23 ms·

After 100 years World War I battlefields are poisoned and uninhabitable

485 points by sbjustin 10y ago

stupidcar 10y ago
There is a similar problem in the western desert of Egypt, where unexploded ordnance from the battle of El Alamein in WW2 has been killing and maiming Bedouin for decades: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8576292.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon.... It's strange to realise that there are still many people yet to be born who will die as casualties of WW1 and WW2.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  > the French government estimates the current rate of removal will clear the battlefields between 300 and 900 years from now If it ends up taking until the upper end of their estimate, casualties from WW1 could span an entire millennium.
  - Razengan 10y ago
    Suddenly, all those science-fiction/fantasy stories seem plausible now, about ancient weapons, traps and guardians staying lethally functional for thousands of years..
    - jqgatsby 10y ago
      Terry Brooks!
    - speeder 10y ago
      Many of these stories became popular because of the Egypt archeology. Many of the early "acheologists" (they were more like tomb raiders, invading egyptian tombs, stealing the contents, and shipping to Europe) died of misterious diseases, or got mad in some way, it is where the "cursed pyramid" trope came from. Recently it was found out that the culprit for these, was mostly fungus, the fungus locked inside those places over thousands of years, would slowly fill the air with toxic stuff, that then would poison anyone breaking in, with effects ranging from poison-related death/disease, to poison-related brain damage (thus, madness). Also, losing technology and weapons is not new, India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat" Or Atlantis, that was already mythical in ancient Greece (what we know of Atlantis, is about ancient greeks writing about the Atlantis myth... so to them, Atlantis was already a mythical thing). And of course, people would always stumble into random crap left behind by earlier generations. For example recently something puzzled many historians, when in germany archeologists found a bronze-age battlefield with traces of having people from all countries in Europe (something kinda bizarre, since until then bronze-age was considered mostly isolationist), with signs of a large scale battle (bizarre because historians thought the population to be too small then, for that happen), and lots of signs of civilisation (advanced clothing and weaponry, including signs of that the soldiers involved were some kind of special forces, having expensive clothes and weapons, multiple scars on their bones, and yet were very strong and healthy). Or another interesting one, here on HN someone shared recently about the people found dead on tar pits are frequently murdered, not just died there stuck, and research matched ancient roman legends (To the romans, it was a legend already), about how they heard that ancient countries threw prostitutes, adulterers, enemy nobility, and other undesired people into the tar, instead of giving them normal execution and burial.
      - capnrefsmmat 10y ago
        Do you have a link to details on the fungus theory? I haven't heard it before, but it sounds like a fascinating medical mystery.
        ghaff 10y ago
        It's a theory although it seems that most experts are skeptical: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_mummycurse.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_...
        nnq 10y ago
        Was a strain of Aspergilus Niger - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_mummycurse.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_.... Same kind of mold you find in your kitchen on forgotten fruit, but probably this strain was different enough from ones Europeans had exposure and immunity to that it killed a few mildly immunodepressed explorers and a tourist. I remember even a documentary about some of it... kind of boring though. Ancient Indian mythology is creepy as fuck though, got to agree - they even mention units of time of sizes like 8.64 billion human years and longer mentioned in scriptures more than 2000 years old... I mean, I imagine they got to that by playing with exponentiation and logarithms for the first time while trippin' on some 'shrooms... but that's still a good creepy basis for some alternate history tales :)
      - ak217 10y ago
        > India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat" Do you have a source?
        KumarAseem 10y ago
        If you can, then read the vedas, the upanishads, ramayana, mahabharata (bhagvad gita) and other texts which do mention such weapons.
- nostromo 10y ago
  Don't forget about radiation exposure from nuclear weapons (including test bombs here in the US) that will continue to cause cancer deaths among people that are alive today. This map shows just how many people were exposed to fallout from a single nuclear test: http://www.americanscientist.org/include/popup_fullImage.aspx?key=xi6i6nJGw48vKULXvfEIZOOm8IOPKgCE http://www.americanscientist.org/include/popup_fullImage.asp...
  - angersock 10y ago
    There is a qualitative difference between stepping on a land mine and maybe--possibly!--having a higher chance of getting cancer.
    - komali2 10y ago
      The lesson we can learn from the poisoned battlefields of WWI can be applied as a counter-argument to anyone saying we should nuke something - consider not only the short term implications of the nuke, but the long term effect on local and global environments.
      - mangeletti 10y ago
        And on the flip side... they didn't have nukes, so they used all that artillery.
        semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        s/nukes/tanks
        Millennium 10y ago
        s/tanks/mines
        bashinator 10y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the tank was invented in WWI.
- kuschku 10y ago
  The same is happening everywhere in Germany. We’re still evacuating entire cities every week because some new WWII ordnance was found, and has to be defused. Or you learn that they found some 500lbs bomb half a meter below your school’s football field, with an unstable system that could explode every minute. You just learn to live with it.
- matwood 10y ago
  Also a common problem in Croatia from the war in the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia It was a bit unnerving seeing all the signage in the hills above Dubrovnik when I visited.
  - yread 10y ago
    Also the sea has all kinds of military garbage "The southern Adriatic Sea has represented a major dumping area of war residues of both conventional and chemical weapons for almost a hundred years" http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=64f53412f4d84603b277cdccdd6370c7 http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=64f53412f4d84603b277...
    - anexprogrammer 10y ago
      Lots of areas were used to dump surplus munitions at the end of both world wars. North Sea, Irish Sea[1], Baltic[2], Gulf of Mexico[3], and many other places. In the case of the Irish Sea, which was the main MoD dump since around 1920, 14,600 tons of Phosgene, and by 1949 the RAF alone had dumped 137,000 tons. It ceased being used in 1973. [1] In the Baltic fishermen catch upto 3 tons of munitions each year. BP turned up quite bit of unexploded ordnance while exploring for their now infamous Gulf of Mexico rig. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1488371/MoD-dumped-munitions-in-the-Irish-Sea.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1488371/MoD-dumped-mu... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/world-war-ii-munitions-dumps-a-rusting-timebomb-in-the-baltic-a-475520.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/world-war-ii-muni... [3] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14141378-world-war-ii-bombs-mustard-gas-in-gulf-of-mexico-need-to-be-checked-experts-warn?lite http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14141378-world-wa...
  - thebeardedone 10y ago
    You did not happen to go across the border to Bosnia did you? Even places that have been cleaned are bordered by places that are mined (villages in the north from my personal experience) meaning that if you are kicking the ball around in a back yard and it goes over the fence, don't go looking for it.
- angersock 10y ago
  Somewhat darkly--is any of the software we write going to still be useful in 80 years? Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Most likely some military control systems will live much longer than the designers thought...
  - dmitrygr 10y ago
    DMV's systems (given their speed) are from 80 years ago
    - jharger 10y ago
      So that's a scary thought... but what's an even scarier thought is that they were probably made pretty recently.
  - ansible 10y ago
    Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work. Technically, the shells being found now are the buggy ones, that didn't explode when they were supposed to.
    - munificent 10y ago
      The worst-written software always lives the longest. Maintainable, modular software, by definition, is easy to change and swap out. So the evolutionary forces favor awful spaghetti codebases that everyone is too afraid to touch.
      - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
        So then the solution would be true natural selection and self-evolving software. As long as external entities (programmers) are tasked with killing off the unfit code, selection is going to be pretty bad.
- terryf 10y ago
  This is one of the reasons for telling everyone: if you are in a foreign country, holding a gun and shooting at someone, then please just stop. If you are forced to not stop by your commanding officer, then miss and shoot as little as possible. Fighting is not the solution.
  - justinhj 10y ago
    This advice probably sounds a lot better when you're not in a foreign country being shot at. Shot at people being lead by a dictator who wants to take over your country.
    - terryf 10y ago
