The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 20 - David Hahn

Episode Date: September 6, 2014

Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds discuss David Hahn, a boy who loved science and did a very bad thing.Tour DatesSources - Main Source - Book - "The Radioactive Boy Scout" and Article in Harpers by Ken Silverstein  Dollop MerchPatreon

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Hey that's the intro. I am Dave Anthony I'm here with my co-host Gareth Ray here with Gareth Ray and so now I don't even know what's going on now. What do you mean? So now we're just attacking that we're I just I wish I just could have my name. You have a name? Yeah well no I have nine names. You were christened right here in this house by young Finn Anthony. He was raised by a Satanist so that's unfair. You can't he's influenced by the devil is what I'm saying. I have I have in my dollop research stumbled across many people who were influenced by the devil. It's quite surprising how many how many

people oh he lives right down the street in Pestina and he was eventually someone who will do a podcast about us. Okay all right it's about to start right you're ready. Fudgy brownie hubba bubba bubba red leather yellow leather there it is yeah okay. David Hawn. David Hawn was born on October 30th 1976. He was raised in Gulfman or Michigan 25 miles outside of Detroit. Ready? His parents divorced when he was a toddler. Okay. Always a bad sign. Yeah listen I'm not far from it so terrible sign. When is your parents divorced? I was 13. Okay so you're a little bit often three or two. That's fair that's a fair point. Phoenix I'm

coming. David lived with his dad and a stepmother. He spent weekends with his mom. His dad was an automotive engineer at General Motors and his stepmother was also an automotive engineer at General Motors so we know where they met and they probably started doing it in one of the backgrounds. Yeah they're probably fucking your car doors. He was pretty ordinary kid. He played baseball. He played soccer. He joined the Boy Scouts. He ran around the neighborhood with his friends. Normal kid. Well I'll say right away. I don't believe you. What do you mean? Well I know I know where we're going somewhere. Why? Maybe this is a story about an ordinary man. No it's not.

That all came to an immediate end. I mean I felt it. When his grandfather gave him the golden book of chemistry experiments. Oh the seed that we will watch grow. Wow. The golden book. Of chemistry experiments. I give to you. Here you go. The golden book. Make something terrifying. Use more basalt. It gave instructions on how to set up a home laboratory and conduct experiments ranging from simple evaporation and filtration to making rayon and alcohol. Okay. Yeah so a nice spectrum. Like a roigy bit. He can make moonshine. Yep. David became obsessed with chemistry and by the age of 12 was reading and

absorbing his father's chemistry college textbooks. Okay. It's never a good sign. I don't like it. I don't like it. When he spent the night at his mom's his mother would often wake to find him asleep on the living room floor surrounded by open volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Oh boy. Isn't that what you do? Yeah. Well it's bittersweet as a mother. You're like he's learning but he's crazy learning. He's just crazy absorbing out there. He's too deep. Do you want to go maybe look at porn? I know honey do you want to masturbate? Do you want to masturbate? It's okay. I'm masturbating to brilliant. Oh so in his father's house David set up a laboratory in a small

bedroom. He bought beakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes and other items commonly found in a child's chemistry set. Alright so I will say right away. What? We're just headed for something awful. I don't know why you'd say that. Because this is not, he shouldn't, this is not good. This is bad. It's a boy learning. No. It's a this. You're a liar. This kid could go on to be one of our greatest scientists. You're a liar. You don't know where this story is. You're a goddamn liar. Could be one of our greatest scientists. You don't know this. I don't, I think he's gonna use his powers for evil. I really do. Ever heard of Rainbow Man? Yeah. By 14 David had

fabricated nitroglycerin. Oh man. I know when the waves cresting today man. Nitroglycerin is a heavy, colorless, oily explosive liquid. Since the 1860s it has been used as an active ingredient in the manufacture of explosives. Mostly dynamite and as such it is employed in the construction demolition of mining industries. Oh good. So it's the mine explosive. Do you, what are you doing at 14? I think I was handling that divorce. I certainly wasn't mixing. I think it was just masturbating. Yeah I was sorry masturbating for sure. All the time masturbating. I think it was masturbating snorting Ritalin. Yeah. Yep. David's parents were impressed by his interest in

science but were apparently alarmed by all the chemical spills and blasts that kept occurring in his bedroom. Honey. Slash lab. Heard a big boom. You okay? Maybe you want to masturbate a little bit? How's it going up there? Do you need some lube baby? Do you need lube baby? Just how about just take the afternoon and just whack it. Just masturbate up there. Also this is pre-internet so thank God he didn't have the internet. Oh yeah. After David destroyed his bedroom. Jesus. The walls were all just ruined. The carpet was so stained and had to be ripped out. His dad banished his experiments. Yeah. To the basement. Oh good dad. Alright that's it. Take it downstairs underneath where it can blow up the whole house.

You are making dangerous explosives up here and mixing things you shouldn't be. If you want to do it go to the basement. Why don't you masturbate like your mom keeps asking. Send him to the place where you'd never see him. Send him where he's below you. Smart. So David loved it. Yeah of course. Yeah. He was alone in his little underworld lab. He took after-school jobs to fund his experiments. Not interested in school at all. He fell behind in every subject except for science. He was terrible at basic stuff like grammar and math. Okay. But would just get like straight A's in science and everything else. Can Jiharadini. Okay so you've rehearsed how to say his name. Jiharadini. Okay. Jiharadina. Oh okay. If you go on to reach out to him he's at

Ghrardiram on Twitter. Who taught David in conceptual physics remembers him as an excellent people on rare occasions when he was interested in classwork but otherwise indifferent to his studies. His dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table. Now classic sophomore. So that that seems like a good dream on the surface but underneath it is probably not a good thing. No I think there's a lot of dangerous items on there. I think some you shouldn't hold in your hand. Yeah there's something that yeah there's something that you need basically like a base to remove it. So gotta be. Yeah I think some it's also quite rare. Something. Yeah exactly. Oh boy. What is he about to do. Oh it's David. Nothing. He's gonna be one

of our leading. Nope. He had fewer and fewer friends but did have a girlfriend. Poor woman. Heather. Although he was clearly weird. Her family invited him to a wedding and the mother said he was a nice kid and always presentable but we had to tell him not to talk to anybody. Oh. He would eat. He could eat and drink but for God's sakes don't talk to the guests about the foods chemical composition. Oh my god. This is a good egg roll. Yes it's actually the phosphorus if you look deep if you look deep beneath it. I'm just gonna roll. The sauce is good. Oh the sauce is made out of. Yeah I understand if you actually break the sauce down chemically what you're eating is a combination. We know so little about science we can't even pull out a half. It's tough.

A half like ass. It's like I'm excited for you to cut me off. His experiments continued and often with bad results. Once he once appeared at a scout meeting with a bright orange face caused by an overdose of can phallaxethan which he was taking to test methods of artificial tanning. So he's just like experimenting on himself. Yeah. Showing up a bright orange face. How is everybody. Today the Pinewood Derby. What are we doing. I'm learning. So I'm just a little off. I'm two ticks away. You know what I mean. How's everyone doing. One summer at Scott camp David's fellow campers blew a hole in the communal tent when they accidentally ignited the stockpile of powdered magnesium he had brought to make fireworks.

