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Why Landmines Are The Deadliest Legacy Of War · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. Back
0:17
Speaker 1: together again at last, Just like last week. I was
0:22
Speaker 1: about to say, what are you talking about? You know
0:24
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about? Oilis what you're talking about. Um oh,
0:29
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good one. Subtle, understated. Um So, Chuck,
0:35
Speaker 1: how are you feeling today? Mm hmm, I'm kind of
0:37
Speaker 1: tired of this weather. Yeah, it's pretty nasty. Huh. Yeah.
0:41
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost April in Atlanta and it's still
0:44
Speaker 1: cold at night, it's um and during the day for that,
0:47
Speaker 1: but it's usually like the way that Atlanta is for
0:51
Speaker 1: those who don't know, it'll be cold, cold, cold, like
0:54
Speaker 1: really cold down in the freezing. Sometimes it'll snow and
0:56
Speaker 1: then it'll start to warm up, and then at the
0:59
Speaker 1: end of February, boom, one more snow out of nowhere
1:02
Speaker 1: and then spring. That's not how it's going this time. No,
1:07
Speaker 1: it's been like real gloomy and dismal. Huh. It's okay,
1:12
Speaker 1: it'll it'll clear up soon enough. Easter is on its way.
1:16
Speaker 1: Peter Rabbit's gonna bring us some sunshine and springtime and
1:20
Speaker 1: poison eggs. Poison eggs. Now, you're you're thinking of Halloween candy.
1:28
Speaker 1: So um today, Chuck, we're not talking about Halloween or
1:31
Speaker 1: Easter or even the weather. We're talking about something, um
1:35
Speaker 1: that has become kind of a international global issue, rightfully so,
1:43
Speaker 1: and like the best way possible because in this case,
1:46
Speaker 1: the international community, the global community has kind of come
1:49
Speaker 1: together to try to alleviate a really overlooked problem, literally
1:55
Speaker 1: and figuratively overlooked problem, um land mines. Yeah, and has
2:01
Speaker 1: been This isn't like a brand new effort, no, but
2:04
Speaker 1: it's a little daunting to say the least, and depressing
2:08
Speaker 1: it is. Um. There's something like I saw. There's all
2:11
Speaker 1: these really, like you said, depressing statistics all over the
2:14
Speaker 1: place when you look into land mines. Fortunately, although they
2:17
Speaker 1: are daunting, they're not so daunting that people are just like,
2:20
Speaker 1: forget it, We're not even gonna do this. But I
2:23
Speaker 1: saw something like it would take eleven hundred years at
2:26
Speaker 1: the current pace of progress to remove all the land
2:30
Speaker 1: mines on Earth right now that are buried on Earth.
2:33
Speaker 1: If not another single one is laid yeah. Well, part
2:37
Speaker 1: of the problem though, was the number of they're laying
2:40
Speaker 1: land mines twenty five times faster than we're gathering up
2:43
Speaker 1: old land mines. Yes, yeah, that's the issue. Yeah, it's
2:47
Speaker 1: like I saw us between two and a half million
2:50
Speaker 1: and five million land mines are laid every year new
2:53
Speaker 1: ones and more than a hundred million and over seventy
2:57
Speaker 1: countries around the world. Uh, that's a lot in places
3:03
Speaker 1: where there's no war conflict going on any longer. That's
3:06
Speaker 1: the big problem with land mines. Well, there's a couple
3:08
Speaker 1: of problems. One, they're indiscriminate. They don't they don't recognize
3:13
Speaker 1: whether you're a civilian or um a soldier. They stick
3:18
Speaker 1: around long after the conflict is over, and they still
3:23
Speaker 1: managed to kill in maim thousands of people every year
3:26
Speaker 1: around the world, which and apparently it's on an upswing
3:30
Speaker 1: thanks to um the conflicts in Yemen, in Syria and
3:35
Speaker 1: in some of the work of ice is as well.
3:38
Speaker 1: It really is. There's like there's nothing that really more
3:43
Speaker 1: that like kind of embodies like just the mute killing,
3:49
Speaker 1: maiming aspect of war than a landmine. It's just a
3:52
Speaker 1: dumb lump of explosive that you step on and it
3:55
Speaker 1: blows you up, you know what I mean, And especially
3:57
Speaker 1: the the years later effect, which is maybe there hasn't
4:02
Speaker 1: been war for two decades and a little kid can
4:06
Speaker 1: still come along and say, oh, what's this thing? And
4:10
Speaker 1: then they don't have legs? Yeah, and the kids thing
4:13
Speaker 1: is is real. So apparently land mines kill disproportionately kills
4:19
Speaker 1: civilians way more than soldiers because of their ability to
4:22
Speaker 1: be left over after war, and the most recent statistics
4:26
Speaker 1: from two thousand sixteen, the majority of the civilians killed
4:29
Speaker 1: were children. Yeah, I was, I was, actually I was
4:32
Speaker 1: talking to you me about it. She grew up on
4:34
Speaker 1: Okinawa and there's a lot of World War two unexploded
4:38
Speaker 1: ordinance around there, and she was telling me that they
4:40
Speaker 1: used to watch like educational films, saying like, if you
4:43
Speaker 1: see something metal in the woods, stay away, go tell
4:46
Speaker 1: an adult. She was like the movies they were they
4:49
Speaker 1: were taught you know. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, when you're
4:52
Speaker 1: raised in an area where and we're talking about landmine specifically,
4:55
Speaker 1: but in a lot of cases they're just unexploded bombs
4:59
Speaker 1: and things like that too. Yeah, I know, like they
5:02
Speaker 1: find something like a hundred tons of it in Belgium
5:04
Speaker 1: alone every year, most of it from World War One
5:07
Speaker 1: still wow. So, but we are talking specifically about land mines,
5:13
Speaker 1: which seemed to kind of bear the focus of the
5:15
Speaker 1: international efforts to to get rid of them, because they
5:19
Speaker 1: are probably the biggest problem of unexploded ordinance today. Yeah. Well,
5:25
Speaker 1: should we go back in time here and talk about
5:27
Speaker 1: the history? Yeah? I think so. Yeah, this one was
5:30
Speaker 1: interesting because I don't think a lot of people when
5:33
Speaker 1: they hear about land mines know that they started in
5:37
Speaker 1: like legit started during the American Civil War. No, I
5:40
Speaker 1: thought world War two at the earliest. Yeah. So, uh.
5:44
Speaker 1: In the American Civil War they were called torpedoes or
5:48
Speaker 1: sub terra shells. That was a man, a North Carolinian
5:52
Speaker 1: named Gabriel Raynes, who initially fought for the Union but
5:56
Speaker 1: then said, wait a minute, I'm from North Carolina and
5:59
Speaker 1: that X be sure how that switch happened. He's like
6:02
Speaker 1: North Carolina's with the South. I Yi, yeah, uh. But
6:07
Speaker 1: he was the first person to um sort of play
6:11
Speaker 1: around with ease and eventually get a patent called the
6:15
Speaker 1: Rains Patent on what essentially was a very sort of
6:19
Speaker 1: early crude but effective land mine yeah, and so this
6:24
Speaker 1: is at a time when like pitched battles are still
6:27
Speaker 1: the norm, where like your your infantry meets my infantry
6:31
Speaker 1: in a field, and like you do a bunch of shooting,
6:34
Speaker 1: and then we do a bunch of shooting, and then
6:35
Speaker 1: there's advancement and retreats and cannons and stuff like that.
6:39
Speaker 1: It turned to shoot or their turn, I forgot, I
6:41
Speaker 1: mean pretty much right, there's people like picnicking watching the battle.
