SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology (48 page)

a.
First Generation Weapons:

This generation of weapon comes in three distinct phases, ascending from the least to the more complex:

(1)
Radiological Weapons (“Dirty Bombs”):
this is the simplest type of nuclear weapon, where a conventional explosive is used to disperse a cloud of deadly radioactive fallout over a wide area. The explosion is purely conventional, although it requires rudimentary nuclear technology to produce the required radioactive isotopes in sufficient quantity for such a weapon. This is the type of weapon many erroneously allege was the only nuclear weapon ever actually achieved by the Third Reich;

(2)
“The Semi-Fission” or “Atomic Fizzle” Bomb:
This type of device actually does generate some nuclear combustion of the nuclear fuel, creating an enormous explosion, though falling short of a full fission reaction. It is a cross between the “dirty” bomb” above and the full fission device below. The explosion, since it does not combust the nuclear material nearly as completely, is also a very dirty bomb. Its yield would be in the fractions of a kiloton, still enormous by conventional standards, but still far short of an actual atom bomb. The atomic “fizzling firecracker” effect of such a bomb
looks
and has the shock wave of a typical explosion, but it is nonetheless a “fizzle.”

(3)
The Pure Fission, or Atomic Bomb:
This type of device is the first genuinely nuclear bomb, where a critical mass of uranium 235 or plutonium 239 is assembled quickly enough to emit fast neutrons, which then split the atoms of the critical mass in a geometrical growth of fissioning atoms, producing the colossal explosion of an atomic bomb. The crictical mass is typically assembled by an implosion detonator of explosives surrounding a sphere of plutonium, which is crushed to supercritical density. Nonetheless, some of the critical mass remains unconsumed in the explosion no matter how efficient it is, and deadly radioactive fallout is always a by-product of such weapons. These are the types of weapons America first dropped on Japan. Note that to achieve this final stage a basic reactor technology, while not needed, is desirable, since plutonium, the most efficient fuel for such a device, can only be synthesized in a fully functional reactor. This will become an important point as we proceed.

b.
Second Generation Weapons:

The next generation of weapons comes in three distinct chronological phases:

(1)
Boosted Fission Weapons:
As nuclear technology develops and becomes more proficient as isotope separation and enrichment, purer grade of fissile weapons grade material is produced, allowing more efficient combustion of the critical mass in the explosion, and a commensurate drop in deadly radioactive fallout. Additionally, some neutron emitting material such as deuterium or tritium is “salted” into the critical mass, to create an additional burst of high energy neutrons which increase the amount of neutrons in the chain reaction, increasing the yield of the bomb, making smaller bombs of higher yield possible. This is the first step towards miniaturizing an atom bomb, as well as the first step toward a fully fledged hydrogen bomb. Atomic bombs of this sort can also be very large, having yields in the several tens of kilotons. It is this type of weapon that some allege was tested by Nazi Germany in March of 1945 at the Ohrdruf troop parade ground in Thuringia.
¹⁸

(2)
Fission-Fusion (-Fission) or Full Hydrogen Bombs:
The next step from boosted fission is to make the heavy hydrogen component of the bomb the main explosive punch of the weapon by packing the bomb with enough fusionable material that, when the atom bomb is detonated, the enormous pressures and temperatures created compress this material to such a degree its atoms
collide and combine, or “fuse”
(rather than
split or fission)
, releasing truly stupendous amounts of energy and free neutrons. The yield of the first exemplars of such weapons were in the tens of megatons (one
million
tons of TNT equals a megaton, whereas an atom bomb is measured merely in kilotons, or one
thousand
tons of TNT). While the fusion reaction produces enormous radiation, this is in the form of gamma and x-rays and free neutrons, which, while deadly, dissipate rather quickly after the explosion when compared to the radiation caused by the atom bomb used to detonate it, which lingers for years. Theoretically, there is no limit to the size of a hydrogen bomb.
¹⁹
This type of bomb may have a
second
atom bomb added to increase the yield and radioactive fallout. It implies the existence of a highly developed nuclear technology both to miniaturize the atom bomb, and to create sufficient amounts of fusionable material – the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium - for a thermonuclear explosion.

