that Geiger counter, and he's measuring this thing, like on a daily basis.

And he's like, it's actually growing. Like it's getting more radioactive in here. I imagine he was thrilled and also possibly a little bit like Matthew Broderick in War Games where it's like, oh, wait a minute, like what have I done here such that he was worried and took it apart? He did. Apparently he could detect it from five houses

down the street. And I looked up pictures of golf manor. And I mean, their yards are decent size. So five houses away is a pretty good distance to be able to pick up his nuclear reactor and his mom's potting shed with his Geiger counter. And at that time- Big side yards there.

Yeah, lots of big side yards. No zero lot lines. No, no, no, nothing like that. No, this is golf manner, man, that we're talking about. So he took it apart and he just kind of distributed the different parts to try to drop the radioactivity levels in his mom's potting shed.

And he kind of went about his life after this assembles reactor. He'd achieved his goal, mom's potting shed. And he kind of went about his life after he disassembled his reactor. He'd achieved his goal. But apparently he had a penchant for stealing wheels and tires off of cars. He admitted as much in an interview later on as an adult. And he seems to have gotten caught doing that by the police. Shortly after he disassembled his reactor, and when the police called him, they said,

we're gonna search your car. And he said, go ahead and search my car, but do not open that toolbox. That toolbox is highly radioactive. Is that a good cliffhanger for a break? I think so. Imagine the cops going, wha? They're like, we gotta listen to ads before we know what happens.

Sorry. All right, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart, and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isakson about the geniuses who changed the world.

Angkor Jane about creating a billion-dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabrikant about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Rachel, and this is my new podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue. You think you know me because you've seen and heard the stories. I was most recently involved in one of the biggest reality TV scandals, Coined Scandival.

I'm ready to divulge the details and you may be shocked by what you hear. I'm here to tell my story, The good, the bad, and the ugly. I've made some terrible decisions, but I continue to learn and grow. I've chosen to protect others by keeping secrets for far too long and I'm ready to come clean. I've taken some time away to reflect on my actions and I'm finally in a place where I can share what I've discovered about myself and some of the tools that I've learned. As I tell my story, I will bring on guests who have knowledge and expertise on a variety of topics. Listen to Rachel Goh's Rogue on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's a wonderful life is one of the most popular movies ever but it has more to offer you than you ever thought. You know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000? In this world where there's a lot of hopelessness, people need this movie. George Bailey was never born. During the many partaking in this one of a kind podcast experience, listen to all 10 episodes available now on the I Heart Radio Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you get your podcast. Save George Bailey dot com. Subscribe now. All right, so it's August, almost September 1994. That reactor is taken apart. I think he put the thorium in a shoebox. The radium in the amoresium was in the shed still, and the rest is in the trunk of his car. He's just been pulled over, like you said, because there was reports that he was stealing tires and wheels. And he said, warning that things radioactive don't open up that toolbox. So they said, well, maybe we should, this sounds like an IED to me,

improvised explosive device. Why don't we call in the bomb squad to be safe? Called in the bomb squad, they said, this whole car basically is radioactive. And all of a sudden, the federal radiological emergency response plan is triggered and the EPA and the FBI and the NRC and the DOE are in the state and local authorities are all like trying to, not trying to get this kid, but trying to figure out

what in the world is going on with this kid, but trying to figure out what in the world is going on with this kid? Yeah, he's 17 at the time still, and all of a sudden these huge agencies are like swooping down on him to figure out what's going on. The thing is, I guess they didn't think to ask the right questions,

or their imaginations just didn't go as far as they could have, but they seem to have in this initial questioning not really have gotten any further than his car and He didn't offer up any information whatsoever about his actual like nuclear reaction experiments in his mom's potting shed They didn't even know there was a potting shed at his mom's house at this point. That's really harsh. Yes But that's the level of questioning that this kid was subjected to.

And I mean, in retrospect, you're like, are you guys kidding? You didn't know about the potting shed right off the bat. But if you're an FBI agent or a Department of Energy agent, and you're talking to a 17-year-old kid, you're probably not going to assume that because they have this stuff in a toolbox in their car, they actually were successfully creating nuclear chain reactions in their mom's

potting shed. I can kind of commiserate with that. Sure. You probably assume he just got it at radiation or us? Pretty much. So a few months later is when they finally got an expert from the State Department of Public Health to interview David more thoroughly and that turned up the potting shed. David's mom at this point had gathered most of the radioactive stuff and gotten rid of it. I imagine not in a very safe way at all. No. Probably just went in the trash can. I imagine not in a very safe way at all. No. Probably just went in the trash can.

