David Hahn: the bizarre tale of “the nuclear boy scout”
David Hahn joined the Boy Scouts of America because his dad thought it would provide him discipline and distraction.
It’s a tale as old as the institution itself. However, Hahn wasn’t pressed into joining the scouts because he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, or obsessed with comic books, or getting into punk music. No, Hahn had an obsession that most parents would kill for their children to have. He liked science. Scratch that, he loved science. Not in an “I unironically own a table of chemicals poster and a microscope” way either, in a “I made chloroform when I was a literal child and passed out from inhaling the fumes” way.
The experiments Hahn was putting on were getting more dangerous as he got older. He was making explosives and fireworks in his spare time, and his father thought that becoming part of the scouts would teach him a sense of responsibility and discipline. In typical grandparent fashion, his grandparents overrode this, with his grandfather giving him The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, which Hahn tried his darndest to recreate in full.
His particular love of chemistry blossomed into a full-blown fascination with radioactive materials. A fascination that, ironically enough, was encouraged by the scouts. He achieved a merit badge in Atomic Energ,y and this got him thinking about how he could take this further at home. It was around this time that he discovered what a breeder reactor was. For those not as au fait with nuclear fission as Hahn, a breeder reactor is a reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes.
The more Hahn read about breeder reactors, the more an idea began popping into his head. “Y’know, I could build one of these!”
…did this child build a nuclear reactor?!
Well, not quite, but not for lack of trying.
Hahn gathered together as much low-level radioactive material as he could find, from smoke detectors to vintage clocks to tritium from gunsights, with the intention of fusing all of them together to create nuclear fission. However, this was a time-consuming process that involved gathering an awful lot of material that would get you strange looks from the feds. By the time the cops found out about his plan, Hahn’s in-process breeder reactor was generating 1,000 times the normal amount of background radiation. And by normal, we of course mean healthy.
So, the kid had a hyper-fixation on chemistry; the real question is why? To me, the answer can be found in his family life. Hahn had a particularly troubled home life; his mother was a depressed alcoholic with diagnosed schizophrenia who took her own life when he was 20. Anyone would want to escape into their special interests at a time of such overwhelming stress, and Hahn was no different. It’s just that when most people hide from reality in their passions, they end up with a kiln gathering dust in their basement or a large collection of Magic: The Gathering cards. Hahn ended up with a police investigation because they thought he was building a nuclear bomb.
Hahn’s story doesn’t get happier from there. He flunked out of community college and joined the Navy in 1997, but was honourably discharged five years later due to medical reasons, Medical reasons that probably stemmed from spending so much time around an intense level of background radiation as a child. It’s telling that the first time he tried to build a nuclear reactor as a child made him a celebrity. The second time, as a young adult got a schizophrenia diagnosis, just like his mother.
Hahn died in 2016, drinking himself to death by combining alcohol with fentanyl. A sad end for someone with such an incredible mind for science.