      I specifically excluded defending your own country and/or home. Everyone certainly should be allowed to that. My point is - we as a society should be actively distilling in everyone the reverse of the results of the stanford prison study - you are responsible for your actions, even if someone else tells you it's ok or even orders you. Because in the end, as the attacker, you always have a choice, when it's just you and someone else. In the end it's just a person against another person, just because someone told them that the other guy is bad. Everyone should be taught to question that. Probably he/she is just as scared as you are. I recently watched "Lessons of Darkness" (documentary by Werner Hertzog) again and the scene where a woman describes soldiers coming into her home and stepping on the head of her infant was just haunting, because I could not stop thinking of, why would anyone do that. In that moment, it's not your superior ordering you - it's you making the decision to be the terrible torturer. Please, just walk away.
- 55555 10y ago
  The US dropped more bombs on Laos while fighting the viet cong than the sum of all bombs dropped during WWII. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and wasn't directly involved. People are still walking through fields and getting blown up and we don't help them de-mine. EDIT: I see some upvotes/interest so I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen. If Norway invaded Sweden via Denmark, we would never have treated Denmark the way we treated Laos. > From 1964 to 1973, as part of the Secret War operation conducted during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped 260 million cluster bombs – about 2.5 million tons of munitions – on Laos over the course of 580,000 bombing missions. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs being unloaded every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – nearly seven bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos. > Nearly half of Laos is now contaminated with unexploded ordnances (UXOs), explosive weapons such as bombs, grenades and land mines. Cluster bombs, explosive weapons that work by ejecting hundreds of smaller submunitions over a wide area, make up the majority of UXOs that plague the country. Cluster munitions pose an especially grave danger to civilians, according to specializing in the field of disability, because they are “highly imprecise and indiscriminate” weapons designed to “scatter explosives over swaths of land often hundreds of yards wide.” > Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped by the United States, up to 30 percent of them failed to detonate. These bombs were released on targets in a large shell or casing. Each of the casings contained roughly 600 to 700 small bomblets, or “bombies,” as they are often called in Laos. > There are now close to 78 million unexploded bomblets littering rice fields, villages, school grounds, roads and other populated areas in Laos, hindering development and poverty reduction. More than 34,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions since the bombing ceased in 1973, with close to 300 new casualties in Laos every year. About 40 percent of the accidents result in death and 60 percent of the victims are children. At this time, less than 1 percent of the UXOs have been cleared. http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a-million-bombs/ http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a...
  - malandrew 10y ago
    Do the number of casualties remain relatively constant over time or have they been trending downwards as more ordinance is detonated accidentally? In other words, is the rate of accidents high enough to de-mine and reduce the likelihood of future accidents?
anonymousDan 10y ago
Call me a pessimist but this is one of the main reasons I'm really disappointed about Brexit, whatever the EU's drawbacks.
- empath75 10y ago
  Yeah, just watching the news, it's becoming more and more apparent that people are so far removed from the horrors of WWI and WWII that they don't understand why we created the international institutions we did. The UN, WTO, EU, etc, are ineffective, bureaucratic messes, but no matter how bad they are, they're a better way of solving international disputes than the historical alternatives. Western nationalists like to talk about how the cultures of the middle east are inherently violent, but seem to forget that the history of europe was a centuries-long bloodbath that eventually engulfed the entire world in horror and put us nearly on the brink of the extinction of all human life. It's those alliances and international organizations that allowed us to step backwards from it. Solving our problems in courtrooms and at negotiating tables rather than on the battlefield.
  - valkea 10y ago
    The UN and WTO are not political unions though.
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      The WTO wields a lot of power as a trade broker, though.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Now that you mention it, some of the rhetoric about the Middle East really is weird. The last time Europeans tried to go out and kill everybody with the wrong religion is still in living memory. And they were a lot more effective at it, too!
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      Don't be forgetting Bosnia (I assume you were referencing WW2). And while the war crimes were nowhere near the same scale, Bush did make a few uncomfortable remarks about evil, crusades and the Middle East.
purge 10y ago
I feel I should do the obligatory Dan Carlin link here: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri... Long, harrowing and left me hankering for more. He covers Verdun in the later episodes.
- lighttower 10y ago
  Why is the book free?
  - icebraining 10y ago
    It's not a book, it's a podcast.
- peckrob 10y ago
  This. "Blueprint for Armageddon" [0] is amazing. He spends a good bit of time talking about what trench warfare was really like. The horror people there experienced is just nearly unimaginable. The entire length of the series is nearly 24 hours, but it is so worth it. Even if you're not a fan of history, check it out because Dan weaves a masterful true story that keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire 24 hours. [0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
  - thearn4 10y ago
    Great series as always, though I have to say I feel like it felt somewhat rushed at the end. i suspect that he did not want to do another 5-hour last part, like his series on the roman republic ended up having.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Carlin is what I recommend to people who don't like history, before I get them into The Great Courses (which are amazing, if pricey when you're not on Audible). I have a catalogue of minor beefs with the way he presents some stuff, but he's always up-front that he's not a historian (and I appreciate that acknowledgement) and they haven't stopped me from happily paying for everything he's done for Hardcore History. It's a good listen, and it's worth your time if you haven't tried his stuff.
finid 10y ago
Now imagine the state of the battlefields of Vietnam and surrounding countries. There are places in Cambodia that are no-go areas because of all the stuff we dropped there that did not explode.
- etrevino 10y ago
  While that's certainly true, nothing beats the First World War for the sheer volume of unexploded ordinance.
  - herge 10y ago
    Three times as many tonnes of bombs were used in Indochina that in the whole of WWII (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_W...), so I suspect there's a bit more by volume. I think we hear more about the ordinance in WWI because was dropped in such a small part of France and Belgium that is so heavily populated.
    - alejohausner 10y ago
      These are not fair comparisons, because you are talking about bombs dropped from the air, whereas WW1 was about shells fired from artillery. According to wikipedia [1], about 1 ton of explosives was fired per square meter of combat territory. If the Zone Rouge originally covered 460 square miles (= 1200 km^2 = 1.2 billion m^2), this works out to 1.2 x 10^9 tons of explosives (can that be really true? wow! [2]). In Vietnam, "only" 7.6 million tons were dropped from the air. That's a few orders of magnitude less. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest 2. My numbers don't add up. I just saw a BBC story about WW1 industrial production (tl;dr: allies vastly outproduced the central powers by more than 2 to 1). There's a graph showing that Germany produced 400,000 tons of explosives from 1914 to 1917. Four times that amount is less than 2 million tons, so the number in wikipedia (1 ton per m^2) is definitely wrong.
    - yread 10y ago
      They are also a lot more "effective" than ww1 munitions. Each bomb could contain up to 7500 gravel mines each capable of wounding or killing a person http://www.inertord.com/subgravelmines.html http://www.inertord.com/subgravelmines.html or here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth weighing 20g, looking like a fucking toy, 4800 of them in a cluster bomb.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
speeder 10y ago
During WW1, the term "Shell Shock" showed up, that later got changed to PTSD, when people started to think it had to do with psychology, rather than physiology (when Shell Shock first showed up, it was blamed on constant explosions hurting people). Then some days ago we had here on HN frontpage, research that shows that PTSD, even in more recent conflicts, IS shellshock, that the air pressure of the explosions and the shaking actually damage the brain, and cause inflammations that cause PTSD symptoms. I wonder then, how bad it was for the WW1 people, those that were near the concentrated fire of 150 explosions per hour nearby, and survived, maybe some of them wished they had been hit instead of surviving...
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  What about PTSD developed in non-combat zones? Or people who develop it and are not even in war zones? Do you know if there is any information on that? Not trying to start a flame war. Just interested in the PTSD thing itself.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Pretty much any environment that causes your body to frequently flood with cortisol is a breeding ground for PTSD. The brain interprets the constant threats to its well-being as a signal to rewire itself to be trigger-happy on the flight-or-fight response to conditions that most others would not react as intensely to. Examples: childhood poverty; abusive/neglectful parents; societal discrimination (especially if violence or a heightened possibility is a factor).