So he he brought a giant pile of explosives piled that he was going to use to make fireworks make like just a dude packing packing up a bunch of shit into his cylinder that he was then going to ignite. Classic Boy Scout after the hot dogs I say I make some fireworks. That's not good. That's good. Now why is your face orange because I'm not good at making fireworks. So here we go. Let's just make some of these fireworks. Oh boy. This is not going well. I love how it's in the tent too. I love how it seems like nobody is watching him. Yeah. There's no parental. He's just around you. The Boy Scout leaders are like oh you got a big up. Oh what's that a pile of magnesium. Boy Scout leader Boy Scout leader are like yeah it's all

right. This kid loves his magnesium. He's incorrigible with his little fireworks. Sure he looks like an Oompa Loompa to Scout uniform but let him play. You got to let the kids learn. You got to let him learn. Let him learn. He's showing interest. He's showing interest. He loves science. The kid loves magnesium. His dad and stepmother started to become worried that he would level their home. So they stopped David from being alone there. They'd lock him out when they were away even on quick errands and they'd set a time for their return so that they could get back in. That's just so that's a good sign when you're like going out for milk and you have to lock your kid out of the house. Well that's why you don't move him to the fucking basement.

You stop it because now you just stop everything. Yeah. Only when we're home and could die. That's it. More weird rules. More weird rules David. I would prefer you only blow up the house when I'm watching television. That's it. You know what? You're only making fireworks in the basement. I've just had it, mister. Where's my magnesium? David? David? Are you stockpiling in there? Would you just masturbate? Please. Just for the love of fucking God. Your father and I are begging you to masturbate. I'll show you how to do it boy. I don't mind. I can do it with beryllium. No. No. David did not stop. One night while his parents were sitting in the living room watching TV, the house was rocked by an explosion in the basement. I mean what the fuck? So they're just

living like a sitcom, like a Fox sitcom. They're just like comfortable with just this weird firework making child in their basement. Oh, here we go. Oh boy. I'll tell you if I had a nickel. If I had a nickel. They ran down to the basement where they found David lying semi-conscious on the floor, his eyebrows smoking. So he's living young Einstein. Turns out he was unaware that red phosphorus is capable of igniting in air. Is he an idiot? We all know that. I've known that forever. Red phosphorus is basically, he just basically took a bunch of match heads and put them in a bowl. It's the red match heads and then he started pounding on them with a screwdriver because science. That's what they

do in the big labs. Hey, he's in the basement. There are no rules. You know how it is in the basement. What's the best thing to do with these match heads? I know. Put them in a bowl and pulverize them. Maybe I'll just stab them a bunch. Just to give it some context, you remember Breaking Bad. Have you seen Breaking Bad? Yes. Okay, season one, season one when Walter is being forced by two Latino drug dealers to show him how to make them meth and then he throws red phosphorus into the boiling water and it blows up and sets off fumes in the... Oh, that one. And then one of them dies and the other one they take to the house and they end up killing. Yeah, after days of torture with a bike lock. Yeah, that's red phosphorus.

Okay. Okay, good to know. Walter probably would have said, don't keep hitting that with the screwdriver. Stop stabbing it, son. David had to be rushed to the hospital to have his eyes flushed and was still going for appointments 11 months later to have pieces of the plastic container plucked carefully from his eyes. So... So that's a fun year. That's maybe, maybe we start wearing goggles. Maybe we start wearing goggles. Maybe we maybe we start masturbating. If you're, if you're, please, please, we beg you. As your physician. David, I'm a half-year mother and father. And as your psychologist. Please start checking. And as your psychiatrist. We're all here to tell you. We're here to tell you the 100%

boy scout cheerleader as your priest. This is an intervention. Please master please. Just start masturbating. Just start masturbating. It's fun. You'll love it. Oh, just touch it once and see what happens. Just touch it and just keep pulling on it until you make your own explosive. And then, and then that's what you do. It's a different kind of science. I think we've really reached a nice middle ground here. And now we're going to show you how to do it. So the fact that he was never wearing goggles during all this, just so little, the parents were paying like, so he's blowing up his bedroom to the point where they have to replace the carpet. The walls are all pockmarked with all the shit that he's been exploding. And they never say put on some fucking goggles. Yeah,

wear knee pads. Also, if you're a science kid, the first thing you do is like, I want to put on the goggles. Yeah, everyone wants to put on the goggles and the fucking lab. Maybe the best part. Maybe the best part is the goggles. For me, the lab coat and the goggles. I'm going to be his lab partner. Oh, God. No, you're just stand back for a second. Let me do the let me do the heavy stuff. Turn your two here. Put this lead apron on. Here you go. Put this on. Close your eyes. Trust me. Have you heard the phrase shit's going to get weird? Um, his stepmother then forbade David forbade David from experimenting anywhere in the home during the day. So now that he almost blew up everything,

they're like that in his face was all fucked up. They're like, okay, that's it. Good. That's the line. They stopped the stepmother began routinely routinely searching David's room and disposing many chemicals and equipment she found hidden under the bed and deep within the closet. So he's hiding. Yeah. So like most kids are hiding porn. He's hiding like what is this? Is this zinc? David, is this zinc? You like that for the last time. Where's all the porn we gave you? Is that even here anymore? Oh, I just love that it took him this long to ban all this shit. Well, that's the problem is that like, if you know, they, they, they kept compromising to the point now where they're like, we're shutting it off. But he already knows he's already obsessed. Yeah, it's over. It's

over. It's over. Yeah. I don't know what he's about to fucking do, but game over. David then made a lab and his mother's potting shed. Oh boy. He always, you always forget about the potting shed. Well, so that he was staying in his dad's house. So now he's moved. Oh, now he's moved his lab, his real mom to his real mom's house. And she had no idea what was going on there, which is is fucking insane. Little communication blowing up his dad's house. Yeah. Like everything. Like, he has no eyebrows. How was your sulfur eye appointment, huh? Hey, why do you do that again? You off to the potting shed? Boy, he just loves to pot. Oh my God, he is out there potting. He's just potting all day and night. And I haven't seen one yet. I can't wait to see what he's been working

on the day he came out black. Black. I mean, he's really potting. They did think it was a little weird that he'd wear a gas mask and often would throw out his clothes in the garbage. And he came out at two in the morning, but they figured he knew science and they didn't. So what the heck? Hey, he's a teenager. You know what? Let him do it. What teenager doesn't go into a backyard shed with a gas mask on and then throws clothes out. He's just routinely dumping his clothes at two in the morning after hanging out in the potting shed all day. I mean, talk to me. What's what's weird? What's weird? They're teenagers. Yeah. It's basically skateboarding. David once tried to explain his experiments to his mom and boyfriend, but they said it went

right over their heads. I don't I can't. I don't know what you're saying. So wait, how come? What's it a period? A periodic? What? What's there? Now, this table you can eat off it. They knew he must have felt so fucking lonely. They knew his experiment had something to do with creating energy because David would say one of these days, we're going to run out of oil and he wanted to do something about it. Okay. So yeah. Yep. He's fixing. Here we go. What do you mean? Here we go. Here we go. He's he's fixing the world's energy problems. We're hitting an important moment. We're hitting an important moment and I need to highlight it. So he's he's going to he's going to create the new oil. Now, Dave, here's the problem.

