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The Boy and his Breeder Reactor
scubacuda writes "Here is an interesting tale about a Boy Scout who went a little too far in trying to achieve a merit badge in Atomic Energy. From smoke alarms, lantern components, the paint from radio clocks, and a little help from the Nuclear Regulator Commission, David Hahn attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed. Regarding his excessive radioactive exposure, Hahn says, "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."" While this is an oldish story (1998) it is not the pathetic self congratulatory lame princeton story.
I remember reading this in the readers digest a few years ago.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
...this was posted in the hardware category.
Why would Slashdot put this as news when it happened years ago and most of us remember it? I mean I'd be all for this story if it was new - but a magazine from 1998? What happened? Find a Harper's while at the doctor's office? Next up: a Slashdot story on the WTC bombing.
There's several references to it everywhere, here's another.
This kid didn't learn to obey the rules of
Military Intelligence
tcd004
...could he split a beer atom?
Jesus christ. Can't anyone at slashdot do a quick search before posting a story? Slashdot ran this story AGES ago.
Must be a *real* slow news day if Slashdot has to resort to picking up stories from ~4 years ago... Didn't Slashdot cover this when it *was* news?
Bah. At this rate Slashdot's becoming nothing more than one of those horribly outdated joke sites which contains nothing but the same old tired jokes you got forwarded in email when the internet was this "new thing."
Truly an American icon.
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
Umm, if I remember properly isn't this an 'urban legend' like the jet powered chevy impala? I thought that this was just an urban legend that people told...
Man, talk about terrible parents. They locked him out of the house because they thought he was making drugs? No wonder he wanted to a-bomb the neighborhood.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
More proof that CmdrTaco and the rest of the people that manage this overblown BLOG-site collectively DO live in a Cave in West Virginia.
/. has begun it's downhill slide with this "news item"
Give us a break and post something relevant, like new news on Beowulf clusters matching the performance of Cray T3E Supercomputers?
It's official -
ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
This same basic story was posted about a year ago. Hell, the dude who did it even made a post. Come on people.... Drink more coffee so your memory will be retained for more then an hour.
Jolt also works.
Harper's didn't run the story until it was old news, at least for those of us in Michigan, where it was "local news"!
After I caught up on this story (admittedly, I had completely forgotten about it when I moved over to the Metro Detroit area, until I picked it up in a magazine while waiting for an appointment somewhere) 3 years ago, I was working about 2 miles from where this all happened.. drove by there for kicks. Didn't seem like anybody/thing was glowing. lol
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I saw the title, and thought that a college student had successful cloned something in his backyard shed. That being said, I off to do that in my garage... then I can be get a story on slashdot.
----
First make Spot glow in the dark, next clone him...
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
It's certainly an interesting story. In spite of being an incredibly stupid thing to do, the kid definitely earned his geek merit badge with his little stunt. "You installed Linux on your PS2? Hey, that's great - I built a breeder reactor out of old watches."
Still, it's an old story. Maybe it's just a slow news day, but how is this particularly newsworthy?
"I don't believe it took more than 5 years off my life. The amount of years it took off the lives of my offspring, however, is yet to be seen..."
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
This was posted here about a year ago
yeah, didn't he say he was in the navy now and banned from working with nuclear subs, bombs etc becuase he's already received over the maximum safe dosage for a human being in their lifetime?
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Seriously, why are we posting this 4 *year* old story? And the editors even know it is 4 years old!
I don't suppose a story about Mozilla vs. Microsoft on CNN would be more useful than this old, useless story?
2002-06-17 17:43:06 Writeup on Mozilla vs. Microsoft (articles,mozilla) (rejected)
Hmmm...I guess not. Oh well. Old stories for all!
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
A Scout is:
Trustworthy,
Loyal,
Helpful,
Friendly,
Courteous,
Kind,
Obedient,
Cheerful,
Thrifty,
Brave,
Clean,
and Reverent.
I think the only thing they could fault him for is "Clean," but I'd give him bonus points for "Thrifty." Makes me proud to be a Boy Scout.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/0 3/0026226
Quoate 1: Finally, David, whose safety precautions had thus far consisted of wearing a makeshift lead poncho and throwing away his clothes and changing his shoes following a session in the potting shed
...
Quote 2: the house was rocked by an explosion in the basement. There they found David lying semiconscious on the floor, his eyebrows smoking. Unaware that red phosphorus is pyrophoric, David had been pounding it with a screwdriver and ignited it.
Quote 3: David pulverized the ores with a hammer, thinking that he could then use nitric acid to isolate uranium. [...] David made his own [nitric acid] by heating saltpeter and sodium bisulfate, then bubbling the gas that was released through a container of water, producing nitric acid. He then mixed the acid with the powdered ore and boiled it, ending up with something that "looked like a dirty milk shake."
Quote 4: Another year, David was expelled from camp when [...] he stole a number of smoke detectors to disassemble for parts he required for his experiments.
This kid is a walking advertisement for the Darwin Awards
-Sean
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
are a leading indicator of its impending demise.
Stay tuned for a story along the same lines
as
Kuro5hin Closing
Yesterday at Wal-mart I saw a suspicious-looking guy wearing a"Death to America" T-shirt buying up all the smoke detectors. I just assumed he was overzealous about fire safety.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I originally read this in the Reader's Digest three years ago. I've been looking for the article ever since.
In lieu of recent happenings, perhaps, it would be best not to mention the fact that I had wanted a nuclear reactor too.
Oh... wait... there is the door.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Slow news day chrisd/scubacuda?
It's official - /. has begun it's downhill slide with this "news item"
Note to moderators: This should be "+5 droll", or "+5 sarcastic", or even "+5 troll". Since none of those are available, I guess "+5 funny" will do.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Someone forgot to search slashdot before posting.
01/06/03
is it even true? i always thought it was a joke...