    - gxs 10y ago
      Interesting idea - any resources that discuss this that you can provide?
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      There is so much about PTSD we don't understand (or more accurately there is very little we do understand about it) that your claims are simply not true. We aren't sure what causes PTSD, we don't understand what physiological, neurological or psychological conditions are needed for "PTSD" to evolve. As far as cortisol goes well it is again not that simple, both elevated and lowered cortisol levels have been recorded in PTSD cases which is why it's still debated if lower or higher levels of cortisol cause or are a symptom or an indicator of PTSD, and since cortisol levels are only usually tested in cases where the person has already been or being diagnosed the correlation is even harder to identify, especially when considering that both lowered and elevated levels of cortisol can be recorded in nominal people and in people suffering from other mental disorders. PTSD is just another placeholder akin to "shell shock" and the later "combat fatigue", in the end it would be an umbrella of various disorders with various preconditions and causes expressing themselves in a similar fashion.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Sobering thought to think that 65 square miles will take 300 years (minimum) to clean of threats and contamination. I would quibble with the characterization of dead people and animals as "contamination" as there are have been people and animals dying in great numbers over the millenia in various spots, but the concentrations of arsenic and lead are different. Given what I've seen of strip mines from the air, I wonder how long it would take to process 100' of material from 65 square miles (~17,000 hectare) through a refining process. Could you just decide that what ever plant and animal life and structures would be forfeit and just dig it out, process it, and put it back? How long once everything had been processed might you expect it to take for the forest to regrow, certainly within 100 years you'd have a solid regrowth. So can you pull 150 to 200 years off the restoration time ?
- trose 10y ago
  I imagine the explosive material complicates things immensely. I'm not an expert on strip mines but it seems like they just dig up and grind everything indiscriminately and process it later. This would obviously be a bad strategy when explosives are involved.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    There are machines designed to clear minefields. Maybe build something like that but a bit bigger to do the digging, and operate it from a distance?
    - justin66 10y ago
      The big difference is that artillery shells are a lot more powerful than land mines, and some of those shells have mustard gas. Using a machine of some sort is a good idea but I bet it wouldn't work the same as the minefield sweeper at all.
      - lostlogin 10y ago
        There are also the mines that were placed to destroy trenches. Truly colossal quantities of explosives that were placed at the end of tunnels. Not all were exploded.
minipci1321 10y ago
See also the previous discussion (more pictures in the article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091 EDIT: the guy who took all these pictures merits a credit and has a website all by himself: http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38 http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38
feklar 10y ago
Anybody know the status of the thousands of tons of chemical weapons the allies dumped in the ocean after WWII? Curious if those munitions are still dangerous
- marvin 10y ago
  Even chemical weapons dumps after WWI are still dangerous today: http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous-substances/sea-dumped-chemical-munitions http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous-substances/sea-...
- jvanloov 10y ago
  As corrosion sets in, the problem becomes bigger and bigger. http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/21/troubled-waters-the-hidden-legacy-of-chemical-weapons-dumping http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/21/troubled-waters-the-hidde...
- Gracana 10y ago
  A while back I posted a map of ordnance dumps, and there was some discussion about the danger: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923702
sabarn01 10y ago
During World War I an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
- alejohausner 10y ago
  I saw that number too. But it's crazy wrong. A square mile has 2.5 million m^2, and I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war. One ton per m^2 works out to 1.2 billion tons over the Zone Rouge that the article talks about. That just can't be right.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    >I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war. I'm having trouble finding a reference, but I don't find 2.5 million tons unbelievable. The comparison to Vietnam is silly because that was a much smaller and different war, and aircraft have limited weight capacity. It's said that some artillery bombardments in WWI were called drum fire because it sounded like a drum roll. During Verdun there was so much artillery that it's said you couldn't distinguish the individual explosions, it was just a load continuous roar that went on for many hours. Perhaps that battlefield is where the statistic comes from. They were going through tens of thousands of shells a day and were quickly running out after a few weeks in. Many factories were converted or built to produce explosives. Dozens of trains were built to transport them to the front lines where they were fired continuously for 4 years. The scale and duration of the war was just insane.
    - ruste 10y ago
      The total estimate he made for the front was 1.2 billion tons. 2.5 million was just for one square mile given the metric.
    - 10y ago
BDGC 10y ago
The book "Aftermath: The Remnants of War" by Donovan Webster explores how the wars of the last century have impacted the surrounding areas. He also gives great perspectives on the clean up effort/process. Highly recommend.
foota 10y ago
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge which the author has clearly read.
fixermark 10y ago
How do these issues (threat of death from unexploded ordnance and chemical poisoning of the soil) compare to the damage done by the atomic bombs? The remaining fissionable material in the bombs was 139 pounds of U-235 (Little Boy) and 12 pounds of Pu-239 (Fat Man). Essentially atomized and spread into the upper atmosphere, where it spread throughout the global environment and may have caused a hard-to-measure uptick in cancer, but the actual demolished territory is rebuilt and thriving today. Horrifying to think that in the long-term view, the conventional ordnance of the European theater was a bigger threat to human life and ecosystem stability than the atomic bombs.
- sevenless 10y ago
  There have been about 2,000 nuclear explosions in world history, plus dozens of meltdowns, innumerable leaks, etc. How about the lives that weren't lost as a result of (1) nuclear deterrence preventing wars between great powers (2) nuclear power competing with coal and preventing deaths from air pollution/coal mining/global warming though? > human life and ecosystem stability You're going to have to pick one of those.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Humans are always more scared of things they can't see. Things like toxic gas and the mythology that built up in mining communities, cursed area/tombs killing people (possibly there are good reasons to avoid these places like biological disease presence). Religion and gods and and allthat carry on - you can't see them but they can hurt you. Radiation, particularly ionising, is somewhere in that collection of hard to understand things. Being able to detect a danger with your own senses is very reassuring.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Who are you arguing with? Fixermark said nothing about nuclear power, and said that the conventional ordnance of WWI was worse than the atomic bombs of WWII, in the long term. You're defending something no one was attacking.
betaby 10y ago
Let wildlife claim that territory. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife-thriving-around-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-despite-radiation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife...
- chaostheory 10y ago
  I was going to say the same thing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife-thriving-korean-demilitarised-zone https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife...
- Houshalter 10y ago
  In some parts the ground is so contaminated that most plant species won't grow. The animals that live in the area get heavy metal poisoning because it bioaccumulates. Chernobyl is different because many plants can withstand radiation, and the levels are low enough to support animals. E.g. this picture: http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/oliviersainthilaire_le_poison_inconnu-161-930x620.jpg http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/...
finid 10y ago
While we're talking mostly about past wars and their past and ongoing effects, let's not forget that we've created and still perfecting weapons that are several times more damaging than any of those used in those wars. And we're always looking for opportunities to use them. Remember Donald Rumsfled's "Shock and Awe"?
- lostlogin 10y ago
  I don't think that episode has done anything to reign in what is seen as acceptable. Those doing the deeds are treated as heros and those ordering attacks are rewarded with money and medals.
jackzampolin 10y ago
Aftermath is an excelent book on the subject if you are interested in more. Sections on WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath
komali2 10y ago
