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Every year I visit various ww1 battle sites in northern France and Italy. We walk through endless farm lands to find information about certain events. We often

Every year I visit various ww1 battle sites in northern France and Italy. We walk through endless farm lands to find information about certain events. We often stumble upon ammunition and steel scrap. The land is literally filled with shells, bullets, scrapnel everywhere. Some are still live and just brought to the top of the soil by farm tractor machinery. The amount of shells fired at the battle of as Verdun is so extremely high that you find layers of shells everywhere. For months millions of shells were fired in a 20 square km area. It will take hundreds of years to clean them up. 900 years in some places. A few years ago I found in the middle of farmland a lot of unexploded bullets still in their clips. After searching a bit more we found also various fragments of helmets and bajonets, leather belts and more. It turned out to be a French defense unit, completely destroyed and burried under layers of mud only to be discovered 100 years later.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
Myself and my then GF visited Arras just north of Verdun in 2019. She was a few months pregnant at that stage and in every hotel we stayed, the proprietor warned her to only drink bottled water, including for brushing teeth. The locality got so hammered with poison gas shells, it all seeped into the ground water making it mildly poisonous!! Lovely part of the world, but a sad legacy of military buildups.
- SenHeng 4y ago
  What about non-pregnant people?
  - SenHeng 4y ago
    It is an honest question. Is the poison bad for others or only because a pregnant woman or the foetus are exceptionally weak to it? If it is, why and how do people still live there?
    - Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
      Again, I'm guessing that pregnancy is probably a health condition where everything is under stress, and drinking toxin laced tap water doesn't help. But lots of people do live there, and from albeit biased observation, they seem happy enough just drinking beer and wine (and maybe bottled water).
  - Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
    I'd say it's probably a red flag for non-pregnant folks too.
dghf 4y ago
The "zone rouge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge
adev_ 4y ago
I am currently born near to Verdun > The amount of shells fired at the battle of as Verdun is so extremely high that you find layers of shells everywhere On the first onslaught on the city, it is estimated the German fired around 2 millions shell on Verdun in two days. [1] It is hard to imagine by today living standards the hell that people lived there. > The land is literally filled with shells, bullets, scrapnel everywhere. Some are still live and just brought to the top of the soil by farm tractor machinery Some forest area are still today considered the 'zone rouge'. There is still so many shell inside them that the access or activities there are forbidden [2]. Even in the area not considered 'zone rouge', it is still pretty common for farmers or forest workers to find back non-exploded shell regularly, even today. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINsiiUZtuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINsiiUZtuc [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge
- jsmcgd 4y ago
  2M shells in 48 hrs is 11.5 shells a second.
  - bozhark 4y ago
    (NUMBER OF BARRELS)[(SHOT SEQUENCE TIME/SECONDS)(11.5 SECONDS)]
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    But if you design a factory to make shells quickly, each production line can probably do 1 shell per second (they're not so different from big bullets, and those are made very rapidly). 11 of those lines and you can be keeping up that rate forever.
    - rypskar 4y ago
      It's not enough to produce them, you also need to get them close to the front. The logistics of transporting millions of tons ammunition outside of normal trading routes should not be underestimated
benj111 4y ago
Yes I went as a teenager. We were warned not to buy souvenirs as live grenades were known to have been bought in the past. But you could still see chalk lines in ploughed fields where the trench lines had been and even in some of the memorials there were signs warning you to keep out of the wooded bits. And some of the memorials are massive, and just covered in names.
InCityDreams 4y ago
"...scrapnel everywhere...". The correct term is 'shrapnel', but your 'scrapnel' means so much more. /'Scrap', being the root of the word.
- holoduke 4y ago
  Yeah you are right. English is not my native language.
- davidkunz 4y ago
  I like that neologism, very fitting.
Balgair 4y ago
To give a bit more reference on the scale of the slaughter of Verdun and WW1 in general: Total casualties for the 1916 battle were ~755,000, maybe less. The battle lasted 302 days, from 21 Feb to 18 Dec. Doing a bit of math, you arrive at just shy of two casualties per minute. That comes out to crashing a fully loaded 737 jet into the ground every 2 hours, every day, every night, for 300 days straight. The total casualties of WW1 are worse. In terms of 737-crashes, it comes out to one every ~14 minutes for the ~4.25 years of the war for military casualties. Including civilian casualties you get a 737 plane crash every ~10 minutes for the four years, three months, and two weeks of the war. Imagine a Lion Air Flight 610 tragedy every 10 minutes, 132 times a day, every single day, every single night, for over 4 years straight. No breaks. Just building plane after plane, fueling them, training pilots, finding people, getting them on the plane, taxiing, taking off, getting to altitude, and then intentionally running them into the ground, every ten minutes, for 4 years, nonstop. Where would you even find a place to put all the wreckage? What airstrip's tarmac could support that many planes taking off that quickly? How could you even get that many willing people onto planes at that rate? What kind of airport fuel system could support that amount of consumption for 4 years without maintenance? How could you possible train pilots that fast? The sheer scale of the slaughter in WW1 is just mind boggling. It truly, really, does make my just head go 'fpoooom!'. EDIT: I'm having some trouble with my math (maybe?), if someone could double check, that would be great.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