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
was a friend of this guy (and in his Boy Scout troop). He helped him procure a few materials (especially the sprinkler pieces).
It's seriously an old story, but it is nice to know that this guy is helping out the Navy with their reactors.
Seriously, who better to monitor these mothers than a guy who can make a backup on his own?
Is this guy related to Otto Hahn .. nobel prize winner that discovered fission.
Seems a sort of coincidence.
-Johan
While this is an oldish story (1998) it is not the pathetic self congratulatory lame princeton story.
What I would like to know is (a) why the Princeton story is pathetic and lame and (b) how we are supposed to evaluate such a claim with nothing but a link to Amazon.com.
As far as I can tell, the Harper's story is pretty smarmy. Note all the claims that he was a "normal" kid by all appearances (as if that matters) ... but all the time he was playing with evil nucular materials! Bwahahahahaha!
Blech.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Someone with a science background can fill in the details that I've missed, but from my understanding, the first atomic pile that actually producted nuclear fission in any large form was setup in a squash court at some university. Basically then put uranium bricks in a corner of the court, put in some other bricks to act as the moderator and they produced the first working nuc. It just goes to show you, american's shouldn't be worried about Osama bin Laden and his followers halfway around the world, they should be worried about High School students working in their basements..
-?-
Well at least the timelines are getting longer than 2 days :-)
Think of all that wasted time he could have been masturbating...
Umm, if I remember properly isn't this an 'urban legend' like the jet powered chevy impala?
Actually the story of the jet powered chevy isn't an urban legend -- it really happened. Fox had a clip of the attempt on one of their "World's ..." shows. Some moron simply fastened two makeshift wings onto the sides of his car and equipped it with a jet engine. He was planning to jump over a river using a ramp. Well, when the car left the edge of the ramp and began the "jump" the wings fell off immediately and the car starting doing an end-over-end flip.
I remember laughing my ass off at that clip. It just looked so stupid. You could tell the moron had no clue what he was doing. Even when the announcer said the guy died in the attempt, it was still impossible to stop laughing. I guess maybe I'm a sicko or something...
GMD
watch this
this is very old. I discovered this story last year, apparently from a couple of links from some other /. article...
I remember reading this story years ago & it was the first thing that popped into my head when the news of the 'dirty bomber' came out. This kid managed to piece together a decent amount of radioactive material. Since the real point of a dirty bomb is fear, the actual amount of material doen't have to be that great to achieve the desired effect ie. closing down a large section of a major metropolitan area for cleanup & causing mass panic. If a boy scout can gather this much material, then any dedicated individual can.
"I don't believe I took more than five years off my life..."
...Unfortunately those were the years I was planning on having sex...damnit!
This
If I was a corporation (or a government lab) I would be clamoring to hire this kid. He's smart, he's motivated, he has more ingenuity than 20 average people combined, and he obviously has great science skills. Put him in a lab with whatever supplies he needs, and just sit back and let him invents stuff.
Actually, he was an evil kid playing with normal nuclear materials! Damn journalists always get it wrong.
/. about a year ago.
Oh, and this is an old story. It even made it to
I think the story was just an urban legend. For a geiger counter to be reading that high from across the street, the radiation near the source would have to be pretty intense.
My blog: Click here
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/0 3/0026226
Hello editors? Are we awake?
The same story was posted a year ago on slashdot.
Knock, knock, anybody in there?
The BSA is a Church for Boys. Even the Supreme Court said as much when they (rightly) said they can discriminate. I don't disagree with that one bit.
Howevever, all other TAX EXEMPT CHRURCHES aren't given special access to military installations, 1000s of acres of land, and the ablility to hire LOBBIESTS in WASHINGTON.
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
And at the time I remeber the consensus was that he hadn't made any kind of reactor at all, all he had actualy managed to do was isolate a bunch of radioactive junk and produce a pile of low grade radioactive waste. No fission reaction had been accomplished, nothing useful had been done. Not much had been learned, except that if you quietly bang around in your shed no one will pay much attention until you blow something up or get busted by the cops.
That and work on his own personal Darwin award
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
TOmorrow I'm gonna submit a story about how Linux kernal 2.0 was finally released... :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Yeah, he did din't he.....
----
wTf
Where the hell have you been? Slashdot began its downhill slide years ago, when they picked up John Katz and Taco and his buddies started making money off the site. This "news item" marks the rock-bottom point of the slide. They posted this story a year ago, and it was old news then...
"Beowulf clusters matching the performance of Cray T3E Supercomputers?"
Sorry, but I find making a reactor out of old smoke detectors to be far more interesting than Beowulf clusters. Not all of us blow a load over processor cycles.
"Derp de derp."
I'm pretty sure there's even been a movie made about this kid's work (HBO?).
j.
However I'm surprised that the "Powers That Be" haven't killed this story since it has step by step directions on how to make uranium-233.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
"This same basic story was posted about a year ago."
I wasn't a Slashdot visitor a year ago. I found the story mildly entertaining.
Stop acting like posting a story means another story doesn't get posted.
"Derp de derp."
I wonder if that kid trying to build his own nuclear reactor knew that nuclear fission can occur if you put metal in the microwave. It's a longshot, like one in 500,000, but you might make the whole block go boom!
How ya like dat?
And they wonder where terrorists get plutonium...
My complaint about John Ashcroft
May I be cynical for a bit? I hope you don't mind,
but with Ashcroft's latest barrage of
malodorous notions, I can't resist the urge to make a
few cynical comments. To get right
down to it, some of the facts I'm about
to present may seem shocking. This
they certainly are. However, it's time that a few
facts had a chance to slip through the fusillade of hype.
What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it
in the form of a question: Where are the people
who are willing to stand up and acknowledge
that Ashcroft, in his infinite wisdom, has decided
to destroy the natural beauty of our parks and forests?