Jesus christ, that dude was standing next to three shells that were as big as him. They were really launching artillery that large? What kind of power did those shells have? How'd they launch them? I always thought of the artillery bombardments as similar to modern mortars.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  On the high end, this beast got off a few shots in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav And they dropped a few of these too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(bomb) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(bomb) Most munitions, whether fired by artillery or dropped from aircraft, were much smaller of course.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Most shells were 3 inch, 6 inch with some 8 inch. They weighed 50-300 pounds. Super heavy stuff like railroad guns were much bigger and more powerful. Terrible stuff.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 13of40 10y ago
  If you think that's big... http://s20.postimg.org/qgvhmnm71/dora.jpg http://s20.postimg.org/qgvhmnm71/dora.jpg
- azernik 10y ago
  Looks like a Big Bertha shell [1]. Those larger shells were fired by special-purpose guns built in very small numbers (only 12 Berthas were ever built), used to break sieges or against particularly strong front-line fortifications - for example, Big Bertha was first used in action against the Liege fortifications during the drive through Belgium. An even taller (but lighter) shell was fired by the Long Max [2] converted battleship guns. The majority of the bombardment was carried out by 75-85mm guns, like for example [3]. Their shells were about half the caliber, and a quarter the mass, of modern 155mm howitzer ammunition, but still twice the mass of modern light infantry mortar shells. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder
willholloway 10y ago
In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global renewal project will commence. We will use all the means at our disposal to clean up and undo the damage we have done to our home. Swarms of autonomous robots, and possibly nanites will replenish the soil, water and air. We will restore coastlines and replant forests. Wiser, and ashamed of our primitive past, we will rebuild a pristine paradise fitting of a spacefaring civilization.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  basically, wall-e?
  - Practicality 10y ago
    Except the nanites will repair us too :)
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
- lugus35 10y ago
  As a french, being enslaved by a german kaiser is not what I call a "petty dispute"
deleted 10y ago
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AWildDHHAppears 10y ago
Maybe we can leverage Pokemon Go players and have them hunt for un-detonated ordinance while they're looking for Jigglypuffs.
hyperman1 10y ago
Hello guys, I live in the region (West Flanders, Belgium) so here are some local stories. * When my brother in law was a kid, he found an old bomb at the roadside and decided to take it home on his bike, saying things like 'Look what cool stuff I found'. Of course mom panicked and called the deminers. All friends came to look how the dismantling went. * In fact I know plenty of people finding old grenades and stuff. People die every year messing with them at their kitchen table, even if everybody should know by now not to do that. * Lots of farms have a heap of old bombs on the terrain. Once a year or so DOVO comes and picks them up. * Polish people are used a lot as cheap builders and road workers. In general they dont understand Dutch (the local language) or even English. So while people try to warn them not to touch any strange metal things they find on building terrains, the message doesnt come trough (' Know nothing. Talk boss'). Nasty accidents happen as a result. * A few years ago, an old lady dug up a hand granade from her vegetable garden. So she calls DOVO, the organisation that does the demining. DOVO responds something like no time, call back later. This pissed her off enough to throw the bloody thing in a bucket, drive to dovo, and give the bucket at the reception desk saying ' This is yours'. While typing this, my wife asks why I'm typing on that nerd site of mine. So now she suggests going to the dunes 2 km from here and taking a photograph if I see one. Sorry guys, Im not messing with old bombs in the dark after the Brussels terrorist attacks, but yes, it's that easy.
- random_upvoter 10y ago
  Story in my own family: we had some relatives who lived in a village near Ypres. In their living room they had this giant iron stove. When the Germans invaded they buried some cash and jewels under a tile under that stove, and fled to France. After the war they returned to the village, in the hope of retrieving the jewels. However, they were unable to find back the stove, due to the fact that they could no longer locate the house... due to the fact that they could not find back the street. The whole village was literally dust.
  - hyperman1 10y ago
    Funny one: A nephew of mine bought a house in the region, and started clearing out the mess in the cellar. At the back, behind a fake wall, he found old bottles with a small fortune in DMarks. Unfortunately, the german mark was replaced with a new version after the hyperinflation between the 2 world wars, so it wasnt worth anything anymore. We assume they were left behind by german soldiers in WW1. No idea what he did with them.
lostlogin 10y ago
Reading on with that link is so depressing. Describing 22 year olds getting married (who are old enough to be paid to go and get maimed or die) as "not yet a mature adult... You were young, dumb and full of one bad idea after another". The tips and tricks nature of an article describing basic life skills to people with guns is rather sobering.
pvaldes 10y ago
Reseed masively, keep people out of the borders and let the trees do its job. Roots can crush a lot of that bomb shells or keep pressed forever the trigger of land mines for us. We can afford to lose some poplars here and there.
cyberferret 10y ago
Powerful story - I've heard the tales of how some of the worst battlefields of the WWI and WWII are spooky because of the complete absence of bird song. I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too. Very close to where I live here in Australia is a beautiful cliffside area that is frequented by locals and tourists alike to watch the sunset over the sea. At the foot of the cliffs is an old WWII dumping ground that is absolutely littered with asbestos waste. The local council won't move it because it is (a) too expensive and (b) actually safer to leave it in situ because the sea water keeps it damp and prevent asbestos dust from spreading. I wonder at the other toxins. Lot of local kids still go down at low tide and forage - you are guaranteed to find bullet casings etc., and a friend of mine once found an actual Colt .45 down there once (totally rusted and useless, and he handed it in to the police).
- Camillo 10y ago
  > I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too. Is that the actual thought process of an adult in 2016 Australia? You hear "no wildlife" and your first thought is not environmental damage but "bad karma"?
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Do yourself a favour and visit Auschwitz someday. Stand in front of the ovens and see if you can summon up the jocularity to do a stand up comedy routine, then get back to me with your all seeing knowledge of 'karma'... EDIT: Do you also derive moral superiority by going around critiquing millions of people who still 'irrationally' believe in 2016 that some higher entity created the earth in 7 days?
    - goatsi 10y ago
      That is because of the knowledge we have of the holocaust though. Try bringing someone from Asia who hasn't had the history education or seen any of the books/media and I doubt they would feel anything.
jxramos 10y ago
So what would it take for us to get some metal detecting robots and some advanced imagery to map out these fields of death? That sounds like a fantastic side project that would help a ton of people. I'd contribute if someone knows of something in the works.
- jxramos 10y ago
  actually, didn't consider these things still had chemical munitions in them, crazy! http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26663643 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26663643
nkurz 10y ago
Perhaps this is the right crowd to ask. I've been looking for a particular article on WW I for a couple decades now, but I haven't been able to find it online. It's an Encyclopedia Britannica article which I think is entitled "War", although that may not be exact. It's from one of the editions published in the 1930's, which would make it the 14th Edition. I owned the set in hard copy for a while, but had to give it away when I moved. The article one of the most poignant things I've ever read. The tone was essentially "Finally we've figured out how nations can live together in peace and harmony, and never again will humans engage in a war of that magnitude". Crucially, this article was from one of the editions published after World War I, and shortly before World War II. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I've often wanted to reread that the article and ponder how applicable it is to the present. Does anyone happen to have a copy? The 11th Edition is available online from archive.org, but that's too early. And I presume it was revised quickly in any editions printed after World War Two.
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tn13 10y ago
Uninhabitable is not an appropriate term. Uninhabitable means unsuitable for living. Regions with very high levels of radiation, extreme cold, extreme heat are often the reasons why some place is uninhabitable. These lands are scarred by the war but are surely inhabitable if those countries had higher population density. All the government has to do is perhaps spend couple of billion dollars picking up all the shells, bombs and mines.
brooklyndude 10y ago
Boys just love to blow shit up. Pretty insane if you ask me.
aaron695 10y ago
> high levels of arsenic that nothing can grow there Bullshit. It's a interesting story but this article is repeated blog spam. The comments here are much more informative.
richardseshie 10y ago
I heard of APOPO, a nonprofit organization focused on training rats to smell and identify landmines, https://www.apopo.org https://www.apopo.org. Maybe we (they) could get involved in some way.
nstj 10y ago
tl;dr > Though the Zone Rouge started at some 460 square miles in size, cleanup efforts reduced it to around 65 square miles.
blackRust 10y ago
> At places like Verdun [...] 150 shells hit every square meter of the battlefield