Now, I haven't heard of this new oil. Okay, hold on. That's a problem. David's dad thought his experiments were due to a breakdown in discipline. Not obsessive compulsive discipline. Okay, not disciplined enough. Clearly, he doesn't have discipline because he's blowing up the house. Yeah, he just needs to do a little more homework before he starts stabbing sulfur. So dad thought the solution to David's problem. I'm excited. Would be to achieve the goal of becoming an Eagle Scout. Hey, oh man, good. We're going to send you to Band-Aid camp. I am completely detached from reality. You know what he needs? A good father, somebody to just give him sort of a moral compass. He needs to be an Eagle Scout. Yeah. Now to become an Eagle Scout.

It's a nightmare. First, you have to show Scout Spirit. Well, he blew a hole in the tent. So he's got Scout Spirit. Yeah, he's scouting to me. He did that. Yeah, he did that when he bought explosives to the camp. Yep. Well, he was making fireworks at the Cub Scout retreat. Right. You remember. Right. So Spirit. There's Spirit. Spirit. Tons of Spirit. Check. Eagle Scouts also have to earn 21 merit badges. 11 are mandatory, such as First Aid and Citizenship in the community. The final 10 are optional. Scouts can choose from dozens of choices ranging from American business to woodwork. David elected to earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy. Oh boy. The merit badge company was like, what the fuck? We got to make a merit badge?

What do we make? Oh, okay. Just make like a nuclear smokestacks? I don't really know. We shouldn't be doing this. We're about like a neutron or a proton. Like a neutron and proton. I don't know what those are. Like the electron is like. They go around one. Make them go around. The one goes around the other one. Yeah. And just make one of these because we're only going to need one of these. I feel like I should repeat this. David elected to earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy. Oh my god. And nobody said. Nobody. No. Well, they're volunteers. His scout is a scout master. Joe Owito. A moron. A total moron. Says David is the only boy to have done so in the history of Clinton Township Troop 271. That's surprising. That's surprising that other

boys have not earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy. Shocking. Well, you know how you are as a teenager. Or just fossil fuels. Do we have any about making the new oil? Is there one of those? Just make a kid like for the merit badge. Make a kid sort of just like, you know, with a cauldron stirring it and just say new oil with an air. I don't know. Again, make one of these. I would like to earn my merit badge in Pharmacology. Have you masturbated? No. Okay, try. Couch to a masturbate. David's Atomic Energy merit badge. Oh boy. Merit badge pamphlet was very pro nuclear. So he made a pamphlet about which was no surprise since it was prepared with the help of Westinghouse Electric,

the American Nuclear Society. What? And Edison Electrical Institute, a trade group of utility companies, some of which run nuclear power plants. So he reached out to all these places and they were like, yeah. And got information. They're like, oh, this kid is great. Great. This kid, this kid really is super energy. Hey, if you want to make the new oil as a cub scut, that's fine. Go, go, go. The pamphlet says that critics of Atomic Energy were descended from a long line of naysayers and malcontents, warning that if America decides for or against nuclear power plants based on fear or misunderstanding, that is wrong. We must first know the truth about Atomic Energy before we can decide to use it or stop it. Classic, classic 14 year old.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is the kind of thoughts you're having at that age. You know how it is. David was awarded his Atomic Energy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five months shy of his 15th birthday. Holy shit. See, he did the research. He got his. So this isn't a bad story. Oh, this is a bad story because he earned his merit in Atomic Energy by putting together information. No, he put it together in a pamphlet and he is I think it's impressive. No, you're a liar. You're just a liar to earn it. He made a drawing showing how nuclear fission occurs, visited a hospital radiology unit to learn about the medical uses of radio isotopes and built a model reactor using a juice can, coat hangers, soda straws, kitchen matches and rubber bands.

Now take note that he visited a radiology hospital. Oh boy. But David wanted to take things further. No, wait a minute. Thankfully, he did not have any financial support or actual laboratory or proper instruments or safety devices or legal means to obtain radioactive material, but he did know how to lie. So this is going to work out great. Nope, it's not. David was determined to irradiate anything he could. I'm sorry to do that. He had to build a gun that I'm sorry to do that. He had to build a gun that could bombard isotopes with neutrons. What the fuck? He's making an atomic energy gun. Excuse me. So, so he wrote to a number of groups listed in his marriage badge pamphlet that he made the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

the American Nuclear Society, the Edison Electrical Institute, and the Atomic Industrial Forum, the Nuclear Powers Industries Training Group in hopes of discovering how he could get hand his hands on the radioactive raw materials he needed to build his neutron gun. He's 15 and experiment with. He's just a kid experimenting in a shed. Hey, can I just get any of that radioactive material? David, we told you no radioactive material on weekdays. Only the weekends, bud. Come on. Keep it in the shed. Keep it in the potting shed. By the way, there's no pots in there anymore. That's weird, right? There used to be pots in there. Hey, David, why does the dog have no hair? David, but the dog was in the potting shed. And now he's hairless. And when he breathes,

it's green. So first, he got nowhere because he was a student. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's first. They were all like, you are in high school. You're going to have to try pretty hard to get radioactive material from us, Bob. But by writing up to 20 letters a day and claiming to be a physics instructor at Chippewa Valley High School, David says he obtained tons of information. Now, let's say that somebody emails you 20 times a day for something. Your reaction to that is what? Enthusiastic. No, no, no, it's worried. You get worried. You get anxiety. I say you block them. I stop this. I say this is a terrific high school teacher. No, no, no, no. This guy cares about his students. No, this guy's got mental problems. Oh, no, no, no. 20 letters a day.

