In his expose, "The Doomsday Scam", C.J. Chivers does a superb job of showing how the tenacity of magical
thinking is nothing deterred by its attendant absurdity. His subject is a
precious, albeit — fortunately — non-existent substance called "red
mercury" which would allow those who possess it to construct a
"neutron bomb small enough to fit in a sandwich-size paper bag."
As Chivers puts it:
To approach the subject of red mercury is to journey into a
comic-book universe, a zone where the stubborn facts of science give way to
unverifiable claims, fantasy and outright magic, and where villains pursuing
the dark promise of a mysterious weapon could be rushing headlong to the end of
the world.
The villains Chivers discusses belong to ISIS and its
suppliers, as eager for a red mercury apocalypse as fantasy sports addicts are
for mega-payouts.
He writes:
When hopeful sellers were caught, substance in hand, it
reliably turned out to be something else, sometimes a placebo of chuckle-worthy
simplicity: ordinary mercury mixed with dye. The shadowy weaponeer’s little
helper, it was the unobtainium of the post-Soviet world.
Unobtainium it is, and must will be. (You got any?)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam.html
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