485 points by sbjustin 10y ago

There is a similar problem in the western desert of Egypt, where unexploded ordnance from the battle of El Alamein in WW2 has been killing and maiming Bedouin for decades: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8576292.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon.... It's strange to realise that there are still many people yet to be born who will die as casualties of WW1 and WW2.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
> the French government estimates the current rate of removal will clear the battlefields between 300 and 900 years from now If it ends up taking until the upper end of their estimate, casualties from WW1 could span an entire millennium.
- Razengan 10y ago
  Suddenly, all those science-fiction/fantasy stories seem plausible now, about ancient weapons, traps and guardians staying lethally functional for thousands of years..
  - jqgatsby 10y ago
    Terry Brooks!
  - speeder 10y ago
    Many of these stories became popular because of the Egypt archeology. Many of the early "acheologists" (they were more like tomb raiders, invading egyptian tombs, stealing the contents, and shipping to Europe) died of misterious diseases, or got mad in some way, it is where the "cursed pyramid" trope came from. Recently it was found out that the culprit for these, was mostly fungus, the fungus locked inside those places over thousands of years, would slowly fill the air with toxic stuff, that then would poison anyone breaking in, with effects ranging from poison-related death/disease, to poison-related brain damage (thus, madness). Also, losing technology and weapons is not new, India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat" Or Atlantis, that was already mythical in ancient Greece (what we know of Atlantis, is about ancient greeks writing about the Atlantis myth... so to them, Atlantis was already a mythical thing). And of course, people would always stumble into random crap left behind by earlier generations. For example recently something puzzled many historians, when in germany archeologists found a bronze-age battlefield with traces of having people from all countries in Europe (something kinda bizarre, since until then bronze-age was considered mostly isolationist), with signs of a large scale battle (bizarre because historians thought the population to be too small then, for that happen), and lots of signs of civilisation (advanced clothing and weaponry, including signs of that the soldiers involved were some kind of special forces, having expensive clothes and weapons, multiple scars on their bones, and yet were very strong and healthy). Or another interesting one, here on HN someone shared recently about the people found dead on tar pits are frequently murdered, not just died there stuck, and research matched ancient roman legends (To the romans, it was a legend already), about how they heard that ancient countries threw prostitutes, adulterers, enemy nobility, and other undesired people into the tar, instead of giving them normal execution and burial.
    - capnrefsmmat 10y ago
      Do you have a link to details on the fungus theory? I haven't heard it before, but it sounds like a fascinating medical mystery.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        It's a theory although it seems that most experts are skeptical: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_mummycurse.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_...
      - nnq 10y ago
        Was a strain of Aspergilus Niger - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_mummycurse.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_.... Same kind of mold you find in your kitchen on forgotten fruit, but probably this strain was different enough from ones Europeans had exposure and immunity to that it killed a few mildly immunodepressed explorers and a tourist. I remember even a documentary about some of it... kind of boring though. Ancient Indian mythology is creepy as fuck though, got to agree - they even mention units of time of sizes like 8.64 billion human years and longer mentioned in scriptures more than 2000 years old... I mean, I imagine they got to that by playing with exponentiation and logarithms for the first time while trippin' on some 'shrooms... but that's still a good creepy basis for some alternate history tales :)
    - ak217 10y ago
      > India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat" Do you have a source?
      - KumarAseem 10y ago
        If you can, then read the vedas, the upanishads, ramayana, mahabharata (bhagvad gita) and other texts which do mention such weapons.
nostromo 10y ago
Don't forget about radiation exposure from nuclear weapons (including test bombs here in the US) that will continue to cause cancer deaths among people that are alive today. This map shows just how many people were exposed to fallout from a single nuclear test: http://www.americanscientist.org/include/popup_fullImage.aspx?key=xi6i6nJGw48vKULXvfEIZOOm8IOPKgCE http://www.americanscientist.org/include/popup_fullImage.asp...
- angersock 10y ago
  There is a qualitative difference between stepping on a land mine and maybe--possibly!--having a higher chance of getting cancer.
  - komali2 10y ago
    The lesson we can learn from the poisoned battlefields of WWI can be applied as a counter-argument to anyone saying we should nuke something - consider not only the short term implications of the nuke, but the long term effect on local and global environments.
    - mangeletti 10y ago
      And on the flip side... they didn't have nukes, so they used all that artillery.
      - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        s/nukes/tanks
        Millennium 10y ago
        s/tanks/mines
        bashinator 10y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the tank was invented in WWI.
kuschku 10y ago
The same is happening everywhere in Germany. We’re still evacuating entire cities every week because some new WWII ordnance was found, and has to be defused. Or you learn that they found some 500lbs bomb half a meter below your school’s football field, with an unstable system that could explode every minute. You just learn to live with it.
matwood 10y ago
Also a common problem in Croatia from the war in the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia It was a bit unnerving seeing all the signage in the hills above Dubrovnik when I visited.
- yread 10y ago
  Also the sea has all kinds of military garbage "The southern Adriatic Sea has represented a major dumping area of war residues of both conventional and chemical weapons for almost a hundred years" http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=64f53412f4d84603b277cdccdd6370c7 http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=64f53412f4d84603b277...
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Lots of areas were used to dump surplus munitions at the end of both world wars. North Sea, Irish Sea[1], Baltic[2], Gulf of Mexico[3], and many other places. In the case of the Irish Sea, which was the main MoD dump since around 1920, 14,600 tons of Phosgene, and by 1949 the RAF alone had dumped 137,000 tons. It ceased being used in 1973. [1] In the Baltic fishermen catch upto 3 tons of munitions each year. BP turned up quite bit of unexploded ordnance while exploring for their now infamous Gulf of Mexico rig. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1488371/MoD-dumped-munitions-in-the-Irish-Sea.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1488371/MoD-dumped-mu... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/world-war-ii-munitions-dumps-a-rusting-timebomb-in-the-baltic-a-475520.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/world-war-ii-muni... [3] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14141378-world-war-ii-bombs-mustard-gas-in-gulf-of-mexico-need-to-be-checked-experts-warn?lite http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14141378-world-wa...
- thebeardedone 10y ago
  You did not happen to go across the border to Bosnia did you? Even places that have been cleaned are bordered by places that are mined (villages in the north from my personal experience) meaning that if you are kicking the ball around in a back yard and it goes over the fence, don't go looking for it.
angersock 10y ago
Somewhat darkly--is any of the software we write going to still be useful in 80 years? Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Most likely some military control systems will live much longer than the designers thought...
- dmitrygr 10y ago
  DMV's systems (given their speed) are from 80 years ago
  - jharger 10y ago
    So that's a scary thought... but what's an even scarier thought is that they were probably made pretty recently.
- ansible 10y ago
  Terrible devices with awful intent, but they do still work. Technically, the shells being found now are the buggy ones, that didn't explode when they were supposed to.
  - munificent 10y ago
    The worst-written software always lives the longest. Maintainable, modular software, by definition, is easy to change and swap out. So the evolutionary forces favor awful spaghetti codebases that everyone is too afraid to touch.
    - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
      So then the solution would be true natural selection and self-evolving software. As long as external entities (programmers) are tasked with killing off the unfit code, selection is going to be pretty bad.
terryf 10y ago
This is one of the reasons for telling everyone: if you are in a foreign country, holding a gun and shooting at someone, then please just stop. If you are forced to not stop by your commanding officer, then miss and shoot as little as possible. Fighting is not the solution.
- justinhj 10y ago
  This advice probably sounds a lot better when you're not in a foreign country being shot at. Shot at people being lead by a dictator who wants to take over your country.
  - terryf 10y ago
    I specifically excluded defending your own country and/or home. Everyone certainly should be allowed to that. My point is - we as a society should be actively distilling in everyone the reverse of the results of the stanford prison study - you are responsible for your actions, even if someone else tells you it's ok or even orders you. Because in the end, as the attacker, you always have a choice, when it's just you and someone else. In the end it's just a person against another person, just because someone told them that the other guy is bad. Everyone should be taught to question that. Probably he/she is just as scared as you are. I recently watched "Lessons of Darkness" (documentary by Werner Hertzog) again and the scene where a woman describes soldiers coming into her home and stepping on the head of her infant was just haunting, because I could not stop thinking of, why would anyone do that. In that moment, it's not your superior ordering you - it's you making the decision to be the terrible torturer. Please, just walk away.
55555 10y ago
The US dropped more bombs on Laos while fighting the viet cong than the sum of all bombs dropped during WWII. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world and wasn't directly involved. People are still walking through fields and getting blown up and we don't help them de-mine. EDIT: I see some upvotes/interest so I want to state a feeling that I have: that we would have never done this if we respected Laotian people or thought of them as our equals. Only by thinking of them as simple poor brown hill folk could something like this happen. If Norway invaded Sweden via Denmark, we would never have treated Denmark the way we treated Laos. > From 1964 to 1973, as part of the Secret War operation conducted during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped 260 million cluster bombs – about 2.5 million tons of munitions – on Laos over the course of 580,000 bombing missions. This is equivalent to a planeload of bombs being unloaded every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years – nearly seven bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos. > Nearly half of Laos is now contaminated with unexploded ordnances (UXOs), explosive weapons such as bombs, grenades and land mines. Cluster bombs, explosive weapons that work by ejecting hundreds of smaller submunitions over a wide area, make up the majority of UXOs that plague the country. Cluster munitions pose an especially grave danger to civilians, according to specializing in the field of disability, because they are “highly imprecise and indiscriminate” weapons designed to “scatter explosives over swaths of land often hundreds of yards wide.” > Of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped by the United States, up to 30 percent of them failed to detonate. These bombs were released on targets in a large shell or casing. Each of the casings contained roughly 600 to 700 small bomblets, or “bombies,” as they are often called in Laos. > There are now close to 78 million unexploded bomblets littering rice fields, villages, school grounds, roads and other populated areas in Laos, hindering development and poverty reduction. More than 34,000 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions since the bombing ceased in 1973, with close to 300 new casualties in Laos every year. About 40 percent of the accidents result in death and 60 percent of the victims are children. At this time, less than 1 percent of the UXOs have been cleared. http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a-million-bombs/ http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/books-documents/land-of-a...
- malandrew 10y ago
  Do the number of casualties remain relatively constant over time or have they been trending downwards as more ordinance is detonated accidentally? In other words, is the rate of accidents high enough to de-mine and reduce the likelihood of future accidents?

