4 ms·

if the tunnel is unimportant, not worthy of being protected, then shouldn't it bother no-one that people go and loot it? But it does bother me that people woul

if the tunnel is unimportant, not worthy of being protected, then shouldn't it bother no-one that people go and loot it? But it does bother me that people would loot it. It seems misguided to simply hoping that someone doesn't eventually find a way to excavate it. Which means that I want it protected, I guess? Seems to me that Pierre Malinowski actions prevent the tunnel from being desecrated rather than the opposite, in the long run. Time will tell.

PicassoCTs 6y ago
The problem is the scale. If all war-sites should be protected, and ammunition properly defused and archaeological researched- then all of europe will do nothing else for a century. Large land-strips in several countries are essentially mined mass graves. Once you set precedence, that upkeep costs for that are multiply exponentially. The ordinance defuse operations and it constantly blocking business for days in major cities every year comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_... 2000 tons in germany alone every year. Excavator drivers life dangerous over here. So, yes, if this were to be dealt with properly, goodbye European economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge To avoid opening another barrel (poisoned waste by war production, hidden in the sealed of production caves etc.) - many municipalities employ the three monkey strategy. Don't hear it, don't see it, don't have to deal with it.
- brmgb 6y ago
  > goodbye European economy Even mass defusing (which no one is suggesting) would not tank European economy. It would barely be a blip actually. We are talking about tunnels in the middle of nowhere. The "Zone rouge" is pretty barren. Any large remains of WW1 in cities have been dug up by urbanisation a long time ago. Defusing mostly concern unexploded ordinance from WW2 and there is at most one major event a year in Europe as a whole. It is certainly not "constantly blocking business for days in major cities".
  - CaptArmchair 6y ago
    But Europe isn't just "major cities" either. I have family living in old WWI Western Front area which, today, is mostly a mix of agriculture and industry. Yearly, tons of ordinance are still dug up by farmers working their lands. Building and road construction is still hampered by discovering un-exploded shells or human remains that require careful handling. To put things in perspective, in Belgium alone between 1918 and 2014, some 513 shells exploded claiming 896 victims of which 360 died. 150 tons of ordinance are dug up each year and stored awaiting defusing. I remember my great-uncle stowing shells he found on his land to the side for pickup by the authorities. I've been told countless times by him to not touch anything found by the side of the road whenever we visited them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest And that's discounting the 35.000 tons of munitions - including chemical weapons such as mustard gas - which were dumped into the sea a few miles of the Belgian coast. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mustard-gas-leak-north-sea-first-world-war-weapons-dump-belgium-knokke-paardenmarkt-a8897656.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mustard-gas-... Nobody is arguing for mass defusing, or mass excavations of these sites. I don't argue for them as well for good reason. It's massively dangerous to begin with, and the complexity is enormous and hard to comprehend. The first thing archaeologists are taught is this: the best place to preserve artefacts for the long term is in situ. Digging means destroying the context: there's only one chance to capture the story as told by what you find. And doing that in a way that respects the site isn't cheap or easy. The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner.
    - vladvasiliu 6y ago
      > The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner. While I agree with your point about the danger this poses to the site, this looks to me like exposing vulnerabilities in software. If this guy managed to find the tunnel, who's to say some other "looter" wouldn't have found it, too? At least, according to TFA he's not running around telling people where it is, so this looks kind of like the "responsible disclosure" approach. The other looter might just have made a mess of the place looking for whatever it is looters look for.
- anonAndOn 6y ago
  Gosh, it's almost like the century+ of cleanup costs are a disincentive to going to war.
gvb 6y ago
The tunnel is important and was protected, but it was protected by its obscurity. Like all "security by obscurity," once the secret is known, it is no longer secure and thus is at risk of desecration. Pierre Malinowski put the government in a bind because he broke their previous zero cost security (via obscurity) and now they have to either secure it at a significant cost and effort or end up complicit in its desecration.
kergonath 6y ago
The region is covered in such ruins, and there’s only so much funding and manpower available. And people get grumpy when you want to protect something on their land (thinks not be a problem here though, AFAIK it is in common land). I am not surprised it is a difficult problem. And yeah, it’s incredibly dangerous to go dig these places. There are literally tons of shells there, some of them still waiting to detonate.
incomplete 6y ago
yanno, those looters are seriously playing w/fire. there is so much undiscovered and unexploded ordnance left over from both world wars that even w/a metal detector i'd be afraid to dig very deep at all. i'm an amateur historian as well, and the last time i was in france my wife and i took a detour and spent a day touring the verdun battlefields. entire areas are off limits due to buried ordnance, and the fields of moonscape-like craters were one of the most sobering sights i've ever seen.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

