9 ms·
France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War (2015)
- sengork 9y agoThey say that a photo is worth a thousand words. This is certainly the case with the the last few photos of the landscape how it looked before and after. Likewise Black Adder series concluded with a similar visual contrast: https://youtu.be/vH3-Gt7mgyM?t=176 https://youtu.be/vH3-Gt7mgyM?t=176
- zeristor 9y agoThanks for that
- dang 9y agoDiscussed in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091.
- cletus 9y agoI've just been listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast and it's amazing. I'm listening to Blueprint for Armageddon, which is a 6 part series (3+ hours each!) About the First Works War and it's fascinating and horrifying. He speaks at length about the Battle of Verdun. And it toss house list of places and battles he's never want to be at.
- tenaciousDaniel 9y agoIt's the best. I love Dan Carlin.
- prawn 9y agoI was a late Carlin convert. For anyone on the fence, give it a shot - his material in Blueprint is rarely over the top, it never feels unduly expanded, etc. He shows it respect, but you can feel his passion for the subject and he makes every detail interesting. I also enjoyed Celtic Holocaust, which is a more approachable length.
- refurb 9y agoI have one of his Blueprint for Armageddon episodes a try and couldn't get through it. Seemed very long winded and too much literary flourish. Maybe I picked a wrong episode or need to give it another try.
- mstade 9y agoHe does get long winded at times, but it’s worth sticking with it. There’s a lot of detail in there that is often lost in <hour long documentaries, including a fair bit of comparison to modern times. The first episode, where he discusses the importance of Gavrilo Princip and how his actions depends on the eye of the beholder is particularly enlightening. There are some comparisons to the Kennedy assasination which can feel like a stretch at times, but definitely thought provoking. I think if you come into the series believing you’ll hear a straight up factual recount of events without bias, you’ll be disappointed. It’s more of a discussion (albeit in monologue form) than documentary. That said I find he treads the topic very carefully, trying hard to present the case in different lights – I think this might be why it’s a bit long winded at times. At the same time, this is what gives it color in my opinion. He’s also a very good narrator I feel. I wouldn’t base a history paper off of these episodes, but I’d be comfortable in using them as a starting point for deeper dives.
- ansible 9y agoRelated to this, there is a video series called "The Great War" hosted by Indy Neidell, which covers the war on a week-by-week basis: http://www.thegreatwar.tv http://www.thegreatwar.tv
- Clubber 9y agoSeconded. I've listened to the entire series 2 or three times now. I put it on when I go to sleep. His other stuff is good too. He puts out a lot of material.
- stupidcar 9y agoThere's something very sci-fi seeming about the idea of a huge battlefield from a long-ago war, still too contaminated with old poisons and weaponry to safely enter. Which nature has mostly reclaimed, except in dead zones so toxic that not even plants can grow there. And yet, this is a real thing that happened, and is a part of our past. A generation who very soon will only be ancestors the living participated in battles so destructive that they did this to the land they were fought on. I find that difficult to fathom. Of course, humans have only gotten better at killing each other since, and WW2 was more destructive overall. But the static nature of the Western front, combined with the unrestrained use of artillery and gas, and the total commitment of manpower on both sides in places like Verdun, gave its battles an apocalyptic intensity that I think is unmatched in any war before or since. And that, hopefully, we won't ever see again.
- Clubber 9y agoIt's just not WWI, there are minefields all over the world that still kill people that wander into them. The only reason WW2 had more combat casualties than WWI is that the USSR decided to defend their country with a meat wall of unprepared soldiers. That generation of Russians had like an 80% casualty rate or something crazy like that. Nearly wiped out an entire generation.
- John_KZ 9y agoLet me correct that phrase: One of the main reasons WW2 ended, was because the Russians defended their country fiercely with their lives, and because the communism establishment industrialized Russia enough to produce war munitions and equipment. I hate to see people injecting anti-communist bullshit everywhere, even when it's irrelevant. The Russians, and the people of the USSR, like all the allied forces, died heroically in the battlefield fighting fascists. Calling them a "meat wall" really fucking grinds my gears as it's extremely insulting and derogatory to the dead.