6:45
Speaker 1: Like that's how that's how staged they were. And and
6:49
Speaker 1: the Confederacy didn't necessarily play by those rules. They did
6:52
Speaker 1: in many battles for sure, but they also definitely had
6:55
Speaker 1: a guerrilla facet to them as well. And this definitely
7:00
Speaker 1: screams guerrilla warfare because the the Union Army was taken
7:05
Speaker 1: totally off guard by the early um Land minds that
7:08
Speaker 1: they encountered. Yeah, and it was not something that was
7:13
Speaker 1: readily accepted into warfare. The generals were, um well, everyone
7:18
Speaker 1: was scared first of all, once they got wind of
7:20
Speaker 1: what these things were there all of a sudden, like
7:22
Speaker 1: what like I can like we're literally just walking through
7:25
Speaker 1: the woods and now we can just die right and
7:29
Speaker 1: with no enemy nearby and apparently Gabriel Reins himself was
7:33
Speaker 1: one of the first to lay a bunch of these
7:35
Speaker 1: from the road to Richmond after the defeat of a battle,
7:38
Speaker 1: and that's when they first the Union army first encountered
7:41
Speaker 1: these things. Well, yeah, so not only were they scared,
7:43
Speaker 1: but then the the you know, the the hierarchy, the generals,
7:48
Speaker 1: we're pretty ticked off. They were like this is you know,
7:50
Speaker 1: one of the quotes is the rebels have been guilty
7:52
Speaker 1: of the most murderous and barbarous conduct. So they were
7:57
Speaker 1: not welcomed into warfare. They thought it was sort of
8:00
Speaker 1: a cheap trick and a dirty, a dirty, rotten thing
8:04
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, and like you said, it scared the troops,
8:07
Speaker 1: it upset the generals. And these were not just like
8:11
Speaker 1: land mines like we think of them now. They were
8:14
Speaker 1: like booby trapped, like they put them in flower sacks
8:16
Speaker 1: and when you reached into a flower sack, boom that
8:18
Speaker 1: blew up and put them around like if the if
8:21
Speaker 1: the Confederates abandoned like an outpost, they would put them
8:24
Speaker 1: around the well, around the water like places. They knew
8:27
Speaker 1: the Union troops were gonna go, and you could either
8:30
Speaker 1: set them off by stepping on them like a modern
8:32
Speaker 1: land mine, or they would attach things like tools to
8:35
Speaker 1: them with like a string, so you would bend down
8:38
Speaker 1: and pick up the tool and set off this land
8:40
Speaker 1: mine that was buried nearby. Um. And at first the Confederates,
8:44
Speaker 1: to some of the Confederate higher ups, were like, I
8:46
Speaker 1: don't know if this is okay, even even in a
8:51
Speaker 1: civil war, and we're you know, the Confederacy were in
8:55
Speaker 1: some ways a guerrilla army. I'm not sure we should
8:57
Speaker 1: be using these. And then finally after a while they're like, okay,
9:00
Speaker 1: we we kind of need every tool we can get
9:02
Speaker 1: in the toolbox. And they acquiesced and started using them,
9:06
Speaker 1: and they spread them all over the South apparently. Yeah,
9:09
Speaker 1: and they don't have any figures on the soldiers that
9:12
Speaker 1: were killed, but they do know that total between the
9:17
Speaker 1: Union and the Confederates thirty five. Well, actually that's not true.
9:21
Speaker 1: Thirty five Union ships went down. One Confederate ship went down,
9:24
Speaker 1: which I'm taking was an accident. Mm hmmm, I don't know. Maybe, yeah.
9:30
Speaker 1: But remarkably it says here in this article you said
9:33
Speaker 1: that they found them, they were still finding them in
9:35
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and Alabama, Yeah, which makes you wonder.
9:40
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, how many are they're still out there,
9:43
Speaker 1: like in around Atlanta. You know, I don't know, I mean,
9:46
Speaker 1: surely none. Right well, you would hope also that after
9:51
Speaker 1: this time the explosives would have decayed enough after being
9:54
Speaker 1: exposed the weather for this long. One of the articles
9:58
Speaker 1: that we used said that the um that land mines
10:01
Speaker 1: modern land mines have a useful life of over fifty years.
10:06
Speaker 1: Surely by now whatever they had attached to the Confederate
10:10
Speaker 1: land mines are no longer useful even if you did
10:12
Speaker 1: find him in the woods, I would think so, which
10:14
Speaker 1: is not to say you should do like a belly
10:16
Speaker 1: flop on it to test it out. You find something
10:18
Speaker 1: that even vaguely resembles a land mine in the woods
10:21
Speaker 1: of the southeastern United States, run and tell somebody that
10:24
Speaker 1: is the worst way to test out whether or not
10:28
Speaker 1: a land mine is still capable of working, agreed, is
10:31
Speaker 1: the belly flop method. So the Civil Wars where they
10:35
Speaker 1: got their start, and and they came into use pretty
10:38
Speaker 1: quickly after they were invented, but it was World War
10:41
Speaker 1: One and then really World War Two where they really
10:45
Speaker 1: came into focus. And our article from how stuff works
10:49
Speaker 1: Um says that the land mines for World War One
10:54
Speaker 1: and two were invented to prevent people from picking up
10:59
Speaker 1: the land minds that were originally invented to blow up tanks. Yeah,
11:04
Speaker 1: I mean there were certain they realized that there were
11:07
Speaker 1: a few uses. They could either uh lay a minefield
11:10
Speaker 1: to keep a group of troops and or tanks from
11:14
Speaker 1: going to a certain place. Uh. Sometimes it was too
11:18
Speaker 1: reroute a group of people in tanks to a different
11:22
Speaker 1: area because they're like, oh, well, we know that's minefield,
11:24
Speaker 1: so we gotta go this way, which might play right
11:26
Speaker 1: into the plans of the opposition. Uh. And then sometimes
11:29
Speaker 1: it's just to slow slow everybody down until they can
11:33
Speaker 1: get reinforcements. Right. So, I mean there is a use
11:36
Speaker 1: for this besides just blowing somebody up. There's a larger
11:39
Speaker 1: strategic use For me. I hadn't really thought about. I
11:42
Speaker 1: always thought it was just, you know, a nasty way
11:44
Speaker 1: of blowing somebody up by chance, you know. But it
11:47
Speaker 1: really does send a message to which is don't keep
11:50
Speaker 1: going straight. You're gonna have to go one way or
11:53
Speaker 1: another because obviously this place's mind and and really there's
11:57
Speaker 1: only one way to find out whether a place's mind too,
12:00
Speaker 1: especially during warfare. Like it's not like the the enemy
12:03
Speaker 1: posts a sign that says we've mined this field. Suckers,
12:08
Speaker 1: like you find out because one of them goes off,
12:10
Speaker 1: either on a tank or one of your soldiers. You know, well, yeah,
12:13
Speaker 1: and if one of them goes off, it's there. I
12:15
Speaker 1: don't think they were using like random rogue land mines.
12:18
Speaker 1: It was more likely a minefield, right. So, um, World
12:23
Speaker 1: War two is where they really kind of came into play.
12:25
Speaker 1: One of the things I saw is that one of so,
12:29
Speaker 1: I guess by the numbers, the most mind place in
12:33
Speaker 1: the world as far as countries go, is Egypt. Oh really,
12:37
Speaker 1: I was like, what I mean by a long shot,
12:39
Speaker 1: Egypt has something like, um, I think two hundred and
12:43
Speaker 1: thirty million No, sorry, twenty three million minds unexploded around Egypt.
12:50
Speaker 1: Egypt is not that big, right, I think they have
12:53
Speaker 1: like sixty per square kilometer square miles something like that.
