Could truth get any stranger than a fictional tale about a homemade A-bomb?
The weekend before last, trying to keep on the theme of watching at least one 80’s movie per weekend this summer, I decided to watch The Manhattan Project on Netflix. If you’ve never heard of it before, than let me first tell you it’s not a historical drama about the development of the atomic bomb, that was left to 1989’s Fatman and Littleboy. Rather, this is an interesting little flick about a teenager who creates his own atomic bomb for a science fair, using plutonium he stole from a local laboratory.
The film itself is somewhat obscure, and really wasn't a huge box office success either. No doubt part of the reason was that releasing a heavy drama in the summer of 1986, amongst such classics as Top Gun, Short Circuit, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (the latter opened the same weekend) probably wasn't the best timing on the studios part. The other issue was the general theme of the movie, which was hitting rather close to home in 1986 as fears of rogue nations such as Libya developing atomic bombs hit the news.
A quick synapses of the movie is that a physicist John Mathewson (John Lithgow) with a new way of refining plutonium moves to Ithaca, NY. Well, trying to find a place to live John meets a local realtor Elizabeth Stephens (Jill Eikenberry), and her son Paul (Christopher Collet). In attempting to get a date with Elizabeth, John offers to give Paul a tour of his facility outside of town, due to Paul’s interest in lasers. Of course Paul, being a bit of a genius and science geek, quickly figures out that the facility isn’t just refining harmless Magnesium, but something highly radioactive due to some mutations he notices in plant life nearby. Paul, with the help of his girlfriend Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon), quickly hatches a plan to raid the facility and steal a sample of the material in order to expose the dangers of the facility nearby his home. Upon getting the sample Paul decides rather than take it to the press, that he would instead build an atomic bomb and enter it into the National Science Fair in New York City. Of course his plan is eventually discovered, and trouble comes to find him.
Overall it’s a pretty good flick, and has some excellent acting especially out of Christopher Collet, and John Lithgow. It’s also a pretty compelling story that keeps you going all the way to the end and at times makes you think a happy ending isn’t going to happen. Admittedly, it does have a lot of plot holes and implausibilities though, like two private security guards being the only ones on the night-shift at a facility producing weapons grade plutonium, or the fact that there just seems to be too much story to properly fit into the time frame of this movie. With that said there is a clear theme of a young man trying to do right by his town and point out an environmental danger, but getting too overzealous in doing so.
As crazy as the concepts of this movie may seem though, there have been a few cases of life imitating art that have happened since the movie came out. One of which, would go on to be the basis for its own movie, and the other would produce a truly strange story most people don’t even know about.
The Story of David Hahn - The Atomic Scout
It’s been almost a year since David Hahn died in Michigan due to complications related to alcoholism. He was only 39, but had lived and interesting life of both notoriety and trouble. You see Hanh had gained himself the moniker of “The Atomic Scout”, something he would live in the shadow of the rest of his life. At the age of 17, Hahn who had a lifelong interest in nuclear energy, decided to build his own nuclear reactor after earning his Nuclear Energy merit badge as an Eagle Scout candidate. Hahn collected bits and pieces of radioactive material from such normal household items as alarm clocks, smoke detectors, and camping lanterns and with his limited know how managed to create a simple breeder reactor. Breeder reactors, unlike standard reactors don’t need a lot of water in their processes, so Hahn was able to build one in a shed. Of course merely by dumb luck the authorities eventually caught on to what Hahn was up to, and although what he was doing wasn’t illegal, it did require the intervention of the FBI and EPA in cleaning up the radiation contamination of the Hahn’s property and surrounding area. The story itself would remain no more than a newspaper blurb, until 1998 when the story would be rehashed by Harpers Bizarre, and received a follow up book titled The Radioactive Boy Scout.
Hahn would go onto a short but successful military career, but would began dealing with psychological issues later on that would lead to an honorable discharge, and plague him till his death. Doctors have said that Hahns psychological issues may have been a result of his radiation exposure, as well as prolonged lead poisoning, and believe that had Hahn not declined a proper medical evaluation after his 1994 reactor incident, and later while in the Navy, that some of the problems may have been caught and treated before serious issues occurred. Later, Hahn would have trouble with the law after being caught taking the smoke detectors in his apartment building for the radioactive material inside, Police believed the sores on his body, and shown in his mugshot, show that Hahn had been in contact with radioactive materials again.
