Campaign Against Red Mercury

Jeffrey Lewis 0:10

Hello, you are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Aaron Stein is still on paternity leave, so I'm joined by Michael Moore. Michael writes the blog Landmines in Africa and created the campaign against red mercury.

He had a starring turn in C.J. Chivers' massive article on the red mercury hoax, and I thought he'd make an excellent guest. How you doing? Doing well. Thanks for having me. I think the place I want to start is by asking, how did you get interested in the red mercury hoax?

Michael Moore 0:49

So I got, so I came out of, sort of, out of left field. I started doing the Landmines in Africa blog five years ago. And one of the things, every once in a while there'd be a pop-up, a little story, you know, some guys got hurt trying to crack open a landmine to get red mercury. And I thought, well, that's silly.

Yeah. But then in January of 2013, I read this story, and it came out of just outside the capital of Harare. And a businessman approached a traditional healer, asked him to help extract red mercury from an anti-tank landmine, and leveled his neighborhood, killing six people, one of whom was an infant just sleeping in the next room. And reading that story, and there were several stories that came on after that, and reading that story and starting to hear just how many people are deliberately risking their lives to open up landmines and other explosive ordnance, I said, you know, someone's got to do something.

And so I decided to do something.

Jeffrey 1:56

So one question I have for people who aren't engaged in nuclear issues full time is how did you initially as a – not really a layperson because you do work in a related field. But how did you figure out that red mercury wasn't real, particularly when there are people like Sam Cohen running around saying, it's real, it's real?

Yeah.

Michael 2:20

So that took me a little while of researching. What I knew, though, for a fact is that red mercury is not in landmines or else you wouldn't have to have nonprofit organizations begging for money to clear landmines. So I knew I started from that point.

Jeffrey 2:35

It's totally true. If they were nuclear, you'd have all the money you need.

Michael 2:39

Exactly. Exactly. So I started with that and then just sort of like, why do people think it's worth so much money? And. After a while, it just, it's so fantastic. It's so unbelievable that it, it, it, it is unbelievable. So Sam Cohen, you know, I, you know, I think once you get paranoid, it just, it just goes.

Yeah.

Jeffrey 3:03

Yeah. Well, it's one of the things I find just so interesting about the whole I mean the way, first, the way that the conspiracy theory spread And then the way that it changes. So right in Africa, it's landmines. But in in Arabic speaking places, it's singer sewing machines. And so, you know, do you have any sense of how how landmines came to be the alleged repository for for places in is it mostly it's sub-Saharan Africa?

Michael 3:38

It's mostly sub-Saharan Africa, and it's just that belt. So it's Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique. That's where this is – it's a concentrated rumor, fortunately. So part of it, I think, is there was the – back in the 90s, there was a South African chemical engineering corporate executive.

Jeffrey 4:01

Yeah.

Michael 4:03

And he was supposedly selling red mercury to – Some bad elements in the Middle East. But he also was associated with the Arms Corporation of South Africa. So – and a lot of the landmines that are in these countries are South African-made. So it might have been – so I think that might have something to do with it.

Yeah. I think that plays into it. And some of it is just, you know, if you don't understand how explosives work, you might think that there is this small amount of accelerant in the mine. And maybe that's that could be the red mercury. Right. So this guy, he was found like dead in his trunk.

Jeffrey 4:46

Right. Covered. Yes. But it wasn't it was like actually like mercury that was red. It was like mercuric. Oxide or something. Is that right?

Michael 4:56

Exactly. It was a reddish-hued mercury. But I mean, so his company made mercury products. And so you get a little bit of truth in there. You get the fact that he was dealing with people who are armed smugglers. You get 10, 15% of fact, and then you Just sort of turn it up telephone style, and you tell someone, you tell someone, you tell someone, and it eventually gets into landmines and mortar bombs.

Jeffrey 5:25

So one of the questions I have is, okay, once the hoax gets going around, and it sounds like there are people who fancy themselves as middlemen, and then they engage people to undertake this incredibly dangerous business of trying to dismantle a landmine. Is that how that

Michael 5:42

So in Harare, in this incident in January of 2013, the guy wanted the traditional healer to actually magnify it. And so he was using a traditional technique where you would take a substance of value and grow it. So he was trying to grow the red mercury that was in the anti-tank mine. So he wasn't trying to open it up.