12:57
Speaker 1: So they've got twenty three million miles And I was like,
13:00
Speaker 1: why Egypt? And it was the Nazis during the North
13:04
Speaker 1: African theater fighting in World War two. The Nazis mind
13:09
Speaker 1: all over around there. But apparently Egypt got the brunt
13:12
Speaker 1: of it, and there's still twenty three million unexploded minds
13:15
Speaker 1: they estimate in Egypt from World War two. Should we
13:18
Speaker 1: take a break? Yeah's all right, We'll take a break
13:21
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and we'll talk about the two
13:23
Speaker 1: main types of land mines that we're going to cover
13:26
Speaker 1: today right after this definite should I sk as watched
13:40
Speaker 1: by SKO should know? All right? So, uh, for the
13:54
Speaker 1: purposes of this. And you know, there are more than
13:56
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty types of mind so that would
13:59
Speaker 1: be ex austi to go through all those. But the
14:02
Speaker 1: way our article breaks it down, which makes sense to me.
14:04
Speaker 1: Or and the two main groups, which are anti personnel
14:07
Speaker 1: minds and anti tank minds. Um, they both do about
14:12
Speaker 1: the same thing, which is explode after pressure is put
14:16
Speaker 1: on them. But in the cases of a tank, of course,
14:19
Speaker 1: they're going to be bigger with more boom and require
14:23
Speaker 1: more weight in order to make it go boom, right,
14:27
Speaker 1: more pressure. Yeah, So the the anti anti personnel minds,
14:34
Speaker 1: those are much lighter, much smaller, much cheaper, and I
14:37
Speaker 1: think found in much greater abundance around the world. Um,
14:41
Speaker 1: there's there's one that this article covers called the M
14:45
Speaker 1: fourteen blast mind. And we should say there's actually a
14:48
Speaker 1: few different types of minds, especially as far as anti
14:51
Speaker 1: personnel minds go. Right. Yeah, So, um, there's this the
14:56
Speaker 1: standard blast mind, which as you step on it it
14:58
Speaker 1: goes boom um and bad things happen to you as
15:02
Speaker 1: a result. There's the bounding mind or bouncing mind. Um.
15:08
Speaker 1: Basically it means the same thing where you step on
15:10
Speaker 1: the mind, Uh, a fuses lit that that ignites a
15:15
Speaker 1: propeller charge which shoots the mind upward from under under
15:19
Speaker 1: the ground just barely covered over by the ground up
15:22
Speaker 1: to about chester head height, which then the mind explodes.
15:26
Speaker 1: So it's designed to do even worse damage. Yeah. Those
15:29
Speaker 1: are called bouncing betties or German s minds um, either
15:34
Speaker 1: for spring or shrapnel, and those I think I've seen
15:37
Speaker 1: those in movies before. Uh that stuff is just nuts, man.
15:40
Speaker 1: You step on something and all of a sudden it
15:42
Speaker 1: it bounces up in the air to about your chest
15:45
Speaker 1: and makes a horrible whizzing sound too, if I remember correctly. Yeah,
15:49
Speaker 1: I mean talk about like just sheer intimidation factor too. Sure. Um,
15:54
Speaker 1: And so the bouncing mind or the bounding mind is
15:57
Speaker 1: is meant clearly to kill. The blast mind is meant
16:02
Speaker 1: to maime. It's probably it may not kill you, although
16:05
Speaker 1: you could die of like your injuries later on from
16:07
Speaker 1: like an infection or something like that. Um or you
16:10
Speaker 1: could bleed out if it, if it, if it got
16:12
Speaker 1: enough of your femoral artery, you would be in big
16:15
Speaker 1: trouble there. But it's it's designed mainly just to maim you,
16:19
Speaker 1: take you out of commission. Whereas a bounding mine is
16:22
Speaker 1: meant to to to blow you up and kill you.
16:25
Speaker 1: Then there's a fragmentation mind. That's the third type of
16:28
Speaker 1: anti personnel mine. And and I don't I mean, like
16:32
Speaker 1: for those of you out here you can't see me
16:33
Speaker 1: and chuck, but our fingers are kind of like digging
16:35
Speaker 1: into the tabletop. Now, this is just so grim and gruesome,
16:40
Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not we're not even talking
16:42
Speaker 1: about shooting somebody. It's talking about these things designed to
16:46
Speaker 1: blow somebody up or blow their leg off, you know. Yeah.
16:49
Speaker 1: And I think what's most disconcerting about like like a
16:53
Speaker 1: mine field of blast minds is the purpose to lay
16:57
Speaker 1: a mine field of blast minds is to almost certainly
17:01
Speaker 1: reroute somebody or to keep somebody from going somewhere. So
17:06
Speaker 1: it's not like they're saying, we're gonna put down three
17:08
Speaker 1: hundred minds here because we want to blow off three
17:11
Speaker 1: hundred feet of soldiers. Uh, they just have to scatter them.
17:15
Speaker 1: So a couple of people get their feet blown off
17:19
Speaker 1: and they go, holy cower in a minefield. We've got
17:21
Speaker 1: to go a different direction. But the residual effect is
17:25
Speaker 1: there's still two d of those things out there. You know,
17:28
Speaker 1: it's like a numbers game. So it's just it's like
17:33
Speaker 1: the lowest common denominator of of strategy almost. Yeah, but
17:40
Speaker 1: it's effective, which is why they keep using them. Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 1: And I think also like if the army, the army
17:46
Speaker 1: that was retreating laying those mines in their wake, if
17:49
Speaker 1: they got three hundred feet blown off, they'd be fine
17:52
Speaker 1: with that. Even though that, like you say, that's not
17:54
Speaker 1: the that's not the ultimate aim of it. It's to
17:57
Speaker 1: to redirect people or to stall them in till reinforcements
18:00
Speaker 1: can come for you. Well, yeah, and you don't keep
18:02
Speaker 1: going like after it happens a couple of times or
18:05
Speaker 1: maybe even once, you don't think, well, man, well let's
18:08
Speaker 1: just press on and see what happens, right, Maybe that
18:10
Speaker 1: was a fluke, maybe that was a geothermal spring, and um,
18:15
Speaker 1: you talked about someone's foot being blown off. Supposedly the
18:18
Speaker 1: nickname for the m Fort Team blast mine, which we'll
18:20
Speaker 1: talk about in a second, those are called toe poppers,
18:23
Speaker 1: which is kind of undersells it to me, I think. So. Um,
18:28
Speaker 1: the last one, the last type of anti personnel mine
18:31
Speaker 1: um is a fragmentation mind and that's meant to get
18:35
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys all at once, all around you.
18:37
Speaker 1: And it may not, um, it may not take off
18:39
Speaker 1: their leg, it may not kill anybody, but it's certainly
18:41
Speaker 1: going to slow down several, um several soldiers at once
18:46
Speaker 1: because these blow up and they shoot fragments everywhere like
18:50
Speaker 1: a pretty long way, right. So the Claymore mind is
18:54
Speaker 1: an example of a fragmentation grenade or a fragmentation um my.
19:00
Speaker 1: And then so too are cluster minds, which kind of
19:03
Speaker 1: fall into a different category because there dropped out of bombs,
19:07
Speaker 1: typically dropped from aircraft. They fall out of cylinders, hundreds
19:11
Speaker 1: of them, and then when they hit the ground, they
19:14
Speaker 1: blow up and shoot hundreds of fragments. So each of
19:17
Speaker 1: those hundreds of small mines shoots out hundreds of fragments.
19:21
Speaker 1: The reason they become de facto land mines is because
19:24
Speaker 1: not all of them blow up, and so they can
19:26
Speaker 1: be found later and then blow up when they're being
19:28
Speaker 1: handled by a kid or a curious civilian or something.