He cares about his kids. No, no, no. The most helpful was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Good. That's the one I was hoping would lean into this. David managed to engage the agency's director of isotope production and distribution. The guy who was like, can we shorten this title? Can it be an acronym? Can we shorten this title to fired? Horrible decision maker. His name was Donald Herb. Herb offered David tips on isolating certain radioactive elements, provided a list of isotopes that can sustain a chain reaction, and imparted a piece of information that would soon prove to be vital to David's plans. David's plans. Nothing produces neutrons, as well as beryllium. Oh, boy. And off we go. And let's just do the countdown now. When David

asked Herb about the risks posed by such radioactive materials, the NRC official assured Professor Hahn that the real dangers are very slight, since possession of any radioactive materials in quantities and form sufficient to pose any hazard is subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing. I mean, these are just not words you want to be associated with. Oh, my God. So, jeez. It's just, it's shocking. It's shocking how. So this guy says, Hey, man, how does this all work with these isotopes and, and beryllium? And the other guy says, Oh, it's not dangerous. Don't worry about it, because the only way you can get near it is if it's, if it's regulated by us, even though I'm telling you what to. Yeah, yeah. Yep. David says the NRC also said. Yeah, I feel like

that in the long run, that's going to be a good wrinkle. No, it's all going to end right here. Yep. David says the David says the NRC also sent him pricing data and commercial sources for some of the radioactive wares you wanted to purchase. But again, don't use this for the benefit of eager students. So the NRC gave him everything he needed as far as information goes to get us a little project going. Dave, I don't know what his little project is. Yeah. But it's not good. No, no, no, it's going to be great. Nope, it's going to be a huge bomb. David typed up a list of sources for 14 radioactive isotopes. I mean, I'm going to say, let's see if I say this right, a Merisium 241 he learned from the Boy Scout

atomic energy booklet that he made could be found in smoke detectors. Oh, good, good. Radium 226 in antique luminous style clocks. Oh, boy, uranium 238 and minute quantities of uranium 235 in black or or called pitch blend and thorium 232 in Coleman style gas lanterns. Cool. So they're out there to just grab. So for those of you listening, if anybody wants to make a he's interested in going the David Han route to get a Meri a Merisium 241 David contacted smoke detector companies and claimed he needed a large number of devices for a school project. I'm building the world's biggest smoke detector. So anyway, I could get a whole bunch of it. One company agreed to sell him 100 broken detectors for a dollar apiece. Oh, Christ. David wasn't sure morons. He just wants it for

his project. He just wants 100 of them. What could be wrong? Hey, I think we're turning a profit. Hey, what's your project? Build a nuclear weapon. All right. So just pay Palace. David wasn't sure where the Amir Amiri CM 241 was in the smoke detectors. So he just asked the company that made them just be like, Hey, where's that American 261? Hey, excuse me. Where's the radioactive parts of this? Yep. And then I have the battery. Hey, where's the radioactive thing? And of course they, of course, they said no, right? No, they told them exactly where it was. A customer service representative just told him. Yep. David then extracted the Amiri CM components and welded them together with a blowtorch. Probably really safe in its own right. So he's got a ball

of radiation. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. David put the lump of a Merisium inside a hollow block of lead with a tiny hole pricked in one side so that the Alpha rays would stream out. Then he pointed the stream at aluminum and voila, he had a neutron gun and was ready to irradiate. Question in the back. Okay, go ahead. Irradiate? That's the word I used. That's not good, right? Oh, it's great. It means destroy, evaporate, turn into dust particles? No, you just, you just, you pointed at something, you pointed at specific things that can be irradiated and then you can. Okay, we had a little dog issue. Yeah. So he's irradiating. Well, okay. So I think the way this works is I know, I don't know shit about nuclear energy or nuclear anything, but I think the way

it works is you build this, you build this gun, this neutron gun, and then you pointed at something that can be irradiated. And so it bombards it with neutrons and then it, and then it creates radiation. But not everything can be irradiated. No, I think there's certain things you want that can be irradiated. Okay, because I'm just picturing like Marvin the Martian coming to earth and just like shooting. Your hat is irradiating. My X32 modulator. He thought that uranium 235, which is used in atomic weapons, would provide the biggest reaction. Good, a good thought to have and never think of again. A fine thought. So he scoured hundreds of miles of upper Michigan in his Pontiac looking for hot rocks

with his Geiger, with his Geiger counter, but sadly cannot find any. So what he did was he strapped a Geiger counter on the front of his car, and he just drove around looking for hot rocks. Holy shit. If Billy Spire ever needed to be played, well, that's a TV show. Oh, yeah. Hot rocks. Check out it. What are you doing tonight? Hot rocking. Just hot rocking with my irradiator. Yeah, the Pontiac just got waxed pretty sweet. I got the Geiger counter on front. Hey, what's on the front of your car? Oh, that's just a Geiger counter. I'm looking for hot rocks. So he couldn't, sadly, he couldn't find any. Sadly. So he wrote to a Czechoslovakian firm.

Horrible start to anything. Horrible start to any concept. I would like some uranium in nine girls. Oh, yes, you see the Manila envelope. So they sell uranium. Of course, of course they do. To commercial university buyers. And the NRC had, of course, told them about them. Yep, of course. But don't call them or contact them. Here's all their contact information. Claiming to be a professor buying materials for nuclear research laboratory, he obtained a few samples of black ore, which contain small amounts of uranium. No, here's the thing, like no one was like, can we get an ID? Yeah, like, hello, I am a, well, hello, I am a professor of university. I would like to buy some of your nuclear materials. Well, your credentials, check

out. Here you go. Have at it. There you go. David pulverize the ores with a hammer. Alrighty. Thinking that he could use nitric acid to isolate uranium, unable to find a commercial source for nitric acid. Probably. Did he ask? Did he ask nicely? Probably because he used it in the manufacture of explosives and thus is tightly controlled. So right. Yeah, it's what you used to make explosives. So they're like, no, you can't have that. Yeah. Radiation shit. Yeah, baby. Yeah, have at it. Because this is going to take some work. Have it. So if you can't buy nitric acid, you make it. So he made his own, then he mixed the acid with the powdered ore and boiled it, ending up with something that looked like a dirty milkshake.

At this point, are his parents even seeing? I mean, are they, they must just be so like, yeah, he just, let me tell you something. We haven't talked to him in a couple of years. If your kid goes out to the shed at 3 p.m. and doesn't come out till 2 a.m. With no eyebrows and throws his clothes out. You should check on him. Yeah. Yeah. Just have a little pokesy. Might be time to have lunch. A little poke the head in and go, hey, how you doing? Why don't we just do this weekly? Let's have a lunch every week. We'll sort of talk. You know, I'm going through some stuff with my marriage. You're irradiating a lot of shit. Let's talk weekly. Check ins. Can I have a little check in? Next, he poured the quote,

unquote milkshake through a coffee filthy, hoping the milkshake coffee filter. It's what he's calling it. It looked like a milkshake. So we're calling it a milkshake, hoping that the uranium would pass through the filter, but David miscalculated uranium solubility. And whatever amount was present, whatever amount was present was trapped in the filter. Okay. So that's sad. That's not good. So the uranium didn't work. Okay. Well, I, I have a feeling there's more to this tail. No, yep. I think I think he's done, right? Nope. I don't believe so. I believe that he is going to keep trying. Maybe he makes a phone call. He's the aunt that's going to move that rubber tree plant, except he's not an aunt.

