[HN Gopher] American WWII bomb explodes at Japanese airport, cau...
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American WWII bomb explodes at Japanese airport, causing large
crater in taxiway
Author : impish9208
Score : 231 points
Date : 2024-10-02 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| tonymet wrote:
| Similar to software, sometimes it's safer to leave the bombs
| buried to avoid accidental detonation from attempted removal.
| timr wrote:
| This bomb was buried. Nobody knew it was there...which is sort
| of crazy, considering that they built a runway over it and it
| didn't detonate until now.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Some types of explosives (e.g. detonators) become more
| unstable with age. See for example:
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.231344
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| Do they (Japan, Germany) ever purposely leave unexploded
| ordnance in place? I see a news story about once a year about
| them finding a bomb, and in every case they have their bomb
| squad disarm and remove it. I've never heard of them knowingly
| leaving a bomb in place.
| thyristan wrote:
| I know of some remote1 forest in Germany that used to be a
| training area. It is so bullet- and bomb-riddled that they
| just decided clearing it wasn't worth it, put a fence around
| it and declared it off-limits.
|
| 1 in Germany, "remote" means something like "2km from the
| next settlement".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Same in some parts of France, from WW-I bombs that are
| still there.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not just bombs but also lots of chemical warfare
| pollution and buried canisters.
| eep_social wrote:
| Similar in France from WW1:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Once there's any sort of record that there's UXO somewhere it
| pretty much has to be removed because nobody wants the
| liability that would be incurred by being the party that
| dropped the ball. Even if that wasn't the case they generally
| get found because they're in the way of some construction.
| You have to remove it for the same reason you have to get
| every other rock out of the hole you're digging.
|
| That said, I'm sure there's a few farmers who have a pretty
| strong inkling where one is and are actively not looking to
| disturb that problem.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _in every case they have their bomb squad disarm and remove
| it_
|
| They would do that, the pencil detonators the Allies used to
| disrupt rescue and firefighting efforts after a carpet-
| bombing run become ever more touchy as time wears on. A bomb
| that is found is disarmed or exploded, else there will be a
| repeat of this incident down the line.
| lupusreal wrote:
| This sunken ship in the Thames estuary is packed full of
| explosives, and they don't dare mess with it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
| ruined wrote:
| oooo, free explosives!
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Whoa! One of the reasons that the
| explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate
| outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralize
| the contents of the Polish cargo ship Kielce, that sank in
| 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel. During
| preliminary work, Kielce exploded with a force equivalent
| to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale,
| digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and
| bringing "panic and chaos" to Folkestone, although there
| were no injuries.[5]: 2000 survey, p21-22 Kielce was at
| least 3 or 4 miles (4.8 or 6.4 km) from land, had sunk in
| deeper water than Richard Montgomery, and had "just a
| fraction" of the load of explosives.[10] According to a BBC
| News report in 1970,[12] it was determined that if the
| wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 300
| metres (980 feet)-wide column of water and debris nearly
| 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) into the air and generate a wave
| 5 metres (16 feet) high. Almost every window in Sheerness
| (population circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings
| would be damaged by the blast.
| bityard wrote:
| That's amazing.
|
| Very surprised I haven't heard of a movie involving this,
| or a least a Doctor Who episode.
| dmix wrote:
| It's all over youtube, I've seen a number of recommended
| videos about it
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Richard+Mont
| gom...
|
| Might just be my algorithm
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Tom Scott has covered this exact ship, many years ago
| lostlogin wrote:
| A load has been left in the Thames. The risk of accidental
| detonation causing a tsunami is one factor.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
| detaro wrote:
| And you only hear about the more problematic cases. Hundreds
| or thousands of WW2 bombs get removed in Germany every year.
| Kuinox wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance
| aloer wrote:
| I don't think so. Bombs are usually found during construction
| so leaving them in place would not work if they block
| progress on a hole/tunnel etc
|
| For reference the state of NRW (Germany) alone found 2811
| bombs in 2018 so it's much more common than you'd think.
|
| Laws seem to differ by state but afaik new construction must
| include some kind of bomb assessment, often done via aerial
| photos to quickly filter out areas that were not bombed at
| all
| bmitc wrote:
| I'm not sure. What is to be gained over leaving a bomb buried,
| if you know about it? Because then, it could go off at any time
| versus doing a controlled detonation or remotely disarm it.
| bluGill wrote:
| It was probably buried during WWII where the concern was get
| this airport working fast so it can be used and deal with the
| consequences latter. Of course nobody bothered to write down
| where hidden bombs are (that would take time they didn't
| have) and so they couldn't deal with it latter.
| FpUser wrote:
| Under active runway, 1 meter deep, intentionally? That would be
| the most moronic "safety measure" I can imagine.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Looking at the article, this was a WWII air base converted to
| a civilian airport. The bomb was not paved over due to
| laziness; _no one knew the bomb was there._
|
| Hindsight being 20/20, maybe they (the Japanese) could have
| used metal detectors when they were updating the runway? But,
| given that they didn't find this, I suspect it wasn't
| practical back then.
|
| Perhaps now there will be an effort to use modern technology
| to find these?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| A bomb like this could be pretty deep though. They're
| pretty aerodynamic and heavy yet compact. They'd go through
| mud pretty easily. If it's a few metres deep I doubt it
| would show up on a metal detector. This is why so many are
| still found.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| we have the machines to sacrifice now
| ortusdux wrote:
| Link to the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9GDn-cl1og
| globalise83 wrote:
| That was pretty impressive! Thanks for finding it.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's funny how often these videos are from a camera pointed at
| a monitor, instead of a direct digital copy. I assume
| extracting the actual file is logistically tricky due to both
| technical and bureaucratic reasons.
| denysvitali wrote:
| This assumes that it's available in digital form. Knowing
| Japan, there is a chance this is an analog CCTV
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Surely it would still be cleaner to digitize the tape (?)
| than to point a camera at the screen, wouldn't it?