Again this is one of those “stranger than fiction”, stories that made me think of The Manhattan Project. Although Hahn didn’t try to build a bomb, we are still talking about a teenage boy dealing with something radioactive and extremely dangerous, enough to require the FBI, EPA, and Nuclear Energy Commission to get involved. Hahn’s story also shows us some very real life ramifications of what it would have been at risk had the movie character of Paul actually constructed an atomic bomb in the real world. The movie briefly goes into Paul having caused radiation contamination to the room he was working in at his school, but never hits home the true cost of that or, of the radiation poisoning he himself would have suffered.
Erin Brockovich - Undisclosed Toxins
Another aspect to The Manhattan Project is the character of Paul crusading to make it known that the supposed medical laboratory in his town was actually a government facility for processing weapons grade plutonium. Although it’s only briefly referred to, there is also an element of environmentalism to this as well since Paul mentions the rare mutation of a five leaf Clover, which is growing everywhere around the facility. Sadly, in real life such toxin producing facilities that damage the surrounding area aren’t fictional. It’s also true that like the facility in The Manhattan Project that the U.S. Government has had “in plain sight” weapons and research facilities placed under unassuming names very near residential areas before, and that they have gone on to create environmental and health issues for the surrounding areas. Eventually, laws were passed requiring both government and private facilities to “disclose” the use of radioactive or toxic materials used on premises, but some argue, like in the case of the Lemont, Illinois Argonne National Laboratory, that the truth perhaps still isn’t being fully disclosed.
With that said though there was a real life incident that went beyond rumor and speculation to become a major headline in the early 90’s and that made it onto the big screen in 2000. In pop culture it has become known as the Erin Brockovich case due to the movie, and named after the larger than life legal aid who helped make the case. In actuality the case involved the citizens of Hinkley, CA versus Pacific Gas & Electric.
In this case PG&E, began using hexavalent chromium in order to fight costly corrosion in their natural gas pipeline and cooling towers. However, in an effort to economize, PG&E corporate cut corners and never provided proper containment for the wastewater used in the process. The issue of course is that hexavalent chromium is extremely toxic, and even a small amount of exposure could impact one's health. The water was released into retention ponds that weren’t properly lined and lead to the toxin seeping into the local water supply over time. Although the last time the toxin would be used in the process was 1966, the eight years of the toxins use before that had built up in the ground and water near the ponds, causing issues for years to come. PG&E would eventually disclose the non-toxic anti-corrosive they were currently using hoping to satisfy federal and state regulations on disclosure by using that as a general blanket, but at the same time began to quietly buy up property surrounding the plant. It was this latter action that eventually lead to Masry & Vititoe and Brockovich getting involved and looking into things a little deeper, and everything is well known history from there.
Although the actual events surrounding the release of the toxic chemicals in Hinkley, CA would occur 20 years before The Manhattan Project was made, there is still a bit of reality set into the crusading actions of the movies quasi-hero Paul. In Paul's case he knew the facility was causing contamination to the surrounding area, and believed that the citizens of his home town of Ithaca, should be informed. Of course as I stated earlier Paul's methodology for doing this may have been a bit over the top, but with that said though the parallels exist between the fictional reasons of Paul’s bomb building in The Manhattan Project, and Erin Brockovich’s very real crusade to receive justice for the long suffering citizens of Hickley, CA. The reality is that there was a facility, like that in The Manhattan Project, releasing toxins into the surrounding area while the people living nearby went completely uninformed, and believing it was all harmless.
Of course the movie has several other frightening real life parallels, like the ease of making nuclear weapons in our modern day and age, as we see with North Korea. Not to mention considering the movie was made before the breakup of the Soviet Union, we now see the sudden availability of weapons grade material on the black market, and of those with the technical know-how on weapons building now for hire. These latter issues have of course made it into movies of their own, but in reality international policing has kept pretty close tabs on such things, even though it’s obvious they haven’t always been successful.
In a way The Manhattan Project has a disturbing level of timelessness to it making it a bit more than an 80’s movie, as it sets out a scenario that has had some unrelated but strange realities parallel it since 1986. The movie is worth watching, and as I said it can be found on Netflix, but it’s probably online through Amazon as well. I’ll give a shout out to the guys at The Retro Rewind Podcast, by using their Memory Mind-meld Synopsis and saying that before seeing The Manhattan Project I did mentally intermix The Manhattan Project’s plot with the plot of Real Genius a comedy with a similar premise from 1985. So it was good to watch The Manhattan Project and separate
the film into its actual elements.
If you have any Manhattan Project stranger than fiction stories please feel free to comment below, since I’d love to hear them.
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