(3)
The Neutron Bomb:
In this type of bomb the atom bomb detonator is made as small and efficient as possible, as is the heavy hydrogen component. The goal is to make the atomic explosion and radioactivity from the fission reaction as
small
as possible, while making the radioactivity from the neutrons of the heavy hydrogen as
large
as possible. The blast damage from such a weapon is thus comparatively small, while its radioactive effects are quite large. The aim is to minimize physical damage to buildings, while killing enemy troops. In effect, the neutron bomb is the opposite of the boosted fission bomb. In the latter, the heavy hydrogen is used to “boost” the yield of the atomic explosion itself, but in the neutron bomb, the atomic explosion is used to “boost” the neutron yield of the heavy hydrogen. The goal of the boosted fission bomb is to increase the explosion; the goal of the neutron bomb to decrease long-life radioactivity and atomic explosion, while increasing short-life deadly neutron radiation. This type of bomb requires the most advanced nuclear technology both in the production of high purity fissile material, the conventional explosives used to assemble it, the science and geometry of assembling the critical mass, and the technology to produce heavy hydrogen or other fusionable materials in high quantity.

(4)
The “Salted” or “Doomsday” Bomb:
While not strictly speaking a type of bomb in its own right, mention must be made of this type of nuclear warhead. A “salted” bomb is simply a fully fledged atomic or hydrogen bomb to which a “doping” or “salting” of highly radioactive material such as cobalt 60 or strontium 90 has been added. The aim is not only to produce a high explosive yield of maximum physical effect, but also to create a cloud of very deadly and very long-lived radiation to drift over an entire province or region in an enemy’s territory. As such, any fully fission or fusion warhead may be “salted,” although normally hydrogen bombs were thought to be the best for such purposes, since the mushroom cloud from their explosions reach high into the stratosphere, enabling the fallout to be carried over a wide area. These types of doomsday devices obviously had as much repercussion for the nation using them as for the nation being targeted by them. These were the doomsday weapons of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This type of weapon, while monstrous, constitutes an important step for the creation of the third generation of weapon, since to “salt” a bomb with exotic isotopes implies the existence of a sufficiently large and advanced nuclear technology to create such isotopes in the needed large quantities. This requires a
sophisticated
reactor technology.

c.
Third Generation Weapons: The Pure Fusion, or Pure Hydrogen, Bomb:
This is the type of weapon envisioned by project DOVE, and alluded to by the Russian military experts cited by Cohen. As has already been seen, it dispenses entirely with the need for an atomic bomb to set off the thermonuclear explosion. Thus, very “small” nuclear explosions can be created whose sole goal is to create deadly, though very short lived, bursts of neutrons over an area several hundreds of yards in diameter, killing all life within it, but causing a minimum of physical damage. This type of thermonuclear weapon
requires not only the ability to manufacture heavy hydrogen in sufficient weapons quantity, but also a breakthrough in conventional explosive to achieve the pressures and energies necessary for atoms to fuse, without the necessity of an atom bomb for the “trigger.”

What Dr. Cohen mentioned, as has been seen, is a small device with the equivalent explosive yield of ten
tons
of TNT, what by nuclear terms is a “small” explosion. But the idea that such an explosion would cause no physical damage is nonsense. Only imagine what setting off ten tons of TNT in a normal city block would do, and one gets the idea. In any case,
if
such a weapon were feasible, then it poses the nuclear nightmare in no uncertain terms, for one would no longer have to worry about acquiring an atomic bomb, a much more efficient device would be feasible at much
less
cost. Moreover, with no atom bomb needed, any radioactive effects are very short lived, since the neutrons released by the weapon eventually (and very quickly) run “out of steam” and lose their lethality. In short,
there are relatively no radioactive fallout consequences to a nuclear exchange.