| pistoleer wrote:
| This was faster
| accrual wrote:
| Yeah, similar for interesting events caught on security
| cameras. I assume these videos tend to come from the operator
| who only has access to view but not to export. Plus, they'd
| need to get the export into a phone-native format for upload
| onto social media, so the uploader may need admin access,
| familiarity with formats and/or ffmpeg, and a way to transfer
| to a phone or personal PC.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _I assume these videos tend to come from the operator who
| only has access to view but not to export._
|
| This is why HDCP enforcement may be the dumbest legal-
| technical mandate ever.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| bandwidth_Digital_Conte...
|
| "Someone has a recording device they can point at a screen"
| is a low bar.
| mrandish wrote:
| > This is why HDCP enforcement may be the dumbest legal-
| technical mandate ever.
|
| Indeed. Because of HDCP common use cases like splitting,
| converting or sending a video signal are unsupported or
| afterthoughts by most consumer devices, even when dealing
| with non-protected signals. Of course, the HDCP flag can
| be removed by some shady devices but these are not
| commonly available and are often poorly documented.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Heh, my wife and I were just talking about this the other
| day. She does live audio production for work but
| occasionally has to deal with video. Active HDMI
| splitters are one of the few cases where cheaper is often
| better because the cheap Chinese ones will usually do
| HDCP stripping and something sane with the EDID data,
| compared to more expensive ones that actually follow the
| spec.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Are there any denoising algorithms that remove Moire
| patterns? It would be a welcome addition to the stock iPhone
| and Android cameras.
| nihzm wrote:
| If you don't need it to be perfect it is actually not too
| difficult. A notch filter could be enough remove most of
| the pattern provided that you have a good way of
| guesstimating its frequency
| bmicraft wrote:
| Being very slightly out of focus would probably be the
| best solution
| ortusdux wrote:
| It looks like Adobe Raw added a dedicated moire reduction
| slider to their denoising features a few years back. I
| wonder how it operates.
| MisterTea wrote:
| If its a DVR then one needs permission to download the video.
| Many DVR's have access policies that can limit certain
| users/groups to only view or playback disabling download.
| Then if they do have download access they likely need access
| to a USB port and have a USB drive handy as they likely have
| to download the file from a web UI. Then they have to get
| that video on to a PC or Phone/tablet and upload it.
|
| Or just point the phone at the screen, record, click the
| share button and select YouTube or whatever.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The police have a never-ending issue with this when trying to
| get video from random Temu-quality CCTV recorders at the
| scene of a crime. I know one defendant who almost got away[1]
| with a heinous robbery on a mobile phone store because the
| technician from HQ remoted in to try and get the video off
| and somehow deleted it instead.
|
| [1] the store clerk later remembered the defendant had been
| drinking a pop when he entered the store and they found the
| bottle had been left behind, which had his DNA on it, and his
| DNA was on file
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The more upsetting part to me is that, with even a little bit
| of effort, recording a screen with a camera produces a
| perfectly acceptable image, other than some artifacts about
| framerate not being synced.
|
| This was true back in the CRT and cheap Sony camcorder days,
| and it is even more true in the wide viewing angle, high
| quality phone image sensor, and image stabilization days.
|
| But nobody cares to take five extra seconds to get good
| framing, or reduce glare, or hold their damn phone steady, or
| _match the damn aspect ratio_!
|
| It's infuriating how little people seem to care in general
| fomine3 wrote:
| It should be able to solved by auto situation recognition
| on camera app.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| Slightly off topic but when I read the headline, I assumed "large
| crater" would be much more large than you see in the picture. The
| article reports "7 meters (23 feet) in diameter and 1 meter (3
| feet) deep." For a bomb that doesn't seem that "large."
|
| Luckily no one was hurt or nearby when it went off.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Agreed, seems very very small for 5000lb of explosives.
| Guessing it didn't reach its full yield given that its been
| buried under ground for decades.
| lupusreal wrote:
| If the crater is only 1 meter deep then the bomb was likely
| more shallow than that (although some of the ejected dirt
| will fall back into the crater). So much of the bomb's energy
| went into the atmosphere.
| Oarch wrote:
| Article says 500lb.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| ~270lbs of explosives in a US 500lb bomb.
| sholladay wrote:
| It would have done considerably more damage if it had gone off
| when and where it was intended. The runway is designed to have
| enormous, heavy planes takeoff and land on it routinely, it
| undoubtedly absorbed a lot of the bomb's energy. Not to mention
| the earth underneath it.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > It would have done...
|
| Real WWII historians could probably determine the date on
| which the bomb was dropped, its intended target, etc., etc.
|
| But with the condition that most of Japan was in, later in
| WWII - I'm thinking that "gone off where & when intended"
| would probably have had little effect. Most of the country
| was burned-out rubble.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Did historical bombs typically make big explosions? Reading
| some numbers from the war, it seemed like the strategy was more
| to dump enormous volume of ordinance and hope to get lucky
| hitting something vital.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That strategy was not because the bombs weren't very
| destructive, but because they just could not be placed
| accurately. So they had to drop a lot of bombs and hope a few
| of them hit the strategically important targets.
| skriticos2 wrote:
| Yep. The US did drop around 160,800 tons of conventional
| bombs on Japan during WWII, thought that's still relatively
| tame compared to the 623,000 tons they drop on Germany.
| Though the two nukes more than made up for it, I guess.
|
| Bomb findings during construction is nothing especially rare
| in these countries.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| So like, is "no unexploded ordinances detected" a
| checkbox/service for those "call before you dig"
| organizations in those places?
| ornornor wrote:
| In some parts of France, you can't dig without getting a
| specialized surveyor inspection and certificate it's safe
| to dig this deep in that place first.
| eesmith wrote:
| 'Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies
| dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam,
| Laos, and Cambodia--double the amount dropped on Europe and
| Asia during World War II.' - https://storymaps.arcgis.com/s
| tories/2eae918ca40a4bd7a55390b...
