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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 d

by 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.
    - kragen 10y ago
      There's no reason gravel mines have to weigh that much. Those 20g include 9g of explosive. A .22 short cartridge still contains enough explosive to kill you if it's aimed in the right place, but that's 250mg of black powder, which is half as energy-dense much less brisant than modern explosives. So you could easily imagine "mines" that were a tenth of that size, 2g, with an embedded microcontroller to trigger them under arbitrary conditions, and enough explosive to maim you if you picked them up or stepped on them. A 1kg-payload weather balloon could carry 500 such "mines". It's going to be difficult to keep having civilization.
donretag 10y ago
There are places in the United States that are no-go areas because of unexploded ordinances from military training.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
Most of the landmines in Cambodia were put there by the Khmer Rouge, not the Americans. When I was in Cambodia, I saw the results of what landmines did, they're fucking horrific. They aren't designed to kill someone, but to only blow their foot off and maim them. I believe that they're one of the most barbaric weapons of war. It's a damn shame that the USA, China, and Russia won't ratify the Ottawa Convention.
- finid 10y ago
  I wasn't referring to landmines, but to stuff dropped from the air, by our government.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    Yes, but that isn't the main problem. The no-go areas (and the random explosion in what's now someone's farm) are caused by landmines.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Landmines could be built to decay into inertness after a period of time, say a year. I don't understand why this isn't done.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    It would increase sales too. Seems that would heighten interest. How would the mine know when to start degrading through? Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate.
    - krylon 10y ago
      > Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate. Actually, I think a lot of people would consider that a significant improvement.
      - 10y ago
maxxxxx 10y ago
Same in Laos.

by 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.
  - kragen 10y ago
    There's no reason gravel mines have to weigh that much. Those 20g include 9g of explosive. A .22 short cartridge still contains enough explosive to kill you if it's aimed in the right place, but that's 250mg of black powder, which is half as energy-dense much less brisant than modern explosives. So you could easily imagine "mines" that were a tenth of that size, 2g, with an embedded microcontroller to trigger them under arbitrary conditions, and enough explosive to maim you if you picked them up or stepped on them. A 1kg-payload weather balloon could carry 500 such "mines". It's going to be difficult to keep having civilization.

donretag 10y ago

There are places in the United States that are no-go areas because of unexploded ordinances from military training.

toomanybeersies 10y ago

Most of the landmines in Cambodia were put there by the Khmer Rouge, not the Americans. When I was in Cambodia, I saw the results of what landmines did, they're fucking horrific. They aren't designed to kill someone, but to only blow their foot off and maim them. I believe that they're one of the most barbaric weapons of war. It's a damn shame that the USA, China, and Russia won't ratify the Ottawa Convention.

finid 10y ago
I wasn't referring to landmines, but to stuff dropped from the air, by our government.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  Yes, but that isn't the main problem. The no-go areas (and the random explosion in what's now someone's farm) are caused by landmines.
WalterBright 10y ago
Landmines could be built to decay into inertness after a period of time, say a year. I don't understand why this isn't done.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  It would increase sales too. Seems that would heighten interest. How would the mine know when to start degrading through? Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate.
  - krylon 10y ago
    > Having that happen during storage would be unfortunate. Actually, I think a lot of people would consider that a significant improvement.
    - 10y ago

maxxxxx 10y ago

Same in Laos.