
Wire of Death - curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_of_Death
======
_ak
"To the German authorities it was officially known as the
Grenzhochspannungshindernis ("High Voltage Frontier Barrier")."

How German. And by that I don't just mean that it's a long word per se, but
also the bureaucratic, almost euphemistic, but also overly precise wording.
Informally, people would simply call this an "Elektrozaun" (electric fence).

~~~
krylon
Bureaucratic German is very ... special. In cases like this one, it is cynical
in covering up or disregarding human suffering and death. As Thomas Pynchon
says, "a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them
even know it".

In some cases, Bureaucratese can be quite funny (but never intentionally), and
mocking it can be very enjoyable. At work, we call our trouble ticket system
the "Störungsmeldevorrichtung". ;-)

~~~
elcapitan
There's a general tendency to treat large-scale violence and force in
bureaucratic language. Nobody would call a bunch of thugs who ride into a
village and murder all the people they don't like something other than a bunch
of murderers. But once they claim authority and do it in large numbers or in a
somewhat legitimized ("legitimization by procedure") way, those murders are
being called 'executions' like in the area under control of the IS.

------
woodpanel
Never heard of this before! Thank you for posting this link.

OT: Historians deem it unprofessionial to ask this question, which always
comes to mind: what's the moral of this story?

Should it remind us about the contradiction of "what is right" and "what is
necessary"? Should we take lessons from it at all?

For me it's exactly this what makes history interesting. We may never get rid
of atrocities but we'll get to know a lot about human nature, about what our
actions will lead to over the long term and what delusions we can entangle
ourselves in. For Germans this fence made a lot of sense. And who is to say
that if Germany didn't erect it, the Netherlands wouldn't have done so at some
point.

Like a financial bubble that inevitably will pop, we will repeatedly live in
these scenarios that seem to be outrageously unsustainable afterwards.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."

Maybe the question of moral is unprofessional for the historians, but I think
it is crucial to consider it. Humans have _very_ short memory as a
civilization - we lose the collective memory of things that happened before
oldest of us were born. II World War is hitting this border right now, and you
can notice all kinds of things happening that two decades ago would be
unthinkable - like rising popularity of neo-nazi movements, or regular people
suggesting methods to deal with immigrant crisis in Europe that would make the
continent look pretty much like 1938 Germany.

This is a big problem, because we've wasted thousands of years of collective
experience this way. Knowing what king ruled where at what year (which is what
we're being taught in schools) is of very little value for most people. But
the moral coming from their mistakes and successes is actually helpful. It's
funny that people do study the Bible this way, but not history. It's also sad.

That said, the problem nowadays is that any attempt on trying to preserve
collective memory of lessons coming from past events will be criticized as
propaganda and brainwashing.

~~~
woodpanel
"we've wasted thousands of years of collective experience" \- nicely put.

It's exactly this what good education of history should counter - the waste of
collective experiences. It is very inefficient to go through the same cycles
over and over again.

------
cm127
More graphic:

[http://imgur.com/gallery/zzSmB](http://imgur.com/gallery/zzSmB) (NSFW)

~~~
johnm1019
A striking caption from one of the images in this gallery

> This monastery was occupied by the Germans, most monks escaped to the
> Netherlands. The wire was build right through the monastery's yard, all 2.5
> km of it. The monastery had to pay for the expenses.

The parallels to someone yelling about building a wall and having Mexico pay
for it is chilling.

~~~
bruceb
No it doesn't

Comparing a wall and a wire that electrocutes you is ridiculous.

~~~
csours
It really isn't so ridiculous. Walls are often topped with razor wire or
electrified wire. Even if "Trump's Wall" isn't planned to have that now, it
may have it after a few escalations.