On the surface, it would seem to have something to do
with the way that his whole approach is repugnant.
But upon further investigation, one will find that
by allowing Ashcroft to put mephitic thoughts in our
children's minds, we are allowing him to play puppet master.
As for the lies and exaggerations, Ashcroft's
epigrams are rife with contradictions
and difficulties; they're entirely maladroit,
meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited
for a supposedly educated population.
And as if that weren't enough, if Ashcroft is going to
obstruct important things, then he should at least have
the self-respect to remind himself of a few things: First, a
true enemy is better than a false friend. And
second, many people respond to his debauched vituperations
in much the same way that they respond to television
dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but
they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything
about them. That's why I insist we pronounce the truth
and renounce the lies.
Even people who consider themselves scornful
foolhardy-types generally agree that Ashcroft's slurs
symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided rebellion
-- extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us
lose more than a little freedom. One might conclude
that Ashcroft is incapable of writing a letter without using
such phrases as "crapulous pop psychologists", "loquacious
exhibitionists", "oppressive personae non gratae", or
some combination thereof. Alternatively, one might conclude
that Ashcroft has a different view of reality from the rest of us.
In either case, if you're not part of the solution,
then you're part of the problem. His historical record of
fickle pleas is clearer than the muddled pronouncements
of his apple-polishers for a variety of reasons. For
instance, the worst sorts of inconsiderate Neanderthals there
are must be treated with political justice, not with
civil justice, as they are sincerely not real citizens. Let me
rephrase that: I wonder if he really believes the
things he says. He knows they're not true, doesn't he?
A complete answer to that question would
take more space than I can afford, so I'll have to give
you a simplified answer. For starters, if
we let him cause riots in the streets, then greed,
corruption, and tribalism will characterize the government.
Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens.
And lies and deceit will be the stock and trade of the
media and educational institutions.
Even Ashcroft's bedfellows couldn't deal with the full impact of
Ashcroft's refrains. That's why they created "Ashcroft-ism," which is
just a garrulous excuse to force square
pegs into round holes. He plans to drag everything
that is truly great into the gutter. He has instructed
his votaries not to discuss this or even admit to his
plan's existence. Obviously, Ashcroft knows he has
something to hide. Most of you reading this letter
have your hearts in the right place. Now
follow your hearts with actions. I have traveled the length and
breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can
therefore assure you that Ashcroft's artifices cannot stand on
their own merit. That's why they're dependent on elaborate
artifices and explanatory stories to convince us that Ashcroft's
warnings can give us deeper insights into the nature of
reality. We can and we must protect ourselves by any means
necessary against the unrestrained bestiality
of stupid, quasi-macabre paper-pushers. And that's the honest truth.
When reading the comments for this story, I saw this quote at the bottom of the page:
"What I tell you three times is true. -- Lewis Carroll"
In light of the redundancy of this news item and its dubious source(s), perhaps this is all a joke?
Blah
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
...cos I never saw it the first time :)
Talk about a mad kid.
Get your own free personal location tracker
"BSA Sponsors Domestic Terrorism"
;P
;)
woulda been more catchy headline
so if little davie can build a reactor what's stopping achmed
Time to eat some Karma.
/. Reading stories in that section will require tolerating some troll activity, but at least it's a way of bypassing some narrow sighted power-triping editors.
I think it's Bullshit that Timothy or some other Tin Medal Dictator rejected the MS vs. Mozilla story. It's worth noting when the major media covers an open source project. Especially when that mdeia outlet in no other than CNN, a division of the company that owns Mozilla.
My only question is how long did it take to reject you story?
I suggest it's time for a rejected stories section on
Slashdot: Open source, not open-minded.
I see some people complaining that this story is old, how is it newsworthy. Well let's put it into context with what is going on in the world today. There is a looming threat of dirty bombs being used in the USA. Previously I wasn't too worried, because although I knew the terrorists were good at making bombs, I had assumed it was fairly tough to generate radioactive material that could make them radioactive.
Then I read a story about a 17-year old kid with not much money and a lot of time generating a heap of radiation.
Now add hundreds of thousands or even millions in funding, [at least slightly] better equipment, and you might want to wake up.
But as that lady riding on a New York subway said in a CNN article I read, "If I were really nervous about these terrorists, I'd probably be underground somewhere."
Ahem.
"And like that
I remember this story a while ago in high school. Specifically because my friends gave me crap about how I was gonna make a nuclear reactor at home for a science project. I Decided against it :), enriching u238 for a science project could get messy, that and the fact that I couldn't get all the materials together on a $20/week allowance.
But this time it was posted just after a story about growing new Thymus organs. Probably not a coincidence...
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
This isn't a troll, or flamebait, or anything. It's fact.
The last time this was posted, there were a flurry of links and mentionings of it being fake. Mostly they dealt with the fact that there was no way the amount of materials he supposedly smuggled from antiques would be sufficient to do what he was doing.
It was quickly identified as a fake story, although if news sources keep posting it as fact who knows, people might actually believe it.
Regards,
levine
Maybe the "Powers that Be" aren't quite the dreadful authoritarian monsters that most slashdot posters like to think they are. Nah, that couldn't be true. They're just a bunch of clones of Hitler, right?
The part about the Enrico Fermi I power plant at Detroit Edision is inaccurate. The plant is still alive and functioning today. The costs part are correct however.....
This was already on slashdot a while back, but posted with a different link. It was definitely many months agao, but it's yet another great slashdot repeat posting.
