Chasing Red Mercury – One Drop from Doomsday?

...Red Mercury can do almost anything the aspiring Third World demagogue wants it to. You want a short cut to making an atom bomb? You want the key to Soviet ballistic missile guidance systems? Or perhaps you want the Russian alternative to the anti-radar paint on the stealth bomber? What you need is Red Mercury .

Such adaptability does not come cheap. The going rate for red mercury in more than 25 con tricks stretching from Moscow to Pretoria ranges from $40k to as much as $0.5m a kilogram. Red mercury’s variety of uses is matched by the variation in its physical characteristics. Sometimes it is radioactive, sometimes not. It might be the densest compound known to science, but then again, it might not.........

Los Alamos National Laboratory - 1992

It is 25 years ago since the phrase “Red Mercury” began to attract the attentions of the Western media. Red mercury was allegedly a mystery ingredient used on the other side of the ‘Iron Curtain’ to make pure fusion nuclear warheads. It supposedly relies on heavy hydrogen-deuterium and lithium isotopes for fuel. Under proper heat and pressure the lithium and deuterium isotopes would fuse, releasing high energy neutrons that would kill all living matter in their path. However the properties and effects of this substance are varied depending on who is describing it.

Less than a year after the Berlin Wall came down and the old Soviet Union had broken up this mystery substance was beginning to create whispers on the ‘nuclear black market’.

As the Cold War era ended and South Africa abandoned its own nuclear weapons program there were serious concerns about the safety and security of nuclear material in the old USSR. These were heightened after rumours spread that red mercury was being sold for up to $1.8m per kilogram to would be terrorists and evil dictators on the nuclear black market.

However samples of "red mercury” obtained from arrested would-be terrorists invariably consisted of nothing more than a selection of red dyes and powders of little value. Despite the lack of evidence that the deadly substance really exists the stories surrounding this mythical substance, and the desire to obtain it, go on to this very day.

According to another myth, red mercury is an expensive and rare anti-ageing ointment. However, despite the appeal of eternal life, the nuclear connection has become the more common reference.



Back as early as the 1970s rogue Soviet scientists attempted to sell a substance that could be used as a shortcut to powerful nuclear bombs. No need for uranium enrichment and all in a handy compact size. Moammar Gaddhafi and Saddam Hussein both tried to obtain some. Ordinary mercury mixed with red nail varnish was supposedly sold by some unscrupulous Russian gangsters as the Soviet empire fell apart. Intelligence agencies also used the substance as bait in sting operations. In the murky world of arms smuggling a myth was rapidly being created.

However no one really understood exactly how red mercury worked. In the early 1990s, Samuel T Cohen, an American physicist who invented the neutron bomb, claimed the substance would enable nuclear weapons to become much smaller and how major Western nations were unprepared for a potential doomsday. Despite heavy opposition to his claim he continued with the claims until he died in 2010.

Dr. Frank Barnaby, a former Britain's nuclear scientist said "I'm pretty well convinced it exists," in 1994. "It's an enormous conspiracy, if all the people I have spoken to are lying." Barnaby was convinced after a trip to Russia in 1994 that despite conceding many of the claims were false that one or two were not.

In 1993 and 1994, respectively, UK Channel 4 TV produced the documentaries “Trail of Red Mercury” and “Pocket Neutron”. Both asserted that there was convincing evidence that Russian scientists had designed a miniature neutron bomb using the mysterious compound.The ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ declared that red mercury was a hoax in 1997 and a year later researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which helps to maintain US nuclear weapons declared the story :

"a relatively notorious nuclear hoax"

This seemed to have only fuelled the myths even more.


The South African Connection – The Real Mandela Effect!



South Africa forms part of the red mercury mythology because prior to the end of apartheid the government there had decided that Africa should be a continent free of nuclear weapons. It is still the only nation in the world to willing give up its status as a nuclear power. The motivation behind this decision was described by Frans Cronje deputy CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations

While a racist, violent and brutal oppression white apartheid regime was trusted to have and manage nuclear weapons, a Black and democratically elected regime was not trusted to manage them.

