9 ms·

World War I dangers in France's red zones

103 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

davidw 3y ago
I feel sad thinking about Ukraine for similar reasons. Even after they kick out the invaders, they're going to have so much messed up land.
- SonicScrub 3y ago
  It is sad, and there are certainly areas where injuries and deaths will continue for decades to come. However I feel the need to point out that the First World War is on a whole other level of scale than the Ukraine War. As per the article , approximately 60 million shells were fired at the battle of Verdun. That's just one spot on the front over the course of about one year. In Ukraine, Russia's recent ramp-up of shell production is allowing for about 10,000 shells per day ( 3.65 million per year) across the entire front. Assuming that pace is maintained, that's about 16x less than was fired at a single spot on the front in WW1. I write this comment not to diminish the very real suffering caused by the current war, but as reminder of the destructive capacity of a full-scale industrial war, where the entire state is devoted to producing the means of war.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    I would also assume that modern munitions are much more likely to either immediately explode or fail (relatively) safe rather than lingering as highly volatile UXO. According to the OP about a quarter of the shells fired back then didn't detonate on impact, and those certainly weren't designed to fail-safe.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      That's true, but there is a big cave-at: Soviet shells and North Korean shells can hardly be called modern and there seems to be a lot of duds fired. Not to mention that Russia has littered whole landscapes with anti-personnel mines, something which didn't really exist in WWI. Small, plastic mines, very hard to detect.
      - dralley 3y ago
        And cluster munitions, used extensively by both sides.
        actionfromafar 3y ago
        Yep. Forgot about those. All of that stuff is going to be a sad surprise for a farmer one day, just like in France. :-/
        lostlogin 3y ago
        It’s one of the most productive bits of farmland on earth due to its soil type. Presumably one of the reasons Putin decided to take it.
    - davidw 3y ago
      Sure, but there's still going to be a lot of wreckage and blown up stuff and ... maybe modern munitions aren't chemical weapons ala WWI, but I don't think the ingredients are like "organic, artisanally produced, biodegradable" stuff either. The US was using depleted uranium for a while, no?
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
        Isn't DU still used? Uranium pierces armor terrifyingly efficiently.
      - dralley 3y ago
        Both the Ukrainians and Russians have been using DU shells, but honestly tanks aren't killing tanks very much, so it's basically irrelevant. Even in the best case the DU is still hitting a 40 ton tank which is full of plenty of heavy metals itself.
  - tazu 3y ago
    Thanks for this, I didn't realize the true scale of WW1. That's horrifying. Imagine the industrial capacity of total war today...
    - dylan604 3y ago
      to me, total war today would include all nuclear weapons, which would alter that horrifying scale.
  - baybal2 3y ago
    [dead]
  - JimTheMan 3y ago
    A question I don't know the answer to. Is the scale of the conflict simply significantly less, or is artillery more accurate(and has a greater range?) and therefore less shells tend to get used in a modern day context?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwup238 3y ago
      It's both scale and the nature of combat changing - in great part due to the horrors of WWI. There was a huge front stretching across Western Europe of mostly static defensive installations like the infamous network of trenches, all of which could easily be targeted by artillery but couldn't be held by enemy troops for very long. Artillery units would sit in the same spot for months firing at each other without the battle lines changing more than a hundred meters back and forth. Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. While artillery is still useful today as a cheap way to hit static targets with tons of explosives, modern combat has many more mobile units like tanks and armored infantry that are impractical to hit when they're moving around. Artillery is a big part of Russian military doctrine but no one uses it at the scale it was used in WWI.
      - dgoldstein0 3y ago
        > Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. Not sure what timescale you mean by "once" - if you mean immediately during WWI - well the story is a bit more complicated than that. The first tanks were tested in the battlefield in WWI, but they were few, rare, and slow. Some versions were effective at anti-trench warfare, but they didn't fundamentally change they war, because there weren't enough of them and they weren't that good. WWII tanks were a whole different ball game, travelling at automotive speeds - easily 40mph - over most terrains, with much more effective armor from all sides, and both sides figured out how to use them effectively together with infantry and air power. The WWI stalemate really got broken because the Allies - US, UK, and France - had a lot more in them, whereas the Central Powers - Germany, Austria, etc - ran out of manpower and supplies to keep up. They still made it hell on the Allies to gain ground, but they effectively had lost their ability to manage a counteroffensive through attrition. Tons of tactics were tried before that point to avoid an attritional war, but planes and tanks to make fast high powered strikes didn't exist (WWI planes couldn't carry much weight, so were ineffective as bombers, and had shorter range; they were mainly used as recon), and artillery was so destructive it hindered it's own slow advance. Best source I've seen on these subjects is https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-i-the-trench-stalemate/ https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-... and his followup article.
- arkis22 3y ago
  Or the flip side. Russia is trying to take control of land, but what's the point if you level everything and make it uninhabitable.
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    buffer zone, natural resources, water supply for warm water port, delusional bragging rights, access to do more of the same to moldova and surrounding states.
    - tazu 3y ago
      Key point here is buffer zone, which Russia has been repeatedly demanding for 30+ years.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Which is kinda pointless in this day and age of aerial warfare, and it's also really unfair on those who live in that "buffer zone". That means they're basically just a throwaway crumple zone to Russia ready to be sacrificed. Who wants to be that? And if they do manage to take over Ukraine they still don't have a buffer zone because they'll be bordering with Poland and Romania. Also, Russia has actually gained a huge border directly with NATO as a direct result of this war. It's really backfired in that regard. Finland wouldn't have joined NATO if Russia hadn't shown how dangerous they can be. They were perfectly happy with the status quo until this.
        tazu 3y ago
        [flagged]
        wkat4242 3y ago
        > It's not pointless when nuclear response depends on seconds That's exactly why it's pointless. Those few hundred kms don't make any difference. And in terms of launch warning it's the subs that are the most dangerous and always have been. Don't forget we have Russia's own enclave right in the middle of Europe and nobody complains about that. > Russia has repeatedly asked to join NATO, most recently with Putin asking Clinton in the early 2000s. Unelected men in suits always manage to shut it down. Russia is a crime syndicate masquerading as a country. It's just incompatible with our standards and values and if they joined NATO they would have driven a wedge into it. We have enough problems as it is with Hungary pivoting to Russia and Turkey turning autocratic. Russia joining would have destroyed NATO. Which is probably why they wanted to join. I doubt it was ever sincere. I do agree the MIC makes the US do very bad things but at least we in Europe are allies by choice, not at gunpoint like the former Warsaw pact. It's no wonder that counties prefer our side to joining their sphere of influence.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
geph2021 3y ago
Recommendation for anyone wanting to get into the gory, shocking details of WWI: The podcast, Dan Carlin's A blueprint for Armageddon[1]. Over 24 hours on the topic, and I was left absolutely devastated by the descriptions of the impact and events of WWI. I guess I just didn't have a great appreciation or knowledge of WWI. At least for me, my grade school education was mostly focused on WWII and other more recent conflicts. 1 - https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...
- mstade 3y ago
  Couldn't agree more, this podcast is amazing. Worth multiple listens and definitely worth the price of admission.
- RowanH 3y ago
  We just had ANZAC day in NZ [commemorating WWI/battle of gallipoli). A bunch of (I'm guessing younger people) are getting up in arms that it's glorification of war and whataboutism on other things going on the world "why don't we do x about y", "we shouldn't be celebrating it" etc etc. They really missed the point that it's about not forgetting the brutality of war - to remember those who served and died under horrific circumstances. One of the key phrases is "lest we forget". However I fear we are, as each generation passes from WWI/WWII the horrors gradually get diluted. While we don't have kids it's apparent the younger generations are not getting the stories of WWI/WWII passed down and their exposure to it is the glorification through Hollywood. Thank you good HN'er for posting this up. It's always important to remember so we as a world don't go back there.
  - baybal2 3y ago
    [dead]
  - reitzensteinm 3y ago
    On the theme of Dan Carlin and generational dilution, the first episode ever was an interesting exploration of how Alexander and Hitler through that lens. It's completely different to the current audiobook like format, but the early episodes are still well worth a look. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexander-versus-hitler/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexand...