The mozilla story is ancient and well covered here on slashdot. I agree that the article these comments are attached to is also quite old, but this CNN article is really nothing terribly insightful. It's saying the same thing we've heard a thousand times. IE runs the world. Mozilla took a long time. AOL might be able to push mozilla by putting it in their client. I mean, was there one element of new information in there.
at least this re-hashed article is an interesting read. I've read it twice before and I still enjoyed skimming over it again because it's fascinating to see how a kid could build such a thing. It's even more fascinating given the recent context of Al Qaeda, dirty bombs, etc. Had this kid been malevolent enough to take his radioactive toys and wrap it around a pipe bomb, we would have had a nasty mess. Good to refresh our memories on how frighteningly easy it is to do this sort of thing.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
we did already have this story on /. right?
suckers.
"the house was rocked by an explosion in the basement. There they found David lying semiconscious on the floor, his eyebrows smoking. Unaware that red phosphorus is pyrophoric, David had been pounding it with a screwdriver and ignited it. "
Hmmm i think ill split this atom i found. *gets screwdriver, hammer...*
wap
wap
wap
*KABOOM*
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Slashdot
Leaders in trailing edge technology.
Really, 1998!
Oh yeah they have had it for while... usualy it is awarded for things like wiping your ass with poison oak or pissing on the electric fence. But as I said this kid was only working on getting it
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Come off it... Everything's on it's downhill slide. Name one thing that wasn't better before.
I've seen the links back to the story from last year, but didn't see any posts for David. Can you provide more information?
Good grief!
I can't believe how difficult it can be to find an older article around this place!
- Slashdot -- June 2, 2001. Title: "Duct Tape"
- I remember posting another comment about David Hahn at a much later date, (and asking Pathwalker if he had any recent info) but I can't seem to find it! (Dammit.)
Slashdot's robots.txt file is comprehensively restrictive, so if I feed Google "David Hahn site:slashdot.org", I get nothing.Would you please release (every few months or perhaps annually) a complete archive of Slashdot on CD or DVD? I imagine a simple .tar of the database would be sufficient, as most of your users would be quite capable of handling (and searching) that format. Personally, I think raw articles (no slashboxes, sidebars, etc...) in HTML format would be very useful.
Since CD/DVD production is relatively inexpensive, this could potentially be a non-trivial source of revenue for /.
Alternatively, perhaps Google could be convinced to donate one of their search appliances? Since many of us are quite proficient and familiar with Google's operation, it would make searching our collective memory that much easier.
Further, if a donation from Google is not possible, there are likely many of us who would be willing to donate to a search appliance fund.
Please, PLEASE consider these (and any other!) options to improve Slashdot searching.
Sincerely,
Raetsel.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
FreeBSD split in 1993 from 386BSD and 4.3BSD. OpenBSD split in 1995 from NetBSD. NetBSD split in 1993 from 386BSD and 4.3BSD. So, unless you routinely play around with the kernel source itself, the answer is not much at all. The most noticable thing is that FreeBSD uses bold text when it boots, where OpenBSD uses reversed text. If you want a BSD system to just play around with, FreeBSD would probably be a better choice, but OpenBSD (and espicially NetBSD) support more architectures. For example, I don't think UltraSparc's are supported in FreeBSD yet, but they are in OpenBSD.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Right here
I don't think that David Hahn himself posted in the previous story; some acquaintances/friends from the period did, however, and at least one posted again in this story.
...since he's going to need that new thymus before long.
I saw a pair of guys with shaved heads and black trenchcoats buying some guns at a local Wal*Mart.
Nope. Apparently not.
I'm no nuclear weapons engineer, but everything I've read says dirty bombs,
- Do less damage, to people and things, than a plain old-fashioned bomb filled with nails.
- Can be cleaned up (for contaminated humans, at least) by stripping and washing yourself with a garden hose.
- Cost so much more than a standard terrorist bomb to make, and being less effective (if you discount the hype and resulting fear), that we should hope the terrorists waste their resources on it instead of something more dangerous.
Communist Loosers In Turd
Wow !
Mystic faggot powers.
Do you see a pink aura on your first posts ?
That meme irritates me a bit - it seems to imply that evolution never favors risk-taking. Actually, evolution favors a good balance between risk-taking and fear. If you are paralyzed by fear you won't win any "Darwin Awards" on the internet, but you won't get any rewards from life either.
I think most people who talk about "Darwin Awards" are overlooking the fact that death by excessive risk-taking is not the only kind of death - starvation awaits those who do not take enough risks.
OK, reactor boy is great. Is it better than the JATO car story? I'd call this a genre, but I can only think of these two stories. Then of course there are "geek legends" that are actually true, like the guy who built the roller-coaster in Indiana. Can anybody think of more geek legends, if we can think of enough then there could be a poll.
Note, mere "hacking" doesn't qualify. In order to be a geek legend, you have to be a single person, or perhaps a very small group, you have to be outside the corporate setting, you have to work with a technology that is dangerous and thought to be beyond the scope of what such a group can deal with. For example, concoct a story about a guy who built a submarine in his garage, took it out to sea, and penetrated a carrier battle group. Nobody can verify it because the Navy immediatly classified his plans, moved the model to storage, and ordered him to clam up (under threat of treason charges) for national security reasons because the plans might allow enemies to penetrate carrier groups. If you want to author such a story, feel free to take this idea and flesh it out. Post it to /.. I think we would all enjoy it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Could such an ubergeek acquire one with 5 less years to work with? I suppose he was counting on some of the potting shed spiders to become radioactive and then bite him so he could get buff like Spiderman. Or with enough radiation he himself might mutate enough to reproduce by budding, ala yeast.
And the US Government says that terrorist's don't have the resources to build an atomic device but a 17 year old kid can? Well at least we don't have mass hysteria.
The Anti-Blog
I originally thought that a "breeder reactor" was a Mormon singles ward event.
The middle mind speaks!
A very disturbing image is generated in my mind, which is probably close to the truth:
We have here a story of a youth, estranged from both of his parents by divorce. He shuttles between the two families, each house on the opposite side of Detroit. Neither family seems to care much about his activities or schooling (and failures therein). Neither seems to understand or care about his activities. What they do understand, is that it "had to do with energy"...
