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Gone Fission · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. It's not often that art imitates life. In
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  Speaker 1: his essay The Decay of lyne Oscar Wild penned the
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  Speaker 1: phrase life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
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  Speaker 1: To Wild, art had the power to alter our view
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  Speaker 1: of the world around us. Even our choices and behavior
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  Speaker 1: can be informed intentionally or not by the art we consume.
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  Speaker 1: For example, when a criminal is placed under house arrest
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  Speaker 1: and is forced to wear an ankle monitor, they can
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  Speaker 1: thank Spider Man. A judge in New Mexico got the
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  Speaker 1: idea while reading a Spider Man comic strip in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy seven. He noticed the wall Crawler was wearing a
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  Speaker 1: tracking beacon on his arm thanks to one of his enemies.
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  Speaker 1: The judge took the idea to an engineer who helped
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  Speaker 1: develop the first ankle monitor for law enforcement. The British
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  Speaker 1: version of the show House of Cards, as well as
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  Speaker 1: the novel that inspired it, took place in a world
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  Speaker 1: after Margaret Thatcher had resigned from office. The novel was
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  Speaker 1: released in nineteen eighty nine, while Thatcher was still in power.
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  Speaker 1: The television show came out a year later, and Thatcher
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  Speaker 1: herself resigned as Prime Minister only months after that. Some
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  Speaker 1: think it struck a bit too close to home. Alexander's
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  Speaker 1: story was different. He was born in Scotland in sixteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy six, and from a young age he liked to fight.
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  Speaker 1: He got in trouble with the Church on several occasions
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  Speaker 1: for misbehaving. But more than fighting, Alexander had a passion
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  Speaker 1: for the open sea. By seventeen o three, he had
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  Speaker 1: already put in quite a bit of time on board
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  Speaker 1: various ships, so when he met William damp Here, an
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  Speaker 1: explorer headed to the South Pacific, Alexander joined him. His
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  Speaker 1: job was to serve as the sailing master on board
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  Speaker 1: the sinc Ports, its sister ship, which was being led
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  Speaker 1: by Captain Thomas Stradling. They sailed for months, navigating through
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  Speaker 1: storms and battling other ships for their supplies. One particular
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  Speaker 1: fight left the sinc Ports badly damaged. Strand Ling no
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  Speaker 1: longer wanted to follow damp here and insisted that they
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  Speaker 1: sailed south to an uninhabited island off the coast of Chile.
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  Speaker 1: Once off the ship, Alexander assessed the damage. It was
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  Speaker 1: so extensive that he didn't trust it to get them
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  Speaker 1: safely home without some repairs first, but Straddling wouldn't have it,
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  Speaker 1: so rather than risk his life on a broken ship,
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  Speaker 1: Alexander stayed behind on the island. He took some supplies
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  Speaker 1: with him, though, including a musket, a knife, a hatchet,
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  Speaker 1: cooking pot, a bible, some blankets, and the clothes on
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  Speaker 1: his back. At first, he'd tried to live on the shore,
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  Speaker 1: fishing for his food and keeping an eye out for
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  Speaker 1: passing ships who might save him. But it wasn't until
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  Speaker 1: he moved inland when he realized what he'd been missing.
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  Speaker 1: There were goats there for him to eat, and milk
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  Speaker 1: left behind by previous visitors, as well as countless fruits
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  Speaker 1: and vegetables growing under foot. Alexander turned out to be
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  Speaker 1: surprisingly skilled at solo island life. Rather than build a
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  Speaker 1: ramshackle home for himself out of twigs and leaves, he
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  Speaker 1: constructed two huts using pepper trees. One became his kitchen
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  Speaker 1: where he prepared all of his meals and he slept
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  Speaker 1: inside the other one. He also made his own clothes
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  Speaker 1: out of goat hides, which he's handed himself. When the
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  Speaker 1: rat situation got out of control, he tamed wild cats
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  Speaker 1: to chase them and keep them away from his home.