He's a teenager working on radiation in a shed. So he switches his focus to thorium. Who hasn't done there? David knew from his merit badge pamphlet. I love that he keeps going back to the thing that he wrote. Well, hold on a second. He's like, I will cite the pamphlet. I am going to check here and I can see that. If you cite the pamphlet that I wrote, you'll see I'm right. The thing that I wrote says it's pretty accurate, according to me. Okay. So he checks his pamphlet. He checks his own pamphlet. A pamphlet, by the way, is a piece of paper folded three times. Right. So he checks his piece of paper. Well, it's a merit badge pamphlet. Yeah. Right. So he knew from there

that the mantle used in commercial gas lanterns is coated with a compound-containium thorium 232. And he knew that because he called the gas lamp people. I guess if you isolated it, it could be pretty dangerous. A hundred of them. Yeah, we'll give you a hundred. No, not a hundred. He bought thousands of lanterns from surplus stores and using a blowtorch reduced them to a pile of ash. But then he'd return them. These don't work. They're ash. He'd take stuff out and return the lamp. Okay. David had read a way to do this in one of his dad's chemistry books. David then purchased $1,000 worth of lithium batteries and extracted the element by cutting the batteries in half of the

pair of wire cutters. He placed the lithium and thorium dioxide together in a ball of aluminum foil and heated the ball with a Bunsen burner. This is not going to a good place. Yay, it worked. Yay. It worked. David's method purified thorium to at least 9,000 times the times, the 9,000 times a level found in nature. And 170 times the level that requires nuclear regulatory commission licensing. Holy shit. Okay, but now that he's using thorium, he needs a more powerful neutron gun. Hey, I was just about to say he began preparing radium for an improved irradiating gun. Radium was used in paint that rendered luminescence the faces of clocks and automobile and airplane instrument panels until

the late 1960s. When it was discovered that many clock painters who routinely lick their brushes to make a fine point died of cancer. So there were just a bunch of dudes for years licking toothbrushes that they were painting shit with and then their mouth became cancer mouth and then they died. So let's get that. I know where we're going, exactly. David began visiting junkyards and antique stores in search of radium. I love classic cars. I'm a big classic car clock fan. Clock fan. Although I just want one part of the classic car. Yeah, I'm probably not going to take the whole thing, but you want for the clock. You're looking for radium coated dashboard panels or clocks. Once he found such an item, he chipped paint from it and collected in pill vials.

It was slow going as you can imagine. Yeah, well, listen, I mean, if there's one thing I could think we could say about his life, it's that it's slow going. It's a pretty obsessive build. It's hard to put together all this. It's hard to build. It's hard to make nuclear bombs in a basement. Thank you. Thank you. It's not easy to irradiate. Yes. So let's give him a little bit of credit. Right. I'm just such a stickler for reality. It was slow going until one day driving through Clinton Township to visit his girlfriend. He noticed his girlfriend. He noticed that his Geiger counter went wild as he passed the glorious resale boutique slash antique. So it's just let's just let's just say that you have a kid, a child. I'm not going to have any. He's 16 and

he's driving around with a Geiger counter on the front of his car. Do you a say why is there a Geiger counter in the front of your car? Or do you be not a I'm 100% it's a yeah. I mean, the girl from what the fuck is the girlfriend? I just think it's so cool. I love a Geiger. I love a badass with a Geiger counter on his Pontiac. You're such a fucking man. You don't listen to you don't listen to nuclear regulatory rules at all. You finger me and I'll watch the Geiger counters. I don't know what's going crazy right now me or this Geiger counter. So turned on. Oh, the owner of the antique store, Gloria Jeanette recalls the day more on about to be taken advantage of the day when she was called at home by a store employee who said that a polite

young man was anxious to buy an old table clock with a tinted green dial but wondered if she'd come down in price. She would. David bought the clock for $10. Oh Christ. I love that there's an anxious like he's like standing there like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Need to get the clock. Need to get the clock. So can I please just stand there with a boner. Look how great it is. So can we help you? Want to play this? Want to play this? Want to play this? Inside he discovered a vial of radium paint left behind by a worker either accidentally or as a courtesy so the clock's owner could touch up the dial when it began to fade. Fuck. David was so overjoyed that he dropped by the boutique later that night to leave a note for Gloria telling her

that if she really received another luminous clock to contact him immediately I will pay any sum of money to obtain one because I'm making a bomb. I mean just a clock enthusiast. Doing his clock thing. I love, love, love luminous clocks. Yeah. Just something about the explosive. So green. Then he concentrated the radium using a sample of barium sulfate from the X-ray ward at local hospital. What the fuck. So he went to how many hours in the day? The staff at the hospital gave it to him because they remembered him from when he got his nuclear merit badge thing. So he walked in the hospital and hey you guys remember me from my family? Can I get a little bit of barium sulfate? Oh yeah well you're the creepy guy obsessed with

nuclear stuff. Yeah give him whatever he wants guys. Don't worry you can trust him. Oh my god he just loves nuclear energy. He loves clocks but not all clocks. So this time when he performed his little experiment it worked. It glowed. Yay. How great is it for a boy in a shed in his backyard to make glowing radiated particles? How great. It's not great. How great. Not great. Not at all great. We've all done it. Nope. That is a shed for potting and potting only. Okay but now he was in danger because radiation. Yeah. The downside to being around glowing waste. Now to make his gun all he needed was a strip of barium which he got by having a friend steal one from the community college he went to. Sure because that's there. Hey Larry can you steal me some barium because

I'm making a nuclear reactor at my mom's shed. Is that something you could do? Is that cool? Barry? Yes. All right cool man. I can do that. Thanks bud. We are friends. And if you see any old-fashioned clock paint. Call me. Oh god call me. So now he had a more powerful radium gun. He began. A sentence we've all longed for here. He began to bombard his thorium and uranium powders. What? In the hopes of producing at least some fishable atoms. He measured the results with his Geiger counter but while the thorium seemed to grow more radiative the uranium remained a disappointment. Until. Once again he posed as Professor Hahn and wrote his friend at the NRC to discuss the problem. The NRC had the answer. Yep. David's neutrons were too fast for

uranium. Of course I was gonna say. He decided to use tritium to slow them down. Yep. Even though he could have used water. Okay. Water like comes out of your fucking tap. Yeah. He could have used water. Yeah. But instead. Oh boy. He decided to use tritium. He learned that tritium is found in glow-in-the-dark gun in both sites. So he bought a bunch from sporting goods stores and mail order catalogs. He would then take out the tritium and return the sites to the stores to get his money back. I love that he's returning every he's just taking the nuclear pieces out and returning them. Yeah. Someone's like this camping lamp kind of sucks. How much was it? He eventually was banned for many outdoor stores in the area. Yeah. Hey this guy's a fucking lunatic.

Hey this guy just returned the 75th bow site. Is that? And he keeps calling himself Professor. Yeah. I'm not gonna return this archery kit. Okay. Now at 17 David had his neutron gun. Oh boy. The powder he created was getting more radioactive by the day. Good. So he decided to build a breeder nuclear reactor. Keep going. All he needed was a critical pile of 30 pounds of enriched uranium. 30 pounds of uranium. You motherfucker. How are you going to fucking? How? Where's he calling? He's got everything he needs. Who the fuck is he gonna call? Okay. His blueprint was a schematic of a breeder reactor he'd seen in one of his father's college textbooks. A breeder reactor is a particular type of nuclear reactor.