He seems to have next to nothing for a social life. Scouts, probably a few friends in school. His girlfriend seems only "someone to be with", to fight the loneliness (hence the ton of letters to her) rather than a real "love affair" (not that I am expecting a romance here or anything, the relationship just seems to be a way to stave off the darkness that surrounds him).
With this kind of a life, most teenagers would, at this point, turn to "standard" forms of destructive behavior - drugs, gangs, violence. But not this guy. He attempts to hold on, going so far as to "appear" for most people outwardly normal, even earning his Eagle Scout badge. He has his darkness, though, and continues to spiral down . This culminates in his building up a highly radioactive "waste pit" in the backyard of one of his parent's house.
Neither family understands why (though it should be plain to see), and the mother tosses the lot of it (and she wasn't even wearing the apron) into the garbage, to eventually get down to the water table, or elsewhere. Still, I have this image of this kid, hallowed eye (to a point), making and stiring up "concoctions" for the point of building a breeder reactor in his backyard, knowing the dangers, taking some precautions (but not enough), and then only dismantling it partially (and storing it in the trunk of his car?!) and hiding the evidence. It makes you wonder what he was really doing to have that cop called on him - waiting for a friend doesn't look like "stealing tires" - so why were they called?
It is a dismal image - I can imagine him failing, and perhaps getting severely angry (perhaps from failing, perhaps from other reasons, with failure "igniting" the anger) - in a small "nervous breakdown" rage smashing things in his "lab" - damn the radiation! Damn the consequences!
But in the end - it seems like it is all about an individual whose family broke apart prematurely in his life, and he is trying to find the pieces.
You know what scares me?
He more than likely is still that scared, struggling youth, only in a mans body. He is an adult now, and he may have some semblance of a real life. But is that still just another cover, his adult Eagle Scout merit badge?
Look at what he is studying now. Look at the type of things he is studying. That's right, it isn't about homebrew nuclear reactors anymore.
It is about biotech now...
I'm no nuclear weapons engineer, but everything I've read says dirty bombs,
- Do less damage, to people and things, than a plain old-fashioned bomb filled with nails.
- Can be cleaned up (for contaminated humans, at least) by stripping and washing yourself with a garden hose.
- Cost so much more than a standard terrorist bomb to make, and being less effective (if you discount the hype and resulting fear), that we should hope the terrorists waste their resources on it instead of something more dangerous.
If you manage to steal any of the spent fuel that's lying around, or even a medium-sized shipment of medical isotopes, you have enough to contaminate a good chunk of the core of a major city. While harder to acquire than a few bags of fertilizer, it's by no means prohibitively hard.
The actual health effects of the contamination would be next to nil. But the goal of terrorism is exactly that - terror. North America is full of people who run around screaming about nuclear reactors which release less radiation than the concrete in their basements. People would go *nuts* if a dirty bomb raised background radiation by *any* detectable amount.
Not even a nerve gas attack would cause that much mayhem. It would be the perfect attack.
Nevermind the fact that lawsuits over alleged health problems from the infinitesimally higher exposure would drag on for decades.
Relax! With his methods, he would never have been able to create any fission chain reaction. Sure, his technic can be used to build a "dirty bomb" - but a nuke never. The hardest trick in making a nuke is extreme difficulty increasing the purity of Radioactive isotopes. And he would be dead long before the purity reached dangerous level (let alone it is very hard - one needs acre sized plants for diffusion or centrifuge and hundreds of megawatts of power and millions of gallons of water)
Some may even recall when this was a story line in Bloom County.
Oliver made a working reactor by scraping the luminescent material off 10,000 watch hands.
btw, i'm typing this on my Banana Junior
Of course, the same basic story was also made into a movie called The Manhattan Project in 1986. One can only speculate where this kid got the idea.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Now, the rumor I heard for how he was caught was the following:
He had to move his experiments somewhere besides that shed, so he filled the trunk of his car with the material. On his way to school, he had to drive over a railroad crossing. Apparently there was some sort of radiation sensor by the track, and it started tripping twice a day, always at the same time.
The other rumor I had heard, was that he had given up, and had given most of the radioactive material to a friend who wanted to keep experimenting shortly before he was raided.
I know I'll probably get moded "off topic" but the truth is it really is on topic.
What we need is a new option in Slashdot user preferences that doesn't show articles that have already been posted to the front page. That way people with a memory don't have to wade through the re-posts that happen frequently enough to be annoying. The most annoying part of it is that most of the time you have to spend a decent amount of time just trying to figure out if its an update on a previously posted topic or just another re-post of the exact same article.
Of course the much simpler way to handle it would be to force Slashdot editors to, at the very least, search the archives for any articles that contain the exact same URL linked to in the potential article. I doubt it would be very hard to code it in as a hard wired feature of slash that just automatically searches the body of all back news pieces. Then it could simply list off any articles that posses the same link making it really easy for an editor to see repeat posts before they make it to the front page. Heck even a manual search of the archives before posting every new article would be enough to catch most re-posts and it wouldn't take much time.
The only problem with the auto search idea is that there are plenty of times where commercial web sites like intel.com get linked to. In this case there could simply be a list of well know URLs (predominantly the base URL for corporations and other large organizations). Any links in a potential article that are included in the list could be excluded from the search.
This, of course, says nothing for the, oh so hard, cut-and-paste of all articles into MS Word (or any similar editor with a spell checker) that should also be mandatory for any web site that calls itself a news source. I find myself straying from the main point of the post now though.
This has been an opinion post sprinkled with a little bit of annoyance that this issue keeps getting ignored by the Slashdot editorial staff no matter how many times it gets mentioned in threads. It was not intended as a troll or as flame-bait.
