I was reading about the most recent WW2 UXB (Unexploded Bomb) in Frankfurt on the BBC website and came across this interesting fact there:
An average of about 2,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance are found each year in Germany. It's estimated that about half the 2.7 million tonnes of bombs dropped by Allied powers during World War Two landed on German soil (compared to about 74,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on the UK by Germany). Many of the bombs were equipped with malfunctioning time-delay fuses, and many never went off.
Adding to the problem are Russian artillery shells, German hand grenades and tank mines, as well as Russian munitions from training facilities in post-war East Germany. The problem is so widespread that Germany has a bomb-disposal unit, the Kampfmittelbeseitigungsdienst (KMBD), dedicated to the problem. Its technicians are among the busiest in the world, deactivating a bomb every two weeks or so - and they estimate their work will continue for decades to come.
Dozens of bomb-disposal technicians and hundreds of civilians died from uncontrolled explosions in the decades following the war. The rate of fatalities has slowed since, with 11 technicians said to have been killed in Germany since 2000. But experts warn that the devices that remain could be getting more unstable as the munitions age and their fuses grow more brittle, and as bombs are discovered in more built-up, harder-to-reach areas. The problem is also worse in certain parts of Germany. Oranienburg, just outside Berlin, has the dubious distinction of being the "most dangerous town in Germany". Under Adolf Hitler, it contained an armaments hub, aircraft plant, railway junction and a nuclear research facility - so it was a key target for the Allies, who gave it an aerial pounding. Almost 200 bombs have been defused in the town since the end of the war, and residents are well-drilled in the evacuation procedure. But with experts estimating that some 350-400 bombs remain buried, the task is far from complete.
[I know I shouldn’t be but I’m constantly amazed at the number of unexploded bombs they’re still finding all over Europe from both WW2 and WW1. I guess with the sheer amount of bombs dropped across the Continent (and, of course, on the UK) a certain percentage of them never went off and a certain percentage of those still need to be found but still! It also makes me wonder about places like Vietnam or, bringing it up to date, Iraq and Syria. Just how long will bombs be found (or go off) far into the future if WW2 bombs are still being found over 70 years later. The mind boggles…..]
4 comments:
Thank you for highlighting such an interesting and troublesome issue. However, I confess that unexplored nuclear weapons worry me even more. Will the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be repeated? Hmmm.
Possibly. I always say that we are clever enough to build nuclear weapons and stupid enough to use them. I doubt if there will ever be a general nuclear exchange as envisaged during the Cold War. I think that threat (thankfully) passed us by. It's more likely that a much smaller nuclear exchange will (possibly) happen between countries such as India and Pakistan or (somewhat less likely) between Israel and Iran. The present posturing by North Korea is unlikely to go nuclear. They are probably crazy enough to fire a nuke at someone but it's likely to be intercepted long before it reaches it's target. The US/South Korean/Japanese response is most likely to be non-nuclear I believe.
CK: i sincerely hope you're right; i've been somewhat worried about all the aggressiveness... tx for the info...
Worse case scenario is that NK is stupid enough to start a fight they can't win. Poke a bear long enough and it'll take your head off and all that. Maybe even China will step in and stop them. After all NK is messing in their playpen and could be endangering China's long term plans in the region. At some point it might be worth ditching them completely....
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