[HN Gopher] The Radioactive Boy Scout (2009) ___________________________________________________________________ The Radioactive Boy Scout (2009) Author : SQL2219 Score : 50 points Date : 2022-05-09 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com) (TXT) w3m dump (talesfromthenuclearage.wordpress.com) | macksd wrote: | This is a very interesting story, but this article is pretty | light on a lot of the details of his life. He got into a lot of | mischief throughout his life and unfortunately died a few years | ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn. It's a real shame, | because he was obviously bright and highly motivated and I feel | like he was just never able to really put all that potential into | action. | | My favorite part of the story is that he was arrested for | stealing smoke detectors from his apartment building trying to | collect radioactive material. One of my first jobs was shipping / | receiving for an electronics manufacturer, and smoke / gas | detectors were the lion's share of our business. I was told I | always had to classify the products as "components for a nuclear | reactor" on international shipping manifests, which I thought was | silly. Until I read this story... | sharkweek wrote: | If only you had met Nathan Fielder when he was attempting to | rebrand smoke detectors as musical instruments to avoid these | customs declarations. | | (If you haven't watched the show Nathan For You, I can't | recommend it enough). | ortusdux wrote: | I've actually called the US Dept of Commerce to get help | figuring out which Harmonized System code to use for some | shipments. I managed to stump them and they had to give me a | callback, but throughout they were extremely helpful. | mjevans wrote: | This is also the reason modern smoke detectors are all annoying | BS. We can't have nice things because this one guy went through | a whole lot of trouble to do something silly. | | Now they're all oversensitive steam sensing BS models. I'd | rather have freaking IR cameras looking for too much heat | (outside of kitchens). | Syonyk wrote: | The "nuclear" ones are ionization type, which have the useful | quality of being cheap. Otherwise, they're almost, but not | entirely, worthless as far as being a smoke detector goes. | | The other type is the photoelectric type, which is generally | more expensive, but rather radically more likely to alert for | the sort of fires that kill people. | | Ionization types are really good at detecting the emissions | from flames. They're disturbingly bad at detecting actual | smoke - so the name "smoke detector" for them is a bit | misleading, IMO. If you've got a grease fire or something | going with basically no smoke, an ionization type will detect | this in a hurry, and they're also rather prone to false | positives as noticed by anyone with one of them near a | kitchen. | | The photoelectric types aren't so good at detecting flames, | but are quite good at detecting smoke in the air. In some | tests, they alert 30-40 _minutes_ before an ionization type | notices a problem. | | But the problem comes when you start looking at the type of | fires that actually kill people. The bulk of fire deaths are | from overnight fires, in which something is smoldering (and | smoking...) for half an hour or longer before the heat gets | to the point that the piece of (usually furniture) ignites. | The photoelectric type will alert to this smoke. The | ionization type waits until the [whatever] has actually | caught fire to bother doing anything - which is far less | useful, because by the time the couch has caught fire, the | room and the rest of the house aren't far behind. Some | realistic tests have shown that there's literally half an | hour or more of alert from the photoelectric type, down to "A | minute or two" for the ionization type. | | Skip Walker has done a number of presentations, and some of | his work can be found here: | | http://www.propertyevaluation.net/Photoelectric%20vs%20Ioniz. | .. | | > _In tests, ionization alarms will typically respond about | 30 to 90 seconds faster to "fast-flame" fires than | photoelectric smoke alarms. However, in smoldering fires | ionization alarms respond an average of 15 to 50 minutes | slower than photoelectric alarms. Several studies indicate | that they will outright fail to activate up to 20-25% of the | time. The vast majority of residential fire fatalities are | due to smoke inhalation, not from the actual flames and | almost two-thirds of fire fatalities occur at night while we | sleep._ | | > _In 2007, UL published the "Smoke Characterization Study". | This study tested both types of smoke alarms using current UL | testing standards and materials; they also tested the alarms | using UL test criteria integrating a variety of synthetic | materials and current tests such as smoldering toast. The | results are frightening. Ionization alarms failed the UL 217 | test 20% of the time using the current standard test | materials. This is the test that the alarms must pass 100% of | the time to be offered for sale and installed in US homes. | When tested using synthetic materials, ionization alarms DID | NOT TRIGGER (DNT) in 7 out of 8 synthetic test scenarios. In | the one test where the ionization alarm did trigger, it | activated at a level exceeding maximum allowed under the UL | standard and nearly 43 minutes after the photoelectric alarm | in the same test._ | | He also has a presentation up that just drills down, over and | over, into data, studies, etc. The results are quite clear: | in the sort of fires that actually kill people, photoelectric | smoke detectors _radically_ outperform ionization types - and | this is found in study after study that looks at "fires vs | fire deaths vs smoke detector types" as well. | | https://structuretech1.