- gandhium 9y ago> communism establishment industrialized Russia enough to produce war munitions and equipment They lost most of the munitions and equipment in first _months_ of war, and lost half of the factories as well. So they had to rely on lend-lease from much-hated capitalists. And yes, human waves (if you don't like other term) and general disregard for human lives were common in Soviet tactics. That's the reason for staggering losses (they still cannot get their number right, now there are talks that USSR losses were 2x higher, i.e. ~40 millions).
- mdturnerphys 9y ago"German researchers found extremely dangerous levels of up to 17% arsenic in the soil" That seems too high to be true. The page doesn't give the source, but I wonder if something like bioavailability got misinterpreted as composition.
- valinor4 9y agoWikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge) states that "as arsenic can constitute up to 17% of some soil samples" and references "Bausinger, Bonnaire, and Preuß, 2007". I found this study (https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01267232/document https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01267232/document) but I am afraid I don't know how to read the results. I assume that 17% is the absolute maximum proportion of arsenic ever found in a single small sample.
- tom_mellior 9y agoI don't really know how to read this either, but the number 17 as such does not appear anywhere in that paper. This quote may be relevant: "Concentrations of As vary between 72,820 and 1,937 mg/kg" (page 13). These commas appear to be thousands separators, so that's a maximum of 73 grams per kilogram or 7% per mass of a soil sample. I'm not a doctor, but I would advise against eating significant amounts of these soil samples.
- interfixus 9y agoSwedish historian Peter Englund, writing about French and Belgian WW1 front-zones in the early nineties, claimed that the risk of tetanus-poisoning was still highly elevated if you happened to cut yourself in such a place, and that in damp weather the smell of rot decay was still discernible. I always found that hard to credit, but the man is otherwise always sober in reporting, so perhaps not.
- mstade 9y agoI’d imagine the smell of decay is taking creative liberties with the truth. Any damp forest will have a certain smell of decay to it, more likely due to the fungus and rotting wood, than the smell of rotting bodies. That said, I’m sure being in the area will amplify this, given the gravitas of the event. I visited Normandy a couple of years ago and seeing the beaches, the American cemetery, the bunkers... it was like a punch to the gut. I’d imagine going to Verdun or Somme has a similar effect, even if you’re only slightly aware of history.
- dmichulke 9y agoVerdun and the 30 years war are to me symbols of what happens if you follow people greedy people with an inflated ego. In each case, there's were lot of red lines that threatened the "country's honour" (read: the governments credibility), quite a few powerful factions that were to gain of a war and somehow , partly with the help of those factions and those read lines, it all spiraled out of control. Not unlike what we see today with US (or NATO) vs Russia/Iran/Syria/NK and China to a somewhat lesser extent.
- Fradow 9y agoIt's important to keep in mind most of those zones are not a No Man's land anymore. I often go around Lens, Béthune and Arras (family live in that area), and never heard about or seen anything like pictured in the article, except in museums. People live there, there are farms everywhere, and many, many small cities and villages. Some forbidden areas might still exists, and I wouldn't be surprised about people finding relics of the war (bunkers ruins are a common sight on the nearby beaches for example), but it's nowhere near as pictured on the map.
- philjohn 9y agoYeah, I spent a summer in Arras 20 odd years ago and don't remember seeing anything either.
- ItsMe000001 9y agoYou can't see soil contamination though. The visible scars are the least of the problems. > Until the mid 1970s, much of the “clean-up” was only done superficially, destroying hundreds of thousands of unexplored WWI chemical bombs without considering the leaks and contamination to the soil and water. > Alarming amounts of lead debris scattered by shrapnel were also left in place, contaminating the soil with non biodegradable lead, mercury and zinc likely to remain for at least 10,000 years to come. In addition, you don't get obviously sick from heavy metals such as mercury or lead unless it's a large enough amount to result in acute poisoning symptoms. It has an effect in the tiniest amounts though, and it bio-accumulates.
