[HN Gopher] Devon calls victory in 27-year war on termites
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Devon calls victory in 27-year war on termites
Author : fredley
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-12-21 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| jagger27 wrote:
| Forgive me if I missed it in the article, but what species of
| termite was it and where is it native to?
| ilamont wrote:
| _His constituent believed a previous occupant had accidentally
| imported the termites in soil brought from the Canary Islands
| via some non-native plants, he said._
| teawrecks wrote:
| This is a foreshadowing headline you read on a newspaper at the
| beginning of a SciFi movie about earth being invaded by the
| buggers.
| vmception wrote:
| This is the plot of Gears of War
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| But for one crucial detail: Gears wasn't set in South West
| England.
|
| I can see why. It's a bit... understated.
| muleroid wrote:
| I feel like news reports of invasive species usually end up with
| the invaders becoming endemic. Nice to see a successful
| eradication for once!
| whyenot wrote:
| Yes, but it also demonstrates how difficult complete
| eradication of invasive species actually is. In this case,
| there was only a single location, and eradication still took
| decades and large amounts of money. Now imagine if there had
| been colonies at several different locations.
|
| Most invasive species are only noticed when they are much more
| established and complete eradication is no longer an effective
| strategy.
| bell-cot wrote:
| For _that_ long and "bloody-minded" an eradication effort, in so
| small an area (100m long, 30m deep) - it seems like it'd have
| been far quicker and cheaper to (say) saturate the ground with
| liquid nitrogen. (Assuming that the termites would all either
| freeze, or die for lack of oxygen.)
| kingcharles wrote:
| I facetiously recommended a tactical thermonuclear explosive in
| a comment below, but on a more serious note, this was an issue
| of national security and surely they should have just used
| eminent domain to oust these people from their homes and then
| used some radical scorched earth solution as you suggest to
| just destroy this menace without prejudice. The British
| government is normally very judicious with eminent domain and
| will destroy your home if it is causing an unpleasant wind
| diversion for some species of rare seagull.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Destroying the homes was out of the question as the article
| states, the danger of spreading even a couple of reproduce-
| capable termites was too high.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| I didn't understand that part. Sure, a conventional
| demolition, where debris is carted off to the landfill
| wouldn't work in this case. But surely onsite burning would
| do the trick?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Termites can dig _very_ deep. The final inspection went
| 30 meters down. Burning down 30m into the earth would
| require something far beyond what "onsite burning"
| usually involves. (Hence the "small subterranean fusion
| bomb" comment from kingcharles.)
| maxerickson wrote:
| Isn't that 30 meters one of the dimensions of the surface
| area that was inspected?
|
| If they actually inspected 30m into the Earth, they'd
| have plenty of opportunity to kill everything in the way
| as they did it.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I sometimes have very weird and destructive thoughts, but
| I have often wondered if it were possible to take
| thermite and pack it, make it stable and rigid somehow,
| enough that it could be made into a long rod, like rebar,
| suitable for pounding into the earth. Then you surround
| your nest or whatever with a bunch of rods, run one
| through the middle, set them alight and let them just
| _burn_ down however many yards.
|
| Thirty meters, though ... whew.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Outside of sci-fi and _some_ very arid environments,
| rapid extreme heating of large quantities of soil will
| produce big steam explosions. Which might spread some
| relatively unheated, termite-laden clods of earth over a
| wide area.
|
| In a different context (limited quantities of soil with
| _extremely_ heavy chemical contamination), I have seen
| serious proposals to drive heavy electrodes deep into the
| soil, gradually apply very large currents (avoiding steam
| explosions), and let the heat & electricity destroy the
| contaminants in-place.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| What about pressure? Would it be possible to apply either
| a violent pressure wave, or some sort of compaction
| technology to basically crush everything 30m down?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Drilling and filling would probably work better.
|
| I guess by the time you got enough thermite in the ground
| it wouldn't be very efficient.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| It wouldn't remove the termites, but it would remove the
| surface structure ... which should make it easier to do
| the subterranean work. Instead they wouldn't let the
| homeowners modify the house.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That would just remove the food-source. Removing the food
| source for a colony that you would rather have stay-put
| seems like it would be counterproductive.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "The British government is normally very judicious with
| eminent domain and will destroy your home if it is causing an
| unpleasant wind diversion for some species of rare seagull."
|
| Oh no they won't! Could you provide some more details please.
| causality0 wrote:
| One recalls the recent story where an impostor sold a man's
| house without his consent and the British government was
| just "sorry, we signed the papers, it belongs to him now"
| ajb wrote:
| That's bad, but nothing to do with eminent domain.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Devon is a nice area, otherwise I think a small subterranean
| fusion bomb would have been the tidiest solution.
| jacquesm wrote:
| With some luck you'd end up with radioactivity resistant
| termites owning the whole place.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Hmm, yes, perhaps I didn't put enough thought into my
| 15-second idea. That about summarized my life.
| laurent92 wrote:
| But saturating the ground with liquid nitrogen (it kills if
| it displaces oxygen), I wonder why wouldn't that the
| correct idea.
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