menu Home chevron_right
NEWS & CULTURE

David Hahn: The Radioactive Boy Scout | Random Thursday

Joe Scott | September 14, 2025



David Hahn was a Boy Scout in Michigan in the late 80s with a particular interest in radioactivity. An interest that led him to build a working – and dangerous – breeder reactor in his parent’s shed.

Check out this Channel 4 documentary about David titled The Nuclear Boy Scout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Uuex4VZPE

Support me on Patreon!
http://www.patreon.com/answerswithjoe

Get cool nerdy t-shirts at
http://www.answerswithjoe.com/shirts

Become a channel member and get access to exclusive livestreams and content here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-2YHgc363EdcusLIBbgxzg/join

Follow me at all my places!
Instagram: https://instagram.com/answerswithjoe
Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/answerswithjoe
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/answerswithjoe
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/answerswithjoe

LINKS LINKS LINKS
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive-boy-scout-died-at-age-39/

Weird History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0QMeTjcJDA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150726-nuclear-reactor-fusion-science-kid-ngbooktalk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Written by Joe Scott

Comments

This post currently has 47 comments.

  1. @Culturalenthusiast-q1b

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    This story draws my attention to how the behavior of each individual appears to be judged on the too often narrow experiences of people who surround you as opposed to the broader experiences of people in the region, nation or even world.
    This young man committed a serious crime that affected the public health of his entire community all under the presumed supervision of his parents and BSA leaders. The people surrounding him didn't understand what he was doing or the impact it would have on them despite the immense amount of international intelligence that has been collected on radiation exposure stretching back to the late nineteenth century. Let's consider a much needed reorganization of priorities based upon the broader implications of individual ambitions. How many people have been killed to satisfy the egos of a few people who desire greater popular esteem?

  5. @randallpetersen9164

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    I had one of these incredibly wonderful REAL chemistry sets back in the 60s! It was fantastic! So many insane combinations, things turning color, from solid to liquid, starting to burn without using a flame, tiny explosions! I was also relegated to the basement. I came pretty close to setting the house on a fire a time or two as well. 🙂 I went on to get degrees in Biochemistry and Microbiology.

  6. @lovebugmac1961

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    I feel sad for David and his family. With the proper guidance, David could quite possibly be a lead nuclear engineer. He had the passion but lacked the guidance as a young man. His parents didn't understand and thought they were doing the right thing by letting him experiment, encouraging his curiosity.

  10. @domg.1011

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    Hey so if you have an old gas lamp with the thorium net, & the glass is broken, do you have to worry? Should you find a way to properly dispose of it? Does it matter if you have adhd so severe that even with a former radiation hyperfixation you have put off dealing with it for over a year?

  21. @Tiger_Dawn_Studios_Official

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    2:15 hey I am from Michigan and I found out about the Commerce township incident by reading Wikipedia and I was like "MOM!! I FOUND A STORY ABOUT A NUCLEAR INCIDENT THAT HAPPENED IN MICHIGAN!!! IN COMMERCE TOWNSHIP!!!!!" and my dad was like "Commerce Township isn't all that far from here". My mom was like "Wow, that's nice."

    That's how I found out about it.

    Fun times.

  28. @nassimabed

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    When I was a kid I did electrolysis using pencil graphite electrodes and salt water: Produced about two liters of chlorine gas in a precariously sealed glass jar. Yeah.

  31. @Isoisosings

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    They don’t do that anymore, they have women who run Scouts now, feelings and emotions, that’s what it’s about now, not self reliance. Hard times create strong men, strong men creat good times, good times create weak men, weak men creat hard times.

  37. @markboyle9941

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    David didn't want to produce Pu-239 or build a breeder reactor. He wanted to produce fissile material. So he wrapped all of his Ra-226/Am-241 in aluminium foil. The alphas bombard the foil and sputter neutrons. He surrounded his neutron source with Th-232 extracted from gas mantles using lithium. Th-232 plus a neutron gives Th-233, which promptly decays by beta emission to U-233 which is fissile. All the while his neutrons would be activating anything else that would absorb them with a suitable cross section. U-233 has some gnarly gammas as does Al-28. This is probably what he was detecting. His feat is far more impressive than the fusors built by those rich kids. He didn't have any help and he figured out (pre internet) how to build a neutron source capable of producing small amounts of fissile U-233 from fertile Th-232. Tragic waste…

  42. @lexinexi-hj7zo

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    Yeah my childhood was much more crazy. At 14 the police finally caught me pulling pranks and said "Well it looks like we finally caught the mad professor" I out smarted and phreaked and hacked their radios for two years.

