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Comment by logfromblammo | Hacker News Reader

The article is woefully lacking by not answering the question that everyone who starts to read the article must have on their mind: was the cause of his death related to radiation exposure?

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He could have been hit by a car or slipped on a banana. This is the sort of lazy news article that we all hate in the world, the implication without the actual presentation of the facts.

Ars is a terrible source of news, this isn't their first offence.

It's not entirely their fault. The linked obituary doesn't list a cause of death either.

The reporter could have done some investigating.

maybe he did.

Typically, an article would include something like "Hahn's family could not be reached for comment".

if they are reporting the news they can dig a little bit further than just reading the obituary

Journalism is not mindless parroting of online sources. Sometimes you may have to actually ask a living person a question on behalf of your audience, or do records requests. In this case, as a non-journalist, my first vector of attack would be to get the official death record from the county where DCH died.

Seems like an obvious thing to do whenever writing a "notable person X has died" article.

The obituary, for instance, says he died on the 27th. The Macomb County records office [0] says he died on 26 September 2016.

[0] https://macombvitals.macombcountymi.gov/death.php (search for David Hahn)

It's even more shoddy reporting if, as some commenters are suggesting, he in fact took his own life (which seems especially likely if he was indeed bipolar). Turning tragedy into a sensationalist story purely for the sake of it.

My first thought, on finding no cause of death listed, was how the cause of death is typically omitted when people commit suicide.

Not saying it was suicide, mind you, I have no information aside from what we all have.

He died in a small town, relatively. So any day of the week someone killed themselves in LA, but not rural nowheres-ville, so the lack of XYZ in nowheres-ville kinda proves something.

His internet public memories page was full of relatively close friends and relatives in shock. So your situation or an accident. The police would be involved either way. I pulled the police log for the week of his death of all police calls in that city and found nothing logged along the lines of any bodies being found or violent crime or whatever. As near as I can tell the only interesting thing that happened in the town where he died on the day he died was a very major traffic accident, the worst thing to happen in town in weeks before and after. There was a twitter-worthy hours long road closing due to a major (aka fatal) car accident. Absence of finding anything proves nothing, perhaps they intentionally censor suicide calls or it has to be considered that "suicide by car" is not unknown, but I would not be surprised if he died in that specific car accident.

There isn't much information online, but I found a local TV story claiming that "David Hahn, the man known as the 'Radioactive Boy Scout', died in his Shelby Township home on Sept. 27 at the age of 39." 'In his home' would seem to exclude a car accident: https://www.facebook.com/ShelbyTwpTV/videos/942897049150097/

Separately, the funeral home "tribute wall" has comments which would seem to imply suicide or drug overdose. In particular, it would seem very odd to say "I believe David finally has the peace he so desperately needed" unless his mental state played a role in his death: http://www.wasikfuneralhome.com/obituaries/David-Hahn-2/#!/T...

Well, his life was a mess. He was arrested in 2007 for stealing smoke detectors and his mugshot looks like someone who is either addicted to serious drugs or is suffering from radiation poisoning, or both.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2506549/Uh-oh-Radioa...

He also admits to being schizophrenic and talks about how hard his mother's suicide was on him. It sounds like this guy had a hard life. I'm guessing he followed her lead.

RIP David.

The spots on his skin are believed to have been caused by the radiation exposure.

And yet there is a later or contemporaneous photograph of him without any spots or sores, so that doesn't make too much sense.

Unless it kills quickly there's almost never a way to tell. It just comes down to a stat(istics) off between competing arguments.

In this case with a one person test group.

> Unless it kills quickly there's almost never a way to tell.

Well, if he was e.g. struck by lightning just before he died, then the odds that cause of death is related to exposure to radiation years ago go way down. The article sadly doesn't even give anything to go on, or even mention the omission of anything about cause of death.

Indeed, all we need to satisfy our curiosity is "he died from X" where X is not unknown.

I was also curious as well. But it's also often a matter of privacy.

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