Wait. Okay. And so I don't know shit about nuclear energy. So I'm explaining this. I got this explanation for it. This is basically how a breeder reactor works. Imagine you have a car and begin a long drive. When you start, you have half a tank of gas. When you return home, instead of being nearly empty, your gas tank is full. So a breeder reactor is like a magic car. It generates electricity and also produces fuel at the same time. Okay. The nuclear industry used to believe breeders were the magical solution to the nation's energy needs. They sound fucking great. Used to. The government had opened up two experimental breeders at a test site in Idaho by 1961. In 1963, Detroit Edison opened the Enrico Fermi-1 power plant,

the nation's first and only commercially run breeder reactor. But the first Idaho breeder had to be shut down after setting a partial core meltdown. The second breeder generated electricity, but not new fuel. The Fermi plant was plagued by mechanical problems, accidents, and budget overruns and produced incredibly expensive energy. In 1966, the plant's core suffered a partial melt down. Six years later, the plant was shut down permanently. So breeders were dead as far as the government was concerned. As far as the government was concerned. Was not in the shed. Not to Professor Han. Ignoring any thought of safety. This is what the podcast could also be called. Ignoring any thought of safety. David took the radium and a mericium out of their lead casings and mixed

those with brillium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What were once the neutron sources for his guns became a makeshift core for his reactor? I think. Where is he looking again? Is he still in this fucking potting shed? He's in the shed. Little like green, green beams are just shooting out of it. I don't know what plant he is making in there, but boy, he just loves it. He surrounded this radioactive ball with a blanket composed of tiny foil wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenuously held together with duct tape. Oh, there it is. Nuclear industry standard duct tape. A blanket with balls of aluminum foil and some duct tape. Get it. Use

it. Safety last. Just like they do it sent off on a for you down there in San Diego. Same deal at that time. David monitored his breeder reactor. Good at the laboratory slash shed with his Geiger counter. It was radioactive as heck, he said. So let's take a moment to commend him for not swearing. Yeah, because it's important to have respect for for others, especially when you're making a breeder reactor in a potting shed. Finally, David, whose safety precautions has thus far consisted of wearing makeshift led poncho. I mean, I love that it's a makeshift led poncho poncho like it's like he took he this is what I'm envisioning. He took a he got like a poncho and then the first step and then he said and then he like just taped a bunch of lead to it. Yeah, that's what I that's

an I'm picturing. I mean, if you look at like a poncho package, I picture the poncho guy just with some lead. Yeah, just dangling off like a fucking weird weather vane. Like a wind chime. Oh God. And he was throwing away his clothes and changing his shoes following each session in the potting shed. He began to realize that you can't throw yourself away. That's the that's the critical flaw. That is that is a bit of a problem. Oh, boy, these clothes are ruined after all that. Boy, I feel weird. I just don't feel right. I don't know what I ate, but David, why are you balding? I don't know. I think it was something. I think I ate an egg that was off the side. Just don't feel right. Haven't felt right all day.

By the way, my shoes are levitating over the recycling bin. So my green shoes. My green glowing shoes. Okay, so he began to realize that he began with his with the pretty reaction or not. He could be putting himself and others in danger. This just dawned on him. What? That was weird. So what? A big big a big volume spike. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't touch it, right? I haven't touched it. I won't touch it again. I've learned my lesson from the one time I touched it. So let me just so David began to realize that sustained reaction not he could be putting himself and others in danger. Yeah. So he finally came around. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Hold on now. No, are you attacking me? Are you about to attack me?

I'm just realizing something. I'm making a nuclear reactor in a shed and usually they do that at like surrounded by cement and in big power plants now. So I could be like this might not work. Now wait, wait, this could hurt people. David slow down. I have to get camping. What I'm saying is I have to get everyone a lead poncho. I'm going to need to call the poncho people lie to them get free bottom dollar ponchos and then return them. Yeah. He told a friend Jim Miller. This is my favorite. This is my this is the my favorite sentence of the entire story. Jim Miller who was a nuclear savvy high schooler. Where are they don't belong? That is not that is an oxymoron nuclear savvy high schooler.

Didn't they know about weed? It's just fucking seriously. I think I think we all out of nuclear savvy high school buddy. Oh, you know, you know how it is. Yeah, you have the girl you hang out with the jockey guy, the black guy, the nuclear savvy high schooler, the Asian. Jim warned him that real reactors use control rods to regulate nuclear reactions. And to stop stop this madness. What the fuck are you doing? Good. No, actually, Jim just recommended cobalt, which which absorbs neutrons, but does not itself become a vision. Well, okay, so he goes to the nuclear savvy guy who says no, man, they use rods. And this guy doesn't say stop building a nuclear reactor. He just goes. Yeah, I'd use cobalt.

Dude, what are you an idiot? Don't use rods, use cobalt. But don't wait. I mean, that's the thing everybody's done to David Han so far. Yeah, is they've provided him right vital information and told him to not use it. Nobody except his dad when he blew up the house is that who goes go to the basement get an get an merit badge. You get a merit you can only come home when we're home. Oh, fuck. So Jim recommended cobalt, which absorbs neutrons, but does not itself become efficient. Reactors get hot. It's just a fact, Miller, a nervous, skinny 22 year old said during an interview six years later at Burger King in Clinton Township, where he worked as a cook. Wanted to meet a Burger King for the interview. Okay, so just so we know, the guy in high school

who was the nuclear savvy kid major now six years later works at a Burger King. David purchased a set of cobalt drill bits at a local hardware store inserted them between the thorium and uranium cubes. It's like everything he can get everything what there's nothing he can't get nothing. But the cobalt wasn't sufficient. Now his Geiger counter was picking up radiation five doors down from his mom's house. So David decided that he had too much radioactive stuff in one place, and began to disassemble the reactor. Imagine being a fucking neighbor. Oh God. Yeah, horrible. He placed the thorium pellets in a shoebox that he hid in his mother's house, left the radium and a mericium in the shed, and packed most of the rest of the equipment

into the trunk of the Pontiac 6000. Poor Pontiac. At 2 40am on August 31, 1994, the Clinton Township police responded to a call concerning a young man who had been spotted in a residential neighborhood apparently stealing tires from a car. When police arrived, David told them he was waiting to meet a friend. Officers decided to search his car. When they opened the trunk, they discovered a toolbox shut with a padlock and sealed with duct tape for good measure. The trunk also contained 50 foil wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small discs and cylindrical metal objects, lantern mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals and acids. Can you imagine these small top cops are like, I bet there's gonna be beer in there.

What the fuck? Well, shoot him. Time to kill him. I'm gonna put you down son. I mean, especially if you think about like police fighting little foil balls with gray powder on them, they're like this junkie. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David warned them was radioactive. Hey, that toolbox is radioactive. And they feared it was an atomic bomb. Jesus, they sound a little too smart to be cops already. Yeah. Yeah. So then the idiot Sergeant Joseph Mertis ordered the car containing what he noted in his report was a potential improvised explosive device to be towed to police headquarters. That's fellow officers commended him for his shrewd thinking. Because that's what you do. That's a dangerous bomb. Take it to where we were.

