It is simply presumed that an average person is too stupid
Wow. If you just want the sources, here you go: Wikipedia, Harper’s Magazine article and the follow-up If you’re here for my digest, welcome back!
First, let’s acknowledge that David Hahn had a difficult life and while that is true of many people, not that many die the way he did. His death was ruled an accident, but looking at the chemicals he ingested and given that he overdosed on them, a layman could conclude he took his own life. This piece is a lighthearted take on David’s achievements, but before we bring out the jokes, I wanted to say I am sorry for how his life ended. He deserved better.
With that out of the way, I have one more disclaimer. I thought I was gonna do a digest, as the article seemed too long, but despite the length, it’s an absolute banger all the way, no filler. So I will only cover selected bits that have a relation I want to showcase. E.g. his step-dad’s name Michael Polasek implies he is of Czech origin. I am too!
The story takes place right about at a time when Czech Republic was still in federation with Slovakia, hence in the article we can read about Czechoslovakian firm producing uranium for commercial and university buyers, which sold David some radioactive samples. Normally, I’d complain, but as the story is set at the time of the division and the article is published in 1998, I’m not gonna suggest any corrections. If you didn’t follow any links so far and are shocked that an ordinary American citizen was hoarding radioactive substances, all I can say, that’s today’s topic!
At the time of the inception of the article, David was a sailor in the armed forces. I couldn’t help myself and I adapted Gigi Perez’s song:
Oh, won’t you kiss me on the mouth
and love me like a nuclear-breeder-reactor-designer?
And when you get a taste,
can you tell me, what’s my flavor?Gigi Perez - Sailor Song
Love, you taste just like Radium-226 paint scraped off antique clock face, mused David lovingly after tasting her sweet lips.
His mum and step dad were people who enjoyed simple things in life. They weren’t fazed by their son wearing a gas mask in their shed and that he would sometimes discard his clothing after working there until two in the morning. They thought their limited education didn’t allow them to understand what David was up to. Bless them!
Unfamiliar with how the (American) Boy Scouts work, I was surprised that the “Nuclear badge” is not arbitrary, but rather in a catalogue for the kids to choose. We’re gonna get to the point I am making in the heading later, but it is relevant here as well. The elites treat citizens like cattle, but sometimes there are exceptions. And there are many exceptions for children. Ordinary people interested in nuclear research? No, the ordinary person is too stupid, an agency worker thinks and wonders how to put this, so it sounds not as insulting. But kids, they can be anything they can imagine! Of course we’re gonna support you in learning about nuclear reactions, here, we have a syllabus prepared for you to earn your badge!
Another gold nugget (pun intended) from the article was this:
Hopes [for cheap atomic power] ran so high that Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission during the Nixon years, predicted that breeders would be the backbone of an emerging nuclear economy and that plutonium might be “a logical contender to replace gold as the standard of our monetary system.”
Sure, why not. Remember the scene from Atlas Shrugged: Part III, where the protagonist buys a croissant with a whole (!) gold coin? This dude, Glen Seaborg, saw this (well, he didn’t, because the movie didn’t exist, but it’s based on a book that did exist by the time he said this) and thought:
I envision a future where not only do we carry valuable commodities on us at all times, but also those items are radioactive. Sure, you might die of acute radiation poisoning by the time you leave the bakery, but on the bright side, your croissant will stay warm forever. [source NOT needed]
Anyway, at some point David concluded “it’s radioactive as heck”, then decided that he had “too much radioactive stuff in one place” and began to disassemble the reactor. I can only presume David used a swearword, but the interview captured heck instead and it’s good, because we don’t swear here. But man, I find it wild. He was trying to make a radioactive reactor, yet he was seemingly surprised when he succeeded. Surprisingly, he decided to get rid of the “radioactive as heck” laboratory. Now, seriously though, was he lacking in the prefrontal cortex league? If my goal is to make money, and I succeed, I know what to do with the money, I’d spend it. Why was he not prepared for success? Anyway, we have to pay respects to him, because his endurance is inspiring. Seriously, read the whole thing to see the hell he went through to make this “radioactive as heck” laboratory happen!