  43. @geekfreak5100

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    Not quite as impressive, but I made thermite when I was a kid…. got molten metal all over the garage. Once I tried adding copper sulphate, cos I thought it might make the sparks blue, but it just made a stink bomb. Garage smelt bad for months, and my mum was not happy. Ahh childhood, miracle anyone survives it!

  45. @hall0weenjack

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    The wackiest thing that I ever did with friends chemistry-wise (besides trying to scrape enough explosive material out of firecrackers to make bigger explosives, which luckily didn't result in the loss of eyes and/or fingers) was in high school, when our chemistry teacher demonstrated how hot and inextinguishable burning magnesium was. One acquaintance had his own inextinguishable fire of rage at the gym teacher/disciplinarian and wanted to steal some magnesium to burn a hole in the gym teacher's car hood, so he "liberated" some metal strips from the chemistry lab, and I watched him trying to set aluminum on fire in the parking lot for the better part of an hour.

  46. @BewareTheLilyOfTheValley

    September 14, 2025 at 11:09 am

    The prank your scout leaders played on you is similar to one my older brother and I played on our younger brother regarding him being close to death. Mom had come home one night with some Church's Chicken, which also sells cups of jalapeños that you can eat with your food. I personally dislike most spicy things but my brothers liked them (even though my older brother would then have swollen lips for days afterwards…prooobably he shouldn't have been eating them if they were burning his skin).

    Anywho, on this particular day, we were eating and watching a show about spontaneous human combustion. You know…the normal kind of thing you sit down to watch while eating. Before dinner, we'd been sharing a pack of Pop Rocks between us and we'd also gotten soda to drink with dinner. In the middle of eating, my older brother suddenly stopped and turned toward our younger brother. In a concerned voice, he asked, "Mikey…did you drink any of the soda?" Of course he had, and he said so. My older brother's eyes went wide. "Oh…oh no. The carbonated soda and the jalapeños are going to cause gasses to build up in you, dude. You're going to spontaneously combust."

    My younger brother, who was about nine, of course immediately tells him that's not true, but my older brother managed to continue to sell it very convincingly. My younger brother then turned to me, hils older sister, and it took EVERYTHING in me to not burst out laughing as I usually would do. Instead, I kept my face straight and also gave a solemn nod. "He's actually right. And then you also had the Pop Rocks, too. I'm…so sorry, Mikey."

    And then he burst into tears! 😂 He ran to our mom, who finally told him we were lying and to stop f*cking with him 😆. Had little bro given it just a bit more thought, he would've realized that our older brother had eaten the exact same things as he had, so he too would've "combusted". It was one of the very few times I went along with one of our older brother's pranks, which was why our poor younger sibling thought he could trust me. It was such an absurd lie, I kind of had to see how far we could go with it, lol!

    This takes first place in our sibling deception but second place is perhaps our older brother getting our younger brother to sell his Park Place in Monopoly for "A George Washington", without our sibling understanding that was just a $1 bill 😂. My momory is hazy as to if I stepped in and stopped the sale. I probably didn't. I'm sorry, Mikey!

Comments are closed.

Related
Minnesota Fraud Scandal EXPLAINED
Leeja Miller | April 18, 2026
Related
This anti-sex trafficking law could end internet freedom
Vox | April 18, 2026
Related
BOMBSHELL: Was The TRUMP Admin Leaking Intel To Russia???
christophertitustv | April 18, 2026

This area can contain widgets, menus, shortcodes and custom content. You can manage it from the Customizer, in the Second layer section.

 

 

 

Go to album
  • play_circle_filled

    92.9 : The Torch

  • play_circle_filled

    AGGRO
    'Til Deaf Do Us Part...

  • play_circle_filled

    SLACK!
    The Music That Made Gen-X

  • play_circle_filled

    KUDZU
    The Northwoods' Alt-Country & Americana

  • play_circle_filled

    BOOZHOO
    Indigenous Radio

  • play_circle_filled

    THE FLOW
    The Northwoods' Hip Hop and R&B

play_arrow skip_previous skip_next volume_down
playlist_play