Oh, man, the cops. Oh, Jesus Christ. Can you imagine being the other cops would be like, that's pretty dumb. That's really dumb. The police then called the Michigan State police bomb squad to examine the Pontiac and the State Department of Public Health to supply radiological assistance. The good news the two teams discovered was that David's toolbox was not an atomic bomb. Hey, when you're saying that's good news, things aren't good. The bad news was that David's trunk did contain radioactive materials, including concentrations of thorium, not found in nature, at least not in Michigan, and emersium. That discovery automatically triggered the federal radiological emergency response plan and state officials soon were embroiled in a tense phone

consultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI, and R.C. Everybody's in. You guys get the dial-in info? Yeah, because we're going to talk about this guy. He built a bomb. He's a team. With David was very uncooperative with the police. He provided his father's address but didn't mention his mother's house or his potting shed laboratory. Potting shed laboratory. It wasn't until Thanksgiving Day that David Minnar, a DPH radiological expert, Department of Public Health radiological expert, finally interviewed David. Just to be aware of the time difference, August 31st is in August and Thanksgiving is in a month called November. So three months, nobody checked out his mom's shed. At no point were they like, uh, do you have a

mother? Yeah. We asked two questions. It seems pretty open and shut, right? We asked him what all this stuff was and he said, I'm not telling you. And we said, please, he said, no, we said, have a good day. Take the bomb to where we work. Wrap it up. That's a wrap. Investigation over. That's good detective work. David also finally admitting to having a backyard laboratory. Oh, also, uh, that potting shed is a breeder reactor. David told Minnar that he had been trying to make thorium in a form he could use to produce energy and then he hoped his successes would help him earn his Eagle Scout status. Oh my God. The dad at this point is like, forget about Eagle Scouting. I didn't forget. I said it was a terrible idea. I didn't take it back, David. Just masterpiece.

God, please, please. Would you just begging you? Would you just jerk off, boy? On November 29th, state radiological experts surveyed the potting shed. They found aluminum, pie pans, jars of acids, Pyrex cups, milk crates, and other materials turned about much of it contaminated with what subsequent official reports would call excessive levels of radioactive material, especially a Mercium 241 and thorium 232. About 1000 times higher than normal levels of background radiation. And a million times higher than most potting shed. But because they took three months to figure out where the shed was, David's mother had already ransacked the shed and thrown in the garbage most of what she found, including his neutron gun,

the radium, pellets of thorium that were far more radioactive than what health officials found, and several quarts of radioactive powder. So she just threw it all in the garbage, and then they got taken away. Really not good. So they just... The green ones for yard waste, the blue ones recycling, the beige one is for the thorium. Thorium goes in the gray one. So the gray ones for anything nuclear goes in the gray bin. And they come later. They come later Wednesdays. After determining that no radioactive materials had leaked outside the shed, so she didn't tell them that she took it. So they were just like, okay. What a great upbringing this guy had. Great people. State authorities sealed it and asked the federal

government for help. The NRC deals with any nuclear accidents that take place at sites, at nuclear plants, and research facilities. But the shed in some ladies' backyard was not an NRC licensed operation. So the NRC was like, yeah, we're not... We don't do sheds. We're not... We do not do sheds. We do like a hospital. Hospitals, but we just... It's a potting shed. We'll do a waste from nuclear power plant, but... We don't do camp lights. I can show you the list of things, and shed is not on there. Sheds not there. Shed is nowhere to be found. Do you see anything that says there's a license on the shed for the NRC? It has to be. We don't recognize it as a place. So we... Our hands are tied. So good luck. Good luck. Hopefully they threw it out

really, really, really good. Hopefully they really threw it out. So it was determined that the EPA, which responds to emergency-evolving, lost or abandoned atomic materials, should be contacted for assistance. In a memo to the EPA's emergency response and enforcement branch, the Department of Public Health noted that the materials discovered in David's lab were regulated under the Federal Atomic Energy Act, and that the extent of the radioactive material contamination within a private citizen's property beg for a controlled remediation that is beyond our authority or resources to oversee. So they were like, please, EPA, get in here. It's too fucked. This is too much. If this thing's self-fucked, we can't fix it. The EPA officials arrived in Gulf Manor on January

25th, 1995, five months after he'd been stopped by police. Good. It's important to be timely with these things. God help us if something real happens. It's just a kid making a breeder reaction. Yeah. Yep. So they conducted their own survey. You've heard it a million times. A million times. Thanks for getting around to that. Their action memo noted that the conditions at the site present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare or the environment. So we'll deal with it in two years. There was actual or potential exposure to nearby human populations, animals and the food chain. The memo further states that adverse conditions such as heavy wind, rain or fire could cause

these contaminates to migrate and be released. Or if the mom throws them in the garden. That's also a big red flag. That's a big danger. A super fun cleanup took place between June 26th and June 28th at a cost of about $60,000. Jesus Christ. Neighbor Dottie Pease turned down Pinto Drive and saw 11 men swarming across her carefully manicured lawn. Their attention seemed to be focused on the backyard of the house next door, specifically on a large wooden potting shed. Now three of the men had don ventilated moon suits. Dottie Pease, not the sharpest tool in the potting shed. They had moon suits. They were future men. They were astronaut warriors. The moon people were taking the potting shed. Trust me.

They were proceeding to dismantle the potting shed with electric saw stuffing pieces of wood into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. Can you fucking imagine like the amount of time someone said excuse me in the breakdown of this of what they were gonna excuse me. So we need to go to this potting shed. Excuse me? Huh? Yeah, he built a breeder reactor. Excuse me? Pardon? He had a neutron gun. He had a neutron gun. He was irradiating. What's up? Excuse me? And his mom threw a lot of the, the, the reasonable way. So what's up? Pardon? I just, I don't follow. Pease had never noticed anything out of the ordinary at the house next door.

No, besides a floating potting shed. As she huddled with a group of nervous neighbors though, Pease heard one resident claim to have awoken late one night to see the potting shed emitting an eerie glow. I was pretty disturbed. Not disturbed enough to do anything. I was pretty disturbed. Peace recalls. I went inside and called my husband and said, Dave, there are men in funny suits walking around out there. You've got to do something, honey. What do you want me to do? They're just moon people. What do you want me to do? Yeah, go attack them. You took taekwondo twice. Go hurt them. After the moon suited workers dismantled the potting shed with electric

saws, they loaded the remains into 39 sealed barrels placed aboard a semi trailer bound for and viral care, a dump facility located in the middle of Great Salt Lake Desert. Hey, this is where I'm not moving. They're there. The remains of David's experiments were entombed along with tons of low level radiation debris from the government atomic bomb factories, plutonium, plutonium production facilities and contaminated industrial sites. Holy shit. According to the official assessment, there was no noticeable damage to flora or fauna in the backyard in golf manner, but 40,000 nearby residents could have been put at risk during David's years of experiments due to the dangers posed by the release of radioactive

dust and radiation. Jesus. Most local neighbors don't know what happened. They good. Just a few years later, they thought it was some kind of chemical spill. Good. It's clearly a chemical spill because there's big radiation barrels. Yep. Well, what's for dinner? In 1997. So this is two or three years later, a reporter drove to Lansing to speak to David Menard, the Department of Public Health radiation expert. Because David's mom had cleaned out the shed before Menard's men arrived on the scene, he never knew that David had built neutron guns or that he had obtained, obtained radium. He had no idea until a reporter told him that the cubes of thorium powder found by police at the time of David's arrest were the building blocks for a model

preter reactor. Jesus. He was like, sorry. You said, excuse me? One more time. These are the conditions that regulatory agencies never envisioned said Menard. It simply presumed that the average person won't have the technology and materials required to experiment in these areas, except you can get it everywhere. Yeah. Unless you go on to camping websites. I'm never going camping again. Sounds like everything's fucking nuclear. Or if you just pulled out, what are your fire alarms? Yeah. Here's a fire alarm, a battery and a camping light. Boom. Let's party. David went into a serious depression after the federal authorities shut down his lab.