Myself and my then GF visited Arras just north of Verdun in 2019. She was a few months pregnant at that stage and in every hotel we stayed, the proprietor warned her to only drink bottled water, including for brushing teeth. The locality got so hammered with poison gas shells, it all seeped into the ground water making it mildly poisonous!! Lovely part of the world, but a sad legacy of military buildups.

SenHeng 4y ago
What about non-pregnant people?
- SenHeng 4y ago
  It is an honest question. Is the poison bad for others or only because a pregnant woman or the foetus are exceptionally weak to it? If it is, why and how do people still live there?
  - Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
    Again, I'm guessing that pregnancy is probably a health condition where everything is under stress, and drinking toxin laced tap water doesn't help. But lots of people do live there, and from albeit biased observation, they seem happy enough just drinking beer and wine (and maybe bottled water).
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  I'd say it's probably a red flag for non-pregnant folks too.

dghf 4y ago

The "zone rouge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge

adev_ 4y ago

I am currently born near to Verdun > The amount of shells fired at the battle of as Verdun is so extremely high that you find layers of shells everywhere On the first onslaught on the city, it is estimated the German fired around 2 millions shell on Verdun in two days. [1] It is hard to imagine by today living standards the hell that people lived there. > The land is literally filled with shells, bullets, scrapnel everywhere. Some are still live and just brought to the top of the soil by farm tractor machinery Some forest area are still today considered the 'zone rouge'. There is still so many shell inside them that the access or activities there are forbidden [2]. Even in the area not considered 'zone rouge', it is still pretty common for farmers or forest workers to find back non-exploded shell regularly, even today. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINsiiUZtuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINsiiUZtuc [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge

jsmcgd 4y ago
2M shells in 48 hrs is 11.5 shells a second.
- bozhark 4y ago
  (NUMBER OF BARRELS)[(SHOT SEQUENCE TIME/SECONDS)(11.5 SECONDS)]
- londons_explore 4y ago
  But if you design a factory to make shells quickly, each production line can probably do 1 shell per second (they're not so different from big bullets, and those are made very rapidly). 11 of those lines and you can be keeping up that rate forever.
  - rypskar 4y ago
    It's not enough to produce them, you also need to get them close to the front. The logistics of transporting millions of tons ammunition outside of normal trading routes should not be underestimated

benj111 4y ago

Yes I went as a teenager. We were warned not to buy souvenirs as live grenades were known to have been bought in the past. But you could still see chalk lines in ploughed fields where the trench lines had been and even in some of the memorials there were signs warning you to keep out of the wooded bits. And some of the memorials are massive, and just covered in names.

InCityDreams 4y ago

"...scrapnel everywhere...". The correct term is 'shrapnel', but your 'scrapnel' means so much more. /'Scrap', being the root of the word.

holoduke 4y ago
Yeah you are right. English is not my native language.
davidkunz 4y ago
I like that neologism, very fitting.

Balgair 4y ago

To give a bit more reference on the scale of the slaughter of Verdun and WW1 in general: Total casualties for the 1916 battle were ~755,000, maybe less. The battle lasted 302 days, from 21 Feb to 18 Dec. Doing a bit of math, you arrive at just shy of two casualties per minute. That comes out to crashing a fully loaded 737 jet into the ground every 2 hours, every day, every night, for 300 days straight. The total casualties of WW1 are worse. In terms of 737-crashes, it comes out to one every ~14 minutes for the ~4.25 years of the war for military casualties. Including civilian casualties you get a 737 plane crash every ~10 minutes for the four years, three months, and two weeks of the war. Imagine a Lion Air Flight 610 tragedy every 10 minutes, 132 times a day, every single day, every single night, for over 4 years straight. No breaks. Just building plane after plane, fueling them, training pilots, finding people, getting them on the plane, taxiing, taking off, getting to altitude, and then intentionally running them into the ground, every ten minutes, for 4 years, nonstop. Where would you even find a place to put all the wreckage? What airstrip's tarmac could support that many planes taking off that quickly? How could you even get that many willing people onto planes at that rate? What kind of airport fuel system could support that amount of consumption for 4 years without maintenance? How could you possible train pilots that fast? The sheer scale of the slaughter in WW1 is just mind boggling. It truly, really, does make my just head go 'fpoooom!'. EDIT: I'm having some trouble with my math (maybe?), if someone could double check, that would be great.