| pfdietz wrote:
| The conventional bombing of Japan was scheduled for massive
| increase. To quote Ian Toll's "Twilight of the Gods":
|
| > If the war had lasted any longer than it did, the scale
| and ferocity of the conventional bombing campaign would
| have risen to inconceivable new heights. [...] At the
| height of the bombing campaign, between May and August
| 1945, a monthly average of 34,402 tons of high explosive
| and incendiary bombs were dropped on Japan. According to
| USAAF chief Hap Arnold, the monthly total would have
| reached 100,000 tons in September 1945, and then risen
| steadily month by month. By early 1946, if the Japanese
| were still fighting, eighty USAAF combat groups would be
| operating against Japan, a total of about 4,000 bombers. In
| January 1946, they would drop 170,000 tons of bombs on
| Japan, surpassing in one month the cumulative tonnage
| actually dropped on the country during the entire Pacific
| War. By March 1946, the anticipated date of the CORONET
| landings on the Tokyo plain, the monthly bombing figure
| would surpass 200,000 tons.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Professionals talk logistics indeed. To imagine what kind
| is pipeline would be required to enable such a venture.
| Producing, assembling, and shipping millions of tons of
| explosives as a continual operation.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > The conventional bombing of Japan was scheduled for
| massive increase.
|
| Allegedly.
|
| It's possible it's true, but claims like this have the
| incentive of selling the "atom bombing Hiroshima and
| Nagasaki was necessary and justified" narrative behind
| them, so that should be taken into account as a factor.
|
| It doesn't even have to be consciously disingenous - the
| more one can convince oneself (and thus eventually
| others) of how destructive and costly conventional
| warfare would have been, the more digestible the nuclear
| option becomes, so there's a lot of motivation to fuel
| some motivated reasoning.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There's no reason to doubt it. The resources that had
| been devoted to Europe were freed up and now could be
| fully focused on Japan.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The US 500lb bombs had about 270lbs of explosives in them. If
| this location were a WW-II airfield, it is the sort of bomb
| that would have been dropped on airplanes on the ground to
| destroy them.
|
| Most of the damage to Japan's cities was actually done by
| napalm-filled bomblets combined into cluster-bombs[1], partly
| because weather made precision bombing difficult.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M69_incendiary
| rtkwe wrote:
| Also Japanese construction was conveniently, for the US,
| extremely flammable so you could do way more damage starting
| a firestorm than you could with the same number of bombers
| filled with traditional bombs.
|
| There was also the incredible plan to fill a bomb with bats
| strapped with tiny incendiary charges on timers so they would
| be dropped, go roost somewhere, and hopefully start even
| wider spread fires. They spent about 2 million dollars on it
| before it was cancelled because the atomic bomb was showing
| much better progress. They also accidentally proved it's
| effectiveness and burned down part of the testing facility.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It was the great success of the Allied firebombing campaign
| that inflicted suburbia on the United States. US
| construction is just as flammable but fire is less likely
| to spread when the houses are farther apart.
|
| (Let's rephrase the success part. The campaign was
| destructive and deadly for the civilian population but did
| nothing to end the war earlier. Bomber Harris and the Lord
| Lindemann got a career boost, though.)
| pfdietz wrote:
| > but did nothing to end the war earlier
|
| Really? To assert this, you need to show not that Axis
| production didn't decline, but that the damage done
| didn't prevent production from increasing even more. How
| does one show that?
| greiskul wrote:
| Here is a good critique of the concept of strategic
| airpower: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-
| strategic-airpower...
|
| Axis production continued increasing, according to this,
| it tripled after the bombing campaign started.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Which, of course, proves nothing. What matters is how
| much it would have increased without the bombing.
|
| Actually, it's even worse than that, since one must also
| subtract from this production the resources Germany was
| putting into air defense. This effort was massive.
| shmeeed wrote:
| Did you read the ACOUP article? I remember reading it
| when it was published, and it changed my mind on the
| topic.
| jajko wrote:
| You are completely ignoring Japanese mindset during that
| time. Absolute devotion to emperor, casualties could be
| in millions and that wouldn't change anything. Their
| suicidal charges and not giving up alive are pretty
| famous and this comes from certain place, same as
| kamikadze. Some rational counting of outputs may be for
| bureaucrats but those were not holding any real power in
| Japan empire.
|
| There is a lot of speculation why emperor and generals
| surrendered, even atomic bombs may not have been the
| triggering point as much as soviet declaration of war to
| Japan at 8 August 1945. Most probably it all compounded.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There are many contemporary sources on the Japanese side
| that suggest the firebombings did hasten the (inevitable
| at this point) surrender. The US certainly had a
| strategic desire for Japan to surrender to the US rather
| than the USSR.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah it turns out the whole idea of morale bombing is
| pretty flawed, it largely just galvanizes the population
| it turns out; Japan, England and Germany all reacted
| similarly, maybe for different cultural reasons but it
| was ineffective everywhere.
| justin66 wrote:
| > It was the great success of the Allied firebombing
| campaign that inflicted suburbia on the United States.
|
| BS
| pnw wrote:
| Similarly, the Japanese launched over 9000 incendiary
| balloon bombs against the US & Canada, but they were
| generally ineffective. Six civilians were killed in Oregon
| in 1945.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yeah one of the few instances of damage on the US side of
| the world from WW2 and it barely did anything. The US was
| incredibly fortunate to not have to fight basically any
| of the war on the home front. We rode that wave for a
| couple decades as Europe and Japan etc rebuilt.
| riffic wrote:
| a large crater the size of a small crater.
|
| the reference: https://time.com/5772944/large-small-boulder/
| MengerSponge wrote:
| That's a _lot_ of earth though. Most bombs detonate above the
| ground because rock is really heavy.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Watch the video- it was a large bomb
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| A crater that size can hold 80,000lb of dirt.
| marshray wrote:
| Apparently it was sized appropriately to shut down the airport.