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  Speaker 1: For four years, Alexander lived on an island by himself.
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  Speaker 1: He did much more than survive, though. He hunted for
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  Speaker 1: his own food, made his own clothing, and forged his
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  Speaker 1: own weapons. In early February of seventeen o nine, his
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  Speaker 1: salvation finally arrived i'd in the form of the Duke,
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  Speaker 1: a ship captain by none other than William Dampier. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: Alexander had made the smart choice by not getting back
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  Speaker 1: on the sinc Ports, because not long after leaving him
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  Speaker 1: on the island, it sank. Straddling and his remaining crew
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  Speaker 1: had surrendered to Spanish troops passing by, and ended up
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  Speaker 1: becoming imprisoned for years. Alexander, though, was finally rescued upon
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  Speaker 1: his return to the civilized world. The story of how
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  Speaker 1: he survived on an island alone for four years took
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  Speaker 1: England by storm. One of the crew members that had
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  Speaker 1: worked with him even wrote a book about their travels together.
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  Speaker 1: In its he included a section about Alexander's isolation and
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  Speaker 1: in a clear example of art imitating life. Another book
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  Speaker 1: was written about a decade later, in seventeen nineteen. It
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  Speaker 1: was about a man clad in tanned goat skins trying
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  Speaker 1: to survive on a deserted island all on his own,
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  Speaker 1: and its author had been inspired by Alexander Selkirk's Tale
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  Speaker 1: of Survival. The book Daniel Dafoe's classic, The Life and
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  Speaker 1: Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The biggest dreams often start
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  Speaker 1: as a series of small goals. Swimming laps in the
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  Speaker 1: community pool can eventually turn into an Olympic gold medal.
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  Speaker 1: A piano recital can one day become a sold out
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  Speaker 1: performance at Carnegie Hall, And for David Han of Royal Oak, Michigan,
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  Speaker 1: a simple love of science turned into the scariest day
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  Speaker 1: of his life. David was born in nineteen seventy six
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  Speaker 1: to an average middle class family and lived an average
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  Speaker 1: middle class life. It wasn't until his grandfather gave him
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  Speaker 1: a book on chemistry experiments when his life changed course.
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  Speaker 1: From then on, he devoted every waking hour to science.
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  Speaker 1: He devoured any science related book he could get his
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  Speaker 1: hands on, including his father's college textbooks. As he got older,
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  Speaker 1: his taste matured with him. He built himself a laboratory
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  Speaker 1: and started stocking his shelves with books on handling hazardous materials.
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  Speaker 1: It didn't take him long to develop a recipe for nitroglycerin.
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  Speaker 1: From there, he started thinking bigger. David took various jobs
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  Speaker 1: at fast food restaurants and grocery stores to help fund
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  Speaker 1: his work, but none of them really stuck. His primary
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  Speaker 1: focus was whatever was blowing up in his lab, quite literally.
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  Speaker 1: For example, one time he showed up to a meeting
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  Speaker 1: bright eyed and orange faced. He'd been trying out different
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  Speaker 1: forms of artificial tanning using a natural pigment, but it
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  Speaker 1: had unfortunately exploded in his face. He also almost blinded
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  Speaker 1: himself after pounding red phosphorus with a screwdriver. It ignited
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  Speaker 1: and blew up, causing shards of the plastic container that
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  Speaker 1: he'd been keeping it in to embed themselves in his eye.
