Interesting article on WW1 tunnellers.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36685270
>>30476179
>Grab Enfield, go Unnaground
Nice based Britbongs.
>>30476179
>http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36685270
Read that last night before I went to bed, bretty gud article.
They were saying in the Telegraph (or rather on the Telegraph's website, haven't bought a paper in years) that we still have EOD guys there today. At their current rate, locating and destroying about 1,000kg of explosives a week, they reckon it's going to take another five HUNDRED years until the entire place is clear.
>>30476239
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest
I never heard about clay kicking before, that's pretty fucking cool.
That 26 feet per day rate against 7 feet the Germans could put out.
>>30476244
Yeah 2 Belgian construction workers were killed in 2014 by a WW1 bomb going off.
I think that's the most recent fatality from unexploded WW1 ordinance.
Hundreds have died from them, though I suppose in some places it's hard to tell what was WW1 and what was WW2 ordinance.
that's pretty intense. The explosives they laid were frigging huge, and the craters are insane
![explosion-mine[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/z0RNPNm.jpg "explosion-mine[1].jpg")
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3125088/Inside-toxic-grave-longest-battle-history-French-forest-300-000-died-300-days-Battle-Verdun-littered-bodies-arsenic-unexploded-shells-grows-100-years.html
IIRC a mine detonated in a field a couple years ago, annihilating a herd of cows. I imagine the surprise of the owner.
There's also arsenic and heavy metal poisonning the waters.
>>30476179
Had the chance to get to see this crater and some of the WW1 battlefields. The crater is absolutely huge, seeing the pictures does it no justice, it's insane.
Anyone ever read the book 'Birdsong'? It's about ww1 tunnelers (at least in part...) and isn't half bad.
I really can't imagine 10,000 soldiers dying suddenly to a bunch of underground mines.
Fucking insane.
Imagine digging all that...
>>30476523
Is that the one with the upside down masturbating?
>>30476600
I... shit, probably. It's been a while.
Belgian here.
Our EOD guys (DOVO) got so bored of being constantly called out, they decided to train farmers instead. So now farmers with rudimentary training put explosives they find in their fields next to the road and DOVO comes to pick them up once a week.
Now DOVO only gets called out for really big bombs or for suspected gas shells, which still happens plenty.
The problem is that since so much UXO is found, the EOD guys can't actually keep up with disposal at their base. So they started using a (newly dug) trench system in the woods near their base as open air storage for non-chemical bombs.
Also, did you know that when the war was over, the english and belgians just dumped their surplus artillery shells and aircraft bombs (including chemical shells) into the sea just off the coast of Belgium? The practice of just dumping the shit they found continued until 1980. So now there's a big heap of shells under a fine layer of sand, just wasting away. For obvious reasons, it's illegal to drop anchor there...
It's theorized that if that dump site were to blow up, a chain reaction would be set in motion which would trigger most shells in the vicinity. The released gas alone could easily wipe out half of the belgian coast.
Such an event is supposedly unlikely (or so they tell us when we raise concern about it). However the water quality is monitored since it's highly likely that mustard gas, phosgene, etc is all seeping into the water & soil. Not a very healthy thing, but cleaning up the site is impossibru.
>>30476683
Christ on a cracker.
I have a minor in military history, and I've never really heard about this. That's fucking terrifying, man.
>Belgian EOD make passes by farmhouses like glorified garbagemen
man, that's underwhelming.
>>30476703
>man, that's underwhelming.
Maybe not the most interesting job, but someone has to do it.
Belgian EOD is very highly regarded worldwide. After all, we've had a lot of incentive to keep our EOD guys properly trained. WW1 & 2 raged across our country, leaving unending heaps of UXO.
Very frequently, we also deploy our EOD on UN interventions for mine removal and UXO disposal (cluster bomblets etc). This leads to minor casualties from time to time, but that's to be expected when dealing with explosive devices.
We're also experts at demining at sea btw.
>>30476683
>Also, did you know that when the war was over, the english and belgians just dumped their surplus artillery shells and aircraft bombs (including chemical shells) into the sea just off the coast of Belgium? The practice of just dumping the shit they found continued until 1980. So now there's a big heap of shells under a fine layer of sand, just wasting away. For obvious reasons, it's illegal to drop anchor there...
>It's theorized that if that dump site were to blow up, a chain reaction would be set in motion which would trigger most shells in the vicinity. The released gas alone could easily wipe out half of the belgian coast.
>Such an event is supposedly unlikely (or so they tell us when we raise concern about it). However the water quality is monitored since it's highly likely that mustard gas, phosgene, etc is all seeping into the water & soil. Not a very healthy thing, but cleaning up the site is impossibru.
So basically it's piss easy to fuck up half of belgium?
Any retard could set this off if they wanted to.
>>30477517
this needs to be a move plot, like Lex Luthor trying to sink California by nuking the fault
>>30477660
>this needs to be a move plot, like Lex Luthor trying to sink California by nuking the fault
Except that no one gives a rats ass about the belgian and french coast. It's not like there's enough gas to hit Brussels and affect EU, NATO, SHAPE, etc.
>>30477660
Why doesn't somebody just do it, it's fucking easy and would be hilarious.
>>30477707
>Why doesn't somebody just do it, it's fucking easy and would be hilarious.
1) People don't know about it.
2) The location is deliberately kept vague by the authorities.
3) The likelihood of success is unknown.
>>30476179
This first time I heard descriptions about ww1 tunnel fighting my brain said nope abs I can't imagine it anymore. Closest we will ever get to clearing a space-hulk.
>>30476179
There's a book called Tunnel Wars written by an American who was a miner that you all might find interesting.