|
| A larger probability of a small crater(s) requiring repair
| would seem better for this purpose than a smaller probability
| of a large crater.
| kragen wrote:
| that's a little bigger than my old apartment. i think it
| doesn't look big in the picture because nothing is visible
| nearby to give it scale
| ImJamal wrote:
| > Officials said an investigation by the Self-Defense Forces and
| police confirmed that the explosion was caused by a 500-pound US
| bomb
|
| The article was a bit lacking. How do they know that it was a 500
| pound bomb from WW2? Is it the shrapnel or is there a different
| way to determine it?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Likely because no one's dropped bombs on Japan since then
| ImJamal wrote:
| Somebody could have planted a bomb (if it was actually a WW2
| bomb that doesn't seem likely) or it could have fallen off a
| plane before (not sure if there 500 pound bombs before the
| war?) or after the war.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| That absolutely can be a WWII bomb. They are still finding
| unexploded artillery shells from the first world war in
| France!
|
| Let me repeat that, hundred-year-old shells are still
| underground, intact, and the explosives in them are just as
| powerful as when they were manufactured.
|
| Chemicals in fuse can slowly combine until they detonate.
|
| The odds of someone planting more explosives in a field
| potentially containing a dozen WWII bombs from multiple
| attacks are remote.
| ImJamal wrote:
| You are not addressing anything of my question. I don't
| care if 99.9999999% of bombs that go off are from WW2.
| Not every bomb that goes off is from WW2. How did they
| determine if this bomb was actually from WW2? Is it just
| an assumption or did they check something? The article
| did not clarify that point and just stated it as a fact.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Forensics identified a valid digital certificate matching
| ww2.co.jp. The issuing CA is currently denying
| responsibility.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to identify from the shrapnel.
| ImJamal wrote:
| I understand that it is easy, but is this what they did?
| That was my whole question and nobody is actually
| answering my question
| scanny wrote:
| Usually shrapnel, working out the depth at which it
| exploded, the nature of the explosion (recorded on
| video), and historical evidence of bombing.
|
| There is a buch of forensic methods around this.
| ImJamal wrote:
| I understand that is what is usually used, but I was
| asking for the actual details which was scanty in the
| article. Is this what they did or are they still looking
| into the forensics?
| shmeeed wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Planting a bomb especially of that size (needing a vehicle
| and multiple men to move) in the ground under a paved
| taxiway at a major airport without anyone noticing? Not
| very likely.
|
| The WWII explanation is much more plausible. It happens at
| Schiphol too that they find them (luckily not by them
| exploding randomly but usually during construction efforts)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on Japan in WW2. Many
| of them didn't explode. This airport was apparently an active
| airfield at the time the US was bombing Japan and 500lb bombs
| were the sort of thing used to destroy parked planes.
|
| Yes, someone could have snuck into an airport and buried a bomb
| underneath the runway, then cleaned up the digging operation so
| as to not be noticed, but horses, not zebras.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If it wasn't from the war, then the more likely scenario is
| the bomb feel off a plane after the war than somebody snuck
| into the airfield. Bombs do fall off planes.
|
| My question was more of, how do they determine this sort of
| thing or is it just an assumption because it is the most
| likely scenario?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| You're assuming the bombs like this were removed after the
| war. They weren't. No one knew they were there.
|
| We are still finding unexploded artillery shells from the
| first world war in France. Germans are still finding bombs
| in cities.
|
| The chemicals in the fuses mix and become unstable over
| time. The explosives don't degrade as much.
|
| If you wanted further verification, the bomb casing leaves
| fragments and explosives leave residue.
| ImJamal wrote:
| I'm not doing anything of the sort. I know bombs are
| still there from WW2. Just because there are still bombs
| from WW2 does not mean that every bomb that goes off is
| from WW2. While it is likely that the bomb is from the
| war, I haven't seen what evidence they have confirming
| that. That is all I am asking for.
| kingaillas wrote:
| The evidence is likely simple deduction, as in asking
| "when was the last time this area was bombed" combined
| with the history of the airport (built for the military
| in 1943, later converted to civilian use) and also noting
| other unexploded bombs have been unearthed in the area.
|
| For it NOT to be a WW2 bomb would mean somebody sneaking
| in another bomb and paving it under the runway without
| being noticed.
| ImJamal wrote:
| There is a perfectly plausible alternative. A bomb fell
| off a plane after the war. This happens from time to time
| and has even happened with a nuclear bomb!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Sorry about that. The article obviously doesn't explain.
| Here's my thoughts on it.
|
| I don't think they did any exhaustive research. They
| didn't have to.
|
| You would be able to look at the crater and see sizable
| pieces of a military air-dropped bomb. Normal bombs don't
| disintegrate. If they send it to a lab they can tell what
| explosive was used in it, which will roughly tell you
| when it was manufactured. (Assuming they don't find a
| serial number.)
|
| That by itself is hardly conclusive, but that completely
| changes when you find identical unexploded bombs buried
| in the same area.
|
| It would be rather odd if somebody came along later and
| put the same kind of bomb used in WWII in the ground.
| When the bomb got there isn't that important.
| karaterobot wrote:
| They're just asking on what basis the article is confident
| that it's a specific bomb from a specific era. Is it based on
| a forensic analysis of the shrapnel, something like that? If
| it's just an assumption based on the context, you'd want to
| say "an explosion, believed to have been caused by an
| unexploded WWII-era bomb...".
| Macha wrote:
| In how many eras were bombs being dropped on this airport?
| bmitc wrote:
| When I read the headline, I was wondering why in the world a bomb
| was being taxied on a runway, like on a cargo plane. However, now
| I'm wondering how a bomb wasn't discovered when the airport was
| built. From the video posted elsewhere in the comments, it looks
| like the bomb was buried under the runway. Are there no ground
| surveys done with radar before building a plane runway?
| opencl wrote:
| The airport was built in 1943.
| bmitc wrote:
| Ah, I guess that makes sense. According to a quick search, it
| seems ground-penetrating radar didn't reach common use until
| the 70s.
| bityard wrote:
| I haven't fact-checked anything about this, but this bomb (and
| its friends) were probably dropped here because it was an
| active military airport during WW2 and the US was desperate to
| put a dent in Japan's air power. After the war, thorough
| ordinance disposal was very likely a secondary consideration
| rebuilding the country. (And its runways.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm always a little surprised to realize that the explosives are
| chemically stable enough to still explode nearly 100 years later.
| jowdones wrote:
| Lots of unexploded ordnance. Reminds me of the story of the guy
| who tried to weld an artillery shell (and blew up), he was sure
| it's safe coze his father used it for 40 years as a gardening
| tool:
|
| https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/eveniment/accident-stupid-a-mu...