------
salverofl
|In 1918 only 10% of Dutch and Belgian households had electricity. Most people
didn't know the dangers of electricity at all which meant for a lot of people
their first contact with electricity was also their last." \- I wonder to ask
how many volts are they using during that time?

~~~
venomsnake
Voltage does nothing. It is the current that kills you.

2000 Volts / 1000 ohm (resistance of human skin) is 2 amps if you close the
circuit. That is deadly with a healthy margin.

But put on a insulator shoes and you can hold (the same) wire with 2 dry hands
and nothing will happen - the same way birds can rest on wire and live. Of
course holding 2 different wires will be bad idea.

Btw - a basic safety precaution in engineering school - always plug and unplug
stuff with one hand.

[http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-do-birds-sit-high-
voltage...](http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/how-do-birds-sit-high-voltage-
power-lines-without-getting-electrocuted)

~~~
JensRex
>Voltage does nothing. It is the current that kills you.

Yes, but...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xONZcBJh5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xONZcBJh5A)

~~~
venomsnake
No. Because breach your skin on the thumbs with the needles of the
oscilloscope and 9v battery will easily stop your heart.

The current that passes trough your body is determined by the properties of
the whole circuit. And it is ultimately the current that kills you.

~~~
userbinator
Actually it's the _energy_ \- think of a static shock, which is similarly in
the kV range (or higher) and thus the instantaneous current and power is also
very high; but it doesn't last long enough to cause any real damage (i.e. the
amount of energy imparted is tiny.)

------
OliverJones
I had the privilege in 1979 of traveling in Eastern Europe and crossing the
border in a rural area between DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany) with
my US passport.

The East's border was two 3m (10ft) fences topped with razor wire, with a 10m
(30ft) gap of ploughed land between them. I assume the ploughed land was a
minefield, but I didn't ask. There were towers with fixed machine guns and
searchlights positioned closely enough together to allow the soldiers in them
to monitor everything.

Inside the border was a 5km exclusion zone.

The West German boder? A small guard post, with a passport control officer
dressed in blue jeans, and a sign saying Wilkommen in BRD. (Welcome to the
German Federal Republic). 5k inside the western border was a sign in English
saying "no US military personnel beyond this point." (At that time the post-
WWII Allied occupation forces were still in place.)

What does a border look like that prevents the passage of determined people?
It looks like that, or like the Wire of Death. It's doggone ugly.

------
philbo
_Within 100–500 meters of the wire anyone who was not able to officially
explain their presence was summarily executed. The youngest person to be
executed was a four year old._

~~~
duncan_bayne
Not true. The four year old died accidentally by touching the wire while
playing. Still tragic but not as depraved as made out.

~~~
jobigoud
OK thanks. It was almost sounding like they executed a four-year old because
he was not able to officially explain his presence…

~~~
phyzome
Yeah, the article makes it sound like a sapient fence or something.

------
tech-no-logical
part of the 'doodendraad' was reconstructed in 2015 near Zundert. along it,
people planted 24000 crocus bulbs as part of an art project called 'de
dodendraad leeft!' (the wire of death lives!). this march, they bloomed for
the first time.

a short video here : [http://nos.nl/artikel/2095442-video-dodendraad-zundert-
komt-...](http://nos.nl/artikel/2095442-video-dodendraad-zundert-komt-tot-
bloei-met-24-000-krokussen.html)

------
scotty79
Why not just break it with rope and a hook? Were the wires to thick to break
by pulling?

At 200km of length you could break it faster than they repair it. Also repair
would cause downtime that could allow for people to slip through.

~~~
amelius
Or how about short-circuiting it?

~~~
elcapitan
I think one of the other linked articles said that only 10% of the Dutch
population at the time had an understanding of electricity (I would guess the
people close to the fence were rural population, because most of the cities
are in the west at the sea). Which makes the whole thing so dangerous.

------
Overtonwindow
What made you want to post this? Something in the news or current events
reminded you? Interesting. Didn't know this existed.

------
Artistry121
It really hits home how much effort and ingenuity can go into a terrible
thing.

~~~
krylon
A few years back I watched a lot of videos on nuclear tests (one can find them
at archive.org - the video and audio quality is terrible, and the resolution
is tiny, but it is well worth the time), and I was struck by the same thought
- if only we could spend that much effort, money, time and creativity into
building a better society, ending hunger and disease, what would the world
look like today?

