17 yr old's home lab reported by repair workers

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

?si=yIqIa4J-cKUvCdHi

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Lawyer Seems Sharp

He's not ranting & raving.
I believe him, too.
Nobody has a YouTube channel for chemistry experiments while making nerve gasses.
Takes a kind of CT mindset to do the "hide in plain sight" routine.
I think this will all turn out to be nothing.

[OldBaldy1701E]

2. Yes... from the family's end.

My question is, what was the deal with the person/persons who reported this in the first place?

I guess I will need to do some digging. It seems a bit weird that they felt the need to do all of this, but there is nothing about any arrests or even a detainment. Which makes it sound as if they had determined that this was not what their 'worst case scenario' mindset had originally assumed and were trying to back pedal without losing face.

This is something that worries me often. People who have no idea what they are looking at going off and calling agencies and whatnot over a misunderstanding/misinterpretation. But, those agencies cannot handle losing any public face or even an ounce of ego (not to mention justifying the amount spent on the response), so they make it into something to cover for their gullibility, which not only makes it worse, but also validates the person who called in the stupid crap in the first place.

[Brother Buzz]

3. Same could be said for the kid

Seventeen years old and graduating college

[2naSalit]

6. Yeah...

That sounds unusual but maybe the kids a genius and the repair people are ...not.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I Should Have Mentioned That

I graduated from college at 19, but 17 is a whole other level.

[hunter]

4. Yoiks. I built my first mad scientist lab when I was ten...

... and some of the things I did subsequently really were dangerous.

My siblings and I were largely unsupervised as children and very resourceful.

In my early teens I quickly got bored with Estes rockets and started making my own. Some of them went BOOM! They were not meant to do that.

I think my parents encouraged my interest in computers and electronics because it seemed a safer hobby than rockets or chemistry.

Let's hope this kid isn't scared off his pursuit of science by all the nonsense. Sadly we seem to be living in a demon-haunted world, as described by Carl Sagan.

[intheflow]

5. Reminds me of David Hahn, aka the radioactive Boy Scout.

I read a book of that title, a true story about a teen who was attempting to build a kind of reactor. Hahn had actual radioactive materials he was working with, so the hazmat suits were justified in his case, and his family home became a superfund site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

Seems different for this kid, though. Graduating from college at 17, history includes making and posting science videos. I hope he comes through this as unscathed as possible.