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Over time, the explosive chemicals in the both the detonator
| and the main charge can frequently get MORE sensitive to
| disturbance, which is kind of perverse.
|
| That's why if you ever come across any old UXO (UneXploded
| Ordnance) you should call the bomb squad and never touch it
| bell-cot wrote:
| This. Though I would not call explosives "chemically stable",
| nor their degrading with time "perverse".
|
| They are capable of energetically exploding because they are
| _not_ chemically stable.
|
| And "shelf-stable and safe for many decades" is _never_ a
| priority feature for high-volume wartime production of
| explosives.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > And "shelf-stable and safe for many decades" is never a
| priority feature for high-volume wartime production of
| explosives.
|
| Maybe not on the order of decades, but 'shelf-stable and
| safe for handling' is a definite concern in any ordnance
| production. Last thing you want is your whole ammo
| stockpile blowing up because a tired soldier set an
| artillery shell down a little too hard.
|
| Many of the explosives used are actually fairly stable
| chemically and require either severe degradation to become
| unstable, or an external force applied to them that is
| sufficient to trigger their explosive effects. C4, as long
| as it hasn't been sitting around too long, is pretty safe
| to light on fire. And yet it's one of the more energetic
| commonly used explosives out there.
| tetha wrote:
| Mh, chemical stability is usually meant in a more delicate
| way.
|
| There are explosives that need other explosives to set them
| off. If someone gave you a pound of C4 and then evacuated
| your neighbors, you would probably need to do some research
| to set it off. With the amount of explosives moved around
| in the world wars, easy storage and fairly safe logistics
| even by minimally trained soldiers are very much a
| priority.
|
| On the flipside, there are explosives which won't let you
| finish a sneeze in the same room. Or which decompose into
| the latter. You wouldn't want to move thousands of tons of
| these around.
| shmeeed wrote:
| Re: your last paragraph called to my mind the great
| french thriller "The Wages of Fear" from 1953, in which
| two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin need to cross rough
| terrain, and the viewer finds himself holding his breath
| quite a lot...
| slyall wrote:
| > And "shelf-stable and safe for many decades" is never a
| priority feature for high-volume wartime production of
| explosives.
|
| The problem is that those minitions do get used many years
| later. Often because after a war ends there is a huge
| surplus of munitions you want to save till the next war.
|
| Russia is using decade-old shells in Ukraine for instance.
|
| The USS Forrestal fire was partially caused by 14 year old
| bombs that had been improperly stored.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire
| retrac wrote:
| Even if it's inert many explosives decompose into toxic
| compounds. Other explosives use mercury compounds for
| detonators, which at the worst can make the soil itself toxic
| to the touch. There are also gas shells, some of which had
| arsenic. Areas affected in that way will be poisonous for a
| very long time.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| There was a great discussion I read here a year ago from a
| chemist who went into the details on why this occurs. I'll
| link the comment. Really great read.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34755399
| smiley1437 wrote:
| thanks for the link! A great read as promised
| jdietrich wrote:
| Hundreds of tonnes of unexploded ordnance from the First World
| War are collected every year in Belgium and Northern France.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
| julienchastang wrote:
| > Since 1946, approximately 630 French ordnance disposal
| workers have died handling unexploded munitions.
|
| Incredible.
| kibwen wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a graph over time, because
| presumably the vast majority of those happened in the
| immediate years following the war. That Wikipedia link
| mentions two deaths in 2014, which may be the most recent
| fatalities.
| svieira wrote:
| I can recommend a lovely short video in French documenting
| the work that I recently watched: _Meet the team still
| cleaning up after World War I | Zone Rouge_
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB-Ncob1gDk)
| tetha wrote:
| I still have some german documentary about a man defusing
| these things burned into my head. He was asked why he
| wasn't wearing any safety equipment while working on these
| large bombs.
|
| Well for smaller amounts of explosive chemicals, they'd
| wear the blast suit, because it could save them and might
| keep them a bit presentable otherwise. That'd be nice for
| the family. If the bomb is several times heavier than you
| are though, they'd just do the job right and go home after
| - and no one needs safety equipment on a job done right.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| More specifically such large bombs will kill you with the
| pressure wave if nothing else. They are not survivable.
| Either you diffuse them successfully or you die.
| Xylakant wrote:
| The way they figured out how to defuse the bombs was
| pretty rough, too. The person that did the defusal would
| call out what they were about to do next to a person
| taking notes at a safe distance. If the bomb exploded,
| they knew not to do that again.
| rwmj wrote:
| Here's one in Oxfordshire 4 days ago, although I'm a little
| confused how a First World War bomb got all the way there.
| Dropped from a Zeppelin? (It's also sadly possible that the
| news reporter got the wrong war.)
|
| https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2024-09-28/bomb-
| disposal-t...
| robin_reala wrote:
| Probably. The village I lived in wasn't as far over as
| Oxfordshire, but had a zeppelin raid: https://guildford-
| dragon.com/terror-zeppelin-raid-on-guildfo...
| SapporoChris wrote:
| "We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules
| in order to give those people living in the next century or so
| some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I
| have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder,
| and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year
| 3000. It will show them what we are really like." -- Alfred
| Hitchcock
| arduanika wrote:
| That is an excellent quote, thanks for sharing it. But I'm
| not sure why he told us the exact date of detonation. Wasn't
| he supposed to be the master of suspense?
| jandrese wrote:
| He didn't tell you the location, that's the suspense.
| rincebrain wrote:
| The date of intended detonation is very much not going to
| be the actual date anything explodes with how stable our
| bomb chemistry is over long intervals.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| For the joke to work, the listener needs to picture a
| highly advanced, evolved civilization far in the future.
| Saying a big number gives the imagination a concrete
| starting point. Like a writing prompt.
|
| Plus, while Hitchcock is the master of suspense, he is also
| known for comedy: https://medium.com/life-and-the-
| performing-arts/humor-hitchc...