So he was trying to get it to be enriched and more of it. So that's where that – Particular thing goes. But in other places, it's – yeah, there are guys – so out of – I've seen stories out of both Zimbabwe and Zambia where you have guys out of the military selling ordinance out on the black market saying this is red mercury.

So you've got the start of the supply chain coming out of official military stockpiles and it gets into the black market because eventually it's got to get to – The guys who would use a nuclear weapon for it. So maybe he starts to say, you know, I want the money. I don't want a lot of money because I don't want to have to deal with those guys.

I don't want to deal with the ICs of the world, but I want to get my piece. So there are middlemen and then there are middle middlemen. I don't think anyone has yet figured out what am I going to do once I get the red mercury. It's just let me get it first and then I'll figure out how to sell it.

Jeffrey 7:04

Oh, that's wild. So these people all they hear this rumor and they think they're going to get into this industry, but they don't necessarily have in mind a specific place that they're going to sell it.

Michael 7:14

No, because one of the funny things is, you know, so I've done searches on, you know, back to the statistics on the campaign website to see who is coming to see the site. Where are they coming from? And so many of them are trying to say, you know. I've seen people searching for black market dealers of red mercury and, you know, where can I sell red mercury?

So people trying to figure out that next step in the chain. But again, if you start, if I have red mercury and I've even, you know, guys even typed into Google, I have red mercury and he's come to my site. So they start there and they go, OK, if I've got it, then what do I do with it?

But sometimes they just start with, let me get it first and then figure it out from there.

Jeffrey 7:51

Wow, that's wild. Is there, I mean, is there a particular, I mean, is there a component of the landmines that they have convinced themselves is red mercury? Is it always the same? Is it different? I mean, I think, I mean, assuming you can pop one of these things open without killing yourself, like, I'm surprised you wouldn't just pop it open and be like, oh, that just looks like a landmine.

Michael 8:15

Well, so it kind of goes two ways. So the landmines you probably could – you can't just – I mean there are YouTubes where dudes just kind of pop the things open. Yeah. But he's done that a lot of times. Yeah. You can do that if you know kind of what you're doing, but usually any sort of electrical conductivity might activate it.

And the other thing is that a lot of these mines in these particular countries, they're 20, 25, 30 years old. And in there, the TNT degrades, so it becomes essentially like nitroglycerin, and it is extraordinarily dangerous. Fragile and combustible and doesn't take much tampering to do it. I mean, you've got expert D miners and they're still, they'll occasionally have an injury because the stuff's so unstable.

So they, I don't think they've got a part of the landmine that they're looking for. I think they're just, I think, you know, it's almost like a, you open up a clock, open it up. There's gotta be, I'm looking for the red bit, you know? I mean, it might be that simple.

Jeffrey 9:17

Right. So that they just, it's like, ah, I got a landmine. I know it's in here. And then, you know,

Michael 9:21

I mean, it'll be obvious. It'll have a little mark on it saying red mercury here. You know, they're looking for that.

Jeffrey 9:26

That's so interesting. And how, you know, do you have a sense of how often I mean, I guess what we hear about are when people blow themselves up.

Michael 9:36

Yes.

Jeffrey 9:36

So, I mean, how often does that as gruesome as it is, does that happen?

Michael 9:42

So it could be fair – I mean it's at least a couple times a year in each of these countries. So in Zimbabwe, the head of the mine institute in the country says that the majority of accidents are people trying to open up landmines in ordinance for red mercury. And he's saying there's 20, 25 people every year are killed or injured.

And he's saying the majority of those incidents are – Red mercury searchers. And the same thing is said in Zambia, that the majority of the incidents are people trying to get red mercury. So, so it's, it's frequent enough that you would think people would get the message. But not so frequent that it's in your face.

Jeffrey 10:26

Ah, that's really interesting. Why? I mean, we talked a little bit about like how, how, how the, the story came to be that red mercury is in landmines and that's the version that's in Africa as opposed to the like sewing machines in, in, in, in Arabic speaking places. But I mean do you – is this just a desperate people do desperate stuff?

