The Sad Story of the Teen Who Built a Nuclear Reactor in His Backyard

June 26, 1995 is a day the residents of Golf Manor, Michigan will never forget. On that day, hazmat-suited agents of the Environmental Protection Agency descended upon the quiet suburb and began systematically dismantling the garden potting shed of one Patty Hahn. When interviewed about the incident, most residents believed there had been some kind of chemical spill. But the truth is far stranger, for the cleanup was prompted by Patty Hahn’s son David, who at the age of 17 had tried to build his own working nuclear reactor. This is the bizarre tale of the Radioactive Boy Scout. David Charles Hahn was born on October 30, 1976, in Royal Oak, Michigan to Ken and Patty Hahn. His parents divorced when he was very young and for most of his childhood he spent his weeks with his father, a GM automotive engineer, and his weekends with his mother and her boyfriend Michael Polasek, a GM forklift driver. Despite being constantly shuffled between households, David’s early childhood was relatively normal. He joined the Boy Scouts, played baseball, and spent hours playing with his friends, though he remained a relatively shy and withdrawn child. An indifferent student and a terrible speller, he fell behind in school, nearly failing his state math and writing exams. But according to his science teacher Ken Gherardini, David was fascinated with chemistry and could be an extremely bright student when the class aligned with his interests: “His dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table. I don’t know about you, but my dream at that age was to buy a car.” A major turning point in his life came This is an abridged version of a video on our channel TodayIFoundOut which you can check out and subscribe to here:    / @todayifoundout