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Well the year 3000 is 365 days long, so plenty of room for
| suspense.
| jrnichols wrote:
| We have a bunch of those here in our area still from a train
| accident in 1973.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Roseville_Yard_Disaster
|
| It's believed that many of them are still buried and likely under
| homes & businesses. We just assisted detonating one of the mark
| 81s last week.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Whoa, that's really close to where I live. I'm in Roseville
| right now, actually. Can you tell me more? Where was this mark
| 81 last week? Do you work at McClellan?
| creeble wrote:
| Good short video about the Roseville yard explosion by
| Fascinating Horror:
|
| https://youtu.be/fyzw-1yuUB0
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Headline says "taxiway" and the crater is located on the edge,
| but runway 9/27 markings are very close by. Aircraft should not
| be at speed, departing or landing on a taxiway. "Taxi" is how
| they go between gate and runway at low speed.
| hilux wrote:
| It's not the same thing at all, but if you enjoy reading about
| "abandoned military hardware," you'll love this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash
| jackdh wrote:
| Ha, that is definitely not type of abandoned that I was
| expecting. That poor chap who was killed, what an incredibly
| unlucky event for him.
| hilux wrote:
| Can you imagine the odds? Literally ... any of us could go,
| at any time. That's what gets me whenever I think about this.
| card_zero wrote:
| Ca plane pour moi
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I have an irrational fear of dying from an airplane crashing
| into me. It doesn't help that friends of friends of mine were
| victims in this from just a few weeks ago:
|
| https://www.opb.org/article/2024/09/03/fairview-plane-crash-...
| karlzt wrote:
| >> I have an irrational fear of dying from an airplane
| crashing into me.
|
| I don't, but sometimes I have dreams like that, whether it's
| an aeroplane or a helicopter or whatever.
| ccozan wrote:
| I live near am airfield and just recently I asked my
| assurance company if they would assure agains airplane
| crash which they indeed do!
|
| But alas, if it crashes while inside, it does not really
| matter...
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think I know the feeling. I had these nightmares as a kid
| about wolfes or 'cartoon heatseeking missiles' hunting me,
| like it was the same nightmare/feeling.
| giarc wrote:
| Didn't that happen in DC recently? Remember that US military
| plane that went missing and was found many kms away from where
| the pilot ejected?
| partiallypro wrote:
| The first time I ever went to Munich there was a bomb that had
| been discovered from WW2 under one of the buildings during a
| renovation and they had to do a controlled detonation. Despite
| their efforts there was visible damage everywhere, broken glass,
| etc. I feel terrible for Ukraine, Gaza and others, have
| unexploded ordinances that (probably more so in Ukraine than
| Gaza, just given scale/age of munitions) will be there for
| generations.
|
| https://www.munichre.com/en/insights/infrastructure/munich-b...
| bluGill wrote:
| Modern bombs tend to be more reliable about exploding when we
| want them to, and we now have some bombs that if they don't
| explode will degrade. So not quite as bad as you would guess.
| However still going to be a big problem for decades.
| ttepasse wrote:
| That must have been this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O0lO_j6Ngc
|
| In a way I think Ukraine has a somewhat better handle on big
| unexploded munitions from ballistic or cruise missiles and
| drones: They have an active air defense and the big stuff can
| be followed on radar - so they know the possible point of
| impact and EOD teams know where to look.
|
| I worry more about unexploded cluster munitions and small
| mines. Some of the latter look like something I'd definitely
| had picked up as a child just for curiosity.
| 1317 wrote:
| already back open -
| https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20241002_20/
| sib wrote:
| Which was also the common story when WWII Pacific theater
| airfields were cratered by bombing. It took very little time to
| re-open.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Its surprising to me that bombs explode after being buried for
| such a long time. The chemicals remain contained but I imagined
| the fuse would rust away.
| indrora wrote:
| The irony here is that nuclear weapons are actually safer to
| have lying around than conventional weapons; The amount of work
| that it takes to actually arm and activate a warhead is higher
| and you get basically one chance to get it right or it locks
| you out and self-defeats.
|
| For anyone who is curious, there's a wonderful short video on
| PALs and how they isolate a nuclear warhead from the outside
| world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1LPmAF2eNA
| fluoridation wrote:
| Everyone knows about PALs. You have to warm them up in the
| steel mill and then cool them down in the freezer room.
| talldayo wrote:
| However, that does not stop adversaries with physical access
| from dismantling the warhead and extracting the enriched
| fissile material. In a practical sense, easily obtained
| nuclear weapons are probably more dangerous than TNT UXO, or
| at least possess the potential to be used for greater harm.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Nukes are also not very stable long-term Their fissile
| payload is radioactive after all, and as it decays it becomes
| harder and harder to achieve prompt criticality.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It can be caused by the explosives degrading over decades into
| much more unstable compounds which begin the explosive reaction
| and detonate the rest. In other words degrading into a new sort
| of fuse which spontaneously triggers.
| louthy wrote:
| London fairly regularly has WWII unexploded bombs to deal with.
| When you look at all the bombs dropped [1] on the city, it's
| hardly surprising!
|
| [1] http://bombsight.org/#13/51.5008/-0.0536
| Dansvidania wrote:
| this is mind-boggling. I struggle to imagine how the city must
| have looked.
