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I was reading about old WW1 shells in Europe recently. For instance, around the Belgian town Ypres, in 2000 they still found around 200 tons of munitions per ye
by Scarblac 10y ago
I was reading about old WW1 shells in Europe recently. For instance, around the Belgian town Ypres, in 2000 they still found around 200 tons of munitions per year, tens of shells per day. They have several full time teams collecting them from farmers. 5% of the shells contain poison gas and need to be dismantled by an automatic process. Probably now in 2016 a bit less, but not much.
And that's only Ypres (of course not a random town but one of the largest WW1 battlefields).
Edit: turns out their automatic installation blew up in 2012, new one completed last september: http://www.willemen.be/en/project/ontmijningsinstallatie-langemark-poelkapelle http://www.willemen.be/en/project/ontmijningsinstallatie-lan... . For a war that happened a century ago.
- vkou 10y agoSome estimates peg WW1 cleanup efforts to continue for hundreds of years. If you feel particularly optimistic about our future, that war may continue continue killing people into the next millennium.
- astrodust 10y agoA short jaunt through parts of Europe is almost guaranteed to turn up some WW1 vintage artifacts, the level of fighting was so intense, so insane, that there's still thousands of tons of munitions and other dangerous junk out there. Who knows how many artillery shells either failed to explode or were lost. It could be worse, too. Someone might have deliberately built a gigantic explosive charge underneath your farm that was intended to blow up someone's trench line: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/1451468/Farmer-who-is-sitting-on-a-bomb.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/145...