Yeah. And they still found a lot of radiation at the house and the materials there in the shed. They had the apparently there was a vegetable can that had about a thousand times the normal background radiation. And so they called in federal authorities and they said, well, your house is as well,

the potting shed at least is a super fun site. Yeah. They ended up spending 60 grand on a two three-day operation between June 26th and 28th of 1995, disassembling the potting shed, I think getting some of the earth around it out of there, putting them in sealed barrels with radioactive hazard symbols on it. And they sent it to the Great Salt Lake Desert where they were buried with other canisters of low level radioactive waste. His mom's potting shed is in a Great Salt Lake Desert

buried with other radioactive material. That's kind of neat. The real stuff though, like you said, it ended up in like the landfill nearby. There was a quote from David that I saw where he said, the authorities got the garbage and the garbage got the good stuff in reference to what his mom had thrown away. So yeah, there's some lumps of americium and radium sitting somewhere the the garbage pile outside of Clinton Commerce Township And what's in like a thousand years it'll be safe probably something like that. I

Was just I don't know how long that would be I bet somebody knows so oh they'll write in so David falls into depression after this His high school classmates were not kind to him of course They called him radioactive boy The EPA said hi we should you know we can examine you and your body to see if you're okay He said no, no, no, I don't want anything to do with that. I'll be fine. He did get that Eagle Scout badge I think the scout leaders were like,

should we really do this? But they did. They gave him that Eagle Scout badge. And apparently the neighborhood, all those huge side yards came in handy because no one in the neighborhood and no one at the home or in his family apparently ever suffered from any kind of radiation sickness. That is so lucky. Yeah. Like that is really lucky for him and for everybody but he no one got hurt. That's just mind-boggling at this point. He went on and joined the Navy a couple years later and he served for several years was on anably discharged. And ironically, served on the USS Enterprise, which is a nuclear submarine, but he didn't work in any capacity near the nuclear part of the submarine. He-

I think he fully served his time in the Navy. He did. Yeah, he was honorably discharged. No, no, no. I think he was discharged from the Marines. I think he fully served his time in the Navy. Oh, I thought- Like he was never discharged. No, no, no, I think, I think it was discharged from the Marines. I think he, like he fully served his time in the Navy. Oh, I thought that he was never discharged. I thought they discharged you when your time was up too. No, you just, you're just done. You just, like a discharge means it's time for you to go. And then you're like, wait, I got three more years.

And they're like, no, it's time for you to go. Gotcha. Okay. I got you. All right. So yes, in between the Navy and the Marines, he went to college and started working on an associate's degree. Like you said, he joined the Marines. He was honorably discharged. And his life was just not going the way he wanted it to.

2007 found him unemployed. His mental illness had really kind of kicked in. And toward the end of his life, spoiler alert, he died at age 39. There was an FBI report on him where somebody had been informing on him that he was not using his meds, that he was heavily using cocaine, and that he was acting really paranoid. From what I can tell, based on the FBI documents, it seems like the person informing on him seems concerned, not like they're doing it out of any kind of vengeful reason. Right. But that when the FBI showed up and interviewed him,

again, this is when he's in his 30s, he passed all the inspection or queries that they gave him, questioning that they gave him. Yeah, and there were other complaints and reports with the police that he was trying to do this again, that he had a small reactor at his house. Another landlord, I think, said that he had stolen some smoke detectors

that they were missing and they found them, like torn apart basically, near David's garage. But they never found any kind of radiation. He said he hadn't done that kind of stuff in a decade. And they went and checked where he was living and they never found any evidence that he had at least started up any more radioactive work. Yeah, imagine during your FBI questioning,

you're like, I haven't done any nuclear reactions at home for like 10 years, man. That's like, that is a different chat. It's like a whole lifetime. Teenage stuff. Yeah, exactly. The FBI documents also give just kind of a sad note in 2010, which is where the FBI's investigation

of him as an adult left off based on those complaints. They noted that he was in rehab after being charged with a bunch of drug charges. So apparently the cocaine use thing was true. That was 2010. Six years later, like I said, he was dead at age 39. 2010 six years later like I said he was dead at age 39. Yeah so in the media of course initially there were some people that said that the radioactivity did him in or that was a factor at least very sadly the report came back that wasn't true but he died from combined effects of alcohol and fentanyl and benadryl and he suffered from mental mental illness just like his mom I think from paranoid schizophrenia and depression and it's just a very sad into a