Make of that what you will whilst considering that at that time there was no way of knowing what would happen to South Africa after apartheid ended. The uncertainty was a very real international security concern. South Africa’s porous borders were a major problem. Narcotics, drugs, counterfeit cash and goods, rhino horns and all sorts of weaponry were being smuggled in and out of the country.

In 1991 in a quiet Johannesburg street a BMW was found unlocked by two local boys. They hotwired the car and drove it into Soweto. Only to find that the mutilated body of Alan Kidger, a British national and sales manager for Thor Chemicals was hidden in the boot of the car. There were a number of theories as to how he had been killed. One theory that South African police followed was that Alan Kidger might have been killed by the Israeli Mossad because he was involved in supplying a high-tech mysterious substance known as ‘red mercury’ to Arab nations.
 
In April 1993, one of South Africa's top chemical engineers Wynand van Wyk was lured to a business meeting in a Cape Town hotel and beaten to death. He was allegedly providing chemical weapons to the Middle East. He had also had a number of dealings with Kidger.

On July 1994 an arms dealer , Dirk Stoffberg, and his wife were shot in their home in South Africa. This was dubbed a "murder suicide", but the evidence seemed dubious. Stoffberg had played a part in the Iran-Contra affair-and was also allegedly involved with red mercury.

Big-time South African arms dealer, Don Lange, was discovered murdered in June 1994. His head was in a plastic bag connected to a cyanide gas bottle. Officially Lange’s death was ruled a suicide. But South African officials quietly ordered a second autopsy after discovering he’d claimed he was going to be ‘eliminated’. Lange was involved with Kidger and had been heard talking about red mercury.

The arms world was a very murky place as both the old Soviet Union and the apartheid regime in South Africa began to dissolve.


Sources :
www.jta.org...

www.upi.com...


continued>>>>

Bin Laden’s Doomsday Option


Before he became world famous for the 9/11 atrocities , and playing the longest game of hide and seek in history, Osama Bin Laden is alleged to have tried to procure nuclear material in the 1990s. When asked about nuclear weapons Time magazine even quotes him in 1999 as saying :

“Acquiring weapons for the defence of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.”
Source : Time Magazine

In 1998 leaks to Western intelligence indicated that Bin Laden’s organisation had approached young Pakistani nuclear researchers and may well have been fooled by the red mercury scam. His Al Qaeda purchasing agents however were novices when it came to ‘nuclear arms’ and thankfully nothing ever came of that episode.


Red Mercury on Trial

In the summer of 2006 three men were cleared of trying to procure materials to create a “dirty bomb” in the United Kingdom. The material at the centre of the whole plot was ‘red mercury’.

Bizarrely Abdurahman Kanyare and two co-defendants were put on trial yet no-one in the court was certain whether this allegedly devastating substance really existed.

Prosecutor, Mark Ellison told the jury on day one that : "The Crown's position is that whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant."

He advised the members of the jury to not be "hung up" on whether red mercury actually existed at all and stated that the three men had taken the substance to be an extremely costly and highly dangerous compound that they had attempted to acquire. They were accused of “conspiring together with persons unknown” to obtain a dangerous mercury based substance for purposes of an act of terrorism.

The trial rapidly became rather farcical. Kanyare said he believed red mercury was a liquid which could be used to wash soiled money. He had absolutely no interest in a radioactive substance and would have had no means of testing it anyway.

With no real proof that red mercury existed, or that Kanyare really was trying to obtain some, the case collapsed.

‘Singers’and Land Mines


In April of 2009 a crazy rumour swept Saudi Arabia that old fashioned Singer sewing machines contained red mercury. Other than supposedly being used to create a nuclear bomb, popular folklore in the Middle East has it that red mercury is a substance that can uncover hidden gold treasures. Another rumour was that mobile phones could be used to detect the substance was present in these sewing machines.