- Fradow 9y agoI can see land is actively used for farming, which means it's probably not contamined anymore. I never saw any of the "forbidden" signs anywhere on the other hand. Which doesn't mean it's not a thing, I don't pretend to know all the area, it just means it's small enough in size and in remote areas, so that a local don't stumble upon this anymore.
- ItsMe000001 9y ago
- kakwa_ 9y agoI used to live in the area of the Battle of the Somme. Red zones are not common, nearly all the land of the former battlefield is now cultivated. In fact, after the war, the red zones were quite extensive, but there was an intense lobbying to reopen these lands to agriculture. In the 20ies, a farmer detonated an unexploded ammunition was not an uncommon occurrence. Nowadays, this is a really rare event, I think there was a case in Belgium about 10 years ago, but it's quite uncommon. However, when you dig, you always find something. My mother started a small garden (about 4 x 8 meters) a few years ago and when she worked the soil for the first time, she found various leftovers like shell heads, shell fragments, bullets, lead spheres used in shrapnel rounds, etc. And it's not uncommon to find unexploded shells on the side of the roads, farmers when they find them, put them on the side of their fields. When my mother was a child in the 50ies and 60ies, she used to help her parents collect these various metal fragments as it was a way to get a small additional revenue for the family. When we cleaned-up my late grand-father's house, there were buckets full of those in fact. There was also an unpinned unexploded grenade by the way. If I recall correctly, they called the local "garde champetre" to deal with it, and it's still in his attributions to deal with such finds. However, there are some big ammunition depots in north of France with all these WWI shells collected over the years. And a lot of those shells are still not neutralized. Also, another interesting side effect is all the cemeteries in the area, the land is literally peppered with them. And these cemeteries are UK territories (In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe). This was actually a blocker for a nearby city (Albert) when they tried to extend their airport, they were blocked by these cemeteries.
- tom_mellior 9y ago> However, when you dig, you always find something. This seems to be something that some British tourists like to do. At Paris Gare du Nord where you board the Eurostar train to London there are signs saying that you are not allowed to bring explosives that you dug up as souvenirs on board a fricking train. > In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe What do you mean? Highest in what sense? According to Wikipedia it's 43 meters high, which isn't a lot, so that cannot be what you mean.
- jvkersch 9y agoRelated: there are zones off the coast of Belgium and France that have been used as ammunition dumps after the 1st world war. There's one such zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paardenmarkt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paardenmarkt) that is close to a very busy shipping route and whose existence was forgotten until the 70s, when people realized that they had 10000 tons of unexploded chemical ammunition lying around just off the coast. In practice there's a thick mud layer on top of the dumped ammo which keeps things stable, but if e.g. a ship were to get stranded, this could cause extensive environmental damage...
- madeuptempacct 9y ago>Pictured above is an artist’s impression of the forsaken territory, originally covering more than 1,200 square kilometres (460 sq miles) in the years following the Great War. Yea, no, that's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept art.
- duskwuff 9y agoThe original appears to be a piece called "Fog" by Mac Rebisz: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Dxk4E https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Dxk4E It's been commonly used in web pieces about the Zone Rouge, but there doesn't appear to be any real connection. (And some of the details of the piece make no sense in that context, like the unburied corpse in the foreground or the heavily armed figure on the left side.)
- madeuptempacct 9y agoIt's from Stalker (or more broadly, a modern Russian setting). Note the rifle on the man's back - is an integrally silenced AS VAL, which is a modern development. The figure in the water is from the game's "Freedom" faction. Anyway, this is a pretty pointless discussion, but the author is definitely mislabelling the image.
- anovikov 9y agoIn all of Eastern Russia, finding shell fragments, bullets, bayonets, helmets, and human bones is quite common to this day. Almost every place was an area of fighting of executions at some point in the last 100 years. Countless millions of people were killed - not known even to the million precision - in many wars and terror campaigns there during XX century.