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  Speaker 1: It took months of regular sessions with an opthalmologist before
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  Speaker 1: all the pieces were removed, But these experiments were just
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  Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. David had a much larger
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  Speaker 1: plan to build his own breeder reactor. A breeder reactor
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  Speaker 1: used a fertile material like uranium to thirty eight to
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  Speaker 1: create nuclear fuel. It was not something an average citizen
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  Speaker 1: should have been able to build, but there was nothing
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  Speaker 1: average about David. He lacked the resources of a government
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  Speaker 1: funded nuclear program, but he was resourceful. By posing as
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  Speaker 1: a high school physics teacher, he sent letters to every
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  Speaker 1: scientific organization he could find who might have information on
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  Speaker 1: creating nuclear material. They sent him books, pamphlets, and detailed
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  Speaker 1: outlines on how to isolate radioactive elements. They also sent
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  Speaker 1: him a list of places where he could buy those
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  Speaker 1: elements himself. One easily obtainable substance was amrassium to forty one,
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  Speaker 1: which was readily available in all smoke detectors. He contacted
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  Speaker 1: a supplier who sold him a hundred broken units for
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  Speaker 1: a dollar each, no questions asked. He also managed to
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  Speaker 1: find radium to twenty six in antique clocks and thorium
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  Speaker 1: to thirty two in gas powered lanterns. After welding all
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  Speaker 1: of the amrassium from the smoke detectors together, with a
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  Speaker 1: blow torch. He dropped the whole thing into a hollowed
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  Speaker 1: out lead block and poked a hole in the side
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  Speaker 1: to let the alpha rays out. Then he slid a
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  Speaker 1: piece of aluminum in front of the hole to absorb
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  Speaker 1: the alpha rays and emit neutrons. David had built himself
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  Speaker 1: his own neutron gun. However, he still needed uranium to
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  Speaker 1: complete his reactor. A company informer Czechoslovakia that was known
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  Speaker 1: to sell to colleges sold him black or with uranium
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  Speaker 1: traces in it after David wrote them a letter pretending
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  Speaker 1: to be a professor with a nuclear laboratory. He purified
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  Speaker 1: his materials by pounding them with hammers and passing them
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  Speaker 1: through coffee filters, then blasted them with his neutron gun.
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  Speaker 1: By the time he was finished, he had created fissionable
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  Speaker 1: uranium two thirty three, which he combined with the radium
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  Speaker 1: he'd scraped off the antique clocks. Before he knew it,
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  Speaker 1: his labs started to glow for weeks. He watched as
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  Speaker 1: the concoctions got stronger and more potent. He tried to
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  Speaker 1: offset the radiation with cobalt, which was supposed to absorb
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  Speaker 1: the neutrons, but it wasn't enough. At a certain point,
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  Speaker 1: his Geiger counter could detect the radiation come from his
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  Speaker 1: lab up to two hundred feet away. David quickly realized
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  Speaker 1: he'd gone too far. He dismantled his reactor and separated
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  Speaker 1: the components into different boxes, but it was too late.
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  Speaker 1: Someone had tipped off the police. In the early morning
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  Speaker 1: hours of August thirty one, authorities searched his car and
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  Speaker 1: discovered a bunch of random metals, as well as a
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  Speaker 1: lock toolbox wrapped in duct tape. David told them what
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  Speaker 1: it was. Within hours, the Michigan Police were on the
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  Speaker 1: phone with every federal organization that dealt with radioactive materials,
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  Speaker 1: including the E p A and the Department of Energy.
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  Speaker 1: Around Thanksgiving of that year, his makeshift lab was rated
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  Speaker 1: to make sure all other irradiated substances were properly removed
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  Speaker 1: and disposed of. Months later, a cleanup finished the job
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  Speaker 1: by cutting up his lab and placing the pieces into barrels.
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  Speaker 1: The barrels were then carted off to the desert, where
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  Speaker 1: they were buried with radioactive materials from other facilities. David's
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  Speaker 1: poor mother suffered the most out of the whole ordeal.
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  Speaker 1: Not only had her son nearly turned their town into
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  Speaker 1: a radioactive waste land. She had also lost her potting shed.
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  Speaker 1: That's what David had used as his lab. His breeder
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  Speaker 1: reactor hadn't been the failed experiment of a seasoned scientist.
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  Speaker 1: It had been a misguided attempt by an eager seventeen
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  Speaker 1: year old. All David Han had wanted was to earn
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  Speaker 1: his Atomic Energy Merit badge and eventually make Eagle Scouts,
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  Speaker 1: which thankfully he did. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
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  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious, Ye