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Ion- | vs... | | You can spider off those if you want, but you _really_ should | put at least a few photoelectric smoke detectors in your | house. | | Don't bother with the combo detectors. They're either an "or" | gate, which gives you the worst of both worlds, or an "and" | gate, at which point the photoelectric sensor can be | screaming its head off about the smoke, but the alarm won't | sound until the ionization type detects flame products. | | > _I 'd rather have freaking IR cameras looking for too much | heat (outside of kitchens)._ | | They've been tested against smoke detectors and are worse | than even ionization types for detecting early fires. | hermitdev wrote: | The false alarms you get from the heat detectors are | exceedingly annoying to. My last apartment, I had heat | detectors as well as carbon monoxide detectors. I could not | use the oven in my kitchen without setting off the heat | detector in the hallway. Literally open the door after a | preheat, and the damn thing goes off. Nothing burning that | should be burning (it was a gas oven after all). Lots of | open doors and windows (always fun in winter Chicagoland) | and waving of towels at the detector... | | I lived in that apartment for over 10 years... Never once | had a "real" fire, but easily had hundreds of alarms. Very, | very low signal to noise ratio... | dymk wrote: | Highly motivated yes, bright, probably not. He never actually | managed to build anything useful. He did manage to designate | his backyard a superfund site though. And managed to get | arrested for trying to do it again, this time in an apartment | building full of people. | | If you read through the history of his life, it looks much less | like a smart, resourceful person trying to do science being | kept down by The Man. It's more like untreated mental illness | putting others in danger, and resulting in his premature death. | adolph wrote: | "smart, resourceful person" | "untreated mental illness" | | "smart, resourceful person" + "untreated mental illness" | dymk wrote: | Yeah, I'm saying he was not smart, nor was he resourceful. | He was certainly mentally ill. | | He didn't build a reactor. He didn't build an x-ray | machine. No experiments took place. There was no scientific | method employed. He took apart a bunch of smoke detectors. | He irradiated his mother's back yard, and then he tried to | do it again in an apartment building. | | He wasn't a misunderstood savant. | | The guy did nothing that should be emulated, lauded, or | praised. He's a cautionary tale of untreated mental | illness. | water-your-self wrote: | Smart or not he had a lot of domain knowledge and had the | ambition to learn more. Its vastly disappointing that | none of the authorities or adults in his life steered him | towards work in the nuclear field | dymk wrote: | > he had a lot of domain knowledge | | It doesn't take domain knowledge to stockpile smoke | detectors. He learned what he did from high school | chemistry textbooks. | | > had the ambition to learn more | | Apparently not, as evidenced by him not having | successfully built anything nor pursued any higher | education. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | > none of the authorities or adults in his life steered | him towards work in the nuclear field | | How do you know they didn't? | giantg2 wrote: | It's been more than a decade since I read the book. If I | remember correctly, the parents were pretty | absent/clueless and uninvolved. It's possible someone | tried to steer him (science teacher working with the | tanning lotion). But it doesn't seem the the parents | would have been likely to do it based on his side of the | story. | mynameishere wrote: | I don't care how much booze and drugs and radium-powered | neutron guns you die from, if the coroner finds Benadryl in | your blood, it's going in the report. | rob74 wrote: | I couldn't help but notice that he looks a bit... unhealthy on | the 2007 mugshot | (https://talesfromthenuclearage.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/d...) | - is that just a bad case of acne (unusual at 31), or is that | somehow connected to exposure to radiation? | | Ah, ok, Wikipedia to the rescue: | | > _In his mug shot, his face was covered with sores, which | investigators believed could have been from exposure to | radioactive materials, psoriasis, or possible drug use._ | [deleted] | mgkimsal wrote: | Was just telling some friends about this story the other day. He | want to the the same high school as I did, although he was a few | years after me; I think he may have had a class with one of my | siblings. | dang wrote: | The classic article is https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the- | radioactive-boy-scou..., from 1998. Did this one just lift the | title for a different piece on the same topic? | | Related: | | _The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538908 - June 2020 (1 | comment) | | _The Radioactive Boy Scout_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18396332 - Nov 2018 (1 | comment) | | _The Radioactive Boy Scout (1999)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466860 - Oct 2017 (34 | comments) | | _"Radioactive Boy