-GameMaster
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
With all the media hype over "Dirty Bombs" I think this article pretty much best outlined how easy it would be to build one... Right down to the nitric acid.
Spooky.
Teacher: For show and tell today Oliver Wendell Jones is going to show us a model of an atomic bomb.
Oliver: Oh it's not a modle it's real.
Teacher: Where did you get the radioactive material?
Oliver: I scraped the glow in the dark material off of 10,000 watch hands.
Teacher: You mean...?
Oliver: Yep... KABOOM!!!
Teacher: OK everyone... fire drill!
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
The Kid's name is Hahn! The same name as Otto Hahn, one of the forerunners of nuclear science. Here's a bio of Hahn.
Big Brother has never been better...
I guess I should submit this as a story/topic and see if people like...Its kinda recursive in a weird sorta way...
..........FULL STOP.
it may not be a tar archive, but if your intrested in raw html, this is as close as it gets: http://slashdot.org/palm/
works well with Avantgo too
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Im sure its around here somewhere...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm a total Clavin, and I say stupid things to girls I like. So technically, I am preventing myself from breeding. I guess it's better than up-chucking on 'em like Stan.
OHHHH! Whatta ya gonna do about it, Stan DARSH!
I'll go home tonight, finish drawing my anime pr0n of Android 18, spank da monkey/drink beer/pass out.
Now that I think about it...I'm more of a Yamcha (pre-wish) than a Clavin. I'm just scared/scarred of chicks.
What's interesting is that guy's name... any relation to Otto Hahn? :)
So he mangaed to move the radiation around
he built what boils down to a radiation/particle gun, the fact that he pointed it at what was debateably uranium is more or less irrelevent had he pointed his geiger counter at a wad of aluminium foil that he was bombarding with assorted radiation he would have seen a similar rise in radiation. At any rate I agree that he did manage to isolate some radioactive elements, but anything else he may have accomplished boils down to making a radioactive mess in the shed.
And if this doesn't show that he is darwin award material I don't know what does. A little knowledge mixed with a bunch of ignorance and ingenuity at an early age.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I can't believe all the "This is old news! I'm a 1334 /. oldschooler!" posts for this topic. Were you people around 9 months ago when an international organization funded a multi-million dollar massacre? How many thousands of militant US-haters dream about carrying a block of uranium to the roof of a building in Manhattan and blowing themselves up? If a kid could irradiate his backyard with a few hundred dollars in supplies, how easy would it be to get such materials in countries that are 50 years behind the US in hazardous materials regulations?
Everyone got their lead suits on?
Woops! He screwed up like the Germans did and did not realize that Carbon contains Boron, a powerful neutron absorber. Or did he?
Miller, a nuclear-savvy high-school friend in whom David had confided, warned him that real reactors use control rods to regulate nuclear reactions. Miller recommended cobalt, which absorbs neutrons but does not itself become fissionable.
Ieeee! Cobalt may suck down neutrons, but it does so by making Cobalt-60, a powerful gamma emitter with a five year half life. Not good, kids better to use borax.
The article over all is sinister and alarmist. While the author bettered himself by reading snippits of the Golder Book of Chemistry, the overall tone is that knowledge and should be controled like materials that can POTENTIALY be abused. The parents were at fault for alowing this to go on and not seeking help at the university, but the contamination produced was not great. Our here might not have realized that he had stepped into illegal or unhealthy concentrations. Overall, as the "garbage go the good stuff", there was very little stuff to he had. Most municpal dumps have radiation detectors for the protection of the public and workers. It's kind of a last step in the control of medical isotopes and what not; if the isotope is not controled by the state/federal regulator; if the isotope is lost by the hospital; if the isotope goes to Mexico and comes back; if the isotope is sold or disposed of and can't be found, the isotpe will make it's way to a dump and be found there. That the local dump did not alarm is reassuring. He could have really hurt himself by ingesting some of his work, and his set up was childish and silly, but it's doubtful he ever possed a real threat to his neighbors.
The sad part is that his tallents were not channeled properly, that he never was convinced of the need to study other foundation material like math, that today he is a simple sailor. It's good for the Navy to have such a bright fellow, but bad for the rest of us. At age 21, it's not too late for this man to be educated and made useful. He has more curiosity and energy than most people. Go back to school, David.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This story is SOOOOO old. I read about it two years ago while working at a reactor facility... We came to the mutual conclusion that having the know-how to do something like this sure as hell doesn't mean that you SHOULD. The thing that really struck me was that while this kid obviously had an understanding of some of the involved physics, was there no alarm in the back of his head? I mean, you're building a NUCLEAR REACTOR. Did the health risks even occur to him?
Hm...I have this one. Here is a page with info and the requirements (and, interestingly, a link to this same article): Atomic Energy.
At first I thought this wouldn't actually fulfill any of the requirements, but another look (it's been awhile) shows that you CAN do a model of a reactor and label all of the parts. The article about him didn't mention anything about labels, and some MB counselors can be real sticklers about the wording of the requirements. Betcha he didn't get any credit for it, or had to go back and label his parts! On the other hand...it didn't say "non-functional model using soup cans, timbles, and elbow macaroni", either. Guess it would have been alright, providing he had his parts and their functions clearly labeled.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
"A Scout is honest, etc." "Honest" is the first one. He was using pseudonyms and claiming to be a professor. And I don't know of any merit badge that this project could possibly fill the requirements for; at least not one that he shouldn't have submitted it for as soon as he had a reaction of any sort, as work on merit badges expires after so many months' time. Moreover, if it was not for a merit badge but for his Eagle Scout project, one's Eagle Scout project is a team leadership project, not a solitary design/construction project. His entire pretense is invalid and his failure to live within the Scout Motto is saddening, especially when all the news reports give constant mention of his Boy Scouting.