Like what's the – I mean what I really want to ask ultimately is about the moral responsibility. Where are you assigned moral responsibility for the existence of this incredibly pernicious idea? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's a big question, right? That's what happens is we talk for a while and the questions go from really narrow and specific to like, so?

Michael 11:18

I think that the – I think that in a lot of ways some of the media – So half the newspaper articles about red mercury say, yep, this is what they were looking for, red mercury. And here's, you know, in it, you know, there's a component of nuclear weapons and half of them say it's an absolute hoax.

Do not do this.

Jeffrey 11:38

Oh, so interesting. So some of the articles that say, you know, this person was killed opening a landmine looking for red mercury, then they don't necessarily go that extra step and debunk it.

Michael 11:47

Correct. And there are, I mean, it's a great story, right? I mean, you have this miraculous substance. The thing is, we've been believing in miraculous substances for forever. I mean, this, I mean, red mercury is Eldorado. It's the holy grail. It's the fountain of youth. It's just the same kind of story. Recycled a little bit, and it's just taken on this modern technological angle that it's, you know, part of a nuclear weapon. I mean, it, this is, this, this variety version. The myth could not have existed before 1945. Yeah, but you know, why? Why couldn't the myth have been that you find it in dildos instead of landmines that blow up and kill you, right? But again, you find. Yeah, it really would have been much better, but then you'd ask what the Soviets were doing making radioactive dildos.

Maybe they'd read one too many James Bond – no, something. I think that – Keeps the dildo warm.

Jeffrey 12:45

It's a small RTG radioactive – sorry. It's all right.

Michael 12:52

It's all right. I'm sure now we can just go to the charging company and be like, you need to market a new brand called the red mercury.

Jeffrey 12:59

Okay. But sorry, seriously, to go back to this question of moral responsibility. So part of it is the media doesn't always debunk it when they report it. And then and then, then I was, I was asking about Well, go ahead. You tell me. Are there other – I mean basically are we – how about us experts? Are we morally complicit in this?

Michael 13:19

I think – see, I think right now the tenor of the story that Chris's article comes out and it came – Chris Chivers' article comes out. And a lot of the secondary stories have been look at how silly these ISIS guys are for pursuing this mythical substance. And I think that that kind of just sort of poking humor at it is – I mean at some point we have to sort of do like really, guys?

But we have to – it's not just – there is an element of humor to it, but it's also – we have to say, no, it's funny because it's not true. Some things are funny because they're true. This is funny because it's not true, but then some people take the joke –

Jeffrey 14:03

Way too far. Yeah, I was really surprised by the way, because I thought the story was pretty tragic mostly. And, and I was really surprised to see on Twitter people taking the, oh, isn't this funny, you know, these, these, you know, strange deluded foreigners, which I thought was, you know, both like inappropriate, but also kind of gross, given, given, you know, what, what happens to, you know, human beings.

Michael 14:30

Well, and given the fact that, I mean, these guys are trying to acquire a nuclear device and they're going to take what they think is a shortcut to it. And it's like, so, you know, haha on them for getting a fake one. But, oh, my God, what if they got a real one? And in Africa, it's there is.

I think that. The – so I know that the mining guys do such a good job of trying to reach out. I mean they go – every time that there's one of these incidents, they go to the site where it was and they explain what happens. They talk to the police. They talk to the communities and say, this is what happened and this isn't real and I know it's not real because I have to beg for my job.

Yeah. If this were real, I would take some out of the ground, sell it to some dudes, and vacation on the beach for the rest of my life. So I think they try very hard to combat the hoax, and I think governments try to combat the hoax. And I think what we need to do, though, is also realize that I think you're right.

It is a bit of desperate people do desperate things. I mean, the guys who are trying to crack open these mines are in desperately poor circumstances. And think about in Angola, you know, the vast majority, 90, 95 percent of the country is Dirt poor, literally dirt poor. And you have just a handful of guys soaked in oil wealth.