Story of a kid who he sounds like he was really smart and just wanted to try and do something really amazing You know yeah He he was found dead in the bathroom at the Walmart that he had gone shopping in the night he died. And it is a sad end. I don't quite know what to make of it Chuck. Same. It's, if he was still alive, I don't know. I think it would be a much different story somehow.

Yeah. But he did something, I don't know, maybe it's the story of somebody who was just so single-minded. They did something that most other people would have given up on or never even attempted and that's worth mentioning, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I tried to look at other angles. I just never saw anything like nefarious, really. No, no. Either an FBI interview or a media interview. The interview was like, I mean, were you thinking of making a bomb or whatever? And they said, they reported like, he seemed to just be like, that never even crossed my mind. Like, no, that's not at all what I was

doing. He was just obsessed with creating a nuclear reaction. And he did it. Yeah. Well, thankfully, we don't have to end it on that sad note because Libya found this other great story of a kid named Taylor Wilson who got the radioactive Boy Scout book from his grandmother as an 11-year-old science kid and operating under supervision and oversight and getting real experts to help actually became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at the age of 14. Yeah, this is amazing. I mean fusion is a whole new ball game, but yeah, 14.

And works as a nuclear physicist as an adult. Yeah, and supposedly according to The Guardian, a super cool dude too. Yeah, and directly inspired from David's story. Yeah, and apparently his grandmother lived to regret it, again, according to the Guardian. Oh, really? Yeah, that's what the Guardian said, because I guess his grandmother was giving it to him as a cautionary tale, and he was like, oh, I want to try this myself. Very interesting.

Taylor Wilson's grandmother is the 11th person we need to thank in this episode. Taylor Wilson being 10 and Donald Irr being number nine. Right. Nice work. If you want to know more about the nuclear or radioactive Boy Scout David Hawn, there's a lot of stuff out there, but you would be remiss in not reading Ken Silverstein's article, at least if not his book on David Haunt. And while you're looking that up, we'll just go ahead and do Listener Mail.

All right, this is from Tiffany. Hey guys, thank you for bringing back some vivid memories from my eighth grade reading class. Too many decades ago to admit, but my reading teacher was also the social studies teacher. And I guess that explains where all of our reading lists included Animal Farm, Hiroshima, All Quiet on the Western Front, and You Know It, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To hammer home what we read, he would incorporate details of the book into a little imaginary coin toss he did each day to determine whether the boys or girls got to go first and walk to lunch in

single file line. For the weeks we discussed the jungle it would sound something like this. Today's menu includes hot dogs. Call it in the air. Is it the rusty nail or the severed finger? Hmm. What a great teacher. One day we noticed that half the kids in the class had an edition of the book that included this and yes I still remember it decades later. Mary had a little lamb and when she saw it, sicken. She sent it off to the packing town and now it's labeled chicken. I was really hoping you guys had seen this so we could hear a recitation during the podcast, but we just did it right there, Tiffany. That's great. Yeah, I didn't run

across that. I didn't either. That's a great ad. Yeah, thanks right there, Tiffany. That's great. Yeah, we I didn't run across that. I didn't either. That's a great ad. Yeah, thanks a lot, Tiffany. That's a great email and we appreciate it big time. And hats off to your teacher, the 13th person we need to thank in this episode. Your number 12, Tiffany. Can we thank Jerry? Sure. Why not? We'll go with 14. We could thank ourselves and just bring it up to 16, a nice even number.

Sweet 16. We're going to make it 17 because we want to thank you for listening and we want to thank you in advance for getting in touch with us via email at stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor Vanessa Tyler, welcome you to Black Land. A podcast about the ground on which the black community stands right now

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here to announce a new season of our show, In Retrospect. Which means a whole new batch of episodes, diving into the pop culture moments we love, and love to pick apart. From the dethroning of the first black Miss America. To the legacy of a lesbian joke, from four calf-loving Golden Girls. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeart Radio app,

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