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Germany's forest fires come with an explosive twist: WWII munitions
- mirimir 8y ago> Thanks to soaring temperatures, the northern hemisphere has recently been struck with an unusual spate of wildfires, from Greece, Sweden, and the U.K. to Canada and United States. I'm reminded of Peter Watts' Echopraxia :(
- duxup 8y ago> It follows the story of a biologist who gets caught up in a voyage into the heart of the solar system among members of a transcendentalist monastic order and allies (including a vampire escaped from a research facility and her cadre of zombified soldiers) to investigate a mysterious signal seemingly coming from the mission sent to initiate first contact You're reminded because of the space vampires?
- mirimir 8y agoYou gotta read the novel to get it. I did search for a quote, but Google didn't have one. I could explain, but that would be a major plot giveaway. Let's just say that GCC-driven wildfires are a major problem then, and that they need lots of energy to pump sulfates into the stratosphere.
- Someone 8y agoEarlier this week, in Sweden: ”a […] forest fire is located in an old firing range littered with unexploded military ordnance, making it hazardous even if fire crews could reach the area.“ So, they ”launched a flight of Gripen fighter bombers loaded with GBU-49 laser guided bombs. The Gripens dropped one bomb at an altitude of 9,800 feet. The bomb exploded on target, extinguishing flames up to 100 yards from the impact point” (https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a22550688/sweden-dropped-a-laser-guided-bomb-on-a-forest-fire/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a22550688.... Video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f18EZZA3SQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f18EZZA3SQ)
- 1996 8y agoI am not sure bombing fires is cost effective or applicable in most cases.
- iSnow 8y agoIt might just work in Sweden, which has a low population density, but the fires around Potsdam are in the Berlin vicinity - people would probably frown at bombings, even if the bombs used are laser-guided precision ordnance.
- mikeash 8y agoI’d want a thorough analysis of the probablility of failure, certainly. A 90% on-target rate would be just fine for a weapon of war but is probably bad for a firefighting tool.
- duxup 8y agoCost might be an issue... let alone the issue of leaving your own ordinance that fails to detonate.. .
- pasta 8y agoIt was a last resort action. But I wonder why oxygen extracting bomb are not used more often. Firefighters here (Netherlands) sometimes use them in old wooden houses. They are like grenates that extract all oxygen so the fire dies.
- weinzierl 8y agoIn Germany every year about 5500 WWII bombs are defused. According to a 2013 estimate there are about 100.000 left [1]. My personal experience - living in Munich, Germany - is that approx. one or two times per year I am late because of traffic problems caused by bomb disposal activities. Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by NATO troops during maneuvers. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindg%C3%A4nger https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindg%C3%A4nger
- Tomte 8y agoI had never experienced that in my first 32 years or so. But when I moved where I’m now living, within 5 years I had experienced three bomb defusings with mass evacuations (I’ve always been just outside the evacuation zone). No surprise, it was a strategically important place, so the Allies bombed a lot. It‘s a bit of a local media spectacle, with the local newspaper running stories welcoming back the defusing team by name.
- chrisseaton 8y ago> Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by NATO troops during maneuvers. Blanks? As in blank small-arms ammunition and artillery rounds? I've never heard of them being a fire-risk before, or being dumped like that. They don't contain much explosive do they? How is this happening?
- weinzierl 8y agoI don't know if they are really a risk but I know that there are a lot of them because I collected them as a child and they were not really hard to find after a maneuver, when they were sill shiny. > Firefighters there have found their work hampered by explosions from munitions dating back to World War II, which were buried and had been undisturbed until the heat of the flames set them off. My point was more that the explosions (blanks are loud) could have been caused by ammunition dropped long after WWII.
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- _Microft 8y agoShould or could defense contractors/weapon manufacturers be held liable for bombs that did not explode when planned and the damages and costs that this occurs later? Frankly I find the idea almost entertaining to bill them the direct (and maybe indirect) costs of for example a nowadays evacuation of a city because a bomb needs to be defused.
- jakobegger 8y agoWhile we're at it, we should also make them liable for bombs that did explode as planned.
- _Microft 8y agoOh, and ... reimburse the buyer of the weapon as well?
- DoctorOetker 8y agoonly during wartime! during peacetime the unintended victim should be renumerated
- tzs 8y agoShouldn't they have the option of dropping a working bomb on the location, thus delivering the explosion that their defective bomb failed to deliver?
- jonhendry18 8y agoSometimes, as with mines, you don't necessarily want them to go off. You only want them to go off if triggered. They would remain dangerous, however, unless they're the kind that renders itself chemically inert or otherwise incapable of exploding after some period of time has passed, in order to reduce risk of civilian casualties.
- rustcharm 8y agoPerhaps you should look into why people were dropping bombs in Germany in the first place.
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- Tomte 8y agoThere is a company renting out firefighting tanks to fire brigades. Really: https://www.inforadio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/int/201807/27/257458.html https://www.inforadio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/int/20180...
- SubiculumCode 8y agoI was worried about contaminants, but flame retardants are quite bad also. Edit. I thought this was in regards to a story about using bombs to extinguish forest fires that I heard on the news a day ago.
- krylon 8y agoI am still baffled that back then people could not build mechanisms to set a bomb off reliably, yet could build bombs that remained deadly while lying in the ground for what now amounts to a decent human lifetime. And I am deliberately ignoring the legacy of World War I here, which according to the latest forecasts will still take centuries to clean up.
- pjc50 8y agoThe difficult bit is making a bomb that goes off reliably but not before. Explosive stabilisation is the innovation that made the Nobel fortune, remember.
- Shivetya 8y agoThen be really worried, the amount of munitions dumped at sea is staggering[1]. A US bomb was found around Fukushima near a car park [2]. People tend to ignore the amount of munitions and equipment scattered all over the Pacific and adjacent nations from Japan's attempt to conquer the area during WW2. Their build up while not as impressive as some of the German construction was just as destructive [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapons-world-war-II-threaten-waters-worldwide-180961046/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapo... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40886169 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40886169
- pmontra 8y agoInstead of the article I'm prompted with a privacy policy page. > You always have the choice to experience our sites without personalized advertising based on your web browsing activity by visiting the DAA’s Consumer Choice page, the NAI's website, and/or the EU online choices page, The latter page, the one relevant to me, is a 404. Is it an ironic adblocker on my phone or is it 404 for everybody? http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ http://www.youronlinechoices.com/
- jwilk 8y agoFWIW, it's not 404 for me, but I don't understand what's the purpose of this page. I couldn't get past the nag screen. :-/ Fortunately archive.org has a working copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180728201531/http://fortune.com/2018/07/27/germany-brandenburg-forest-fire-munitions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180728201531/http://fortune.co...
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- qop 8y agoDo countries like Germany, with rich, relatively recent military history have schools where people go to learn all the different models of bomb that they used back in WW2? How do they keep all that important knowledge circulating for defusal techs after all these years? Quite interesting
- chrisseaton 8y agoI presume they write it down.
- nasredin 8y agoRelated. There's actually not a lot of primary sources on the reticles used in German armour. So developers of some of these WWII "realistc" shooters have to design new ones. I would guess there's better documentation of mines and bombs.
- qop 8y agoI've actually wondered about that too! My uncle has a bunch of old rifle optics equipment. Very unusual reticles on some of them!
- detaro 8y agoIn Germany there's special training run at least partially by the same places that do other kinds of explosives training. And some defusal experts had explosives training from the military beforehand.