19:32
Speaker 1: Play more with claymore. Remember that from The Simpsons, No,
19:37
Speaker 1: I think it was. It was a long time ago,
19:39
Speaker 1: but I think that was like a poster in the
19:42
Speaker 1: shop of like an army Navy store or something like
19:44
Speaker 1: the guy the guy missing an arm Oh maybe so, yeah,
19:48
Speaker 1: I remember that was like one of the first season ones.
19:50
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was old for sure. I forgot about him.
19:53
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, our buddy Kevin Pollock just
19:56
Speaker 1: guessed it on The Simpsons after that many years. Would
20:00
Speaker 1: have thought he would have been on by now. But
20:01
Speaker 1: he did it like two or three voices this past week.
20:04
Speaker 1: I did not know that. I gotta see that one. Yeah,
20:06
Speaker 1: it was good. How do you do? Did he cracker
20:08
Speaker 1: under pressure? He did a great job. I'm sure he
20:11
Speaker 1: did all right. So the M fourteen is um These
20:16
Speaker 1: are small like it fits in the palm of your hand.
20:19
Speaker 1: It's about an inch and a half one six inches
20:22
Speaker 1: tall and about two point two inches in diameter, and
20:26
Speaker 1: we developed this here in the US in the nineteen
20:28
Speaker 1: fifties and it has been sort of a go to
20:31
Speaker 1: around the world since then. Uh, this one is not
20:34
Speaker 1: a very big boom um, but it does cause damage
20:40
Speaker 1: with these little, these little silver beabies that it shoots out.
20:43
Speaker 1: That's the toe popper one. So oh, it does have
20:47
Speaker 1: babies that it shoots out. I thought it was just
20:48
Speaker 1: a straight up blast mine and I thought this one
20:50
Speaker 1: had babies. Maybe not. I don't know. Um, I I
20:54
Speaker 1: know that this I don't know. Possibly it could be modified,
20:58
Speaker 1: but it is small and it looks like a mean
21:00
Speaker 1: little hockey puck basically the whole the and one of
21:04
Speaker 1: the things that you're gonna find, um in minds throughout
21:08
Speaker 1: the world is something that's called a Belleville spring, and
21:11
Speaker 1: it's basically like a washer that you put on, um, well,
21:16
Speaker 1: a bolt. You know what else You're gonna put a
21:19
Speaker 1: washer on, you weirdo. So it's a washer, but it's
21:22
Speaker 1: kind of popped upward on one side. So the Belleville
21:26
Speaker 1: spring holds up the firing pin. But when you put
21:30
Speaker 1: enough pressure on it and you overcome the pressure, the
21:32
Speaker 1: upward pressure being exerted by the belleville spring, it kind
21:35
Speaker 1: of pops downward and when it does that, it taps
21:38
Speaker 1: that firing pin which shoots down into the detonator. It's
21:42
Speaker 1: really cheap, really easy to to use, and really effective,
21:46
Speaker 1: and it's it's found through in minds of all different
21:49
Speaker 1: types and varieties. It's usually the thing holding everything in place,
21:52
Speaker 1: and then that's what pressure overcomes as a belleville spring,
21:55
Speaker 1: and they're found in the m Fort team minds as well. Yeah,
21:58
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, uh, like the hand grenade. It's
22:01
Speaker 1: not a very sophisticated piece of gear. Um, it's very
22:06
Speaker 1: kind of rudimentary. And on all of them there's some
22:09
Speaker 1: sort of safety clip, just like a grenade. You remove
22:11
Speaker 1: the clip and usually there's some sort of switch that
22:14
Speaker 1: either says I mean doesn't say this, but basically it
22:18
Speaker 1: says either boom or no boom, and you switch it
22:21
Speaker 1: to boom and set it down and walk away yeah backwards,
22:26
Speaker 1: yeah slowly. Um. And yeah, you cover it up maybe
22:29
Speaker 1: with some leaves, a little bit of dirt, just enough
22:32
Speaker 1: so that it can't be seen, but not enough that
22:34
Speaker 1: you would dampen the blast at all, or make it
22:36
Speaker 1: so that any of the pressure is damp them. And
22:38
Speaker 1: all it takes is like twenty pounds or nine kg
22:41
Speaker 1: of pressure from say somebody stepping on it, and that
22:44
Speaker 1: sets off the I think it's got something like, uh,
22:48
Speaker 1: how many grams of tetra in the M fourteen, So
22:53
Speaker 1: that's again that's not very much, but it's enough that
22:55
Speaker 1: you will, say, lose your foot, or if you're stepping
22:58
Speaker 1: directly on it, you may lose part of your leg,
23:00
Speaker 1: and not necessarily right then, but you may have to
23:02
Speaker 1: have it amputated later on, which makes it even nastier.
23:06
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the point of this. It's like
23:08
Speaker 1: there's one soldier who's not fighting anymore. He's over there,
23:11
Speaker 1: so sapping the healthcare resources of the the the medical
23:15
Speaker 1: medical core. I mean, that's that's a that's a lifelong injury.
23:19
Speaker 1: That's a nasty thing to put down as a three
23:22
Speaker 1: dollar um, a three dollar weapon that's just left behind
23:27
Speaker 1: under the dirt, by the hundreds, by the thousands, by
23:31
Speaker 1: the millions apparently every year. Yeah, imagine that setting these
23:34
Speaker 1: is a little unnerving to like, I know that technically,
23:38
Speaker 1: even for these small ones, it takes, however many pounds
23:41
Speaker 1: of pressure, but it's it's still probably a little bit
23:44
Speaker 1: unnerving when you flip that thing to on and stoop
23:47
Speaker 1: a little dirt on top of it. Yeah, I mean
23:50
Speaker 1: you don't want to like throw a dirt chunk on
23:51
Speaker 1: it or anything like that. Yeah. Or what about being
23:54
Speaker 1: the guy who drives the truck that has crates full
23:56
Speaker 1: of those things in the back. You're just hoping that
23:59
Speaker 1: all of them have the safety in Yeah. So that's
24:03
Speaker 1: the M fourteen. That's the one that's probably the most
24:05
Speaker 1: common throughout the world, mostly because it's the cheapest. Like
24:08
Speaker 1: I said, it costs about three U s dollars to
24:11
Speaker 1: make one of those things, although supposedly it costs about
24:14
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars to remove one man not well, that's
24:18
Speaker 1: part of the problem too, Yeah for sure. So the
24:20
Speaker 1: M sixteen is another account. This is one of the
24:23
Speaker 1: bounding uh our fragmentation minds that we're talking about that
24:26
Speaker 1: pop up from the ground. Uh. And that has three
24:29
Speaker 1: main components the mind fuse propelling charge to lift it
24:33
Speaker 1: out like you said, uh, and then this cast iron housing.
24:36
Speaker 1: And it is it is bigger. It's about almost eight
24:39
Speaker 1: inches tall and about five inches in diameter, and it
24:43
Speaker 1: has about a little over one pounds of TNT inside,
24:48
Speaker 1: So that's that's quite a bit of boom going on. Yes,
24:51
Speaker 1: and again when you when you either step on the
24:53
Speaker 1: thing and you overcome the upward pressure from the Belleville
24:56
Speaker 1: spring or I think these things can also be booby trap,
24:59
Speaker 1: so like, uh, a wire can be attached to uh
25:03
Speaker 1: the firing pin. Either way, the firing pin shoots down,
25:07
Speaker 1: ignites that um that percussion cap, which sends the thing upward,
25:12
Speaker 1: and then a second detonator that's been on a delay
25:15
Speaker 1: fuse explodes once it reaches about three ft or a
25:18
Speaker 1: meter into the air. Yeah. I think one of the
25:20
Speaker 1: scariest parts of this one too is, at least in
25:23
Speaker 1: the movies, there's like that split second, uh where you're
25:27
Speaker 1: a soldier and you see that thing pop up in
25:29
Speaker 1: the air and you know what's coming right. Yeah, with
25:32
Speaker 1: a with a regular old blast mine, it's like step boom.