"If the line cuts off when the telephone is placed close to the needle ... that proves the existence of the substance,"

Saudi Gazette - April 2009

Yet another mythological property of red mercury is that it can keep evil spirits away.

Saudi police say they are investigating a hoax that has seen people rushing to buy old-fashioned sewing machines for up to $50,000 (£33,500). The Singer sewing machines are said to contain traces of red mercury, a substance that may not exist. But it is widely thought that it can be used to find treasure, ward off evil spirits or even make nuclear bombs.

It is believed that tiny amounts can sell for millions of dollars, the Saudi Gazette reported. The paper said that trade in the sewing machines was brisk across the country. Rumours about the sewing machines have been spreading for days by word of mouth and over the internet, it said. These included rumours that foreign experts and companies had been buying up Singers.

Source : BBC News

The Saudi Interior Minister declared these rumours as false and deceptive whilst the manufacturers also issued a statement stating that Singer sewing machines contained no radioactive material and were made of cast iron.

The rumours were believed to have started with criminal gangs cashing in on the ignorance and superstitions of the people. No red mercury was ever found by the Saudi authorities.



Worse still were the deaths caused in Africa. Near Harare, Zimbabwe in 2013 six people were killed by a blast caused by a tank mine being dismantled in a faith healer’s home. The reason was that once again rumour had it that land mines contained red mercury. People were even reported trying to collect them from mine fields in a misguided attempt to make money from a substance which did not exist.

continued>>>>

The ISIS Man Cometh



Even recently the seduction of this mythological substance has had the latest in a long line of international terror organisations chasing after it.

Abu Omar, a Syrian smuggler working for ISIS from across the Turkish border, had developed a niche for himself after war erupted in Syria. He had began smuggling in mobile phones, flak jackets, medicines and all sorts of underground paraphernalia. Then in January 2014 he was told by an ISIS commander to put ‘red mercury’ on his shopping list.

Omar knew full well what they were after. He was told ISIS would pay up to $4m and was sent an image of a pale, oblong object, around the length of a hot-dog , with a hole at each end. It looked nothing like common descriptions of a liquid with a metallic sheen. It was more like an object a Turkish media outlet had called a red-mercury rocket warhead in an overhyped report.

Omar followed a lead into Syrian Government held territory near the front line to meet a cousin. However his cousin suspected ISIS were behind it all and refused to play ball.

In an interview with the New York Times Abdul Omar claimed that despite all the talk in the West that red mercury did not exist that he had seen it with his own eyes. He claimed that a couple of years earlier a small group of Islamic rebels demonstrated its impact in Ras al-Ain, Syria. They were warned that once the experiment had begun they would have 10 seconds to vacate the property or they would die.

A needle was dipped into a tiny quantity of red mercury and then dipped in a foil lined container filled with chlorine. Omar then claimed everything began to interact, filling the house with noxious fumes and everyone fled gasping for breath. Another unverifiable legend was born.

Omar abandoned his quest when Kurds seized Tal Abyad and his ISIS contact fell silent. But he still believed ‘red mercury’ was out there. He claimed people he knew had sold it to the Kurds, that Syrian Government forces had found ‘red mercury warheads’ and even Georgian smugglers had been arrested in Turkey possessing the substance . Nothing he said was ever backed up with any evidence.

Conclusions

There is more than enough information out there on the internet that ‘red mercury’ does not exist (t least as an element for producing a nuclear weapon of some sort). It has long been thought to have been a story put out by the intelligence communities of the nuclear powers to catch criminals and terrorists trying to obtain nuclear materials. However it seems, in certain areas of the world at least, that the mythology and legend of this substance will not go away.

Perhaps parts of the reasons behind those beliefs are that Western media and websites are not to be trusted. Even though there are no reputable reports of any weapon allegedly built around the mystical properties of ‘red mercury’ being used.

Red mercury is probably one of the most influential and lethal substance that does not exist. It is also proof that although facts can be checked with the click of a button today people can still be fooled by a tall story and will always choose to follow their own beliefs.

Unless of course red mercury really does exist?