Loughla 3y ago
Wow. The problem is, this immediately makes me consider all the industrial pollution sites across the world. I genuinely wonder how much of our planet has already been rendered completely inhospitable to life? I'm not trying to be dramatic or bait arguments, I legitimately wonder how much.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  It's pretty difficult to make an area inhospitable to all life, including microbial (though I guess massive arsenic poisoning will do it). But as soon as you start thinking like that, then you wind up with a very boring sliding scale of hospitality for microbes, fungus, weeds, insects...
- loeg 3y ago
  Approximately zero percent.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  There probably are a few such patches, but I'm not aware of any. Earth life, as a total entity, is amazingly adaptable to any and all circumstances.
- dmbche 3y ago
  The shelling, in Verdun for example, was so absurd that it's not really relatable to pollution. It was days upon days of non stop shells, including chemical shells, going over the same ground back and forth, for weeks if not months. It really was something completely off the charts. Edit0: from the wiki on the battle of verdun: It lasted from february to december - in the very first 10h bombardment, on the first day, over 1 000 000 shells were shot over a 30km x 5 km strip. It's hard to even imagine what that looks like!
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > I genuinely wonder how much of our planet has already been rendered completely inhospitable to life? I'm not trying to be dramatic or bait arguments, I legitimately wonder how much. As has already been pointed out by multiple people, none of it. That's not a thing it's possible to do. If you really were legitimately wondering about this... you need to find some sources of information that aren't just lies.
thrance 3y ago
I am french and didn't know about these, thanks for sharing. Growing up in the north, I remember holes in the forests that were supposedly dug out by shells a century earlier. They were fun to ride on a bike.
dylan604 3y ago
"And the relatively elevated levels of lead in certain French wines may result from the wood of the barrels in which they matured, from oak harvested in former red zones." Okay, so I'm no longer putting French wine as high on my lists.
- ajdude 3y ago
  That's what makes it sweet
AlbertCory 3y ago
WW I is much more interesting to study than WW II, I think. How it started and might have been prevented, for instance. Why the combatants kept going when it turned out to be much more horrible than they'd ever imagined. And especially, how it ended, and the Treaty of Versailles.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lostlogin 3y ago
  WW2 was very much a continuation of WW1s unfinished business, and if someone were viewing them as completely separate events I think that incorrect.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Yes. And yet, the business being unfinished was very much Woodrow Wilson's fault. OK, that's flame bait, for sure. I'm working (just mentally, so far) on a lengthy article on that. I was watching a series on Prime last night called "The Ultimate Guide to the US Presidents" or something like that, and it mentioned, for Wilson, that he expressed surprise and displeasure that so much of his second term had to be devoted to foreign policy, when ALL of his training was in domestic policy. It showed. His astonishing naivete and pigheadedness along with the US's immense power and influence worked to end the war in the worst possible way.
    - dmvdoug 3y ago
      That's certainly... a take. Wilson had managed to wrangle the other Big Three into an agreement on an entirely new model of international relations, which he was in part responsible for coming up with, and which was actually somewhat popular. But he had to have the Senate ratify the damned thing. The Senate did not ratify it. That precluded our involvement in the whole business and effectively set us adrift from international concerns again. How it's Wilson's fault that he probably suffered a stroke during his address to the Senate arguing the case for ratification is beyond me.
freddie_mercury 3y ago
What a weird article. The only WW1 era picture is actually from Belgium, not France. It is easy to find pictures of WW1 France! They even have one in another article on their site on the same exact subject: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/zone-rouge-plant-growth https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/zone-rouge-plant-growt... There's also no actual pictures of any red zones?? The only picture of the area is something that is no longer a red zone and has been rehabilitated.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xavor 3y ago
HN title more accurate than that of the ariticle
tim333 3y ago
I always thought these things were relegated to the past but of course we have similar if smaller scale fighting in Ukraine. I'm not sure how to stop it for good.