anonymousDan 10y ago

Call me a pessimist but this is one of the main reasons I'm really disappointed about Brexit, whatever the EU's drawbacks.

empath75 10y ago
Yeah, just watching the news, it's becoming more and more apparent that people are so far removed from the horrors of WWI and WWII that they don't understand why we created the international institutions we did. The UN, WTO, EU, etc, are ineffective, bureaucratic messes, but no matter how bad they are, they're a better way of solving international disputes than the historical alternatives. Western nationalists like to talk about how the cultures of the middle east are inherently violent, but seem to forget that the history of europe was a centuries-long bloodbath that eventually engulfed the entire world in horror and put us nearly on the brink of the extinction of all human life. It's those alliances and international organizations that allowed us to step backwards from it. Solving our problems in courtrooms and at negotiating tables rather than on the battlefield.
- valkea 10y ago
  The UN and WTO are not political unions though.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    The WTO wields a lot of power as a trade broker, though.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Now that you mention it, some of the rhetoric about the Middle East really is weird. The last time Europeans tried to go out and kill everybody with the wrong religion is still in living memory. And they were a lot more effective at it, too!
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Don't be forgetting Bosnia (I assume you were referencing WW2). And while the war crimes were nowhere near the same scale, Bush did make a few uncomfortable remarks about evil, crusades and the Middle East.

purge 10y ago

I feel I should do the obligatory Dan Carlin link here: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri... Long, harrowing and left me hankering for more. He covers Verdun in the later episodes.

lighttower 10y ago
Why is the book free?
- icebraining 10y ago
  It's not a book, it's a podcast.
peckrob 10y ago
This. "Blueprint for Armageddon" [0] is amazing. He spends a good bit of time talking about what trench warfare was really like. The horror people there experienced is just nearly unimaginable. The entire length of the series is nearly 24 hours, but it is so worth it. Even if you're not a fan of history, check it out because Dan weaves a masterful true story that keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire 24 hours. [0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
- thearn4 10y ago
  Great series as always, though I have to say I feel like it felt somewhat rushed at the end. i suspect that he did not want to do another 5-hour last part, like his series on the roman republic ended up having.
- eropple 10y ago
  Carlin is what I recommend to people who don't like history, before I get them into The Great Courses (which are amazing, if pricey when you're not on Audible). I have a catalogue of minor beefs with the way he presents some stuff, but he's always up-front that he's not a historian (and I appreciate that acknowledgement) and they haven't stopped me from happily paying for everything he's done for Hardcore History. It's a good listen, and it's worth your time if you haven't tried his stuff.

finid 10y ago

Now imagine the state of the battlefields of Vietnam and surrounding countries. There are places in Cambodia that are no-go areas because of all the stuff we dropped there that did not explode.

etrevino 10y ago
While that's certainly true, nothing beats the First World War for the sheer volume of unexploded ordinance.
- herge 10y ago
  Three times as many tonnes of bombs were used in Indochina that in the whole of WWII (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_W...), so I suspect there's a bit more by volume. I think we hear more about the ordinance in WWI because was dropped in such a small part of France and Belgium that is so heavily populated.
  - alejohausner 10y ago
    These are not fair comparisons, because you are talking about bombs dropped from the air, whereas WW1 was about shells fired from artillery. According to wikipedia [1], about 1 ton of explosives was fired per square meter of combat territory. If the Zone Rouge originally covered 460 square miles (= 1200 km^2 = 1.2 billion m^2), this works out to 1.2 x 10^9 tons of explosives (can that be really true? wow! [2]). In Vietnam, "only" 7.6 million tons were dropped from the air. That's a few orders of magnitude less. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest 2. My numbers don't add up. I just saw a BBC story about WW1 industrial production (tl;dr: allies vastly outproduced the central powers by more than 2 to 1). There's a graph showing that Germany produced 400,000 tons of explosives from 1914 to 1917. Four times that amount is less than 2 million tons, so the number in wikipedia (1 ton per m^2) is definitely wrong.
  - yread 10y ago
    They are also a lot more "effective" than ww1 munitions. Each bomb could contain up to 7500 gravel mines each capable of wounding or killing a person http://www.inertord.com/subgravelmines.html http://www.inertord.com/subgravelmines.html or here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-43_Dragontooth weighing 20g, looking like a fucking toy, 4800 of them in a cluster bomb.

deleted 10y ago

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speeder 10y ago

During WW1, the term "Shell Shock" showed up, that later got changed to PTSD, when people started to think it had to do with psychology, rather than physiology (when Shell Shock first showed up, it was blamed on constant explosions hurting people). Then some days ago we had here on HN frontpage, research that shows that PTSD, even in more recent conflicts, IS shellshock, that the air pressure of the explosions and the shaking actually damage the brain, and cause inflammations that cause PTSD symptoms. I wonder then, how bad it was for the WW1 people, those that were near the concentrated fire of 150 explosions per hour nearby, and survived, maybe some of them wished they had been hit instead of surviving...

