Introduction

Where can a curious mind take you?  Apparently, lots of places.  You don’t even have to go far, just open a book for starters.

Being an avid reader myself, I recently came across the curious true story of David Hahn, aka, the Radioactive Boy Scout.  He was born in 1976, and as a young kid his fascination with all things mechanical grew. He would take apart household objects, try to understand how they worked and then see if he could reassemble the parts into something new.  He had a very inquisitive mind. When he was about ten years old, he got his hands on a long out of print copy of The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.  Published in 1960, the book was written during the era of satellite launches and the race to the moon.  It had an upbeat tone and colourful futuristic illustrations typical of a time when anything seemed possible.  It greatly inspired young David Hahn.  The book promised a future where the harnessed power of the atom would be turned into light and heat and power for everyday uses. David was all too aware of the global energy crisis of the 1970s, and early 1980’s because his parents continually argued over the monthly electricity bill. He knew the US was dependent on foreign countries for oil, and so he believed in a future where nuclear energy production would solve their problems.

At around the same time that David got his book, in 1986, there was the Chernobyl disaster, a major nuclear accident where the reactor core of a power plant in what is now Ukraine, was damaged and significant amounts of radioactive isotopes were released into the environment.  It was the worst nuclear accident in history. Chernobyl released roughly 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A study in 2005 by the World Health Organisation estimated that there may have been up to 4,000 cancer deaths related to the accident among those exposed to significant radiation levels.  I do not know if David was disturbed by this accident, but he continued to delve deeper into his home made science experiments, until at the age of 17, he had cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation in an attempt to build his own nuclear reactor in a backyard garden shed.  His unsupervised project eventually sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s 40,000 residents at risk and the EPA ended up burying David’s lab at a radioactive dump site in Utah.

David passed away in 2016, at the age of 39 due to an accidental drug overdose. His story is a sad one. He had admirable goals, but he went about achieving them the wrong way.   His goal of solving the global energy crisis—by building a functional breeder reactor, in secret, was crazy. His tunnel vision meant he was ignoring the massive health risks he posed to his neighbors and himself. The book that started it all and inspired David’s quest covered dangerous topics and experiments in a casual way, made light of potential hazards and encouraged readers to be bold scientists. David soaked this up because he was a lonely kid. His parents had separated when he was just nine years old. The book gave him hope.

Despite his short life and sad end, David’s story resonates with me. Who hasn’t gotten excited when reading a good book, with hopes of becoming that one hero who ushers in a new golden era?

I will be sharing other real life stranger than fiction stories with you, as well as some of my favourite sci-fi books and how they compare to modern science.  Along the way, there will also be interesting interviews, philosophical essays, and more. My hope is that you will find these posts further your sense of wonder about the world without adding to the madness and distractions of much of the media found online these days!

See you in the next post!