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ISIS's Hunt For a Bogus Superweapon
schnell writes: The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating story about ISIS efforts to get their hands on a mysterious and powerful superweapon called Red Mercury. The problem is that by consensus among scientific authorities, Red Mercury doesn't exist. And yet that hasn't stopped the legend of Red Mercury, touted by sources from Nazi conspiracy theorists to former Manhattan Project scientists, as having magical properties. Middle East weapons traders have even spun elaborate stories for its properties (ranging from thermonuclear explosive properties to sexual enhancement) and origins and sources (from Soviet weapons labs to Roman graveyards). What can account for the enduring myth of Red Mercury — is it rampant scientific illiteracy, the power of urban legend and shared myth, or something else?
Too much exposure tho and you'll turn into a smeg head.
We tell them Andromeda Strain was a documentary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating story about ISIS efforts to get their hands on a mysterious and powerful superweapon called [Allah]. The problem is that by consensus among scientific authorities, [Allah] doesn't exist. And yet that hasn't stopped the legend of [Allah], touted by sources from Nazi conspiracy theorists to former Manhattan Project scientists, as having magical properties. Middle East weapons traders have even spun elaborate stories for its properties (ranging from thermonuclear explosive properties to sexual enhancement) and origins and sources (from Soviet weapons labs to Roman graveyards). What can account for the enduring myth of [Allah] — is it rampant scientific illiteracy, the power of urban legend and shared myth, or something else?
Are you telling me a group of religious fundamentalists are scientifically illiterate??
The nature of a group like ISIS (though I hear they hate being called DAESH, which is a good reason to) leads them to be somewhat gullible on such matters. So this is not surprising. But part of me is oddly reassured by the fact the most feared terrorist organization in the world is on a massive snipe hunt.
This is typical /. propaganda. Red Mercury DOES exist.
Recent scientific research has confirmed that it's so-called 'magical properties' are actually endowed by Allah.
This is how I have been able to build one myself. I am offering it for sale to ISIS for $USD20 Billion and no one can stop me (hopefully).
I mean, if they're really this gullible, why stop there? If we want to talk about fictional destructive fluids of a crimson color, why not try to sell them red matter? What faster way to your 72 virgins than destroying an entire planet? Or don't they have a way yet to drill to the Earth's core?
Don't spoil the honeypot, assholes.
This seems like a great plot for the next Indiana Jones movie. Maybe they could even have a Spock cameo.
movie title...band name...porn id....too many possibilities.
Maybe they're thinking of Ice-9?
--Steve
What can account for the enduring myth of Red Mercury — is it rampant scientific illiteracy, the power of urban legend and shared myth, or something else?
Yes.
Has mercury and is colored Red. Pleasure doing business with you Mr. Armeen.
I hope they don't learn about the absolutely lethal dihydrogen monoxide. They'll be all over that shit.
Oh, I let the cat out of the bag didn't I?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Red Mercury is totally bogus. If they were smart, they'd go to Ethiopia and swipe the Tabota Seyen -- the Ark of the Covenant. There's your super-weapon. I mean, all you have to do is carry it in front of your army, and it just wipes out your enemies in masse! The Ethiopians themselves have used it multiple times in battle.
Did you guys *see* what it did in Raiders of the Lost Ark? That movie was totally fact-based! ;)
It gave Spock COPD
Let us set up a clandestine program to dope real RDX explosives red, make spectacular explosions as demo and lure them in. Let us sell them fake red mercury that would not explode well, add tracers to them and track them down.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As much as I like laughing at idiots, I'm not sure that letting them know it's bullshit is in anyone's best interest. Every bit of money and manpower they devote to finding shit that doesn't exist is money and manpower that's not killing everyone else.
In fact, the RIGHT approach to this would have been to seed the marketplace with various government agents leading the bad guys on in their hunt for this mcguffin.
Remember folks: DON'T educate the bad guys. Don't tell them what they are doing wrong - it's counterproductive to make them smarter.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
people who are wildly batshit insane keep yakking about the mythical "red mercury"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
They're looking in the wrong place.
This is what Daesh should actually be looking for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hail Hydra.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I take it they haven't seen the Star Trek reboots...
For the right price, I could be persuaded to part with my red mercury.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think they'd be happy just to get their hands on some high level radioactive wastes so they can build a dirty bomb. So while everyone is being snarky, they are probably being serious, but not about Red Mercury.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Mercuric oxide is red. I'm not sure about any of the other properties, but it *is* red. (Actually orange might be a better descriptive, but it's on the red side of orange.)
Google: mercuric oxide color
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What is it with that hair, Donald?
You are welcome on my lawn.
That silver mercury was a blast to play with. It tasted like shit, but man it was a fun toy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Below is but a few of the many recent noteworthy contributions from the so-called religion of peace to the field of Scientific Advancement
Polio is making a come back in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, thanks to Islam, many health workers were killed because they were accused of trying to make the little children infertile with the polio vaccine
Islamic clerics from Saudi Arabia claim that female who drive are prone to damage their ovaries
And if you really want to know how moslem feel about science, I encourage you to read an article from the Discover Magazine to find out
http://discovermagazine.com/20...