asimuvPR 10y ago
What about PTSD developed in non-combat zones? Or people who develop it and are not even in war zones? Do you know if there is any information on that? Not trying to start a flame war. Just interested in the PTSD thing itself.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Pretty much any environment that causes your body to frequently flood with cortisol is a breeding ground for PTSD. The brain interprets the constant threats to its well-being as a signal to rewire itself to be trigger-happy on the flight-or-fight response to conditions that most others would not react as intensely to. Examples: childhood poverty; abusive/neglectful parents; societal discrimination (especially if violence or a heightened possibility is a factor).
  - gxs 10y ago
    Interesting idea - any resources that discuss this that you can provide?
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    There is so much about PTSD we don't understand (or more accurately there is very little we do understand about it) that your claims are simply not true. We aren't sure what causes PTSD, we don't understand what physiological, neurological or psychological conditions are needed for "PTSD" to evolve. As far as cortisol goes well it is again not that simple, both elevated and lowered cortisol levels have been recorded in PTSD cases which is why it's still debated if lower or higher levels of cortisol cause or are a symptom or an indicator of PTSD, and since cortisol levels are only usually tested in cases where the person has already been or being diagnosed the correlation is even harder to identify, especially when considering that both lowered and elevated levels of cortisol can be recorded in nominal people and in people suffering from other mental disorders. PTSD is just another placeholder akin to "shell shock" and the later "combat fatigue", in the end it would be an umbrella of various disorders with various preconditions and causes expressing themselves in a similar fashion.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Sobering thought to think that 65 square miles will take 300 years (minimum) to clean of threats and contamination. I would quibble with the characterization of dead people and animals as "contamination" as there are have been people and animals dying in great numbers over the millenia in various spots, but the concentrations of arsenic and lead are different. Given what I've seen of strip mines from the air, I wonder how long it would take to process 100' of material from 65 square miles (~17,000 hectare) through a refining process. Could you just decide that what ever plant and animal life and structures would be forfeit and just dig it out, process it, and put it back? How long once everything had been processed might you expect it to take for the forest to regrow, certainly within 100 years you'd have a solid regrowth. So can you pull 150 to 200 years off the restoration time ?

trose 10y ago
I imagine the explosive material complicates things immensely. I'm not an expert on strip mines but it seems like they just dig up and grind everything indiscriminately and process it later. This would obviously be a bad strategy when explosives are involved.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  There are machines designed to clear minefields. Maybe build something like that but a bit bigger to do the digging, and operate it from a distance?
  - justin66 10y ago
    The big difference is that artillery shells are a lot more powerful than land mines, and some of those shells have mustard gas. Using a machine of some sort is a good idea but I bet it wouldn't work the same as the minefield sweeper at all.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      There are also the mines that were placed to destroy trenches. Truly colossal quantities of explosives that were placed at the end of tunnels. Not all were exploded.

minipci1321 10y ago

See also the previous discussion (more pictures in the article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091 EDIT: the guy who took all these pictures merits a credit and has a website all by himself: http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38 http://oliviersainthilaire.com/?page_id=38

feklar 10y ago

Anybody know the status of the thousands of tons of chemical weapons the allies dumped in the ocean after WWII? Curious if those munitions are still dangerous

marvin 10y ago
Even chemical weapons dumps after WWI are still dangerous today: http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous-substances/sea-dumped-chemical-munitions http://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/hazardous-substances/sea-...
jvanloov 10y ago
As corrosion sets in, the problem becomes bigger and bigger. http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/21/troubled-waters-the-hidden-legacy-of-chemical-weapons-dumping http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/21/troubled-waters-the-hidde...
Gracana 10y ago
A while back I posted a map of ordnance dumps, and there was some discussion about the danger: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923702

sabarn01 10y ago

During World War I an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

alejohausner 10y ago
I saw that number too. But it's crazy wrong. A square mile has 2.5 million m^2, and I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war. One ton per m^2 works out to 1.2 billion tons over the Zone Rouge that the article talks about. That just can't be right.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  >I don't think the combatant nations produced 2.5 million tons of explosives altogether during the whole war. About 7 million tons (!!!) were dropped from the air during the Vietnam war. I'm having trouble finding a reference, but I don't find 2.5 million tons unbelievable. The comparison to Vietnam is silly because that was a much smaller and different war, and aircraft have limited weight capacity. It's said that some artillery bombardments in WWI were called drum fire because it sounded like a drum roll. During Verdun there was so much artillery that it's said you couldn't distinguish the individual explosions, it was just a load continuous roar that went on for many hours. Perhaps that battlefield is where the statistic comes from. They were going through tens of thousands of shells a day and were quickly running out after a few weeks in. Many factories were converted or built to produce explosives. Dozens of trains were built to transport them to the front lines where they were fired continuously for 4 years. The scale and duration of the war was just insane.
  - ruste 10y ago
    The total estimate he made for the front was 1.2 billion tons. 2.5 million was just for one square mile given the metric.
  - 10y ago

BDGC 10y ago

The book "Aftermath: The Remnants of War" by Donovan Webster explores how the wars of the last century have impacted the surrounding areas. He also gives great perspectives on the clean up effort/process. Highly recommend.

foota 10y ago

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge which the author has clearly read.

fixermark 10y ago

How do these issues (threat of death from unexploded ordnance and chemical poisoning of the soil) compare to the damage done by the atomic bombs? The remaining fissionable material in the bombs was 139 pounds of U-235 (Little Boy) and 12 pounds of Pu-239 (Fat Man). Essentially atomized and spread into the upper atmosphere, where it spread throughout the global environment and may have caused a hard-to-measure uptick in cancer, but the actual demolished territory is rebuilt and thriving today. Horrifying to think that in the long-term view, the conventional ordnance of the European theater was a bigger threat to human life and ecosystem stability than the atomic bombs.

sevenless 10y ago
There have been about 2,000 nuclear explosions in world history, plus dozens of meltdowns, innumerable leaks, etc. How about the lives that weren't lost as a result of (1) nuclear deterrence preventing wars between great powers (2) nuclear power competing with coal and preventing deaths from air pollution/coal mining/global warming though? > human life and ecosystem stability You're going to have to pick one of those.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Humans are always more scared of things they can't see. Things like toxic gas and the mythology that built up in mining communities, cursed area/tombs killing people (possibly there are good reasons to avoid these places like biological disease presence). Religion and gods and and allthat carry on - you can't see them but they can hurt you. Radiation, particularly ionising, is somewhere in that collection of hard to understand things. Being able to detect a danger with your own senses is very reassuring.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Who are you arguing with? Fixermark said nothing about nuclear power, and said that the conventional ordnance of WWI was worse than the atomic bombs of WWII, in the long term. You're defending something no one was attacking.

betaby 10y ago

Let wildlife claim that territory. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife-thriving-around-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-despite-radiation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/05/wildlife...

chaostheory 10y ago
I was going to say the same thing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife-thriving-korean-demilitarised-zone https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife...
Houshalter 10y ago
In some parts the ground is so contaminated that most plant species won't grow. The animals that live in the area get heavy metal poisoning because it bioaccumulates. Chernobyl is different because many plants can withstand radiation, and the levels are low enough to support animals. E.g. this picture: http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/oliviersainthilaire_le_poison_inconnu-161-930x620.jpg http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/...

finid 10y ago

While we're talking mostly about past wars and their past and ongoing effects, let's not forget that we've created and still perfecting weapons that are several times more damaging than any of those used in those wars. And we're always looking for opportunities to use them. Remember Donald Rumsfled's "Shock and Awe"?

lostlogin 10y ago
I don't think that episode has done anything to reign in what is seen as acceptable. Those doing the deeds are treated as heros and those ordering attacks are rewarded with money and medals.

jackzampolin 10y ago

Aftermath is an excelent book on the subject if you are interested in more. Sections on WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War 1. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55545.Aftermath

komali2 10y ago

Jesus christ, that dude was standing next to three shells that were as big as him. They were really launching artillery that large? What kind of power did those shells have? How'd they launch them? I always thought of the artillery bombardments as similar to modern mortars.

johan_larson 10y ago
On the high end, this beast got off a few shots in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav And they dropped a few of these too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(bomb) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_(bomb) Most munitions, whether fired by artillery or dropped from aircraft, were much smaller of course.
Spooky23 10y ago
Most shells were 3 inch, 6 inch with some 8 inch. They weighed 50-300 pounds. Super heavy stuff like railroad guns were much bigger and more powerful. Terrible stuff.
deleted 10y ago
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13of40 10y ago
If you think that's big... http://s20.postimg.org/qgvhmnm71/dora.jpg http://s20.postimg.org/qgvhmnm71/dora.jpg
azernik 10y ago
Looks like a Big Bertha shell [1]. Those larger shells were fired by special-purpose guns built in very small numbers (only 12 Berthas were ever built), used to break sieges or against particularly strong front-line fortifications - for example, Big Bertha was first used in action against the Liege fortifications during the drive through Belgium. An even taller (but lighter) shell was fired by the Long Max [2] converted battleship guns. The majority of the bombardment was carried out by 75-85mm guns, like for example [3]. Their shells were about half the caliber, and a quarter the mass, of modern 155mm howitzer ammunition, but still twice the mass of modern light infantry mortar shells. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_(howitzer) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_L/45_%22Max%22 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_18-pounder

willholloway 10y ago

In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global renewal project will commence. We will use all the means at our disposal to clean up and undo the damage we have done to our home. Swarms of autonomous robots, and possibly nanites will replenish the soil, water and air. We will restore coastlines and replant forests. Wiser, and ashamed of our primitive past, we will rebuild a pristine paradise fitting of a spacefaring civilization.