103 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

I feel sad thinking about Ukraine for similar reasons. Even after they kick out the invaders, they're going to have so much messed up land.

SonicScrub 3y ago
It is sad, and there are certainly areas where injuries and deaths will continue for decades to come. However I feel the need to point out that the First World War is on a whole other level of scale than the Ukraine War. As per the article , approximately 60 million shells were fired at the battle of Verdun. That's just one spot on the front over the course of about one year. In Ukraine, Russia's recent ramp-up of shell production is allowing for about 10,000 shells per day ( 3.65 million per year) across the entire front. Assuming that pace is maintained, that's about 16x less than was fired at a single spot on the front in WW1. I write this comment not to diminish the very real suffering caused by the current war, but as reminder of the destructive capacity of a full-scale industrial war, where the entire state is devoted to producing the means of war.
- jsheard 3y ago
  I would also assume that modern munitions are much more likely to either immediately explode or fail (relatively) safe rather than lingering as highly volatile UXO. According to the OP about a quarter of the shells fired back then didn't detonate on impact, and those certainly weren't designed to fail-safe.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    That's true, but there is a big cave-at: Soviet shells and North Korean shells can hardly be called modern and there seems to be a lot of duds fired. Not to mention that Russia has littered whole landscapes with anti-personnel mines, something which didn't really exist in WWI. Small, plastic mines, very hard to detect.
    - dralley 3y ago
      And cluster munitions, used extensively by both sides.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Yep. Forgot about those. All of that stuff is going to be a sad surprise for a farmer one day, just like in France. :-/
        lostlogin 3y ago
        It’s one of the most productive bits of farmland on earth due to its soil type. Presumably one of the reasons Putin decided to take it.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Sure, but there's still going to be a lot of wreckage and blown up stuff and ... maybe modern munitions aren't chemical weapons ala WWI, but I don't think the ingredients are like "organic, artisanally produced, biodegradable" stuff either. The US was using depleted uranium for a while, no?
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
      Isn't DU still used? Uranium pierces armor terrifyingly efficiently.
    - dralley 3y ago
      Both the Ukrainians and Russians have been using DU shells, but honestly tanks aren't killing tanks very much, so it's basically irrelevant. Even in the best case the DU is still hitting a 40 ton tank which is full of plenty of heavy metals itself.
- tazu 3y ago
  Thanks for this, I didn't realize the true scale of WW1. That's horrifying. Imagine the industrial capacity of total war today...
  - dylan604 3y ago
    to me, total war today would include all nuclear weapons, which would alter that horrifying scale.
- baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
- JimTheMan 3y ago
  A question I don't know the answer to. Is the scale of the conflict simply significantly less, or is artillery more accurate(and has a greater range?) and therefore less shells tend to get used in a modern day context?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwup238 3y ago
    It's both scale and the nature of combat changing - in great part due to the horrors of WWI. There was a huge front stretching across Western Europe of mostly static defensive installations like the infamous network of trenches, all of which could easily be targeted by artillery but couldn't be held by enemy troops for very long. Artillery units would sit in the same spot for months firing at each other without the battle lines changing more than a hundred meters back and forth. Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. While artillery is still useful today as a cheap way to hit static targets with tons of explosives, modern combat has many more mobile units like tanks and armored infantry that are impractical to hit when they're moving around. Artillery is a big part of Russian military doctrine but no one uses it at the scale it was used in WWI.
    - dgoldstein0 3y ago
      > Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. Not sure what timescale you mean by "once" - if you mean immediately during WWI - well the story is a bit more complicated than that. The first tanks were tested in the battlefield in WWI, but they were few, rare, and slow. Some versions were effective at anti-trench warfare, but they didn't fundamentally change they war, because there weren't enough of them and they weren't that good. WWII tanks were a whole different ball game, travelling at automotive speeds - easily 40mph - over most terrains, with much more effective armor from all sides, and both sides figured out how to use them effectively together with infantry and air power. The WWI stalemate really got broken because the Allies - US, UK, and France - had a lot more in them, whereas the Central Powers - Germany, Austria, etc - ran out of manpower and supplies to keep up. They still made it hell on the Allies to gain ground, but they effectively had lost their ability to manage a counteroffensive through attrition. Tons of tactics were tried before that point to avoid an attritional war, but planes and tanks to make fast high powered strikes didn't exist (WWI planes couldn't carry much weight, so were ineffective as bombers, and had shorter range; they were mainly used as recon), and artillery was so destructive it hindered it's own slow advance. Best source I've seen on these subjects is https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-i-the-trench-stalemate/ https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-... and his followup article.
arkis22 3y ago
Or the flip side. Russia is trying to take control of land, but what's the point if you level everything and make it uninhabitable.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  buffer zone, natural resources, water supply for warm water port, delusional bragging rights, access to do more of the same to moldova and surrounding states.
  - tazu 3y ago
    Key point here is buffer zone, which Russia has been repeatedly demanding for 30+ years.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Which is kinda pointless in this day and age of aerial warfare, and it's also really unfair on those who live in that "buffer zone". That means they're basically just a throwaway crumple zone to Russia ready to be sacrificed. Who wants to be that? And if they do manage to take over Ukraine they still don't have a buffer zone because they'll be bordering with Poland and Romania. Also, Russia has actually gained a huge border directly with NATO as a direct result of this war. It's really backfired in that regard. Finland wouldn't have joined NATO if Russia hadn't shown how dangerous they can be. They were perfectly happy with the status quo until this.
      - tazu 3y ago
        [flagged]
        wkat4242 3y ago
        > It's not pointless when nuclear response depends on seconds That's exactly why it's pointless. Those few hundred kms don't make any difference. And in terms of launch warning it's the subs that are the most dangerous and always have been. Don't forget we have Russia's own enclave right in the middle of Europe and nobody complains about that. > Russia has repeatedly asked to join NATO, most recently with Putin asking Clinton in the early 2000s. Unelected men in suits always manage to shut it down. Russia is a crime syndicate masquerading as a country. It's just incompatible with our standards and values and if they joined NATO they would have driven a wedge into it. We have enough problems as it is with Hungary pivoting to Russia and Turkey turning autocratic. Russia joining would have destroyed NATO. Which is probably why they wanted to join. I doubt it was ever sincere. I do agree the MIC makes the US do very bad things but at least we in Europe are allies by choice, not at gunpoint like the former Warsaw pact. It's no wonder that counties prefer our side to joining their sphere of influence.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