In the process of packing everything up, police interfered and in stupidity exclusive to police, they suspected they were dealing with a nuclear bomb and towed the vehicle (containing the “bomb”) to their headquarters. IDK, guys, if I suspected there’s a nuclear bomb, I would probably escalate things and maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t put it in a place, where police officers were heavily concentrated, as I would imagine that the designer of the bomb would be very happy if he could bomb specifically a large number of active policemen. Alas, the ancient saying says: it is what it is.
Later, David was interviewed by Dave Minnaar, a DPH radiological expert. In the interview, David told Minnaar that he had been trying to make thorium in a form he could use to produce energy and that he hoped “his successes would help him earn his Eagle Scout status.” surprised Pikachu face Guys, I am certain you don’t have to produce a working breeder reactor (that has never been commercially successful) or even produce a lab that’s “radioactive as heck” to get the badge. Just chill out. This reminds me of the scene from Pelíšky, where one of the characters comments on an intricate monument model that its authors want it to replace Stalin’s Monument, that it must have been a hard work to put it together, yet it’s just a silly toy. The author present takes this insult on the chin, as he recognizes the comment was not meant as an insult. While the similarity is not as clear cut as I would like it to be, I will take this opportunity to promote Czech culture.
While I’d love to share more of the article, I will leave the rest as homework to the curious reader. So, if you wanna know how the cleanup agency got the garbage, and the garbage got all the good stuff, you’ll have to follow the primary source. Last quotation I will make is this (an entire paragraph):
Last May, I made the 90-mile drive from Detroit to Lansing, where Dave Minnaar works in a dreary building that houses several state environmental agencies. Because Patty Hahn had cleaned out the shed before Minnaar’s men arrived on the scene, he never knew that David had built neutron guns or that he had obtained radium. Nor did he understand, until I told him, that the cubes of thorium powder found by police at the time of David’s arrest were the building blocks for a model breeder reactor. “These are conditions that regulatory agencies never envision,” says Minnaar. “It’s simply presumed that the average person wouldn’t have the technology or materials required to experiment in these areas.”
Wow! Man, this piece is such a wild ride. Putting aside that the government folk had no idea what was going on, despite being heavily involved (do you feel protected by your government?), this Minnaar dude just casually insults the entire population, saying that everyone is just too stupid to do this kind of stuff at home. Yeah, sure. Tell me again, why are you so afraid of a guy named Mohammed when he buys a sack of fertilizer in a desert halfway across the world? Suddenly he’s an evil genius with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, five minutes away from vaporizing Toledo. Apparently, nuclear capabilities require decades of top-secret state-funded engineering… unless you’re brown, in which case you can just whip up a warhead in a cave with some wire coat hangers and a bottle of bleach. Nuff said.
Okay, I think we have to end with Jerry’s final thought. In my piece about working on a bus on a PDA touchscreen, I confessed to feeling inadequate compared to people who just “try harder” and make big things happen. But looking at David Hahn puts that whole dynamic into perspective.
When Marty McFly went back to 1955, Doc Brown sarcastically scoffed: “I’m sure that in 1985, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955, it’s a little hard to come by!” Fast forward to 1994, and a 17-year-old in Michigan essentially proved Doc right. Honestly, Back to the Future would have been a very different movie if Doc had taken David’s approach. Instead of double-crossing Libyan terrorists for weapons-grade fuel, Doc would’ve just spent six months in a gas mask, scraping paint off hundreds of antique clocks, melting camping lantern mantles, and ordering mail-sample uranium from Czechoslovakia until the DeLorean was “radioactive as heck” (sorry, I love saying that!).
David had an incredible, frightening ability to keep moving forward. He hit a roadblock, finessed his way around it, and didn’t stop until his Geiger counter started screaming.
Maybe the takeaway isn’t that we all need to grind like maniacs until we glow in the dark. Maybe it’s just a reminder that execution beats perfection every single time. Pick a direction, ignore the absurdity, and just keep pecking at the screen—preferably without generating “radioactive as heck” contraptions. (Unless you’re into it, in which case, you have no other choice.)