25:36
Speaker 1: You know, you probably don't have much of a chance
25:38
Speaker 1: to register that you've just stepped on something. Whereas yeah,
25:42
Speaker 1: that fragmentation mine and and again, like the sound that
25:45
Speaker 1: it makes is just horrifically unnerving. Yeah, well, I should say,
25:49
Speaker 1: at least from the movies, Yeah, when movies are always right. Yeah. Um,
25:54
Speaker 1: speaking of movies though, like in the hurt Locker I know,
25:57
Speaker 1: and I've seen in other movie is like, um, I
26:01
Speaker 1: think generally step on it and once that pressure is
26:03
Speaker 1: released is when the boom happens. So I remember episodes
26:09
Speaker 1: of maybe Mash and other like war movies I've seen
26:12
Speaker 1: there have been like soldiers would step on one and
26:16
Speaker 1: hear the click and then be like, well, I've gotta
26:19
Speaker 1: stand on this thing now until we figure it out. Right.
26:22
Speaker 1: I was under that impression too, But nowhere in my
26:25
Speaker 1: research did I find that to be the case. Really. Yeah,
26:28
Speaker 1: for me, everything I saw was once you step on
26:31
Speaker 1: it and that pressure overcomes the Belleville spring, the firing
26:34
Speaker 1: pin is shot downward into the detonation cap, and then
26:38
Speaker 1: once that happens, or the detonator I should say, once
26:41
Speaker 1: that happens, the whole thing explodes. There's not like a
26:45
Speaker 1: once you lift up then the pressure or the firing
26:47
Speaker 1: pin has dropped. My guess is that they did not
26:50
Speaker 1: completely create that out of hull cloth, and out of
26:52
Speaker 1: the three and fifty types of land mines that some
26:55
Speaker 1: of them probably do that. Yeah, you're probably right. I'm
26:58
Speaker 1: just saying I didn't run across any had that, and
27:01
Speaker 1: I noticed that as well. So next up we have
27:04
Speaker 1: the tank mines that we were talking about. Um, with
27:07
Speaker 1: the arrival of tanks basically is when we started getting
27:10
Speaker 1: these anti tank mines. And they're much much larger and
27:15
Speaker 1: they require at least like three plus pounds of pressure.
27:19
Speaker 1: So unless you're a big boy soldier, then you're not
27:23
Speaker 1: going to detonate them by stepping on them. It's still
27:25
Speaker 1: probably again, I don't think you would give that a
27:29
Speaker 1: try and say not only way to seventy five. Let
27:31
Speaker 1: me say what happens, but those are built too uh
27:37
Speaker 1: disabled a tank. Sometimes they can have so much boom
27:39
Speaker 1: that it can it can kill people around it, but
27:42
Speaker 1: generally it's to blow the tracks off of the tank,
27:46
Speaker 1: right and yeah, and so once the tank is disabled,
27:50
Speaker 1: that's a yeah, that's a big win. So um again,
27:55
Speaker 1: they started making those from what I can understand as
27:58
Speaker 1: far as World War One goes, they made those first,
28:00
Speaker 1: and then they made the anti personnel ones to keep
28:03
Speaker 1: people from just going up and picking up the mines
28:06
Speaker 1: and removing them. Yeah, so like they'll surround an anti
28:10
Speaker 1: tank mine with several anti personnel mines right, and you
28:14
Speaker 1: said it has a big boom to it. It's this
28:17
Speaker 1: thing is um has twenty two almost twenty three pounds,
28:21
Speaker 1: so over ten km of composition B which is T
28:25
Speaker 1: N T and R d X. It is a lot
28:29
Speaker 1: of boom um. And if you have ever seen anybody
28:33
Speaker 1: removing anti tank mine, you get the impression that, yes,
28:37
Speaker 1: it would, it would tear a tank up pretty pretty well. Yeah,
28:41
Speaker 1: and you want to take another break and then come
28:43
Speaker 1: back and talk about removing some of these things, Okay,
28:47
Speaker 1: definitely large sky wandk Okay Chuck. So we talked about
29:11
Speaker 1: what's out there and how many are out there. There
29:14
Speaker 1: are people who are dedicated to removing these things. As
29:19
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, a group formed the uh AN
29:23
Speaker 1: International Land Mine Treaty Band Treaty UM to basically outlaw
29:32
Speaker 1: those things, and there's a hundred and sixty four countries
29:35
Speaker 1: that have signed it. Most of those, I think a
29:36
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three have ratified it, and it basically
29:40
Speaker 1: says that we are not going to produce stockpile or
29:45
Speaker 1: transfer any minds any longer land mines of any kind
29:49
Speaker 1: any longer, and we're also going to work toward removing
29:53
Speaker 1: old minds and getting rid of them and then financially
29:57
Speaker 1: and medically assisting the survi iver's or victims of land
30:02
Speaker 1: mines casualties of land mines. UH. Specifically, I think civilians
30:06
Speaker 1: who have undergone who have been blown up by a
30:09
Speaker 1: land mine, and they I think they formed in within
30:12
Speaker 1: two years they won the Nobel Prize. Yeah, this is
30:15
Speaker 1: an interesting one because the U. S And Cuba are
30:18
Speaker 1: one of the only two Western countries that have not
30:20
Speaker 1: signed onto this UM. However, the US is also probably
30:25
Speaker 1: the leading country in the world at pouring money into
30:29
Speaker 1: land mine eradication and support. UH. And for their money,
30:33
Speaker 1: they say, listen the I mean, this is what they say.
30:37
Speaker 1: At least they say. The only reason that we're not
30:39
Speaker 1: signing onto this is because of the demilitary zone between
30:42
Speaker 1: North Korea and South Korea. We need that line of
30:45
Speaker 1: defense so North Korea cannot march in there and attack
30:49
Speaker 1: our ally and South Korea. UM. I don't know whether
30:53
Speaker 1: to believe that. I know the Obama administration came close
30:56
Speaker 1: to signing on, but he never did. UH. It's virtually
31:00
Speaker 1: guaranteed that the Trump administration won't sign on, like a
31:03
Speaker 1: zero percent chance of that happening. But the more and
31:06
Speaker 1: more nuclear capable North Korea gets, the less and less
31:11
Speaker 1: the reason that you're going to have to have those
31:13
Speaker 1: land mines um scattered throughout the d m Z there.
31:17
Speaker 1: So I don't know whether to buy that or not,
31:18
Speaker 1: but they say that that's the reason, and to their credit,
31:21
Speaker 1: they do spend more money and time and efforts trying
31:24
Speaker 1: to clear the world of land minds in any other country.
31:26
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, they're definitely a leader in reality,
31:30
Speaker 1: but they're still criticized or the US is still criticized
31:33
Speaker 1: by for not having signed on to this treaty, because
31:37
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other states that may actually follow
31:40
Speaker 1: suit if the United States did. They're in the company
31:43
Speaker 1: of um Iran, uh Israel, um Azerbaijan, a lot of
31:50
Speaker 1: form Yeah, Russia, a lot of former Soviet satellite states,
31:54
Speaker 1: UM China. It's some pretty big players in uh IN
31:58
Speaker 1: as far as global militaries go, right, or militaries around
32:02
Speaker 1: the world go. So if the United States did that,
32:04
Speaker 1: it would exert some pressure on some of the other ones.