geph2021 3y ago

Recommendation for anyone wanting to get into the gory, shocking details of WWI: The podcast, Dan Carlin's A blueprint for Armageddon[1]. Over 24 hours on the topic, and I was left absolutely devastated by the descriptions of the impact and events of WWI. I guess I just didn't have a great appreciation or knowledge of WWI. At least for me, my grade school education was mostly focused on WWII and other more recent conflicts. 1 - https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...

mstade 3y ago
Couldn't agree more, this podcast is amazing. Worth multiple listens and definitely worth the price of admission.
RowanH 3y ago
We just had ANZAC day in NZ [commemorating WWI/battle of gallipoli). A bunch of (I'm guessing younger people) are getting up in arms that it's glorification of war and whataboutism on other things going on the world "why don't we do x about y", "we shouldn't be celebrating it" etc etc. They really missed the point that it's about not forgetting the brutality of war - to remember those who served and died under horrific circumstances. One of the key phrases is "lest we forget". However I fear we are, as each generation passes from WWI/WWII the horrors gradually get diluted. While we don't have kids it's apparent the younger generations are not getting the stories of WWI/WWII passed down and their exposure to it is the glorification through Hollywood. Thank you good HN'er for posting this up. It's always important to remember so we as a world don't go back there.
- baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
- reitzensteinm 3y ago
  On the theme of Dan Carlin and generational dilution, the first episode ever was an interesting exploration of how Alexander and Hitler through that lens. It's completely different to the current audiobook like format, but the early episodes are still well worth a look. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexander-versus-hitler/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexand...

