On a Friday in May 1986, the tiny town of Cokeville, Wyoming, basically stopped breathing. It was just after 1:00 p.m. A man named David Young and his wife, Doris Young, pulled up to the local elementary school with a van full of guns and a homemade gasoline bomb. They weren't there for a parent-teacher conference.
David Young was a former town marshal. He had been fired years earlier for misconduct, but he didn't come back for a simple grudge. He came with a manifesto titled "ZERO EQUALS INFINITY." He wanted money—specifically $2 million for every child in that building. But more than that, he had a twisted, philosophical obsession with starting a "Brave New World" where he would rule over these children in the afterlife.
It sounds like a bad movie script. Honestly, if it hadn't actually happened, nobody would believe the details. By the time the afternoon was over, 154 people—including 136 children—were crammed into a single 30-by-30-foot classroom.
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The Chaos Inside the Classroom
The standoff lasted about two and a half hours. Inside that room, it was hot, cramped, and smelled like raw gasoline. David Young sat in the middle of the floor, the trigger to a complex, multi-stage bomb literally tied to his wrist. He was agitated. He was unpredictable.
Doris Young tried to play a different role. While David was the "bad cop" threatening to blow everyone to smithereens, Doris tried to keep the kids calm. She told them to think of it like an adventure movie. She even brought in books and a TV to distract them. But you can't really distract a child from the smell of gas and the sight of a man holding a dead-man's switch.
The bomb itself was a nightmare of engineering. It was built into a two-wheeled shopping cart and filled with:
- Gallon jugs of gasoline.
- Tuna cans filled with aluminum powder and flour (meant to create a massive fireball).
- Shrapnel made of chain links and bullets.
Teachers did everything they could. They used masking tape to mark off a "safety zone" around the bomb so the kids wouldn't accidentally bump into it. They led the children in songs and prayers. Interestingly, the prayers seemed to make David even more twitchy.
Why the Bomb Didn't Kill Everyone
Around 3:45 p.m., David Young needed to use the bathroom. This was the moment everything changed. He transferred the trigger string from his own wrist to Doris's wrist and stepped into the small bathroom connecting the classrooms.
Then, it happened.
Doris apparently developed a headache from the gasoline fumes. She reached up to rub her forehead. When she moved her arm, she pulled the string.
The room exploded.
Black smoke filled the air instantly. It was total mayhem. But here is where the "miracle" part of the story comes in. Investigators later found that the bomb had malfunctioned in a very specific way. A pinhole leak in the gas jug had dripped into the powder mixture, turning it into a paste instead of a fine dust. Instead of a massive, building-leveling fuel-air explosion, it was a "flash" fire.
The blast went up instead of out. Because teachers had opened the windows earlier to vent the smell of gas, the pressure had a place to go.
The Final Moments of David Young and Doris Young
Doris Young was caught in the center of the blast. She was severely burned and staggered through the smoke. When David Young heard the explosion, he burst out of the bathroom. Seeing his wife in agony and the room in flames, he didn't try to help the children. He shot and killed Doris.
He then shot John Miller, a music teacher who was trying to help kids escape, wounding him in the shoulder. Finally, David retreated back into the bathroom and took his own life.
It was a dark end for a man who spent his life obsessed with control and "the next world." His 43 journals and boxes of slides revealed a man who had meticulously planned his own version of a revolution, only to have it fail because of a leaky milk jug and a wife's headache.
The Aftermath and the "Miracle" Claims
Everyone got out alive.
Well, everyone except the Youngs. Seventy-nine people were hospitalized, mostly for flash burns and smoke inhalation. But 154 hostages walked away from a bomb that should have killed every single person in that room.
In the days that followed, some of the children started telling their parents similar stories. They talked about seeing "people in white" or "angels" standing over them. Some said a lady in white told them to move toward the windows right before the blast. Whether you believe in the supernatural or just incredible luck, the survival of those kids remains one of the most statistically improbable events in Wyoming history.
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What We Can Learn From Cokeville
Looking back at David Young and Doris Young, the case is a haunting study in how fringe beliefs can turn violent. David wasn't just a disgruntled employee; he was deeply involved in radical philosophies and survivalist ideologies that isolated him from reality.
Key takeaways for safety and history:
- Teacher Presence of Mind: The teachers at Cokeville didn't panic. They created a "safety zone" and vented the room, which saved lives when the blast finally occurred.
- The Power of Community: The town of Cokeville didn't just fall apart; they mobilized immediately to support the survivors.
- Mental Health Red Flags: David’s journals showed years of escalating instability that went largely unchecked until it was too late.
If you're looking to dive deeper into this, you can look up the local archives at WyoHistory.org or watch the 2015 film The Cokeville Miracle, which dramatizes the event based on survivor accounts. It's a heavy story, but one that ultimately highlights the resilience of a small town against a very specific kind of madness.
To understand the full scope of the event, you should check out the original police reports and the "Zero Equals Infinity" manifesto, which are still preserved in Wyoming state archives.
Next Steps:
- You can research the Cokeville Miracle Foundation to see how the survivors are doing today.
- Look into the National School Safety and Security Services for modern protocols developed from incidents like this.
- Read the WyoHistory oral history projects for first-hand accounts from the teachers who were in the room.
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