32:06
Speaker 1: But like you said, the Trump administration is not a
32:08
Speaker 1: huge on international treaties and um this I think it
32:12
Speaker 1: was the new York Times editorial Board that said there's
32:15
Speaker 1: a zero percent chance of assigning it right, but we
32:19
Speaker 1: are still one of the leaders and actually removing minds.
32:22
Speaker 1: The United States military stockpile is pretty small. I think
32:27
Speaker 1: it's around three million right now, and as far as
32:29
Speaker 1: I know, we're not deploying anymore, and we really haven't
32:32
Speaker 1: since I think two thousand three uh in a rock
32:36
Speaker 1: when we have invaded a rock. That was the last
32:38
Speaker 1: time we laid land mines UM as far as the
32:42
Speaker 1: US goes, right, yeah, and three million sounds like a lot,
32:45
Speaker 1: and it is, but compared to like a Russia, which
32:47
Speaker 1: has like between twenty and thirty million, it's not as many.
32:51
Speaker 1: So one thing that that like, I thought that was
32:54
Speaker 1: pretty odd too. I was like, the d m Z,
32:56
Speaker 1: that's what that's why we're not signing onto this land
32:59
Speaker 1: my treaty. That's weird. And then I started looking up
33:02
Speaker 1: cluster bombs. And there's another treaty kind of like a
33:05
Speaker 1: corollary treaty to the International Landmine Treaty UM to ban
33:10
Speaker 1: cluster bombs as well, and that has some it's much newer,
33:14
Speaker 1: but it has I think a pretty decent amount, like
33:16
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty countries already signed onto it, but
33:19
Speaker 1: um with cluster bombs. I was looking up the Pentagon's
33:23
Speaker 1: reasoning for not signing onto this treaty. So back in
33:27
Speaker 1: I think two thousand eight, the Bush administration said, the
33:32
Speaker 1: US will sign this, this cluster bomb band Treaty if
33:36
Speaker 1: we have not developed cluster bombs that have a failure
33:39
Speaker 1: rate of one percent or less, meaning only one out
33:42
Speaker 1: of every hundred of those little bomblets that comes out
33:45
Speaker 1: of the cluster bombs cylinder doesn't explode upon contact, right um.
33:50
Speaker 1: And apparently just within the last few days, the Pentagon said, well,
33:55
Speaker 1: the deadlines two, we haven't developed cluster bombs that have
33:59
Speaker 1: that low of a fail your rate, So we're just
34:01
Speaker 1: gonna ignore that and keep using cluster bombs. And the
34:05
Speaker 1: report said it's because they want to reserve the right
34:09
Speaker 1: to use them in case of a ground war with
34:12
Speaker 1: North Korea. So I'm like, what do you guys know
34:15
Speaker 1: that we don't know, Like it's is it? Is it
34:18
Speaker 1: really that eminent a ground war with Korea that we
34:21
Speaker 1: we need to reserve the right to use cluster bombs
34:24
Speaker 1: and land mines? Still that like, is it is it?
34:27
Speaker 1: Are we that close to the knife edge. And if so,
34:30
Speaker 1: then this, the whole, the whole nuclear thing makes me
34:32
Speaker 1: even more nervous than it did before. It should all
34:37
Speaker 1: make you nervous. It does. So I'll tell you one
34:40
Speaker 1: thing that makes everybody nervous chuck, and that's being out
34:42
Speaker 1: in a minefield removing land mines. Yeah, so this is
34:46
Speaker 1: uh this has many many um problems to root out.
34:51
Speaker 1: First of all, finding the mines. Like you said earlier,
34:55
Speaker 1: they're not marked. They don't say here's a minefield and
34:57
Speaker 1: here's where they're all located. Uh So finding these things,
35:01
Speaker 1: millions of them around the world is really tough, um.
35:05
Speaker 1: And even when you find the minefield, it's tough. So,
35:08
Speaker 1: like the first thing is to find the minefield, then
35:12
Speaker 1: it's it depends on how you do it. And we're
35:14
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all the ways that they're trying to
35:16
Speaker 1: do this, um, some of which are very rudimentary. Which
35:20
Speaker 1: the very first one you can do is called probing
35:23
Speaker 1: the ground. That means walking around with a stick or
35:27
Speaker 1: a bayonet and poking around lightly, very lightly so lightly. Yeah,
35:33
Speaker 1: I get the feeling that this is I'm sure it's
35:36
Speaker 1: still done in some parts of the world, but it's
35:38
Speaker 1: there's certainly not one of the more advanced operations any longer.
35:41
Speaker 1: I get the impression that that's what soldiers do when
35:44
Speaker 1: they're like, Nope, we can't go around, we have to
35:46
Speaker 1: keep going straight. Probably, so that that's what because they
35:49
Speaker 1: use sticks or bayonets typically, and they're trained to kind
35:52
Speaker 1: of do it very very lightly. Um, so I think
35:55
Speaker 1: that's who does that, all right. So you've also got
35:57
Speaker 1: trained dogs. This is horrifying when you think about a
36:01
Speaker 1: dog getting blown up. Um, but they are trained to
36:04
Speaker 1: sniff out these explosive vapors and the bomb ingredients. I
36:09
Speaker 1: also saw rats have been trained by a company called
36:12
Speaker 1: a Popo. Oh yeah, rats and bees. Oh I didn't
36:15
Speaker 1: see bees. That makes sense though, Yeah, bees are trained
36:18
Speaker 1: and uh that was one of the things you sent
36:20
Speaker 1: over to me. The bees were How did I miss that?
36:23
Speaker 1: I don't know, because you're all about bees. I love bees. Yeah,
36:28
Speaker 1: the bees apparently, um said. The hard part is not
36:33
Speaker 1: training them to find these things, but tracking them once
36:36
Speaker 1: you release the honey bees. So they're trained with sugar
36:40
Speaker 1: coated t and t uh and then of course they
36:44
Speaker 1: can find the that's how they find the TNT. But
36:47
Speaker 1: it has no sugar on it um one of the
36:51
Speaker 1: I guess I think, so that to me is a
36:53
Speaker 1: big step up from poking with a stick. Yes, in
36:57
Speaker 1: between those two is using a good old ashen um
37:01
Speaker 1: metal detector. It works, but the problem is twofold one
37:06
Speaker 1: um metal detectors send a signal back for anything that
37:09
Speaker 1: has any metal to it whatsoever. So you get a
37:12
Speaker 1: hit and you are very like gingerly searching the area
37:17
Speaker 1: to see if there is a mine there. No, if
37:19
Speaker 1: it's a it's an old Roman coin, or it's like
37:22
Speaker 1: an old um butterfly top to a Miller beer can. Um,
37:26
Speaker 1: it's anything metal, right, So that's one part of the problem.
37:29
Speaker 1: And then the second part of the problem is that
37:32
Speaker 1: you um, you actually may miss metal because some types
37:35
Speaker 1: of the three fifty different varieties of minds use very
37:40
Speaker 1: little metal. Some of them are almost entirely plastic. So
37:44
Speaker 1: so not only are you picking up stuff that's not
37:46
Speaker 1: a landline and then wasting time seeing if it is
37:49
Speaker 1: a landmine, you're actually potentially missing land mines as well. Yeah,
37:53
Speaker 1: so that's that's a problem because that was my first
37:58
Speaker 1: thought is like i'mber. When I was a kid, my
38:00
Speaker 1: dad was all over that metal detector on the beach.
