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

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