Loughla 3y ago

Wow. The problem is, this immediately makes me consider all the industrial pollution sites across the world. I genuinely wonder how much of our planet has already been rendered completely inhospitable to life? I'm not trying to be dramatic or bait arguments, I legitimately wonder how much.

andrewflnr 3y ago
It's pretty difficult to make an area inhospitable to all life, including microbial (though I guess massive arsenic poisoning will do it). But as soon as you start thinking like that, then you wind up with a very boring sliding scale of hospitality for microbes, fungus, weeds, insects...
loeg 3y ago
Approximately zero percent.
BurningFrog 3y ago
There probably are a few such patches, but I'm not aware of any. Earth life, as a total entity, is amazingly adaptable to any and all circumstances.
dmbche 3y ago
The shelling, in Verdun for example, was so absurd that it's not really relatable to pollution. It was days upon days of non stop shells, including chemical shells, going over the same ground back and forth, for weeks if not months. It really was something completely off the charts. Edit0: from the wiki on the battle of verdun: It lasted from february to december - in the very first 10h bombardment, on the first day, over 1 000 000 shells were shot over a 30km x 5 km strip. It's hard to even imagine what that looks like!
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> I genuinely wonder how much of our planet has already been rendered completely inhospitable to life? I'm not trying to be dramatic or bait arguments, I legitimately wonder how much. As has already been pointed out by multiple people, none of it. That's not a thing it's possible to do. If you really were legitimately wondering about this... you need to find some sources of information that aren't just lies.

thrance 3y ago

I am french and didn't know about these, thanks for sharing. Growing up in the north, I remember holes in the forests that were supposedly dug out by shells a century earlier. They were fun to ride on a bike.

dylan604 3y ago

"And the relatively elevated levels of lead in certain French wines may result from the wood of the barrels in which they matured, from oak harvested in former red zones." Okay, so I'm no longer putting French wine as high on my lists.

ajdude 3y ago
That's what makes it sweet

AlbertCory 3y ago

WW I is much more interesting to study than WW II, I think. How it started and might have been prevented, for instance. Why the combatants kept going when it turned out to be much more horrible than they'd ever imagined. And especially, how it ended, and the Treaty of Versailles.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lostlogin 3y ago
WW2 was very much a continuation of WW1s unfinished business, and if someone were viewing them as completely separate events I think that incorrect.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Yes. And yet, the business being unfinished was very much Woodrow Wilson's fault. OK, that's flame bait, for sure. I'm working (just mentally, so far) on a lengthy article on that. I was watching a series on Prime last night called "The Ultimate Guide to the US Presidents" or something like that, and it mentioned, for Wilson, that he expressed surprise and displeasure that so much of his second term had to be devoted to foreign policy, when ALL of his training was in domestic policy. It showed. His astonishing naivete and pigheadedness along with the US's immense power and influence worked to end the war in the worst possible way.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    That's certainly... a take. Wilson had managed to wrangle the other Big Three into an agreement on an entirely new model of international relations, which he was in part responsible for coming up with, and which was actually somewhat popular. But he had to have the Senate ratify the damned thing. The Senate did not ratify it. That precluded our involvement in the whole business and effectively set us adrift from international concerns again. How it's Wilson's fault that he probably suffered a stroke during his address to the Senate arguing the case for ratification is beyond me.

freddie_mercury 3y ago

What a weird article. The only WW1 era picture is actually from Belgium, not France. It is easy to find pictures of WW1 France! They even have one in another article on their site on the same exact subject: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/zone-rouge-plant-growth https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/zone-rouge-plant-growt... There's also no actual pictures of any red zones?? The only picture of the area is something that is no longer a red zone and has been rehabilitated.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xavor 3y ago

HN title more accurate than that of the ariticle

tim333 3y ago

I always thought these things were relegated to the past but of course we have similar if smaller scale fighting in Ukraine. I'm not sure how to stop it for good.