38:03
Speaker 1: So just get a lot of my dad's out there
38:06
Speaker 1: or dudes like my dad, and just tell them to
38:09
Speaker 1: go wild. Yeah, they could coordinate over CEB while they're
38:12
Speaker 1: driving their jeepsides of the minefield. They would. Uh. Some
38:16
Speaker 1: more promising newer technology UM specifically being developed at Ohio
38:20
Speaker 1: State University, and I think they're actually using this now,
38:23
Speaker 1: is called GPR, or ground penetrating Radar UM. This uses
38:30
Speaker 1: magic lepricns inside a machine who exerts no pressure to
38:34
Speaker 1: tell you where these things are underground. Yeah, it's actually
38:38
Speaker 1: it's pretty sweet. It's like a metal detector ground penetrating
38:42
Speaker 1: penetrating radar combo. So the ground penetrating radar can show
38:46
Speaker 1: you if it's an anomaly. But then the radar also
38:49
Speaker 1: interacts with explosives and the the electrical properties unique to explosives,
38:54
Speaker 1: so it can actually tell you there's something weirdre down there,
38:57
Speaker 1: and uh, the amazing creskin here thinks that it's t NT. Yeah,
39:02
Speaker 1: and this is crazy. Once they find these land mines
39:05
Speaker 1: with the GPR device, it shoots chemical agents, two of
39:09
Speaker 1: them into the ground that actually solidifies the triggering mechanism
39:14
Speaker 1: at first along with the soil, and then a second
39:17
Speaker 1: chemical agent that solidifies all of the mine and the
39:21
Speaker 1: soil so they can just be scooped up. Right, I
39:24
Speaker 1: don't understand that. What is it? I just I don't know.
39:27
Speaker 1: Is it cement? I don't know if it was proprietary
39:29
Speaker 1: or what. But I couldn't find what those chemical agents were.
39:32
Speaker 1: But they sound pretty awesome and not something you want
39:36
Speaker 1: to get on your hands, you know, wash hands, flush eyes.
39:42
Speaker 1: So that's actually that's that's like you said, that's in use.
39:45
Speaker 1: That's a huge innovation because it shows you, um, you
39:49
Speaker 1: get like the hits that you get from a metal detector,
39:52
Speaker 1: but you also don't get the misses. And then it
39:54
Speaker 1: also shows you if something is roughly the size or
39:57
Speaker 1: shape of a land mine, so you don't wait time
40:00
Speaker 1: digging up old old butterfly bottle caps. Right, Yeah, I
40:05
Speaker 1: like it. That's my favorite, and it came from the
40:07
Speaker 1: Ohio State University. This article gets it wrong. It calls
40:11
Speaker 1: it scientists at Ohio State University the shame. My favorite
40:16
Speaker 1: are these uh, these big heavy machines. So if you
40:22
Speaker 1: and I didn't ever think I was a kid who
40:24
Speaker 1: liked UH, I never played with like Tonka trucks and
40:27
Speaker 1: stuff much. I was obviously, you know, we talked about
40:30
Speaker 1: the evil Kinevil and stuff like that, model model cars.
40:33
Speaker 1: But for some reason, as an adult heavy machinery, really
40:37
Speaker 1: it really turns my crank. So go look up on
40:42
Speaker 1: your Google images the Panther and the art vark um
40:47
Speaker 1: tank or mind removal machines and just delight in these
40:52
Speaker 1: huge things that are part of Bobcat part hum v
40:59
Speaker 1: uh and there they're just so rudimentary, Like literally one
41:03
Speaker 1: of them, the art Vark has these. It has like
41:07
Speaker 1: a spinning uh thing that sits out in front of
41:11
Speaker 1: it that just spins chains and like whips the ground
41:15
Speaker 1: with big metal chains. I mean, it's so brain dead
41:19
Speaker 1: and rudimentary. That said, let's just get a big heavy
41:22
Speaker 1: thing out there that smashes the ground with chains and
41:25
Speaker 1: the point is to just set off a land mind encounters, right,
41:29
Speaker 1: So it's like and the art Vark just takes it.
41:31
Speaker 1: It's a huge anti tank minds just blown up right
41:36
Speaker 1: underneath these chains that are whipping up the ground the
41:38
Speaker 1: front part of the art Vark. And I saw a
41:40
Speaker 1: video of a guy um in one who I guess
41:44
Speaker 1: hit a mind and they show him in the cab
41:47
Speaker 1: and he barely is jostled by the explosion, this huge
41:50
Speaker 1: explosion that they show like eighty times because it's I
41:53
Speaker 1: think on the Military Channel or something like that. And UM,
41:57
Speaker 1: it's like, why don't you just make everything out of
41:59
Speaker 1: whatever you're making the r park out? Why isn't the
42:01
Speaker 1: tank made of that? It's it's that same joke, is like,
42:04
Speaker 1: you know, why don't you make the whole plane out
42:06
Speaker 1: of the black box? If the black box is the
42:07
Speaker 1: one thing that's always found. But it's true and I'm
42:10
Speaker 1: sure I think um with M wraps like mine. I
42:13
Speaker 1: can't remember that what that stands for. But remember the
42:16
Speaker 1: I E. D s that we're killing so many American
42:19
Speaker 1: soldiers at the beginning of the Iraq War. Um, and
42:22
Speaker 1: then they figured out a way to armor plate humvees
42:27
Speaker 1: so that they were kind of impervious to I E. D. S.
42:31
Speaker 1: I think it's basically the same technology on the ard Park. Yeah,
42:35
Speaker 1: so that one, like you said, has a dude in it. Uh.
42:37
Speaker 1: Then there's the panther, and that is a sixty ton
42:42
Speaker 1: remote controlled thing. So this has somebody on the side
42:47
Speaker 1: with a joystick operating this thing through a minefield. This
42:50
Speaker 1: has big metal rollers to set off these uh, set
42:54
Speaker 1: off the mines. And then there are regular tanks that
42:56
Speaker 1: you can sort of retrofit with a plow that sort
43:00
Speaker 1: of plows along and gently pushes these minds out of
43:04
Speaker 1: the dirt in the path. Then someone can come along
43:07
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I guess collect them in a
43:10
Speaker 1: in a pink basket. Yeah. No, there's there's a there's
43:15
Speaker 1: another machine called a burm processing assembly that just goes
43:18
Speaker 1: down through these these mounds of dirt that have minds
43:21
Speaker 1: in them and shakes the minds out of the dirt
43:25
Speaker 1: and sets them off to the side so they're exposed
43:27
Speaker 1: that they can be picked up and detonated. Uh. We
43:30
Speaker 1: mentioned bees and rats and dogs. Very sadly, elephants can
43:38
Speaker 1: sniff out mindes. Uh. They're they're pretty good at it.
43:40
Speaker 1: They don't use elephants uh to do this because that
43:45
Speaker 1: just doesn't make much sense. But they have killed and
43:47
Speaker 1: injured a bunch of elephants. Um. My favorite new machine
43:51
Speaker 1: that they're using, and this makes total sense, are drones.
43:56
Speaker 1: The mind Cafon Drome k fo N. This is a
44:01
Speaker 1: drone basically that I was developed by guy named massud Hasani,
44:06
Speaker 1: And it's a drone that does the work of the human.