Red mercury is located next to the dilithium crystals (below the unobtanium) at any Walmart.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
On that movie set where they faked the moon landings.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A lot of people who believe in Red Mercury don't believe in global warming.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What can account for the enduring myth of Red Mercury
We had almost stamped out that myth, and then Star Trek (2009) came out with red matter, and it started up all over again.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
but they post about it on SLASHDOT, like that's "stuff that matters!"
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Real or not, red muercury is used to lure rubes into ISIS' ranks as the superweapon for wiping out the superpowers. Without a superweapon on their side, the ISIS rubes know they're looking at a serious butt kicking when the sleeping giant tires of their games - and nobody wants to be on the losing side. ISIS leadership knows this, too, and has fabricated the red mercury story and how close they are to acquiring it to keep membership and morale up. I could also be completely full of shit.
I don't think anyone questioned that.
Yet they managed to build a strong "state", make tons of money, and kill many people on the West. The West being much more clever.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It's at the bottom of a big pit on Oak Island. Just keep digging. It's down there.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I guess it's a matter of perspective. They've managed to conquer a small swath of barely ariable land, sell numerous ancient artifacts that they didn't discover and kill an infitesimally small percentage of westerners. And they did all of that using the technology of the "much more clever" westerners.
These guys really are morons, I see red mercury's on the road every day. They just need to rob the nearest ford dealership.
monatomic gold! That stuff makes red mercury look like candy!
... I would go for Cold Fusion instead
I mean, if I were to waste my time hunting down non-existing red mercury I might as well waste my time better by chasing down an equally non-existing cold fusion
If I were to get Red Mercury what the fuck am I going to do with it, other than a few spectacular ' KA-BOOM '?
But if I were to get my hands on Cold Fusion that really works, I would be the one controlling the world's endless supply of the much needed energy that this world is hungry for
What better way to force the world bows down before me, huh?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
the nearest Ford/Lincoln car dealer
Or it's like how the star wars missile defense project was supposed to work, billions spent and nothing happend.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was always partial to the gold colored Mercury, but that's just me.
We're just making our small business by pulling money from these idiots and their sponsors.
Possibly you know, previously we offered Lapis Philosophorum.
Well, making a lot of money doesn't take a lot of brains if the rules of the "game" allow you to use guns to seize productive assets, particularly of the extract-from-the-ground variety (oil, diamonds, tantalum etc.). This is particularly true when those things are geographically located in a place that has a power vacuum.
In such situations boldness and ruthlessness will either get you killed or make you rich.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Have you ever asked yourself what color anti-mercury would be?
... if they get red mercury, we still have Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-hun, and Helen Mirren... we can just send them in to kick their asses. We could call it RED 3, although we'd have to actually call it a "reboot" of RED 2, and i'd hate to see the actors they go with this time around. Bruce WIllis.... ain't nothing going to get to us... red mercury, asteroids the size of Texarse... nothing!
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
What is it with that hair, Donald?
It's RED MERCURY powered hair, derrrr.
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
Probably we'd die of laughter if it wasn't "our" money, but the US and Soviets spent huge amounts of money trying to find and control psychotic weapons. One plausible sounding idea was "remote reading". After all, if you could read cards, then why not read "intelligence" documents. I guess Yuri Geller said that he could ready Soviet intelligence on their psychotic weapons research and would suggest further avenues of research. Now, don't these "investigation" have to be scrutinized by experts in a field. Otherwise, there would be an army of people trying all sorts of shit.
The biggest example of bogus science was at Harvard, when the world's leading brain surgeons decided to lobotomize J.F. Kennedy's sister Rosemary. Now, the two biggest problems are that the Kennedy's had access to money and were not morons.
Because then we would be truly fucked. Unobtanium pisses down on Red Mercury from a very great height.
What are psychotic weapons? Or did you mean "psychic"?
I got your Red Mercury right here! I mean, not here now. I have it, I just need some time to deliver.
I wonder if all those people in pursuit of 72 virgins realize that souls don't have dicks?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I first read about this when researching John Dee...red mercury was part of his alchemy work on the Philosopher's Stone. That was over 400 years ago, far older than the NYT's claims of "around the time of the Cold War".
The formulation for red mercury can be found in the koran - The return of the Mahdi, the final defeat of infidels and the end of the world - that's the formula for red mercury. They have been staring at it all along.
The Sphynx has a room underneath its front paws, dicovered by means or echolocation.
However, no archeologist has been allowed in, yet.
Must be because the superweapon is there!
..who laughingly refer to themselves as 'Islamic State', is revealed in all it's glory, here: They're idiots. Violent, animalistic, atavistic idiots, but idiots nevertheless. They believe in Fairy Tales, superstitions, and myths. They're not rational in the least. Sadly, they think they're fit to rule over a population, when in reality their 'caliphate' is a bad joke, and they don't posess even a fraction of the intelligence, experience, or restraint to actually create and rule over a productive, modern country. Makes one wonder if they even acknowledge that the world is round, and if they believe the sun revolves around the Earth.