And there is one final, even more unthinkable, danger. It will be recalled that thermonuclear weapons can be made to be very large in terms of their yield, to the tens if not hundreds of megatons. Thus, within the – as yet unknown - limits of the ability of any such breakthrough in ballotechnic explosives, such fusion bombs could conceivably be made
quite large.
One is confronted with the dreadful prospect of a truly city- (or region-) busting thermonuclear bomb that is not only
cheap to produce, light, and comparatively small,
but also one with almost
no
radioactive consequences to the nation or group using it, and almost no radioactive signature that would allow such a device to be detected..

3. The Red Mercury Legend, Recipe, and “Xerum 525”

We now enter the dark and murky world of late twentieth century nuclear weapons research, a world with its own highly suggestive connection to the Bell, for precisely such a breakthrough in conventional explosives is alleged for the mysterious compound “red mercury.” It is therefore worth recounting its legend, the “recipe” for its confection, and their possible relationship to the Bell’s mysterious “Xerum 525”.

a. The Red Mercury Legend

The Red Mercury Legend began in the immediate aftermath of the “collapse” of Communist Russia. With the collapse, several Russian nuclear scientists found themselves out of work, and out of money, and began to sell Russian nuclear secrets on the black market. One of the secrets was Red Mercury. Not much would have been known about it had not the story surfaced in connection with a series of bizarre murders in the Republic of South Africa, murders that raised the prospect that South Africa’s own progress in nuclear armaments had proceeded much farther along under its apartheid governments than previously imagined.
²⁰
The story also surfaced, appropriately enough, in Germany, when the German government successfully closed down a number of nuclear smuggling operations, including some allegedly trying to smuggle Red Mercury.
²¹

The Red Mercury Legend, however, does not have directly to do with the number of deaths that seem to mysteriously occur in connection with it, but with its properties itself, for it is allegedly one of the prized “ballotechnical explosives,” i.e., a “conventional” explosive capable of initiating thermonuclear fusion without an atom bomb.

Authors Peter Hounam and Steve McQuillan, who researched and published what may be the only book-length investigation of the subject,
The Mini-Nuke Conspiracy: Mandela’s Nuclear Nightmare,
traced the origin of the substance to secret Russian nuclear installations around the city of Sverdlovsk.
²²
Contacting a Russian named “George”, they were quickly apprised of its various properties:

“When it is first made, it is a powder which is dark red in colour. But
we irradiate it in a nuclear reactor which turns it into a very heavy liquid,
the colour of wine. It is very, very expensive, because it is so difficult to make…..”

Then George lowered his voice: “You know, my friend, that one of the uses of red mercury is for nuclear weapons. You can make them in a different sort of way – nothing like the ones you have in the West – and they can be used by underdeveloped countries. That is why our mafia are in the black market.”
²³

The plot thickens, because, of course, Sverdlovsk or Ekaterinburg is where U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in May, 1960, trying to photograph the very same nuclear installations. And lest one forget, many allege that Lee Harvey Oswald, during his “defection” to the Soviet Union, betrayed the necessary radar secrets and operational parameters of the U-2 that allowed the Soviets to shoot Powers down.

In any case, “George” also related that the uses of Red Mercury could be used in atom bombs in an implosion detonator to compress a plutonium core, while at the same time generating a powerful burst of neutrons to make “the fissioning more efficient.”
²⁴
“George” also revealed the fact that many nations were trying quietly to obtain their own supply from the Russian mafia for use in their own nuclear programs, including, predictably enough, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and much more importantly, Japan.
²⁵

Wierdly enough, the story of Red Mercury first surfaced publicly in post-Communist Russia, where Presidential Order number 29, signed by Boris Yeltsin, authorized a company called Promecology, headed by one Oleg Sadykov, to sell up to ten tons of the substance annually, an amount with an estimated value of 3.5
billion
dollars!
²⁶
As if this were not enough, Sadykov claimed other unusual properties for the substance, among them “faster semiconductors” and newer, “cheaper methods of energy production.”
²⁷