44:09
Speaker 1: It's a drone with metal detectors attached to it, so
44:12
Speaker 1: it just flies really low over the ground and detects
44:16
Speaker 1: these land mines with nobody walking on the ground or
44:19
Speaker 1: no machine on the ground. Right, makes total sense, it
44:22
Speaker 1: really does. It's great. And then what does it do
44:24
Speaker 1: is it market on like GPS or something like that. Yeah,
44:26
Speaker 1: it marks it on a GPS. Uh, and then can
44:29
Speaker 1: even come back and place a detonator, drop a detonator
44:32
Speaker 1: on it, basically fly away and it explodes itself. That's
44:36
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. And they're only like five grand compared to
44:39
Speaker 1: UM robots and stuff like that can go from eighty
44:42
Speaker 1: to half a million bucks. Yeah, the art Vark looks
44:45
Speaker 1: extremely expensive for sure. Imagine it's not cheap so UM
44:50
Speaker 1: we talked about the International band Treaty UM, the campaign
44:54
Speaker 1: to band land mines that won the Nobel Prize in
44:59
Speaker 1: UM our work actually had a huge impact, and I
45:04
Speaker 1: think nineteen ninety nine there's a peak of casualties worldwide
45:10
Speaker 1: from UM from land mines of nine thousand, two hundred
45:14
Speaker 1: and twenty eight. By two thousand thirteen they'd gotten that
45:18
Speaker 1: down to thirty four hundred and fifty, and it really
45:21
Speaker 1: looked like the work of this group, and like the
45:23
Speaker 1: international treaty that that it created and and all these
45:27
Speaker 1: countries signed, was having a real genuine impact on landmine casualties.
45:35
Speaker 1: Apparently the tide turned in two thousand and sixteen and
45:38
Speaker 1: the numbers have started to go back up. So the
45:40
Speaker 1: lowest thirty four fifty and two thousand thirteen, in two
45:44
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen it was up to UM eight thousand,
45:49
Speaker 1: six hundred and five, which has got to be really demoralizing. Yeah,
45:55
Speaker 1: and and I think you said very early on a
45:58
Speaker 1: lot of this is because of what's going on it
46:00
Speaker 1: Yemen in Syria right now, right right, so sad I
46:04
Speaker 1: saw Also remember I said Egypt has a lot of
46:06
Speaker 1: old mines from World War Two. Apparently ISIS is taken
46:09
Speaker 1: to digging those up and replanting them. And we should say,
46:13
Speaker 1: you know, the land mines and I E. D S
46:15
Speaker 1: are virtually one and the same. It's just land mines
46:18
Speaker 1: are mass produced, um, whereas I E. D S are
46:23
Speaker 1: made by insurgent bomb makers. They're usually not commercially produced.
46:28
Speaker 1: There's no contract that ICES has out with somebody. Did
46:32
Speaker 1: you ever see hurt Locker? The hurt Locker? Now, I
46:34
Speaker 1: haven't seen that one man, that's a good movie. Talk
46:36
Speaker 1: about tents, I can imagine. I mean that's what they do, right,
46:39
Speaker 1: They go and remove minds, right, or bombs or any
46:42
Speaker 1: i e. D. S bombs, anything like any unexploded thing.
46:46
Speaker 1: Jeremy renters in it. And these it's just amazing. Like
46:49
Speaker 1: they just wear these like big heavy suits basically um
46:53
Speaker 1: like anti blast suits and then work very carefully and slowly.
47:00
Speaker 1: Oh one other thing, chuck, Yes, Uh, Princess Diana, Yeah,
47:06
Speaker 1: we have to mention her. I mean some of the
47:08
Speaker 1: probably her most important work she did as Princess was
47:13
Speaker 1: and the in the final years of her life working
47:16
Speaker 1: to try and raise awareness to eradicate land mines around
47:20
Speaker 1: the world. Just amazing stuff. And she wasn't. She took
47:24
Speaker 1: a lot of heat, sometimes from within her own country. Uh.
47:27
Speaker 1: Sometimes they didn't. They thought she was just not being
47:32
Speaker 1: super helpful. Some people would um bag on her for
47:37
Speaker 1: just doing like photo ops and stuff like that. But
47:40
Speaker 1: by all accounts, she was. I mean, she did what
47:43
Speaker 1: she could. She she had a lot of things that
47:45
Speaker 1: happened off the cameras. She would go and visit these
47:48
Speaker 1: hospitals where these children were affected, and it was a
47:51
Speaker 1: humanitarian effort to really kind of shine a light and
47:54
Speaker 1: raise awareness more than like, hey, I can create policy
47:58
Speaker 1: as as the princess she knew she couldn't that, but
48:01
Speaker 1: she did a lot of great work to raise awareness
48:03
Speaker 1: and when she uh when she died, it was a
48:05
Speaker 1: very sad day and they obviously for many reasons. But
48:09
Speaker 1: um Nobel Prize winning winner Jody Williams said, the death
48:13
Speaker 1: of Princess Diana meant that the anti land mine activists
48:16
Speaker 1: lost their most visible advocate, So that was very sad.
48:20
Speaker 1: She did great work. Yeah, I mean it takes a
48:23
Speaker 1: certain kind of person to say, well, the global spotlight
48:26
Speaker 1: is on me right now. I'm gonna walk over here
48:29
Speaker 1: to this um under under under served population of people
48:35
Speaker 1: who are being blown up by leftover land minds that
48:38
Speaker 1: people don't really know about, and now the spotlights on them.
48:41
Speaker 1: That says quite a bit about somebody to do that.
48:43
Speaker 1: Pretty So you got anything else and nothing else. If
48:48
Speaker 1: you want to know more about land minds, you can
48:51
Speaker 1: type those words in the search bar how stuff works
48:53
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said land mine. It's time
48:56
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this brother and Sister
49:06
Speaker 1: listening pair. I was never a good headline writer on
49:12
Speaker 1: newspaper staff. By the way, it's tough. Hey, guys, finally
49:16
Speaker 1: feel like I have something to write about. My brother
49:18
Speaker 1: introduced me to your show over Christmas just this year,
49:21
Speaker 1: and I've been slowly working my way through from DV
49:23
Speaker 1: Cooper to X Murders, to Winchester Mystery House to Jellyfish.
49:27
Speaker 1: I love them all. So first of all, thanks to
49:29
Speaker 1: my brother Michael, who lives in Savannah, for the introduction.
49:32
Speaker 1: He actually plays a role in why I'm writing. I
49:35
Speaker 1: just finished listening to The Vampire Hannock's episode and at
49:39
Speaker 1: the beginning you talked about coming upon dead bodies. Well,
49:42
Speaker 1: growing up, a dead body was discovered in the ravine
49:44
Speaker 1: behind our neighbor's house and they had to pull it
49:46
Speaker 1: up the hill. So my brother and I got out
49:48
Speaker 1: our spy gear took pictures of the policemen in paramedics
49:52
Speaker 1: pulling up the dead body and carrying it away. It's
49:54
Speaker 1: a lot of excitement and at the time we didn't
49:56
Speaker 1: really think about it, but when the photos came back
49:58
Speaker 1: developed it really find the hit home. How creepy it
50:01
Speaker 1: was that we had seen a dead body. Anyway, Thanks
50:04
Speaker 1: for providing inner, interesting and entertaining episodes. I teach kindergarten.
50:09
Speaker 1: It's funny. She talked about being drawn to the darker
50:11
Speaker 1: episodes as a kindergarten teacher. She says, sometimes you just
50:15
Speaker 1: need a break from boogers and Paul patrol uh and
50:18
Speaker 1: here grown ups talk about cool and interesting stuff. That
50:21
Speaker 1: is from Melissa and she's going to be at our
50:23
Speaker 1: DC show and Michael and Savannah is upset because he
50:26
Speaker 1: can't go. Yeah, well he should fly up to d C.
50:29
Speaker 1: There are such things as airplane. It's it's greater chances
50:31
Speaker 1: of that happening than us going to Savannah for our show.
50:34
Speaker 1: And there are there is always room for boogers, Melissa,
50:37
Speaker 1: don't be mistaken. There is room for boogers. By Josh Clark.
50:42
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing in. Hey do you both, Um and
50:45
Speaker 1: thanks for listening and send us those pictures. If you
50:48
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, you can tweet
50:50
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50:53
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50:57
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51:00
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