And I think that level of income disparity leads some guys to say, well, why can't I get that? And here's a quick shortcut.

Jeffrey 16:13

So if there are these efforts, right? I guess one of the I mean this is like the lame DC policy thing, which even though I've moved out, I still succumb to. It's the five-paragraph op-ed where the last paragraph is the recommendation, right? How you magically fix the problem. Is the problem solvable or is this – Is it manageable?

Is it remediable with a proper public education campaign? Like what's the – yeah, go ahead.

Michael 16:47

So you tell me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch continents on us to give the example. In Southeast Asia, you've got tremendous contamination from landmines, bombs and whatnot, right? Now, a lot of these bombs and stuff are made out of very high-quality metal that even 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War is still in good quality.

You had this scrap metal industry built up of guys who were collecting scrap metal from unexploded ordnance and reusing it and reselling it.

Jeffrey 17:20

Wait, which country was it?

Michael 17:22

This is Vietnam, Laos, and Laos in Cambodia. Okay. So I heard about this specifically in Vietnam. And... And so what they started to do is they said, you know, these guys are metal pickers and they're going to go after metal. And this is high quality metal that is just everywhere. So they started very concentrated education campaigns with this very specific group of metal scavengers and saying, look, you're going to find these things.

And this is what it looks like. This is what it is. If you find it, you know, call these deminers. They'll tell you whether or not it's safe to use or resell. Or if you're likely to kill yourself and your family trying to extract the metal from it. So they figured out that there was a very specific audience for this kind of messaging.

And I think the same is true with red mercury in sub-Saharan Africa that I think we can look at. You know, trying to do very focused messaging. Right now, most of the mind risk education messaging in sub-Saharan Africa is aimed at children. You know, don't tamper with interesting looking things that you find on the ground. It's very, very focused.

And I think it's fairly, fairly effective. I mean, unfortunately, I do read an awful lot about Where it's not effective. But I think it is a, you know, you target the message, you target the audience, and you go after them multiple times. And I think something like that could be done for Red Mercury, you know, reiterating this kind of message and, you know, saying that, You know, this stuff doesn't exist.

It falls within some other mystical ideas you may have, you know, that permeate the traditions. But I think it's a, you know, this stuff doesn't exist. And again, you target that message to the right individuals and you'll get it there. Because it's mostly men between 25 and 45 who are really the ones who are going after this stuff.

And so I'd start targeting them.

Jeffrey 19:27

Tell me about setting up the website and pitch the website. Talk to me about how you think that the website relates to this broader approach of targeting the right groups and getting this message to them.

Michael 19:45

So I think unfortunately the website is probably – I mean I think if you are going on the internet looking for red mercury and by the time you get to me, you've already either made up your mind that you've got it or you don't. So I need to make it a little glitzier and stuff like that. But I think it's a – it's part of trying to generate enough knowledge within – The people who are in the industry, the people in the demining industry, remind them that this is a common cause for people to tamper with explosives.

I mean, it's been going on. The earliest notice I've seen is 1997. People were reporting tampering with explosives for this stuff. So it's been going on a long time without addressing it directly. So I think we need to start being more specific in addressing it. And I think I have the ear of some of the demining guys.

And I think I can work with them to develop these kinds of materials. Then they would be accessible on the website. And so someone would... You get a report of someone doing this and you'd be able to go to the site, get the specific mind risk education materials, get the facts, get – see some of the pictures that are circulating around the internet in a single place that says not real, not real, not real.

And – but I think it's also you need to sort of – we need to do a better job of talking to the people who have been in these incidents. They're – What made you think that this was going to work? Who did you hear this story from? Everyone is blaming someone from some other country. In every country, in Angola, they're blaming guys from Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, they're blaming guys from Mozambique. It's people from elsewhere that are bringing this stuff in. So I think it's also looking at who's the traitors moving back and forth across the borders. I think they're – some of these middlemen, I think, if we targeted them – So I think it's still a work in progress. It's still something that I'm trying to coalesce in my head in terms of how are we going to get this information to the right hands and have it be With the myth, you can't just confront it face on.

