The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor

Amazing read, I read this entire book in one sitting and enjoyed every second of it.

If you've ever lived next door to a twisted teenager, you should love reading The Radioactive Boyscout, by Ken Silverstein. It's the frighteningly true story of a suburban teenager - maybe your neighbor - who tried to assemble a makeshift nuclear reactor in his backyard using radioactive materials that he salvaged from old antique stores, junkyards and camping gear. Remember grandpa's radium-dial watch that glowed in the dark? I had one of those things when I was a kid. I used to duck under the covers and marvel at the little dots of bluish-green light. Ah...the miracle of radioactivity! Eventually my watch got misplaced and I never saw it again. I suppose it went to junk heaven along with everything else. Radioactive? No one cared. After all, what damage could one little watch do? After reading this book, however, I was amazed at how much radioactive stuff is out there - just lying around waiting for someone to find it and do something weird with it. That's where our hero came into the picture. He had this brainstorm about building a nuclear reactor in his back yard, so he rummaged through every junk pile he could find in a tireless effort to collect all the little bits of radioactive material he could get his hands on. He didn't do it for money, or notoriety. It was literally a labor of love. He dreamed about atomic power the way most guys his age dreamed about muscle cars and dating cheerleaders. Totally rad...dude! So, did he succeed? Did all of his hair fall out? What do you think? You couldn't make up a story spookier than this. It's unbelievable, but true. I literally loved this short book, and since you're reading this report, my guess is that you'll love it too.

There's something not quite serious about The Radioactive Boy Scout. The book jacket has a cartoonish design and each page has a little atomic symbol by the page number. It's a small book, almost like a children's reader. It seemed to me as if it would be a quick, fun read. Well, it was quick, all right. Author Ken Silverstein originally wrote this as an article for Harper's Magazine, according to the blurb. The article has been padded with several chapters on nuclear power, chemistry, and the history of the Boy Scouts. But The Radioactive Boy Scout is hardly a cartoon or a fun little story. Although this is a story about how one teenager nearly built a nuclear reactor in his back yard, Silverstein wants us to know it is more than that. He emphasizes how David Hahn, the teenager, was neglected by his parents and not taken seriously by his teachers. If only someone had taken the time to take this boy under his wing, perhaps a near-disaster could have been averted. Certainly the fact that there was no disaster takes the edge off the story, but we already know what can happen when teenagers don't get the attention they need. I enjoyed the main story as well as the chapters on science and the Boy Scouts. Silverstein describes how radium-based products were sold in the early 20th century as tonics, lotions, and even suppositories, to improve one's health. He recalls filmstrips (remember?) and pamphlets that cheerfully told us to "duck and cover" in the event of a nuclear explosion. He uses a hilarious passage from P.G. Wodehouse to illustrate a common view of the Boy Scouts in their early days. Although I share most of Silverstein's opinions on federal government, the nuclear power industry, the Boy Scouts, and inattentive parents, I think the story would have been more effective if he had left his editorial comments out. Describing David's father as "pathologically oblivious" is unnecessary. True, but unnecessary.

A great story - fascinating to see just how far one young man's imagination and drive could carry him, and frightening to see how readily he was able to obtain and assemble fissile material to make a nuclear device. Add to that the undercurrent that he was terribly under-supervised by his parents, and you may well find yourself in sympathy with this young man. Parents, geeks, scout leaders (and I count myself in all three groups) will find something of interest in this story.

I loved this book. I l.o.v.e.d. this book. It is the story of a bored, repressed, neglected, secretive, obsessive teenager with enough chemistry and physics knowledge to build a breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. The story is compelling for its own sake, to be sure. But I especially loved the author's style of writing and analysis. It is a glowing radioactive brew containing ingredients such as "informative", "hilarious" and "scary." To wit: "Even Ken [his father] couldn't ignore a transgression the size of a breeder reactor. He grounded David for two weeks and took away his car keys." The author describes the protagonist's psyche and family of origin with great insight and clarity. As such, you can watch the kid drift gradually and inevitably into nuclear genius and tragedy in the same way that a sailboat drifts and crashes into the rocks when there is not sufficient wind. With insufficient parental connection and guidance, David Hahn's motivators in life became twisted. One motivator was "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments", a book for kids from the cold war era that contained an un-housebroken evangelical fervor for science, as well as enough technical information to put "The Anarchist's Cookbook" to shame. When David's remote and exasperated father deposited him into the Boy Scouts, David drifted aimlessly until he discovered the highly motivating Atomic Energy merit badge, and set an unwavering course toward creation and destruction. You have to be a pretty dim bulb (see other reviews) not to react (no pun intended) favorably to the author's lampooning of the Boy Scouts, the nuclear industry, science geeks, and suburban America. Personally, I really enjoyed reading the negative reviews posted here after reading the book. Please, lets hear more complaining from disgruntled high school science teachers, scouting nuts, nuclear nuts, and other people who didn't really comprehend or appreciate the book's finer points. One of the finer points y'all missed-this book is, among other things, wonderful from a psychological and social perspective. The protagonist's behavior and world view are explained within the context of dysfunctional family dynamics, adolescent rebellion, and search for identity, The reader can see how and why the kid became what he became, and did what he did. One of the greatest accomplishments of the author is that he enables the reader to see through this unusual kid's eyes. If you read the book but did not appreciate this supreme accomplishment, then you probably should quit your job working with radioactive elements. If you are still watching the re-runs of the movie "Dr. Strangelove", or if you are hopelessly addicted to your old, fraying "Nuclear War" board game, then reading this book has to be your next step.

The book works on several levels. It's informative in detailing precisely how the boy obtained and used the materials in his nuclear experiments. As a human interest story, it shows once again how kids fall between the cracks when parents and teachers fail to pay close attention to them as individuals. And it both informs and entertains with its background history of the atomic age. I can see how the book might irritate nuclear power enthusiasts, but perhaps reading this cautionary tale will curb some of that enthusiasm.