References and Further Information not in OP

Newsday : Red-mercury hoax costs lives

The Unobtainium Files

New York Times – The Doomsday Scam

Smuggling Special Nuclear Items

International Business Times – The Hunt for red mercury

My first thought is that "red mercury" refers to cinnabar, HgS, a mineral.

Interesting thread, OP, S & F.

originally posted by: Olivine
My first thought is that "red mercury" refers to cinnabar, HgS, a mineral.

Interesting thread, OP, S & F.

Yes there are many substances dubbed 'red mercury'.

such a good read thnak you

Interesting read Indeed

Thank You!!!

Despite the lack of evidence that the deadly substance really exists the stories surrounding this mythical substance, and the desire to obtain it, go on to this very day.

Red mercury, one of those mythical substances used by the main stream to instill fear in those not familiar with science.

Like the term 'nano thermite', introduced after 911 to mystify how the buildings were brought down.

Cue the truthers...

Good work .



Thankx.

a reply to: mirageman

I've had constant recurring dreams of mercury as a superfluid, I really believe there is more to mercury than we are told.

red mercury and element 115 (unumpentium)...2 mythical elements....both the same source ....vril project Germany
but reminds me on the notourious Russia "briefcase" atomic bombs....triggerd by red mercury ????????
ofcourse the russians had there own "operation paperclip"....

good post OP

I could of swore that red mercury was a made up term created by the CIA to help them track and find those looking to buy nuclear material and devices on the black market.

a reply to: mirageman

Makes me think of Star Treks huge bubble of "Red matter'.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: mirageman

I've had constant recurring dreams of mercury as a superfluid, I really believe there is more to mercury than we are told.

I'm guessing you don't known what a superfluid is. Also, if you think there is more to Hg than you are told..the buy some and conduct experiments in it.

Do you think that all the scientists working on Mercury are in the government's pockets?

Red mercury is a myth but it's an interesting story

Excellent post. I was glued to the end. I can't remember ever hearing of Red Mercury outside of this article.

a reply to: mirageman

Unless of course red mercury really does exist?

Thanks for a great Thread;

Then there is Mercury & the Philosophers Stone (immortality or Life extension)

gnosticteachings.org...

45. Remove the Mercury of the Secret Philosophy from the Sun and from the Moon, which means from the man and from the woman, from these two metals.
46. Work with this Mercury and "learn how to serve yourselves with it, so that you may march towards the light with open eyes and not fall as blind men into the abyss of perdition."
47. Thus, you will engender the king crowned with the red diadem, the Master of metallic transmutations.
48. This is the phoenix bird that is reborn from its own ashes.
49. This is the salamander that survives within the fire.
50. This is the universal chameleon that disguises itself with innumerable colors.
51. At times, it is black; at times, it is red; at times, it is white or of various colors.
52. Our Mercury blackens, reddens, whitens, and is revested with a thousand colors that are observed in the changing atmospheres of the alchemist.
53. It is necessary to bake, bake, and re-bake and not to become tired of it.
54. Thus, we transmute the Mercury into potable gold.
55. Thus, we succeed in joining the Cross with the Triangle.
56. The receptacle must be well-sealed in order to avoid the escape of even a single drop of our philosophical Mercury.
57. If the seed of the wheat is pulled out from the earth during the process of putrefaction, then the wheat cannot grow and the seed dies.
58. Likewise, our seed must not be pulled out or taken from our Philosophical Earth, because the seed and the universes that could flourish would be lost, and we would fail in the Great Work.

a reply to: mirageman

It has made it far enough into pop culture they designed a movie around it. RED 2 (2013)

Red Mercury Bomb

Red mercury was the code name for Li6D at one point. The rest probably happened from there.

The more sane bits of red mercury folklore seem to be referencing nuclear isomer explosives. If those were to exist, they'd have a lot of the same characteristics you see attributed to red mercury.

Red mercury isn't real.
It's a propaganda hoax.

Obama tried to sell Iran some of his red mercury and look how that backfired

Red Mercury is just bad mojo