Red Mercury Bombs

J.R. Nyquist reports that that Russia may have given red mercury fusion
technology to Saddam Hussein.

Nyquist writes: "According to one of my sources, Iraq possesses
's-megaton' micro-nuclear warheads. These are softball-sized two-megaton
fusion bombs triggered by an irradiated and compressed compound of mercury
antimony oxide. This device doubles the nuclear yield with a hundredfold
reduction of weight. Using heavy hydrogen instead of uranium or
plutonium to fuel its explosive reaction, this hand-held nuclear weapon cannot
be detected by U.S. sensors.

He adds: "... former Russian Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov,
who once spoke of a new kind of bomb that could devastate "foreign
territory" while carrying no risk of retaliation. During a Pravda interview
almost a decade ago, Mikhailov described the existence of 'little
bombs' that 'could appear by the year 2000.' In 1993 General Y. Negin said
that Russia had developed a special nuclear weapon, 'in which a doubling
of yield is achieved with a hundredfold reduction of weight compared to
existing weapons.' American scientist Sam Cohen, inventor of the
neutron bomb, pointed out in 1995 that such an increase in nuclear efficiency
would only be possible if the Russians had developed a red mercury
device."

talk about a hitting one out of the park !

uh i hate to be an ass, but do you have a link or other"proof" (i know "proof" is only relative now a days)

Newsmax.com

That would be a hand grenade that I would not care to throw.

Who around here can pitch a grenade two miles or better?

[shock]

Nuclear mortars.   Nuclear cluster bombs.
Nuclear rounds in your 37mm flare launcher.
Nuclear land mines. (Well, we already have those...)

Palestinian suicide bombers...with nuclear bombs.

With further developments in miniaturization, we have the .50 caliber nuclear bullet, quite capable of taking down an entire herd of Cape Buffalo in one shot.

Nuclear .22LR CCI Mini Nukes.  Explosive yield: 1 ton.  Blows houses clean off their foundations, and more than suitable for any dangerous game.   Extra fun for night shooting!

The possibilities are unlimited!

CJ


CJ

Could you provide a specific link?  newsmax is slower than molasses, and a search on "mercury" turned up a lot of stuff, none related to this topic.

BTW, since the Russians never developed anything on their own, it stands to reason they came by this technology via espionage, probably from us.  I'm sure by now we have testicle-sized nukes, and I'm not talking cajones here, I'm taking liberal Democrat sized nuts. [rolleyes]

: Insider Report: A Special NewsMax.com Briefing

To: "NewsMax.com-CyberWar"

From: "NewsMax.com"  


This is where I receivedit from.

Quite frankly, horse-feathers.

No such thing exists.

That would be a hand grenade that I would not care to throw.


Can you say terrorist?

Birdman Weapon Systems beat you to the Nuclear .50...  But the CCI MiniNuke SuperStingers?  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!  Great!  And you thought that bunny exploded when it was hit with a .17 at 4000 fps!

It's true ! it's true !

Hollywood has had these things for years, didn't you guys see predator ? As for newsmax these dudes are hereby invited to permanantly attatch their mouth to my ass.

I am not saying this is true, but if it is we may find out the hard way.

Do us all a favor, and go here- read and learn...

[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/help/code.html[/url]

Enjoy!

I have a very hard time beleiving that. Without getting into the details, the physics package that would be required to acheive the preguisite thermal and presure pulse to ignite fusion has to be very powerful. Recently the US has been able to develop a silicon based hyper-explosive that is being used to develop a 'clean' nuke. ( a nuclear device in which fusion fuel [lithium hydride] is directly compressed by a symetrical chemical explosion rather then using a fission device that's child isotopes are what produce radioactive fallout.) Keep in mind that non nuclear exposives powerful enought to produce such energy levels have only been produced in the last 2 years. and are extremly dificult to produce.

Red Mercury is an urban legend. The smallest nuclear device that I consider likley to be developed by the former soviet union would be suit cased sized, and useing reasonable estimates for the amount of fissionable material within the device, would produce a yeild of less then 25< kilotons.

If a nuclear device is unleashed on an American city, we would have no choice but to unleash the world single most affective stratigic force on most of the middle east, as well as likley North Korea, and possibly the stratigic forces of the PRC.

Times like this make you long for the good old days of the cold war when we only had one, fairly rashional enemy, now we have many that are armed with weapons and devices that they can't produce, don't understand, but are eminetly willing to use.

From a 1995 report:

"The only real technological barrier to the clandestine construction of nuclear weapons is access to fissionable material itself. There is a growing black market for this material, and eventually demand will result in enough material reaching as-yet unidentified buyers to produce a nuclear weapon, if the world community continues to procrastinate as it has to date. In the meantime, terrorist threats of contamination using radioactive substances gain enhanced credibility as the number of smuggling incidents continues to rise."

[url]http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/comment/com57_e.html[/url]

If the technology to create "red mercury" mini-nukes did exist, I have to wonder why the Russians would give away something that must have required millions and millions of dollars in R&D work.  But even if they did, it would take more a couple of CD-ROMs of data to make a working device.

There is a big difference between fission and fusion.  Fission is done on a lake with worms and...

Oh oops.

Wrong fission.

Fusion requires the the driving together of nuclei into a new or sibling element.  

Fission is the splitting of nuclei, conventional bombs, and is dependant on the mass of fissional material in a close proximity or high density (critical mass) hence it's size and mass are limited by physical laws.

Fusion cannot be done with out tremendous amounts of initiating power.  While granted the energy yield  is much greater than the energy required to initiate, if it were possible to concentrate the initiation energy in a baseball or even a cage ball, we would be able to have cold fusion as an unlimited source of power and put the oil fields of the near, mid and far east out of business tomorrow.

Say, wasn't that a Tom Clancy novel, "The Hunt For Red Mercury"?  As I recall it was about a red Ford Mercury whose muffler was so perfect it could not be heard. [:D]