Samuel T. Cohen, Red Mercury, Neutron bomb.

First a little about Samuel T Cohen.

Cohen's parents who immigrated from London, England. He was born on January 25, 1921 in Brooklyn and raised in New York City. He studied math and physics at UCLA before joining the Army after Pearl Harbor.[2] In 1944 he worked on the Manhattan project in the efficiency group and calculated how neutrons behaved in Fat Man, the atomic bomb that was later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. After the war he studied for his Ph.D at Berkeley before dropping out to join the RAND Corporation.[2] At RAND Corporation in 1950, his work on the intensity of fallout radiation first became public when his calculations were included as a special appendix in Samuel Glasstone's book The Effects of Atomic Weapons. Cohen was personally responsible for recruiting the famous strategist Herman Kahn into the RAND Corporation.[3]

Wikipedia

So he was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan project, thats a pretty big credential in my book. Cohen was a big proponent of Neutron bombs over nuclear ones.

Neutron bombs are mentioned in.

is included as an 'enhanced neutron weapon' in chapter 5 of the declassified (formerly secret) manual edited by Philip J. Dolan, Capabilities of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Department of Defense, effects manual DNA-EM-1, updated 1981 (U.S. Freedom of Information Act). Provided that the weapon was not used in a thunderstorm, no fallout effects would occur from the use of a neutron bomb according to that manual, as the combination of 500 m burst altitude and low yield prevents fallout in addition to significant thermal and blast effects. The reduction in damage outside the target area is a major advantage of such a weapon to deter massed tank invasions. An aggressor would thus be forced to disperse tanks, which would make them easier to destroy by simple hand-held anti-tank missile launchers.

also from wikipedia.

Now I found an article with an interview with Samuel Cohen.

Bomb inventor says U.S. defenses suffer because of politics

Now what strikes me in the article is he makes claims that red mercury is real

Most frightening for Cohen is the relative ease by which neutron bombs can be created with a substance called red mercury. Red mercury is a compound containing mercury that has undergone massive irradiation. When exploded, it creates tremendous heat and pressure - the same type needed to trigger a fusion device such as a mini-neutron bomb.

And lastly I remember a thread about the Wiki-cables about red mercury

[Sensational!] Red Mercury Mentioned in leaked Diplomatic Cables

It strikes me how persistent the claims of red mercury are, if it was really a Russian sting to catch people buying material like some people suggest was Cohen in on that scam?

Is Red Mercury just code wore for something else?

This man helped make the first nukes, surely if someone had known it would of been him?

Yours is one of the few posts referencing Red Mercury that actually have a logical context and some factual basis. You may be onto something there. If Red Mercury is real and it allows the creation of Neutron type weapons with relative ease, it explains the fear and almost superstitious avoidance of even muttering the words in any official statements. Neutron Weapons would be the ultimate terrorist or small tactical weapon when you think about it. I hope these type of weapons haven't spread beyond the positive control systems of each Nuclear Power.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Ive always assumed we had neutron bombs and for some reason I can't remember when or how long ago I came to that belief lol. The manual showing its mention to me is proof, which raises all kinds of scary questions. There is even people that think Israel has them as well.


There is more I could of added but hesitant due to taking it into the realm of crazy, Ive always been fascinated by the UFO claim that magnetic manipulation of mercury causes lift, and then you look at how similar descriptions of the ancient indian texts that talk about flying machines mention mercury as well.

seems like mercury could be manipulated to maybe produce very energetic reactions.

reply to post by benrl
It does make for some very interesting thinking. I know fulminate of mercury forms one of the higher order explosives known if applied and initiated correctly. I'd looked for a link to ask if that is what you mean by energetic reactions, but the things I found were more along the instruction for how to make it at home variety. Probably not the best thing to post but it sure would make a certain sense if that were the bases for a Neutron weapon.

I don't know..I'll leave it to the physicists I suppose but I'm with you on hoping the combatants in the Middle East do NOT possess these weapons. Any of them. All the bang of a nuclear war without the mess of fall out, destroyed infrastructure or pesky lingering radiation to close the area to human use. What a nightmare for how tempting that would be for some to use in an open war. How evil when one considers what the last time would be like for the population being "removed" from a given area. There are some things I wish we could un-invent.

reply to post by benrl

Neutron Bomb - Tritium not necessary but only needs to be added for more power, a palladium trigger, 3 x normal ratio of Li7/Li6 mix and no fission products needed, – acts as catalyst, electron transfer to start neutron out of the nucleus, releases nuclear energy and neutron, ie, palladium injected into Li mix – seems like Beryllium – contained in inner bomb, deflectors would also work. Li 7 +e →He 7 →He 6 →Li 6 … Lithium 7 with the add. of 1 electron the expulsion of a neutron and yield more Li 6.

Link

This guy is (well, you decide) and somewhat discredited but some in the circle think he stumbled onto the information, but greatly misunderstood most of it. But still he found something from what I heard it relates to the above quote formula. But I haven't been able to dig into this deeper as of yet. Maybe you will have better luck!
Ed Ward MD

BTW - when I was in NM it was widely leaked that Sandia Labs did some research on something(chemicals I believe) to do with this. But it was listed under the guise of some other benign testing project.

reply to post by benrl

Most frightening for Cohen is the relative ease by which neutron bombs can be created with a substance called red mercury. Red mercury is a compound containing mercury that has undergone massive irradiation. When exploded, it creates tremendous heat and pressure - the same type needed to trigger a fusion device such as a mini-neutron bomb.

I wonder which radioactive isotope of mercury he is talking about and how making a compound with some other element (which one?) before it all decays, usually into daughter isotopes Platinum or Gold, may alter the very short half-life's that radioactive mercury tends to have [43 days maximum half life for Hg203 and most are well shy of that maximum]

Isotopes of mercury

Now speaking about Hg203 ...

Mercury Isotopes

Hg-202 is also used for the production of radioactive Hg-203 which is used for gamma radiation calibration.

I am going to suggest that red mercury may be a compound like mercury fulminate, but with a Hg203 mercury atom instead of a normal stable mercury atom and thus works both as an explosive and also as a - beta decay [electron] source to help produce a highly shaped electrical field at the moment of detonation and that creates a subsequent magnetic field that holds onto all the positively and negatively charged particles and that allows all the fast neutral neutrons generated, to escape the magnetic field and death ray everybody in the area whilst the magnetic bubble also works to limit blast and thermal effects [it channels the plasma].

However such a weapon would only have a shelf life of 430days maximum, if the half life of the Hg203 mercury isotope [or whatever mercury isotope] doesn't change whilst it is a made into a compound molecule, as by that time it would have decayed to the point of being 1024th as rich in radioactive Hg203, that means less than 0.1% of the Hg203 still remains with 99.9+% having decayed into daughter products ... which for Hg203 is Titanium (TI203).