A Matter Of Survival
She shut the window to catch her breath. What was her son up to? She watched as he struggled to carry the offending object into the boot of her car.
He drove in a panic. His destination was somewhere desolate. He had to get rid of the evidence before they found him. But when he got caught, his whole neighborhood had to run for their lives.
A Smart Boy
David Charles Hahn was 10-years old when his grandfather gifted him with a children’s chemistry book, The Golden Book of Chemistry. What he thought was a thoughtful present at the time became the starting point of where it all went wrong.
As David grew, his obsession for Chemistry grew with him. As did his hunger for dangerous experiments.
Broken Home
David’s parents divorced when he was young and as an only child of divorced parents, he split his time between his re-partnered parents’ houses and felt his support base crumble. But the one thing he could always rely on was science.
David looked to science books for comfort. It was the one place he felt safe, until he took things way too far.
Obsessed
When David turned 14, he set up a makeshift laboratory in his bedroom at his dad’s house. His workshop was complete with plenty of beakers, Bunsen burners, and test tubes.
He would come home from school and go straight into his room, watching youtube videos and reading chemistry books on how to try out different home experiments. What started off as small projects here and there, soon turned into a devastating event.
First Accident
David’s first science experiment accident happened when he learned how to make nitroglycerine - a highly explosive acid. Up until this accident, chemical spills and foul potent smells were the norm.
But when they eventually led to him destroying his bedroom in his dad’s house, he had no choice but to live in the basement. But his experiments didn’t stop.
Bad Reputation
In school, his reputation for his wild experiments and obsession with chemistry was building. It was all he ever talked about and the teachers began to worry.
“His dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table,” David’s former physics teacher said. “I don’t know about you, but my dream at that age was to buy a car.”
Jolted Awake
His strained relationship with his father finally came to a boiling point after his father and stepmother awoke to the shaking of an explosion in their basement.
His father ran frantically downstairs and found David lying semiconscious on the floor due to a red phosphorus accident. With his father livid, he banned David from experimenting with chemicals again. But it was too late, David had already identified his life’s goal.
A Gas Mask
Without hesitation, David immediately moved out to his mom’s house and built a new laboratory in his mother’s potting shed.
Although his mom wasn’t as strict as his father, she began to worry and ask him what he was doing when he’d emerge from the shed in a gas mask. But whenever she’d ask, his reply was as strange as his behavior.
Full Of Jargon
“One of these days we’re gonna run out of oil”, David said. He’d continue to give a complicated answer, full of science jargon while avoiding his mother’s eye contact. Something wasn’t right.
His mom backed away, thinking that he was up to nothing more than some harmless high school science experiments. She was wrong.
Strange Behavior
It was 2 am on Friday night when David’s mom heard a loud shuffling in her shed. She got up to look out the window and saw her son carrying something huge out, wrapped up in tinfoil and a black bag.
She opened the window, planning to yell at him but a foul smell stopped her dead in her tracks. It was like nothing she ever smelt before.
Up To No Good
Out of reflex, she shut the window to catch her breath. What was her son up to? She watched as he struggled to carry the offending object into the boot of her car.
A bad feeling washed over her - and she wasn’t the only one. Across the street, a neighbor called the authorities. He knew he was up to something but he had no idea, just how dangerous this something was.
Nuclear Reactor
When the police stopped David, he was in a state of panic. He intended to drive to a desolate place and drop the object off there.
David had built a radioactive reactor that was fully detectable a whopping two blocks from his laboratory. The radioactive that leaked from this science experiment was off the charts. It was the kind of stuff people fled Cheronobly for.
Radioactive
The police asked David to show them what was under the tinfoil. He tried to explain to them that it was radioactive and no one should go near it.
Immediately, they called for a swat team and brought David to the police station. The police and swat team then showed up at his laboratory and were blown away by what they saw.
Neighborhood Evacuation
David’s laboratory was full of illegal materials which he attained by assuming a false identity as a physics teacher.
His radioactive experiment left officials to declare the area was deemed unsafe and the whole neighborhood had to be evacuated for health and safety reasons. What happened to David?
Not The End
David was soon reprimanded for carrying out such a dangerous experiment and costing the city $60,000 to clean up the radioactive materials that lingered in his neighborhood.
David put 40,000 locals at risk, but luckily everyone escaped from this catastrophe unharmed. David tried to continue his love for science in a safer way. However, whether he succeeded or not is another story!