This story has personal relevance for me. My brother and I were in the same Boy Scout troup as David Hahn, and went to high school with him. He's two years older than me, I believe, and one year younger than my brother. He briefly served as Senior Patrol Leader; I believe my Totin' Chit (knife certification card) was signed by him.
One of the things I've noticed about all the articles I've read about him, is that they seem to give him credit for too much competence. On more than one occasion he showed up at a scout meeting with his eyebrows missing and his face red and burned from something gone awry. He used to pull me aside and tell me that he had Americanium in his pocket, at which point I would tell him he was probably making himself sterile, which he would shrug off. This is not good science by any means.
He would ask my brother chemistry questions, and (after my brother stopped coming to meetings) he would ask me for advice about chemicals, reactions, nuclear power, etc (I, who was two years his junior and yet to take high school chemistry). We knew about some of his experiments, but in a lot of ways assumed he was exaggerating. And we didn't know the extent to which he had lied and swindled to obtain his supplies. We didn't know until we saw the report about the EPA on the news, cleaning up a backyard shed and thought, "Good God, that must be Dave..."
I've given several interviews with an author who was apparently working on a full length book on Dave at various times as an undergrad, but I don't know if the book ever saw the light of day. Between the EPA incident and his joining the navy, my dad and I ran into him at the local Kroger where he was a stock boy (or something). His skin color was bright orange. He was experimenting with artificial tanning, and babbled on in pseudo-science talk about trying to permanently modify his skin color. ?! And last I heard he was a helmsman on the carrier Enterprise (though that was a few years ago, now).
Several things frustrate me about this whole story:
1) That he still made Eagle Scout. The Board of Review for advancement in Rank is composed of senior leaders of the troop; they are supposed to judge a candidate and, if they aren't satisfied, can refuse him the rank if they find him not meeting character requirements, etc. (what with the lying, cheating, etc, one would think Dave did not). But politics on local and notional board levels has contributed to what I consider dilution of the award in more cases than this (note, I'm not an eagle scout myself, i'm just arguing on principle).
2) What he did was really, really stupid and dangerous. This is not an inspiring tale of a brilliant young man, but a cautionary tale of how a little knowledge and not much common sense can cause lots of trouble.
3)This gets publicity for years, but legitimate science by young people is often overlooked.
Sigh. I'll end my rant now. But I get frustrated everytime I see this story come up yet again.
-Wombat.
too dismayed for a sig.
(Dave, if you're somehow reading this, I'm sorry, but what you did was dumb)
I don't need to read any chem books, just print out this article, and bam! ....
Oh yeah. I forgot to mention, but as my brother pointed out in another comment, we used to call Dave "Glow Boy."
Just thought people might find that amusing, if they hadn't seen it before...
-Wombat.
I remember this because... wait for it
I'm a Tasmanian...
true...
Burma?
Radioactive Products and Other Sources Of Radiation
Amateur Radiation Detection and Experimentation Page
I recall reading about this instance in Reader's Digest. And on slashdot, years ago. I can't believe it's been reposted, some 4 years later.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Amazing, isn't it? Every year teenagers kill themselves with cars, motorbikes, guns, alcohol and drugs, in the first few cases often killing other people in the process. They also develop the smoking habit that will ultimately take years off their lives. Not a big story. Someone accumulates a quantity of radioisotopes and doesn't kill anybody, and this is a big story.
Because, unlike all the other things mentioned, radioactivity is really scary and nasty and dangerous and might get used by terrorists
Or because most people are totally irrational about radioactivity
But yes, I'm prejudiced. Possibly because I was interested in the same things as David but I got encouraged by a sympathetic physics teacher, result a Cambridge science degree. For me this story is about the failure of a useless education system to identify and foster talent, resulting in an underperforming 20 year old who on the face of it had the energy and talent, with a bit of support, to make Harvard.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Zane, I must say that sig is JUST WRONG! I ALMOST FRICKIN FELL OUTTA MY DAMN CHAIR. GOOD GOD THAT SCARED THE CRAP OUTTA ME!
The fact that it's 1 in the morning and there weren't any lights on may have had some effect...
At least half of the posters who are calling this guy a dumbass are really saying to thimselves.
>
I read this story somewhere else. I remember having some problems with it. I thought it sounded like an urban legend. Has anyone done any serious fact checking on this one?
You seem to stress on the fact that the guy should have been denied the award just because he stole a few small things and lied?
Give me a break! Tell me, would he have done this if he had direct access to these materials in the first place? I find it disgusting that you'd place more importance to such trivialities of character, rather than his scientific spirit.
In this context, this quote by HL Mencken comes to mind --
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret.... His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.
-- H. L. Mencken
The guy has to be more than just admired for the fact that with little or no resources, he's built something that's definitely worth commending.
2) What he did was really, really stupid and dangerous. This is not an inspiring tale of a brilliant young man, but a cautionary tale of how a little knowledge and not much common sense can cause lots of trouble.
Huh? You know something? Any path that does not involve risk ultimately leads to stagnation. It's only the people who take risks, who are unafraid to break through the odds who help humanity progress.
You cannot hope to build a rocket without risking it crashing somewhere. If that's the case, then most of the world's greatest scientists are idiots by your scale.
If I didn't know better, I'd probably say you're jealous of this guy. Come on man! You're supposed to be an astrophysist (atleast that's what I gather from your site), you should know this of all people!!!
All said and done, he's one smart dude. Naive yes, and a little ignorant too, but one of the smarter ones with a creative streak.
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/%7Eups/humor/bomb.html
Scene: 1906, burly men pounding on anvils with massive hammers. "Atom Smashing"
Burns Senior inspects a workers pockets as he leaves:
"AH HA! Atoms! 1...2..3..4...5 SIX of them! Take him away!"
Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong. It's made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old -
Unfortunately I think you're missing/misunderstanding my point in a lot of ways.