Scout" who tried to build a homemade nuclear | reactor dead at 39_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957768 - Nov 2016 (67 | comments) | | _The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a teenager attempts to build a | breeder reactor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867739 - | July 2015 (5 comments) | | _The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310748 - Sept 2013 (1 | comment) | | _The radioactive boy scout: the teenager who attempted to build | a breeder reactor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611583 | - May 2009 (18 comments) | | Also related, a little less directly: | | _Middle school student achieved nuclear fusion in his family | playroom_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24705563 - Oct | 2020 (82 comments) | | _Boy, 12, said to have created nuclear reaction in playroom lab_ | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19472076 - March 2019 (14 | comments) | | _12-Year-Old Claims to Have Achieved Nuclear Fusion at Home | (2018)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229433 - Feb | 2019 (92 comments) | | _"I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom - AMA"_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118525 - July 2016 (127 | comments) | | _The Fusioneers, who build nuclear reactors in their back yards_ | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11777553 - May 2016 (54 | comments) | | _Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867072 - Dec 2013 (102 | comments) | | _The Nuclear Scientist Who Skipped College_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762449 - Nov 2012 (50 | comments) | mikepurvis wrote: | The author of the Harper's piece also expanded it into a 2004 | book: | | https://www.amazon.com/Radioactive-Boy-Scout-Backyard-Nuclea... | watersb wrote: | "The Scoutmaster's wife noted that a typical kid working on this | badge goes to a hospital and asks about x-rays. David decided to | build a Breeder Reactor." | | .!!. | | I'm currently reading through the 1950s "Tom Swift Jr." | stories... so maybe that's why I expected this HN post to be a | great work of fiction. Like Charles Stross' "De-chlorinating the | Moderator" http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/moderator.html | | The real world can be more delightful. And terrifying. | Trouble_007 wrote: | FYI: | | David Charles Hahn (October 30, 1976 - September 27, 2016), | | sometimes called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy | Scout" : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn | | The Nuclear Boy Scout - A Short Documentary : | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyFktKBGfIA | | The Nuclear Boy Scout (TV Short 2003) - IMDb : | https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0378468/ | CoastalCoder wrote: | > The Scoutmaster's wife noted that a typical kid working on this | badge goes to a hospital and asks about x-rays. David decided to | build a Breeder Reactor. This was perfectly logical to someone | with a rather naive social awareness, accompanied by a passion | for collecting all the Periodic Table Elements. | | Can someone explain the logical connection between "naive social | awareness" and "choosing to go way above and beyond for this | merit badge"? | | As someone with Asperger syndrome (very mild) and the parent of a | kid with it (more so), I may be overly sensitive to stereotyping | on the topic. So in that excerpt above, what I hear is a neuro- | typical adult dismissing the kid's amazing accomplishment here, | just because he's socially awkward. | | I'm sure she's actually a lovely person, so I'm hoping someone | can give me a better explanation. | peterburkimsher wrote: | The Gervais principle of management hierarchy: | | Sociopaths (friends with everyone) | | Management (clueless) | | Losers (actually do the homework) | | I'm trying to be the biggest loser and outsmart the system, but | thank God, I failed. The sociopaths want to copy the homework. | Whatever good ideas you and your kid have, please type them and | share! There's no intellectual property here. We're not afraid | to ask "What if?" | | Welcome to the community of the Internet, we love you. | otomoaoe wrote: | It sounds like he was hyper-focused to the detriment of his | health and others around him at several steps in the story | (lying to nuclear scientists, performing dangerous experiments | in a residential area, it goes on). I agree with you that he | did amazing things, but those things are tainted by his | disregard for others. I think that's what they mean by social | naivete. | zitterbewegung wrote: | From my limited background in psychology what really separates | him is the drive to execute on his goals and not the social | awkwardness. But, creating the device would obviously have a | large amount of time invested which would be the same for | whoever would build the device . | ncmncm wrote: | This story makes me feel ill every time it surfaces. | lifefeed wrote: | This story always reminds me of the Nth Country Experiment, from | 1964, where the United States wondered how long it would take a | country to design a nuclear weapon, starting from no particular | expertise or classified access. One answer, they learned, was | three new physics PhDs and two and half years. I don't know if | that's when the US started focusing on enriched uranium, but that | is really the only limiting factor in the whole deal. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-09 23:00 UTC)