You can't just go, no, you were wrong. Here's the truth. You sort of have to listen, redirect, almost like deprogramming. I know you believe this deep down, but let's discuss it and stuff like that. So it's going to be more conversational than just here's your piece of paper. Get on with things.

Jeffrey 22:42

Yeah, I was really surprised by that aspect of Chris's story where there was this – he's talking to this person and this person is absolutely convinced that this substance exists. And any effort to convince him otherwise is just part of like the conspiracy to cover it up. Yeah. And so – I'm always interested by the prevalence of conspiracy theories.

But they do seem awfully resilient. And I just – I'm fascinated about why – I mean it's the question I started with. So it looks like this in Africa. It looks like this in Arabic-speaking places. And it doesn't seem to exist in Southeast Asia. Correct. And I just – I find that – I don't have any flip answer to that, but I just find that so interesting.

Michael 23:39

But I bet if you were to go to Southeast Asia, you would find something else. There is something else that is the – think about the guys who have the statue. I think it's Ganesh on their dashboard. I mean that's the god of money. I mean, we've all got our get-rich-quick schemes. So this is just a very brutal, very harsh version of it.

And I think part of what I'm trying to do by bringing up the fact, try to highlight arrests, try to highlight when an incident happens, because I think that reinforces the message that Even if I can't get someone to change their mind about it, I can at least get them to say it is too dangerous for me to attempt.

I think that would be step one.

Jeffrey 24:37

That's interesting. You think you might be able to – you might have more success at deterring them from trying than persuading them that the whole thing is a hoax.

Michael 24:47

I think that is a more reasonable target and something that is achievable. I mean, the thing is you can say – and I can say this for a fact. There is not a single documented incident of someone successfully extracting red mercury from a landmine. And I have dozens of incidences where someone has blown themselves up trying to do so.

So – And the professionals injure themselves when they open up landmines not trying to get red mercury. So think about that before you take an angle grinder to that mortar bomb. That's kind of the start with that message. And what's going to happen is I think myths... Morph over time. And if you get people to stop believing or stop pursuing it in landmines, they'll start looking for it in elsewhere.

I mean, there is, the myth exists in, I've seen reference to it in Algeria, in Central African Republic, in other parts of West Africa, and it's not tied to landmines. To start, you know, it'll, you know, let it, let people buy, believe it's in Singer sewing machines. I mean, I think that would be at least safer than.

Yeah, absolutely. In landmines. So, I mean, I'm sort of going to start with the low hanging fruit of no one dying from this anymore and then work my way up towards people learning the truth.

Jeffrey 26:20

Wow. It just, it just, it, it, it, it just, it really, I, I, I struggle to wrap my head around it. I wanted to ask you another question about Chris's piece, which is, do you find that as a consequence of that, that you're getting more attention for the campaign against Red Mercury?

Michael 26:42

So I have gotten – certainly I had a very busy day that day. And, yes, it's getting a lot more attention. But it kind of – it's already sort of petering out. And my guess is – and you can kind of see the spikes when there's an incidence in the – that gets in the media. I'll get a few more hits.

It's pretty low level. It is a pretty modest sort of thing. So I don't expect to be a world beater at it. But yes, Chris did me a tremendous favor in terms of bringing attention to what I'm trying to do.

Jeffrey 27:17

And when you say it's low level, is that relative to the attention that's paid to landmines, which actually I think probably also get pretty short shrift in the grand scheme of things?

Michael 27:24

Correct. So if I compare traffic on one side versus the other, the landmines consistently get a higher return, a lot more attention. But it is – yeah, we don't get a lot of attention. And I think that's – so if you think about malaria, for instance, malaria kills as many people in a day as landmines do in a year.

And so malaria should get 365 times as much attention as landmines do. And then if you think the red mercury, you know, if I can document, you know, a few dozen incidents over the last couple years, it should get that much less attention than landmines. So I think it's, you know, in proportion, you know, that's – it doesn't feel right.

I think probably malaria doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. But I think if I think about it in terms of the humanitarian impact – We should probably have it – I'm not surprised it's a – not top of the 9 o'clock news or whatever. So I'm OK with that.