| hedgehog wrote:
| There are a lot of photos, really bad. You'd think people
| would have learned but in current events Gaza has had 4x the
| ordnance dropped on it (in about 1/5 the land area).
|
| Edit: The easiest way I found to see photos and video is in
| Getty's archive: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?f
| amily=editorial&...
| pmalynin wrote:
| You don't have to struggle. There are plenty of videos and
| photos of that time that you can check out. Also if you visit
| London you can go around and see a bunch of buildings they
| haven't rebuilt and just left them in semi destroyed state as
| monuments
| Dansvidania wrote:
| I have been in London a few times but never noticed.
| mattlondon wrote:
| What? Where are these semi-destroyed buildings left as
| monuments? I am not aware of any in London.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Mostly churches, it seems.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ruins-of-st-
| dunstan-...
|
| https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/03/06/the-ruins-of-
| christ-c...
|
| https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/st-clements-church-blitz-
| damage...
| louthy wrote:
| > Also if you visit London you can go around and see a
| bunch of buildings they haven't rebuilt and just left them
| in semi destroyed state as monuments
|
| I lived in London for 20 years and never knew or saw
| anything like that?
|
| The main thing you notice when you walk around London is
| the old/new mix. If you see a concrete monstrosity, nestled
| next to a Victorian/Edwardian/Elizabethan building, you're
| probably guaranteed that the newer building was built on
| top of a bomb site.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I can't imagine the record keeping to provide the data for
| this. And of course, they have weasel words at the bottom:
| "The National Archives give no warranty to the accuracy,
| completeness or fitness for purpose of the information
| provided"
| louthy wrote:
| In other words: "if you get blown up by a bomb that we
| haven't listed here, it's not our fault!"
| ggm wrote:
| My mum and dad were teenagers during the war and did fire-
| watching, notoriously avoided if at all possible (they said)
| so given to anyone biddable or old. It got a bit hair-raising
| according to my dad, he stood in a doorway near Imperial
| College watching a plate glass sheet decide if it was going
| to fall on him or into the building. Walking through labs
| with bombs dropping was .. intense.
|
| If you had an "anderson shelter" in your garden you were
| lucky. Many poor working class families got a "morrison
| shelter" which was basically a steel table you could use in a
| dining room or kitchen and then hide under. In some ways more
| convenient I guess? (Anderson shelters got cold and damp)
|
| He was bombed out of a house in Stepney. They lost
| everything. I can't decide if he missed more the entire
| collection of the first 50 penguin books, or a lump of melted
| glass he scavanged from the fire of crystal palace in the
| 1930s: these are the two things he remembered in the 60s and
| 70s talking about it.
|
| He was studying electrical engineering and maths at
| university by the end of the war and so not called up. He
| said they trained in how to manage live power cables with
| wooden "tongs" and were part of rescue crews when buildings
| collapsed. My mum was tracing maps for D-Day, and packing
| munitions and my Aunt did technical drawing on the "mulberry
| harbour" concrete caissons floated over to the beaches for
| D-Day.
|
| A good read on the blitz would be "the people's war" by Angus
| Calder, which in large part is made up from "mass
| observation" recruited/organised diaries kept during the
| period, and donated to the University of Sussex. My mum kept
| one of them.
|
| A standing joke in Architecture circles is that the greater
| london council destroyed more Wren churches in London than
| the Blitz. UCL used to say the basements where compsci was
| sited were kindly dug by the Germans.
|
| Postwar housing was a mess. My aunt lived in a 5 story block
| of flats in Paddington she got on a long lease as bomb
| damaged property, my Uncle bought into commercial premises
| around Farringdon in a deal which demanded he do structural
| repairs immediately. There was a huge housing shortage and
| for years you could still see the pre-fabricated houses
| around Lambeth Palace which were a godsend of temporary
| housing but persisted into the 60s. Stepney where my dad grew
| up was a wreck, anywhere around the docks basically. It was a
| patchwork.
|
| The pseudo-documentary film "Fires were started" by Humphrey
| Jennings has some iconic footage of the dock firestorm (not
| to be compared with Dresden, but it was severe) You would
| recognise the shots of the fronts of builings collapsing and
| firemen holding hoses wearing brodie helmets.
|
| Comparisons are evil. Coventry was really badly affected and
| the modern day cathedral stands next to the wreck of the
| original gothic one. It's like the Kaiser Wilheim spire in
| Kurfurstendamm in Berlin, a very pale shadow of the reality
| at the time. Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Rotterdam
| were all significantly worse affected than London in the end,
| but to anyone in London I doubt it felt like it. The bombing
| in Japan was on an altogether different scale.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Prague is a really good example of a major European city that
| was relatively untouched in the war. And it shows. Lots and
| LOTS of historical buildings and a very "old European" feel
| through a lot of the city.
|
| It's quite beautiful.
| asyx wrote:
| Same in Germany. Happened fairly regularly when I had to come
| to the office every day that a road was blocked because they
| found a WW2 bomb when they dug new underground parking garages.
|
| Guess bombing civilians wasn't a good idea. Sorry about that
| louthy wrote:
| > Sorry about that
|
| Right back atcha. Let's learn from this and stay friends!
| generic92034 wrote:
| > Guess bombing civilians wasn't a good idea.
|
| Alas, this has never stopped to be part of warfare. When was
| the last war where bombing civilians (intentionally or as
| "collateral damage") was not happening?
| ddejohn wrote:
| I always like to share this [1] article about a UXO team
| working in La Zone Rouge. These are UXO from WWI. It's pretty
| haunting.
|
| [1] https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-forbidden-forest/
| karlzt wrote:
| In Germany, unexploded bombs are discovered on a weekly basis.
| Clubber wrote:
| Verdun, France too, though I don't think they build an airstrip
| on top of one.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Odds are the airport is on the same land an old Imperial
| Japanese airfield was on.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Yes the article supports that.