;-) .
You said, "You seem to stress on the fact that the guy should have been denied the award just because he stole a few small things and lied?"
Yes indeed. I am stressing that. He stole lots of smoke detectors from a summer camp. He lied a lot. The Eagle Scout Award is not one given for scientific achievment. It's given for completing specific requirements, public service, and maintaining a certain level of character. It's not a, "well, you did an impressive feat, have an award," thing. It's not supposed to be like a honorary Oscar.
Second, if all he did was risk his own health, I would be far less critical. But with the experiments he was doing, he was putting the health of the community in danger (sort of anti-public service). A good scientist needs to have a sense of ethics. Yes, I agree that risk is inherent in new discovery, etc. but there is such a thing as acceptable risk. There's a reason the Space shuttle launches from a thin peninsula. Dave, at least from what I know and have read after the fact, did not even consider what effects his experiments might have on others. This was a serious lapse in judgement. This is why what I say was "really dumb," not to say that what he did didn't take hard work and dedication. But, IMHO, it was seriously misguided.
You also say, You cannot hope to build a rocket without risking it crashing somewhere. If that's the case, then most of the world's greatest scientists are idiots by your scale.
Since when did Stephen Hawking risk anyone's life? Brian Greene? Your statement here is silly, I'm afraid. See above section about acceptable risk. And I find your use of three exclamation points in the section I have not quoted inflamatory
Finally, you say that "When all is said and done, he's one smart dude." I guess this really depends on your definition of 'smart.' He did try to do something impressive, if dangerous, with at least a fair amount of chemistry knowledge at his disposal. I could give him the benefit of the doubt, and say that in conversations I had with him he feigned less knowledge than he had to make me feel like I could help him out, but I don't think that was the case. Maybe he advanced quickly shortly thereafter, and read a lot of books. In any case, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. And smart people can still do really stupid things.
-Wombat
Does anyone know what happened to David Hahn? Is he still in the US Navy? Did he go back to University?
About the first point, I'd say it's a question of perspective. I think a curious scientist meddling with "risky stuff" contributes a whole lot more to society than any good samaritanish work, or any kind of public service. Atleast that's my opinion, so it's entirely objective.
;-) .
:-P ;-)
:-) Relativity at work, I suppose...
Since when did Stephen Hawking risk anyone's life? Brian Greene?
Huh dude... those are theoretical physicists you're talking about! There is a very big difference working with your hands and working on paper. I do agree that both are important (I do theoretical physics myself) but I feel that we're losing out on people who can work with their hands. Who can actually build good stuff. This guy may not be great, but he's got a streak of initiative which a whole lot of people do not have.
And I find your use of three exclamation points in the section I have not quoted inflamatory
Ahem! I respect intellectuals!
Yes, I do agree that smartness and wisdom are relative terms. And in the end you say that smart people can do really stupid things. You know, a lot of people said that to Jules Verne abt his book "From Earth to the Moon".
And it is some of those stupidities that sometime give us wonderful things
And he almost won too
.
-
I can really really really see the experience and professionalism you're talking about. You're posting this at your $200k a year job? On the company computer?
Yikes.
There must be a bunch of people who dick around with dangerous chemicals etc as kids...
I got into it when I was 12 and ordered plans for making model rocket motors from one of the ads in Boys Life mag. There was an address for a chemical supply house from which I ordered 2 pints of concentrated sulfuric acid, 5lbs powdered potasium nitrate and 1lb powdered magnesium for about $35. I got sulfur powder from agway for $1.50/lb.
With this I made gunpowder, nitric acid, nitrocellulose, and replaced charcoal with Mg powder in the gumpowder formula ( 2 moles Mg for every mole of C in gunpowder recipe ) to make some seriously powerful flash powder that burned my hand enough to send me to the emergency room ( I lighted about a cubic centimeter of the mixture with a wooden match and the flash powder scorched my thumb and wrist )
I expected it to burn but I was suprised by how fast it went up. Once I learned the nature of the stuff ( do not make! it probably is not safe to handle, some mixtures are prone to go off spontaneously ) I made firecrackers by rolling up magazine subscription cards with toilet tissues, fuse and masking tape. These loosely confined firecrackers made 4 foot wide blinding white flashes and loud bangs when lit off.
I did things that would earn me a Darwin Award. But I was not as bad as this kid.
I could have made nitroglycerin ( Boy did I want to! ) but I didn't want to risk having hot acid explode and leave me a Freddy Krueger of a person. I could have made pipe bombs but I stuck to cardboard because there was no shrapnel and so it was safer.
I can't say I used common sense but this guy seems to have been asking for it..
My parents never knew the stuff I did. They knew I'd ordered chemicals, but they thought they were strictly for model rocket motors. Most of the explosions they heard were things I told them might happen. ( once, I tried powering a rocket engine with compressed air and hydrogen made with muriatic acid and charred aluminum cans in a pickle jar ) I wore goggles and the jar was behind cinder blocks and in a hole in the gravel driveway. When I used the sparker to ignite the engine there was still air in the jar and the resulting explosion blew the lid of the jar of acid 50 feet into the air and made the loudest bang I ever produced. I had done this with alcohol vapors and pure oxygen without that happening before...
This was all before the internet was widely available and research hard..
This post has no point accept that I wonder what other ppl have done that deserves a darwin award...
Eat at Joe's.
Many of the details in the article are quite inspired, but could not be carried out in practice. Probably Mr. Hahn embellished his exploits rather liberally. Hey, I would have done the same thing.
"Science allowed him to distance himself from his parents, to create and destroy things, to break the rules, and to escape into something he was a success at, while 'sublimating' a teenager's sense of failure, anger, and embarrassment into some
really big explosions."
To sublimate is to convert a solid Directly to a gas without first going through the liquid phase.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.