On the 31st of August, 1994, police were called to a quiet suburb outside of Detroit, where
a 17-year-old boy was suspected of stealing tyres. When they challenged the boy in question,
though, police were stunned to find that he hadn’t been stealing tyres at all, but instead
had been loading what looked like components for a homemade atomic bomb into his car. The
boy was David Hahn – a troubled but brilliant individual who later became known as “the
Nuclear Boy Scout”. David Hahn enjoyed a relatively peaceful and
happy upbringing… at least for the first decade or so of his life. Though his parents
were divorced, they got along well, and he spent time with both of them. He was a bright
and energetic kid. He had no shortage of friends, and a wide range of interests, including baseball,
soccer, and participating in activities as a member of the Boy Scouts of America.
Another of David’s favourite hobbies was chemistry. After receiving a copy of The Golden
Book of Chemistry Experiments as a gift when he was ten years old, he became totally obsessed
with carrying out experiments. He kitted out a room at his father’s house as a small
laboratory and spent his allowance on Bunsen burners, test tubes and chemicals. Within
just a few years he was easily digesting chemistry textbooks that most full-grown adults would
have struggled with, and was routinely carrying out dangerous experiments, including synthesising
several different types of explosive. Despite his aptitude for chemistry, David
was by no means an all-round academic. In fact, he struggled in the classroom, barely
managing to scrape the grades necessary to graduate from Chippewa Valley High School.
His spelling was consistently terrible, and he had little to no interest in any subject
that wasn’t science-related. As David grew older, this singular passion
only deepened. He took a few after school jobs, and used the funds to purchase more
sophisticated equipment. At the same time, however, he also caused a number of small
explosions, which saw his home laboratory relegated first to the basement of his father’s
house, and then to a potting shed outside his mother’s… there, at least, he stood
little chance of burning down the house. Out of sight in this shed, David – now a
teen – continued his experiments. At this stage he wasn’t trying to hide what he was
doing. Quite the opposite, in fact: he’d talk enthusiastically and at length with anyone
who would listen… but would tend to discuss concepts of such complexity that most listeners
simply didn’t understand what he was talking about.
He was also still a member of the Boy Scouts of America… and would share his interest
with his fellow scouts, sometimes with disastrous results. One summer he took a stockpile of
magnesium with him to camp, intending to make his own fireworks to entertain his friends.
Unfortunately, those friends accidentally ignited the magnesium before it could be made
into fireworks, and blew a sizeable hole in David’s tent. He was sent home early from
camp that year. Despite this and several other similar setbacks,
David was still keen on scouting, and was in fact working his way towards the status
of Eagle Scout. To do this he would need to earn 21 merit badges. Merit badges serve as
markers of achievements within the Boy Scout organisation. They’re typically given when
a scout can demonstrate mastery of a certain topic or skill, be that wilderness survival,
knot-tying, canoeing, needlework, or any one of hundreds of other activities.
David’s interest in science naturally lead him to seek a badge in Atomic Energy. The
requirements for this badge were pretty simple – all he had to do was draw a diagram explaining
nuclear fission, make a model reactor out of juice can, and take a tour of the local
hospital’s Radiology unit to learn how radioactive materials were used in medicine. David managed
these tasks easily, and was duly awarded his merit badge, bringing him one step closer
to being a fully-fledged Eagle Scout. David, however, wasn’t content to leave
things there. Attaining the badge had piqued his interest in all things nuclear, and so
he continued his studies independently even once he’d been awarded his badge. After
a few initial experiments, David’s mind was made up – he didn’t just want to build
a model reactor… he wanted to build a real one. And, what was more, he believed that
he could find a way to do so. To achieve this goal, David needed two things:
information, and nuclear material. To get hold of the information, he posed as
a schoolteacher, and wrote to several organisations involved in the nuclear power industry. Most
of his correspondents were more than happy to help - with some of them even providing
information on where David could order samples of radioactive material… solely for educational
use, of course. Using this information, David set about collecting
his nuclear material. He purchased hundreds of surplus smoke detectors and extracted the
radioactive americium from within. He attempted to process pitchblende into uranium, burned
lantern mantles to produce radioactive ash, and scoured antique stores looking for devices
with radium coated luminous dials. He would purchase these and scrape off the radioactive
paint by hand, collecting a sizable store of radium.
