The Last Nuclear Boyscout

[Pulp Hero]

A little behind the times, but this is a subject I'm interested in, and thought I would share.

2007 arrest

And this guys background, here

[CaptainChewbacca]

Jesus Christ, are those lesions on his face?!

[Darth Wong]

This guy must be seriously out of his mind. He's doing it all to earn a Boy Scout merit badge, and he's 31 years old.

[Pulp Hero]

This guy must be seriously out of his mind. He's doing it all to earn a Boy Scout merit badge, and he's 31 years old.

No, the merit badge business happened when he was younger, the article is a bit poorly worded.

He seems obviously quite obsessed with nuclear power. Though he is indeed quite talented.

[Soontir C'boath]

Pulp, they're both the same link.

I wonder if kept under security, he could reasonably conduct his experiments under controlled conditions. Maybe he'll discover something with those smoke detectors.

[Pulp Hero]

Fuck, my bad with the double link.

Here is is very interesting background.

[FSTargetDrone]

Jesus Christ, are those lesions on his face?!

Yeah, apparently so. This was at the very end of the story, so you might have missed it:

Police say that Hahn's face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.

One would think the first appearance of these sores would dissuade him from continuing this business. And I don't even want to think how many more and exactly where else he's got similar lesions. Not to mention what other damage to his health may have occurred.

[FSTargetDrone]

Yeah, apparently so. This was at the very end of the story, so you might have missed it:

Er, in the middle, but just before the ad.

[Adrian Laguna]

The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David said was radioactive and which they feared was an atomic bomb.

Lol ignorance, you can't fit an atomic bomb in a tool box. The smallest ever made is the SADM, and that barely fits in a large backpack.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Likely they fear a "dirty" bomb, although even that those fears are more media hysteria than actual justification warrants.

[Sea Skimmer]

Lol ignorance, you can't fit an atomic bomb in a tool box. The smallest ever made is the SADM, and that barely fits in a large backpack.

The US is known to have tested (Redwing Yuma) a nuclear bomb that was only 5in in diameter and 24.5in long. I’ve sure as hell seen tool boxes that big. The police are idiots in any case, but SADM is certainly not the smallest a nuclear weapon can get. It was bigger then it had to be already, since the whole package had to be rugged enough to survive being hauled around by hand in a war zone.

The US Army figured out on paper that it could build a mere 40lb nuclear artillery shell of 105mm caliber employing linear implosion, it would be about 20in long. However linear implosion devices are so difficult to build that even most current nuclear weapon armed nations states couldn’t do it. It’s possible in theory that a nuclear bomb of only 2in width could be built using cylindrical implosion, but this would require a very large research effort and might just never work.

[sketerpot]

Lol ignorance, you can't fit an atomic bomb in a tool box. The smallest ever made is the SADM, and that barely fits in a large backpack.

The US is known to have tested (Redwing Yuma) a nuclear bomb that was only 5in in diameter and 24.5in long. I’ve sure as hell seen tool boxes that big. The police are idiots in any case, but SADM is certainly not the smallest a nuclear weapon can get. It was bigger then it had to be already, since the whole package had to be rugged enough to survive being hauled around by hand in a war zone.

Fortunately the yield of the Redwing Yuma was only 190 tons. That's still enough to mess you up, but pretty tiny as nukes go. Its effect would be further diminished by the fact that it's a ground burst.

[Sea Skimmer]

Fortunately the yield of the Redwing Yuma was only 190 tons. That's still enough to mess you up, but pretty tiny as nukes go. Its effect would be further diminished by the fact that it's a ground burst.

The device fizzled actually, it was designed to use boosted fusion but this failed to function. Had it worked properly the yield would have been at least several kilotons. The difference between a ground burst and air burst in any case is not that great with a 190 ton blast, the optimal air burst height would be very low. Remember, the smaller the nuke the more destructive it is per unit of yield owing to the massive overkill any nuke inflicts at close range. You could simply place it on top of a several story building, or for that matter you could place it underground in a major city and collapse buildings over a wide area via earth shock. 25,000 people dead is more then devastating enough.