3 ms·
Almost one thousand tons per year still seems like a pretty large number considering the war ended some 75 years ago. How long is the long tail of demining?
by sk5t 7y ago
Almost one thousand tons per year still seems like a pretty large number considering the war ended some 75 years ago. How long is the long tail of demining?
- brnt 7y agoThat war is now over a century ago. Belgium still has an impressive infrastructure and skilled personnel to deal with this. Now you understand why mines are outlawed almost everywhere. Cleanup will never be done. Its just started in Bosnia for instance, with decades of work ahead of us.
- gsnedders 7y agoThis. If we assume we're talking about the order of 10,000,000 tons, of which 10% didn't detonate (this is roughly accurate for bombs & shells, mines are much harder to quantify), then that left 1,000,000 tons of UXO. If we assume (somehow!) half of that was dealt with quickly, that leaves 500,000 tons of UXO. If we assume 1000 tons are found per year, that's still 500 years to tidy up. Across both wars the total may well be closer to 100M than 10M, so then that makes it 5000 years.
- Scarblac 7y agoIn Belgium they still have weekly demolitions of WW1 ordnance found by farmers. A couple of years ago an explosion went wrong, somebody died, and they built a new facility.