After months of trial and error, David was able to put together a makeshift core for
his reactor – a ball of scavenged and synthesized radioactive materials wrapped in tinfoil,
surrounded by cubes of radioactive ash and carbon, all of it held together with duct
tape. A mail order Geiger counter confirmed to him that it was indeed very radioactive…
and that as time went on it seemed to be becoming more so. David was delighted with the results.
In a later interview, when asked about the radiation levels he was detecting at that
time, he said: “It was radioactive as heck.” It was clear that David knew what he was doing
was risky… but perhaps that he wasn’t aware of just how risky it was. The precautions
he took were relatively light. He wore a lead apron, threw away his clothes after each session
in his lab, and hung a misspelled warning sign on the door of the shed.
A breeder reactor – the type of reactor that David was trying to build – not only
generates energy, but also converts non-fissionable material into fissionable fuel that can then
be used to generate more energy in turn. The device David had built certainly seemed to
be doing this. With each day that passed it became more and more radioactive.
After several days, David noticed that he could detect radiation not just within the
shed, and not just within his mother’s garden, but also much further down the street. It
was this that convinced him, finally, that building a nuclear reactor in his shed was
perhaps a bad idea. And so, calmly and quietly, David began disassembling his reactor and
loading its component parts into the trunk of his car.
It was as he was doing this that the police were called – ostensibly because a passerby
believed that David was trying to steal tyres off parked cars. When the police arrived on
scene and searched David’s car, however, they found something much more alarming. Inside
was a wide array of scientific equipment – equipment which David warned them was radioactive. Fearing
that what they were looking at was a bomb, the police called the FBI, and summoned bomb
disposal experts to the scene. The car was seized, and David was questioned
at length. Nobody could quite comprehend what he had been doing, and he was very careful
about what he told the police, only initially providing them with his father’s address.
This meant that his radioactive shed remained standing and unguarded for several months
before authorities became aware of its existence and what David had gotten up to there. During
this time, it is thought, David’s mother quietly disposed of several pieces of equipment
stored there by throwing them out alongside the regular household garbage.
When the shed was investigated it was found that background radiation levels there were
more than 1,000 times higher than the norm. The whole thing was sealed off and painstakingly
demolished at a cost of around $60,000. Every single piece of the shed and its contents
was sealed inside metal barrels and transported out to Utah to be buried in the desert alongside
waste products from the manufacture of atomic weapons.
David, who stayed tactfully silent when questioned, escaped legal consequences for his experimentation…
but nonetheless the incident did change his life. After his shed was demolished, he was
forbidden from engaging in science experiments of any kind by his parents. His friends, teachers,
and even group leaders within the Boy Scouts began treating him with distrust. He once
even had a Valentine’s Day balloon he’d been given as a gift confiscated by the school,
for fear that it might contain chemicals he could use for further experiments.
As he got older, his parents pushed him to join the armed forces. Reluctantly, he did
so… and spent several years serving in the United States Navy. Most of this time was
spent on board the USS Enterprise – a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Given his previous exposure
to radiation, however, David was never allowed to undertake any duties related to the reactors
on board the ship. After being honourably discharged from the
Navy on medical grounds after just a few years, David returned to his home town and fell into
a deep depression. He had a further brush with the law when he was accused of dismantling
smoke detectors in his apartment building and harvesting the radioactive material within.
His mug shot from that encounter shows his face covered in sores, possibly a result of
handling radioactive material. Though there’s no doubt that his experiments
had some impact on David’s health, the extent of this is unknown, as he refused all medical
tests and examinations he was offered. When he died in 2016, it was not due to any medical
problems arising from his exposure to radiation, but instead a result of his use of drugs and
alcohol, which he had turned to in the final years of his life to help cope with his depression.
He was just 39 years old when he passed away. What David Hahn did in the early years of
his life was incredibly reckless and dangerous… but at the same time demonstrated a certain
brilliance: he was a smart, independent, highly capable young man – someone who had the
capacity to do great things, but who categorically did not flourish within the school system,
and never received the kind of direction and support that might have helped him make the
most of his talents. David is remembered now for doing something
that nobody else his age would do… but also something that nobody else his age could do.
Perhaps, if things had been different, if he had found the support he needed or the
right vocation, an ill-advised science experiment might have been just one of many remarkable
things he did with his life.