Red mercury
Red mercury is a discredited substance, most likely a hoax perpetrated by con artists who sought to take advantage of gullible buyers on the black market for arms.
The report, compiled by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, shows that in the hands of hoaxers and conmen, red mercury can do almost anything the aspiring Third World demagogue wants it to.
[4]A 1993 article in the Russian newspaper Pravda, claiming to be informed by leaked top-secret memos, described red mercury as: [A] super-conductive material used for producing high-precision conventional and nuclear bomb explosives, 'Stealth' surfaces and self-guided warheads.
Primary end-users are major aerospace and nuclear-industry companies in the United States and France along with nations aspiring to join the nuclear club, such as South Africa, Israel, Iran, Iraq, and Libya.
When detonated, this mixture allegedly becomes "extremely hot, which allows pressures and temperatures to be built up that are capable of igniting the heavy hydrogen and producing a pure-fusion mini neutron bomb.
[2]Following the arrest of several men in Britain in September 2004, on suspicion that they were trying to buy a kilogram of red mercury for £900,000, the International Atomic Energy Agency made a statement dismissing claims that the substance is real.
"[7] When the case came to trial at the Old Bailey in April 2006, it became apparent that News of the World's "fake sheikh" Mazher Mahmood had worked with the police to catch the three men (Dominic Martins, Roque Fernandes and Abdurahman Kanyare).
[11] The reason why somebody had assembled this complex mixture of chemicals is unknown; equally puzzling was the presence of fragments of glass and brush bristles, suggesting that someone had dropped a bottle of this substance and then swept it up into a new container.
This can be reduced through the use of neutron reflectors or clever arrangements of explosives to compress the core, but these methods generally add to the size and complexity of the resulting device.
[17] He went on to claim that the reason this is not more widely known is that elements within the US power structure are deliberately suppressing or hiding information due to the frightening implications such a weapon would have on nuclear proliferation.
Since a red mercury bomb would require no fissile material, it would seemingly be impossible to protect against its widespread proliferation given current arms control methodologies.
Cohen also claimed that when President Boris Yeltsin took power, he secretly authorized the sale of red mercury on the international market, and that fake versions of it were sometimes offered to gullible buyers.
Red mercury is thought by some to be the invention of an intelligence agency or criminal gang for the purpose of deceiving terrorists and rogue states who were trying to acquire nuclear technology on the black market.
[19] One televised report indicated that the Soviet Union encouraged the KGB and GRU to arrange sting operations for the detection of those seeking to deal in nuclear materials.
The Soviet intelligence services allegedly created a myth of the necessity of "red mercury" for the sorts of nuclear devices that terrorists and rogue governments might seek.
[6] Organizations involved in landmine clearance and unexploded munitions disposal noted a belief amongst some communities in southern Africa that red mercury may be found in certain types of ordnance.
Attempting to extract red mercury, purported to be highly valuable, was reported as a motivation for people dismantling items of unexploded ordnance, and suffering death or injury as a result.
[24] There was little agreement among believers in the story as to the exact nature or even color of the red mercury, while the supposed uses for it ranged from it being an essential component of nuclear power, to having the ability to summon jinn, extract gold, or locate buried treasure and perform other forms of magic.
The official spokesman for the Riyadh police said that the rumors had been started by gangs attempting to swindle people out of their money, and denied the existence of red mercury in sewing machines.