You know what? Well, it's hard. Yeah. I mean, think about this. You spend years working on something. You spent years trying to damage everyone. A bit of much assholes just throw it in the garbage or it's sorry, entomb it in the desert. No, your mom threw it in the garbage. Now that words were out, student at the high school started calling him radioactive boy. And when his girlfriend Heather sent David Valentine's balloons at his high school, they were seized by the principal who apparently filled they had been inflated with chemical, who feared they had been inflated with a chemical gas. Okay. So first of all, I'm not calling David anything good, but this principle something somebody's finally on the ball. Yeah, like no,

no balloons destroy them. They're probably filled with gas. Trust me. They're helium. I knew it. It's Burnham. They're floating in the air. Yeah. Like magic. Nope. I know what balloons do. They go on the ground. Now let me ignite these. Then some scout leaders attempted to take away David's Eagle Scout badge. What about you? I mean, at this point, that's fucked, right? Yeah, just let him be. They said something about his extra extracurricular merit badge activities had endangered the community, blah, blah, blah. You know, I mean, more red tape. But he got to keep his Eagle Scout badge. Oh, that's sweet. Yeah, that's nice. In 1995, he enrolled in community college,

but skipped many of his classes and spent much of the day in bed or driving in circles around the block. It's a great sign. Great sign when you're just driving in circles around the block. At this point, he's fucking the Geiger counter. His parents told him he had to join the military or they would throw him out and he did. He was stationed on the nuclear powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. May I say something? Wow. The advice from these parents gets better and better and better. But he was not allowed to work with the nuclear power. His duties were mostly deck swabbing and potato peeling and that sort of shit. Late at night, though, after shipmates went to sleep, you stayed up studying topics that interested him.

Steroids, genetic codes, antideoxics, prototype reactors, amino acids and criminal law. The years. He really should find other things to focus on because EPA scientists believe that his previous exposure to radioactive material may have greatly cut short his life. All the radioactive materials he experimented with can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation or skin contact and then deposit in the bones and organs where they can cause a host of ailments, including cancer. So weird. Who would have thought that? But that's why you had the poncho. That's why you buy two ponchos and some goggles. Just make your bones safe. Because it's so potent, the radium that David was exposed to in a relatively small enclosed space

is most worrisome of all. Back in 1995, the EPA arranged for David to undergo a full examination at the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant. David, fearful of what he might learn, refused. Oh shit. Okay, so here we are 18 years later. What's David been up to? Probably just working on a Burger King. What did you think about what happened? Oh boy. As far as the reactor, David says, look, there may have been a few safety issues.

Look is a horrible way to start something about this. Look. But the whole 60,000 Superfund clear up was a total overreaction. I was just building a model nuclear reactor and never saw the shed glowing. Okay. Because you were in the glow dickhole. David's enthusiasm for science remains undiminished. He still wants to break barriers. His current ambition is to create a light bulb that will glow for 100 years. And he's pretty sure it's possible. In 2007, he was arrested for stealing smoke detectors in his apartment building.

Oh Jesus. He had 17 in all when his home was searched. What? Turns out his fascination with radioactive materials. When was this? 2007. Oh my God. His fascination with radioactive materials has continued. Once again,

he had hoped to extract the radioactive isotope housed in the devices to conduct his experiments. David was charged with larceny. And though he denied the crimes, he was convicted and spent six months in the psychiatric unit at Makeham County Jail. He was then arrested twice for cocaine possession in 2008. Oh boy. Now the photos of ranching out. The photos of him of his bookings.

He's just got the just scars all over his face from picking his face from, you know, a drug addict. He's always experimenting. When he noticed that his cat, named Kit Kat, loved catnip, he decided to distill it to produce an essence. I boiled it up in water, then filtered it through the coffee filter and evaporated it, then turned the essence into a syrup. Man, she loves it.

Oh, poor cat. He made hash for cats. Yeah, he made cat hash. The cat loves it. He currently collects antique clocks. No, what the fuck? Why are we ones with illuminated faces? Yeah, I know the ones he likes.

They line his bedroom and he studies their faces because he loves the way. No, he doesn't quote energy seems to move in the paint. While in the military, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with bipolar disorder. He is on medication for both. Though sometimes it is very clear he wrestles with delusions and anxieties of his mind's creation. He says there were some very dark times before I was diagnosed. Yeah, I feel like we just heard about one of those dark times. So that guy's out there.

Yeah, out there still collecting clocks, the smoke detectors, schizophrenic, which is good. It's a good combo. I feel like we maybe will hear about this guy again. I feel like this might be our first two dollop. This can be a three-part series. This might be, there's more to come. We'll do a where are they now in five years when we're all green.

Jesus Christ, man. You would hope that some of this has changed since all the terrorism shit, but you know it hasn't, right? Well, that's the thing is that it is so like, yeah. I mean, it really, like it's honestly just like, look, if you want to do something destructive, you're going to have to work. Like that's where we've left it. And thankfully, 95% of us are lazy enough to just be like, well, fucking, I can't figure it out. Yeah.

But now people can just look online and figure it out. Well, that's what they said with the like the Boston bombing thing. When that happened, CNN was like, here's how they made it. Like that literally was on the air. You're like, good shit. Smart. Thanks. Thanks for that, gentlemen.

They just took a simple rice cooker. You're like, oh, good. Okay, stop talking. Good enough. Stop talking. The situation room. Well, how do you feel? I feel, I feel like it's not resolved.

I think it's an open-ended story. And I don't like that. And I got a Coleman lamp right there. Oh, Jesus, you fucking monster. You monster. Yeah, I don't, I don't. Where does he live? What?

Where's he potting? Where's he potting now? He lives in, I think he lives in Pennsylvania now. Okay, as long as it's far from here. Yeah, it's far from here. I'm okay with it, because it won't hurt us, but people in Pennsylvania, you know, might be time to do a little districting,

see what's going on. It's going to be quite a shock for all the Lutites out there. If you have a potting shed, you're on notice. All right, just should have, again, masturbate. Okay. That's our message.