The problem is the scale. If all war-sites should be protected, and ammunition properly defused and archaeological researched- then all of europe will do nothing else for a century. Large land-strips in several countries are essentially mined mass graves. Once you set precedence, that upkeep costs for that are multiply exponentially. The ordinance defuse operations and it constantly blocking business for days in major cities every year comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_... 2000 tons in germany alone every year. Excavator drivers life dangerous over here. So, yes, if this were to be dealt with properly, goodbye European economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge To avoid opening another barrel (poisoned waste by war production, hidden in the sealed of production caves etc.) - many municipalities employ the three monkey strategy. Don't hear it, don't see it, don't have to deal with it.

brmgb 6y ago
> goodbye European economy Even mass defusing (which no one is suggesting) would not tank European economy. It would barely be a blip actually. We are talking about tunnels in the middle of nowhere. The "Zone rouge" is pretty barren. Any large remains of WW1 in cities have been dug up by urbanisation a long time ago. Defusing mostly concern unexploded ordinance from WW2 and there is at most one major event a year in Europe as a whole. It is certainly not "constantly blocking business for days in major cities".
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  But Europe isn't just "major cities" either. I have family living in old WWI Western Front area which, today, is mostly a mix of agriculture and industry. Yearly, tons of ordinance are still dug up by farmers working their lands. Building and road construction is still hampered by discovering un-exploded shells or human remains that require careful handling. To put things in perspective, in Belgium alone between 1918 and 2014, some 513 shells exploded claiming 896 victims of which 360 died. 150 tons of ordinance are dug up each year and stored awaiting defusing. I remember my great-uncle stowing shells he found on his land to the side for pickup by the authorities. I've been told countless times by him to not touch anything found by the side of the road whenever we visited them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest And that's discounting the 35.000 tons of munitions - including chemical weapons such as mustard gas - which were dumped into the sea a few miles of the Belgian coast. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mustard-gas-leak-north-sea-first-world-war-weapons-dump-belgium-knokke-paardenmarkt-a8897656.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mustard-gas-... Nobody is arguing for mass defusing, or mass excavations of these sites. I don't argue for them as well for good reason. It's massively dangerous to begin with, and the complexity is enormous and hard to comprehend. The first thing archaeologists are taught is this: the best place to preserve artefacts for the long term is in situ. Digging means destroying the context: there's only one chance to capture the story as told by what you find. And doing that in a way that respects the site isn't cheap or easy. The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    > The problem here is that a rogue citizen archaeologist decided to start a peeve with national authorities, rather then considering things pragmatically. By turning to the newspapers (Le Monde) they effectively endangered the site. For sure, it's painful to not know what happened to a long lost ancestor in a War, but there's also a lot to be said to leave things as is until there is an opportunity to find out in a respectful manner. While I agree with your point about the danger this poses to the site, this looks to me like exposing vulnerabilities in software. If this guy managed to find the tunnel, who's to say some other "looter" wouldn't have found it, too? At least, according to TFA he's not running around telling people where it is, so this looks kind of like the "responsible disclosure" approach. The other looter might just have made a mess of the place looking for whatever it is looters look for.
anonAndOn 6y ago
Gosh, it's almost like the century+ of cleanup costs are a disincentive to going to war.

gvb 6y ago

The tunnel is important and was protected, but it was protected by its obscurity. Like all "security by obscurity," once the secret is known, it is no longer secure and thus is at risk of desecration. Pierre Malinowski put the government in a bind because he broke their previous zero cost security (via obscurity) and now they have to either secure it at a significant cost and effort or end up complicit in its desecration.

kergonath 6y ago

The region is covered in such ruins, and there’s only so much funding and manpower available. And people get grumpy when you want to protect something on their land (thinks not be a problem here though, AFAIK it is in common land). I am not surprised it is a difficult problem. And yeah, it’s incredibly dangerous to go dig these places. There are literally tons of shells there, some of them still waiting to detonate.

incomplete 6y ago

yanno, those looters are seriously playing w/fire. there is so much undiscovered and unexploded ordnance left over from both world wars that even w/a metal detector i'd be afraid to dig very deep at all. i'm an amateur historian as well, and the last time i was in france my wife and i took a detour and spent a day touring the verdun battlefields. entire areas are off limits due to buried ordnance, and the fields of moonscape-like craters were one of the most sobering sights i've ever seen.