In 1994, 16-year-old David Hahn wanted an Eagle Scout merit badge in atomic energy. Instead of writing a paper, he decided to build an actual breeder reactor in his mom’s backyard potting shed.
He couldn't buy uranium, so he farmed everyday household items:
Stripped hundreds of smoke detectors for americium.
Scraped radioactive radium paint off antique clocks.
Boiled camping lantern mantles with blowtorches for thorium.
Drained stolen lithium batteries to purify the materials.
David posed as a physics teacher on the phone to trick federal scientists into mailing him instructions on isotope extraction. Rigging everything together with lead, coffee filters, and duct tape, he created an unshielded radioactive core.
It worked a little too well. His Geiger counter started screaming from five houses away, irradiating the entire suburban Michigan block.
Panicking, he packed the radioactive mass into his trunk at 2:30 AM to dump it in the woods. Cops stopped him for suspicious activity. When they went to pop the trunk, David deadpanned: "Be careful, that’s radioactive."
The bomb squad, FBI, EPA, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission swept in. The feds bulldozed the shed, sealed the entire backyard into thirty-nine steel hazard barrels, and buried it in the Utah desert as a federal Superfund site.
Accidentally turning your mom’s garden shed into a radioactive exclusion zone just for a scout badge is elite teenage chaos. That wraps up Day 27!
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