I heard today an estimate that it might take 20 or 30 years to completely rid the Earth of this particular pestilence of radical 'Islamic' (in quotes because the term only applies to them in the loosest sense of the word imaginable) extremists; I just hope I survive long enough to see the day when the last of them are finally put down.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It's much more effective if you dilute in one to a million with water.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Making sure to make the tracer Isotopic for the double win, trigger a Geiger counter to convince them this is real and make it easier to track.
http://www.britannica.com/scie...
Some thermometers have red mercury.
No. Some thermometers have alcohol dyed red. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
That must be a very tiny room..
No way any full grown human can fit in there.
Now... mice-archeologist might be able to fit in there, but there are other obvious issues with that solution as well.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Terrorist money spent on Red Mercury is money not being spend on bombs and bullets. Perhaps more time should be spend debunking the debunkers :-)
The red ones are alcohol based. They put red dye in it because clear alcohol in clear glass is kind of hard to see.
I've got an old mercury thermometer and the contents is a silvery liquid (i.e. mercury).
SJW n. One who posts facts.
White phosphorous is used in munitions, including the controversial "whiskey pete" anti-personnel explosives. Red phosphorous is the source for phosphine, a toxic gas used as a fumigant.
OK, neither one is mercury or a radionuclide, but one is red, one is a weapon, and phosphine could be used as WMD.
That horrible Star Trek reboot with the red matter must recently have made its way to ISIS computers.
There is a body in the grave, but there are no known samples of his DNA (or Kyle's) to test against so the identity of the body is uncertain.
The nature of the work he did during the war is likewise unknown. As is why he, a civilian, arrived in the Ardennes in early December 1944, but whatever he was doing there had Germany worried enough to launch a major offensive for the sole purpose of capturing him alive, now known as "The Battle of the Bulge".
For obvious reasons.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's because it sounds a bit like fReddie Mercury.
Haha. What idiots will believe that there's a weapon of mass destruction in that area that they need to find?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Whatever we do, we must not let ISIS find out that Ann Coulter has the secret to achieving a working Red Mercury weapon.
Sounds a like Red Matter in His first Star Trek movie.
Maybe the CIA should whip up a batch of viagra laced with ricin and red dye and distribute it to some of these morons.
The US isn't perfect but tries to do what's good for her and Western civilization while the terrorists kill, maim, rape, torture, and otherwise make people's lives shorter and more horrific. Do not equate the US with terrorists (though I'm sure the responses below will try).
If we're lucky.
Well now, this explains a lot. Did you try lead based paint chips? Some of those were tasty.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That's an insult to the culture of ancient Egypt.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Maybe I should sell the Libyans some of my Corbomite stockpile to fund my time travel experiments.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Don't they know that they must first exhume the body of Cobra Commander??
I'll be glad to sell them my spare Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I don't use it much anymore.
What a bunch of idiots...
Religions are ~2000 years old;
Humans are ~200,000 years old;
Religion was born when the first con-man met the first fool;
Casteism
Followed a breadcrumb from one of the news sites on the "Red Mercury" being mentioned in alchemical texts.
Yep, it is right on target as a reference to the paint pigment "vermilion". When used in traditional carved laquerware from China; it is known as "cinnabar". Red Mercury is mercury sulfide, one of the easiest ores to get elemental mercury from.
Whomever started the disinformation campaign on the properties of "Red Mercury" should be commended. Good gag there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar
NRRPT/RCT
P.S.=> I am going to annihilate you publicly for those you reprehensible piece of fucking lying malicious libelous trolling trash... apk
Bwhahahahahaha! Oh, you *go* girl, you *troll* that bad, bad man!
There's nothing more pitifully amusing than watching APK hollering away at everyone and everything with his panties up in a big old bunch.
You've almost become an institution, Slashdot's "Donald Duck" if you like - a highly-strung, pompous twit who explodes into tantrums of quacking and squawking at the slightest hint of provocation.
Keep up that stalking of yours, it's sure to keep winning you hearts and minds!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Did someone say the forbidden word three times ?
Oh? I must have missed that memo. What is it, something like "fuckwit, fuckwit, fuckwit"?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Makers, what?? I'm saying the terror group, in using the name ISIS, is an insult to ancient Egyptian culture, namely ISIS herself; but also by extension I suppose Osiris, Horus, Ra, and hell, even Set.
ISIS (aka Daesh/ISIL) are an abomination that soils the name, and ironcially devalues and detests ancient cultures, as the destruction of Palmyra has recently shown.
That's an interesting conclusion you jumped to there, you seemed awfully primed to argue with someone. Or you have sex on the brain a lot.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
However, I believe they call this, "psychological transference".. I quote:
An insult to the ancient culture? Why's that? Are you uncomfortable talking about sex or does it bother you?
You projected an imagined issue onto me, that of "being uncomfortable with sex". You completely misread the meaning of my post when there was no cause to.
You provided not a shred of any kind of evidence whatsoever. That you even claim to is ludicrous. You're just looking for an argument, i.e. trolling.
Now bugger off, there will be further communication, you're not worth my time.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.