LoSboccacc 10y ago
basically, wall-e?
- Practicality 10y ago
  Except the nanites will repair us too :)
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Makes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
lugus35 10y ago
As a french, being enslaved by a german kaiser is not what I call a "petty dispute"

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AWildDHHAppears 10y ago

Maybe we can leverage Pokemon Go players and have them hunt for un-detonated ordinance while they're looking for Jigglypuffs.

hyperman1 10y ago

Hello guys, I live in the region (West Flanders, Belgium) so here are some local stories. * When my brother in law was a kid, he found an old bomb at the roadside and decided to take it home on his bike, saying things like 'Look what cool stuff I found'. Of course mom panicked and called the deminers. All friends came to look how the dismantling went. * In fact I know plenty of people finding old grenades and stuff. People die every year messing with them at their kitchen table, even if everybody should know by now not to do that. * Lots of farms have a heap of old bombs on the terrain. Once a year or so DOVO comes and picks them up. * Polish people are used a lot as cheap builders and road workers. In general they dont understand Dutch (the local language) or even English. So while people try to warn them not to touch any strange metal things they find on building terrains, the message doesnt come trough (' Know nothing. Talk boss'). Nasty accidents happen as a result. * A few years ago, an old lady dug up a hand granade from her vegetable garden. So she calls DOVO, the organisation that does the demining. DOVO responds something like no time, call back later. This pissed her off enough to throw the bloody thing in a bucket, drive to dovo, and give the bucket at the reception desk saying ' This is yours'. While typing this, my wife asks why I'm typing on that nerd site of mine. So now she suggests going to the dunes 2 km from here and taking a photograph if I see one. Sorry guys, Im not messing with old bombs in the dark after the Brussels terrorist attacks, but yes, it's that easy.

random_upvoter 10y ago
Story in my own family: we had some relatives who lived in a village near Ypres. In their living room they had this giant iron stove. When the Germans invaded they buried some cash and jewels under a tile under that stove, and fled to France. After the war they returned to the village, in the hope of retrieving the jewels. However, they were unable to find back the stove, due to the fact that they could no longer locate the house... due to the fact that they could not find back the street. The whole village was literally dust.
- hyperman1 10y ago
  Funny one: A nephew of mine bought a house in the region, and started clearing out the mess in the cellar. At the back, behind a fake wall, he found old bottles with a small fortune in DMarks. Unfortunately, the german mark was replaced with a new version after the hyperinflation between the 2 world wars, so it wasnt worth anything anymore. We assume they were left behind by german soldiers in WW1. No idea what he did with them.

lostlogin 10y ago

Reading on with that link is so depressing. Describing 22 year olds getting married (who are old enough to be paid to go and get maimed or die) as "not yet a mature adult... You were young, dumb and full of one bad idea after another". The tips and tricks nature of an article describing basic life skills to people with guns is rather sobering.

pvaldes 10y ago

Reseed masively, keep people out of the borders and let the trees do its job. Roots can crush a lot of that bomb shells or keep pressed forever the trigger of land mines for us. We can afford to lose some poplars here and there.

cyberferret 10y ago

Powerful story - I've heard the tales of how some of the worst battlefields of the WWI and WWII are spooky because of the complete absence of bird song. I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too. Very close to where I live here in Australia is a beautiful cliffside area that is frequented by locals and tourists alike to watch the sunset over the sea. At the foot of the cliffs is an old WWII dumping ground that is absolutely littered with asbestos waste. The local council won't move it because it is (a) too expensive and (b) actually safer to leave it in situ because the sea water keeps it damp and prevent asbestos dust from spreading. I wonder at the other toxins. Lot of local kids still go down at low tide and forage - you are guaranteed to find bullet casings etc., and a friend of mine once found an actual Colt .45 down there once (totally rusted and useless, and he handed it in to the police).

Camillo 10y ago
> I always assumed the sheer bad karma of so many deaths in a small space would make the place a 'no go' zone for wildlife, but I never considered the sheer amount of toxins in the environment that would be a deterrent too. Is that the actual thought process of an adult in 2016 Australia? You hear "no wildlife" and your first thought is not environmental damage but "bad karma"?
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Do yourself a favour and visit Auschwitz someday. Stand in front of the ovens and see if you can summon up the jocularity to do a stand up comedy routine, then get back to me with your all seeing knowledge of 'karma'... EDIT: Do you also derive moral superiority by going around critiquing millions of people who still 'irrationally' believe in 2016 that some higher entity created the earth in 7 days?
  - goatsi 10y ago
    That is because of the knowledge we have of the holocaust though. Try bringing someone from Asia who hasn't had the history education or seen any of the books/media and I doubt they would feel anything.

jxramos 10y ago

So what would it take for us to get some metal detecting robots and some advanced imagery to map out these fields of death? That sounds like a fantastic side project that would help a ton of people. I'd contribute if someone knows of something in the works.

jxramos 10y ago
actually, didn't consider these things still had chemical munitions in them, crazy! http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26663643 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26663643

nkurz 10y ago

Perhaps this is the right crowd to ask. I've been looking for a particular article on WW I for a couple decades now, but I haven't been able to find it online. It's an Encyclopedia Britannica article which I think is entitled "War", although that may not be exact. It's from one of the editions published in the 1930's, which would make it the 14th Edition. I owned the set in hard copy for a while, but had to give it away when I moved. The article one of the most poignant things I've ever read. The tone was essentially "Finally we've figured out how nations can live together in peace and harmony, and never again will humans engage in a war of that magnitude". Crucially, this article was from one of the editions published after World War I, and shortly before World War II. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I've often wanted to reread that the article and ponder how applicable it is to the present. Does anyone happen to have a copy? The 11th Edition is available online from archive.org, but that's too early. And I presume it was revised quickly in any editions printed after World War Two.

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tn13 10y ago

Uninhabitable is not an appropriate term. Uninhabitable means unsuitable for living. Regions with very high levels of radiation, extreme cold, extreme heat are often the reasons why some place is uninhabitable. These lands are scarred by the war but are surely inhabitable if those countries had higher population density. All the government has to do is perhaps spend couple of billion dollars picking up all the shells, bombs and mines.

brooklyndude 10y ago

Boys just love to blow shit up. Pretty insane if you ask me.

aaron695 10y ago

> high levels of arsenic that nothing can grow there Bullshit. It's a interesting story but this article is repeated blog spam. The comments here are much more informative.

richardseshie 10y ago

I heard of APOPO, a nonprofit organization focused on training rats to smell and identify landmines, https://www.apopo.org https://www.apopo.org. Maybe we (they) could get involved in some way.

nstj 10y ago

tl;dr > Though the Zone Rouge started at some 460 square miles in size, cleanup efforts reduced it to around 65 square miles.

blackRust 10y ago

> At places like Verdun [...] 150 shells hit every square meter of the battlefield