Jeffrey 28:32

Yeah, that's fair. Although maybe it's just that I always have a little residual guilt because the great thing about nuclear weapons is they get people's attention. But the downside is – Although a nuclear use would be an incredibly catastrophic event, it is or at least has been since the US used to in August 1945, it's been an entirely speculative harm.

So I always feel a little guilty that my speculative harm tends to get more attention than the actual everyday harm that really does occur to people. And in this case, partly because of things my colleagues said.

Michael 29:12

And I think it happens because I think if there were landmines on the border with Mexico, as I've seen some people propose, I think we'd pay a lot more attention to landmines. I think because they happen elsewhere, we don't pay much attention to them. I think because red mercury is sort of this black market substance, we pay even less attention to it.

And so, again, I think that somewhat makes sense to me. But the line that I've heard and that I've repeated many times is that landmines have killed more people than all other weapons of mass destruction combined. So except for when a celebrity shows up. So there are a few celebrities that have been associated with the landmine issue.

And when they show up, you get a lot of attention. And I kind of wish it got attention for the sake of itself rather than for the sake of who's associating themselves with it.

Jeffrey 30:07

Yeah, sure. But you're right. Like, yeah, I mean, you're asking for people to be better than we are.

Michael 30:16

I do hold I do expect a lot of my fellow man. Yes.

Jeffrey 30:21

Yeah. Well, it's just odd because, you know, the other place that this interacts is because I do national security policy. I remember vividly that a discussion in the 1990s about the ban on on anti-personnel landmines, right, which is. I mean, it seemed to me that that was such a clear case where you have this military technology, which is of...

Dubious value except in very limited circumstances and even in those circumstances it's not clear they were that valuable but that totally took precedence in u.s government and by the way still does to this day right you can't get the obama administration to sign up to the was the ottawa convention right yep it was actually one of the reasons i i i decided that i was very disappointed with the president because i struck me as a relatively cost-free thing for him to do but But yeah, the actual harm that landmines cause does not seem to matter in Washington.

Michael 31:24

No, and I think it's a – there are – we have a few champions in town. Senator Leahy remains one of the heroes of the cause, and I fear for the day he retires. I think he's done a tremendous job of protecting – The financing for landmine clearance. I think what often gets forgotten in this conversation is the hundreds of thousands of people who've survived a landmine incident and now face really significant physical disability.

It's easy to put forward the money to demine. It's easy, you know, as we say about red mercury, it's easy to say to someone, don't, Don't tamper with it, but the, for the people who have tampered with it and I've been injured by it what do we do for them? And I think that's a, a, a question that often gets asked to the, within the community.

We, we struggle with it. But it's a, it is a bigger, more complicated question. And I just wish I find the, the Like so many other things, you pick the low-hanging fruit because it's what you can get your head around. I stopped someone from stepping on a mine. I've done my job, but the person who has stepped on it, how do I help them?

Jeffrey 32:51

Yeah. Well, this has been – I mean it's depressing, but it's been a fan – You can see I'm such a hit at parties.

Michael 33:00

Yeah, right.

Jeffrey 33:01

Well, it's not much more cheery when you tell people that you work on nuclear weapons issues. It turns out people finish their drink really quickly at cocktail parties and then need a refill. Yes. Yes, indeed. But depressing as it is, I have really enjoyed it. It's a chance to talk about something slightly different than we normally do and something I think that's pretty important.

One thing I love before we close is you end all of your blog posts. By reminding readers of something. And I think that's a great place to end this conversation. Do you want to do it or do you want me to do it? Because I've got it in front of me.

Michael 33:44

I'm happy to do it. So this red mercury does not exist. Will never exist. Don't open these mines up. It's just not worth it. It's a hoax. And for the sake of your family and children, find another way to get rich.

Jeffrey 34:02

Right. So there we have it. As always, red mercury does not exist. And anyone promising you riches for it is a con man. Exactly. Michael, it was really great to have you on. This has been fantastic.

Michael 34:12

Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. Nice to chat with you.

Jeffrey 34:15

Great. And as always, to our listeners, thanks for listening. And if you don't despise the podcast, leave us a review at iTunes and a star or two.