| sjm wrote:
| In Cambodia too, where the US dropped 540,000 tons of bombs
| during the Vietnam war.
| junga wrote:
| When I was in elementary school in Lower Saxony I ,,often"
| couldn't go home after school because there was some defusion
| of WW2 bombs in my area going on. ,,Often" means something like
| 10 times in 4 years. Was quite used to this and didn't think
| much about it back then. Now that I have kids myself I would be
| glad to know that they won't have to deal with the fails of my
| generation. But the older I get, the less confident I am.
| jajko wrote:
| Slightly off topic - if you want to see how explosion looks like
| in vacuum, here is recent (less than 1 day old) Iranian ICBM
| interception (either by Israeli Arrow 2/3 or Patriot) in cca
| outer space [1] or direct video link [2]. Expanse wasn't so far
| off
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fu1bc1/iran...
|
| [2] https://packaged-
| media.redd.it/1p1ueyie38sd1/pb/m2-res_848p....
| genezeta wrote:
| For those without a reddit account:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fu1bc1/iran...
| beloch wrote:
| It would be great to think that littering the countryside with
| unexploded ordinance was a thing of the past and we no longer do
| such things, but the conflict in Ukraine is just one example to
| the contrary.
|
| Has any effort been put into making duds easier to find after the
| fact? e.g. Has anyone thought of putting something like an
| upscaled RECCO reflector on bombs? i.e. A passive radar reflector
| that would allow searchers to just hit a field with radar and get
| reflections back from unexploded ordinance.
|
| Obviously, this wouldn't work for cruise missiles, etc. that need
| to have a low radar profile while in flight, but why not for
| bombs ( _especially_ cluster munitions) that are used in _much_
| greater numbers?
|
| This is just one idea. I'm sure other methods could be used to
| make duds easier to find. Is there military value in leaving
| stealthy duds in your enemy's territory?
| btbuildem wrote:
| > Is there military value in leaving stealthy duds in your
| enemy's territory?
|
| In all fairness -- probably, yes. It's the enemy's territory,
| and now you've made it more deadly, like an accidental
| minefield.
|
| But I don't think any consideration is given to what happens to
| duds, what are the civilian consequences or environmental
| impacts of any part of the weapons lifecycles. It is an
| industry of death and destruction after all.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| It'd likely to be more accurate to say that some are left
| that simply don't explode yet. A good example would be
| certain cases of cluster munitions that are designed to hit
| airfields. A most of the explosives will go off and crater
| the concrete and asphalt, but others will remain unexploded
| and sensitive to detonation. As runway repair work cannot
| commence until those unexploded munitions are cleared, the
| airfield is out of action longer than it would be otherwise.
|
| I understand in these cases and other ones such as scattering
| mines that a timer can be set so the mine or munition
| deactivates after a set time (say, a week) by deactivating
| the fuse.
|
| Not all are designed in this way of course. And apologies,
| I'm looking for source links, but I can't find them at the
| moment. Edit: Here's an example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GATOR_mine_system
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >But I don't think any consideration is given to what happens
| to duds
|
| On the contrary. Duds causing UXO is the reason the US and
| most of NATO chooses not to build cluster munitions anymore,
| preferring instead pre-formed tungsten balls that are fired
| like a shotgun when the munition is over it's target.
|
| The dud rate was something like _2%_ , not that much but
| enough to make the US decide that leaving tens of thousands
| of UXOs in formerly enemy territory isn't okay.
|
| Russian cluster munitions being used in Ukraine right now
| have a much much higher dud rate, and that's before any bad
| storage or handling.
|
| For similar reasons, many NATO countries have given up types
| of landmines
| ls612 wrote:
| Modern US munitions have a mechanism that bricks the
| warhead after a certain amount of time from being fired
| (years). That way they retain use on the battlefield as a
| threat to enemy soldiers even if they don't properly
| detonate but will not pose a long term risk to civilians.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Radar is sometimes used for detecting incoming artillery
| rounds, so yeah, no need to make it easy for the enemy by
| filling it with radar reflectors.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I wonder if you could put the radar reflector on the end of
| the shell or bomb. It would only be visible from behind which
| is only possible when in ground.
|
| The other way would be have fuse that shows reflector after
| hitting something but not detonating.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Duct tape an AirTag on'em.
|
| I'm only half joking. "not even Apple knows the location of
| your AirTag"
| jopsen wrote:
| I think it'd be pretty hard to convince North Korea, Iran, or
| Russia to alter their munitions.
|
| We can't even convince them not to throw bombs at other
| countries.
|
| War should be a thing of the past.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Mines and cluster ammunition are horrifying. They are invisible
| or look like toys even, and it is impractical to clean all of
| them up. They're just waiting there, in the dirt, ready to kill
| some innocent child. Horrible.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Wow, so lucky there was no plane passing at that time.
| Gazoche wrote:
| I grew up in a South Pacific country that served as an advanced
| American base during WW2. A few years ago a massive stockpile
| (over a hundred) of artillery shells was found at the bottom of
| the capital's port, right under the dock of a big ferry that
| shuffles people between islands every day. I can't imagine the
| carnage if one of those had gone off during the 70 years or so
| they had been sitting there.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Every bomb, gun, and mine we make has impacts like this... AK47s
| manufactured by the Soviet Union are still in circulation in
| Africa and the Middle East, mines in Southeast Asia from the
| Vietnam War still maim children decades later, cluster munitions
| in Syria and Ukraine continue to cause civilian casualties long
| after conflicts have subsided... weapons of war often outlive the
| wars they were created for, perpetuating violence and suffering
| for generations... yet we never learn.
| icar wrote:
| Another reminder of USA "democratisation" history.
| aidog wrote:
| Never thought my city would show up on hackernews like this, but
| here we go. It's a nice surfer town without many tourists. My
| website is on miyazakian.com
| coding123 wrote:
| Large? Maybe 3 yards of gravel 8 sticks of rebar and some drill
| in pins to connect and 5 yards of Crete and they're good to go.
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