It is really depressing to think about this for too long.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Don't be too down on society. Humans are doing a lot of horrible things but
we're also doing some wonderful things too.

Just look at the many billionaires who are doing amazing things with their
wealth [http://givingpledge.org/](http://givingpledge.org/)

~~~
Artistry121
Yes. And we are still on a massive, unprecedented progress run that has
created abundance.

I just hope we stay on that path.

------
stinos
_In 1914 one million Belgian refugees were already in the Netherlands_

This is often forgotten. And instead Belgians I know are now complaining
about, what, some tens of thousands?, Syrian (and other) refugees entering the
country. And yes, some of these Belgians even want to build fences to keep
them out. Hmm, where did I hear this story before..

~~~
unknown_apostle
Pretty lame. If you live close to the border, Flemings and Dutch are
intermarried, they speak the same dialect and all. Refugees were close to home
and actually went home after the Germans left.

Refugees of Syria (and Iraq and Afghanistan and also all of Africa etc) have
been flooding Belgium for 20-30 years now. Somehow they never depart in any of
the other 360 degrees surrounding their countries. Or choose to stay in one of
the many countries they pass through on their way. Only North West Europe will
do: Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden.

On the plus side, last year Saudi Arabia did offer to help Belgium, not by
taking up refugees until the war is over but by funding construction of more
mosques.

~~~
gjulianm
This is incredibly misinformed. First of all, the majority of refugees are
staying in the middle east zone. See UN data [1]: ~4 million Turkey, Lebanon
and others. Estimates round ~1 million for all of Europe.

Regarding that they only "flood North West Europe": in Spain, for example, the
~4 % of the population is Muslim (not all of them are immigrants but it's a
decent indicator). In Sweden, it is ~5%, ~5-7% in Belgium, ~5% in Germany.

1:
[http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php](http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php)

~~~
unknown_apostle
"Incredibly" misinformed? Not really. How many in Saudi Arabia? Gulf states?
Iran? The *stans? North Africa? Georgia? In China or Japan or Russia or Kenya
or New Zealand for that matter?

How many would be in NW Europe without the spreading plan? How do the ones
that weren't even registered, or the ones that went missing move around the
Schengen zone?

About the second set of figures. Total immigration is much higher than 7%,
because not all immigrants are muslims. Even then, I’d say these numbers
confirm that migration is much higher in NW Europe.

But you know, 7% of Belgium being muslim is not even the problem. The problem
is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries that have never
seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long before the Syrian
refugee crisis. Culturally and economically.

Au fond, immigration policy in Europe is completely reckless. There is no
vision, just passively reacting to whatever happens and calling that being
compassionate. And to go back to the original reason for my post: I’m
especially sick of hearing specious, patronizing arguments like ”but 100 years
ago Belgians fled to the Netherlands". We need to move beyond that sophistry.
Especially if you live in Brussels.

~~~
gjulianm
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War).
Saudi Arabia is the 6th country. UAE 10th, Kuwait 11th, Egypt 12th. Sweden is
13th. Germany is the only rich european country in higher positions, and it's
the fourth one.

Why don't they go to China, Japan, Russia, Kenya or New Zealand? Well, just
look at a map. Syria -> Greece can be a long but doable journey. Except Russia
(and that would be entering via Georgia, which doesn't seem to be like an easy
route) all of those are pretty unfeasible.

About the figures, yes, they're not the best but they're an indicator and
probably useful for comparison. And they do not confirm that immigration is
higher in NWE. Sweden and Belgium have far less population than Spain (~10 vs
45 millions). If you add immigration percentages in France, Portugal and
Italy, I'm pretty sure that it's not higher, and even if it is, it wouldn't be
by much.

> The problem is that this is happening in a few decades time. In countries
> that have never seen immigration and were screwing it up big time long
> before the Syrian refugee crisis.

So what's the solution? Sweeping the problem under the rug? Because it's not
an impossible task. It can be done. Spain has received a huge amount of
immigrants in the last decade (2000 it was 2%, 2010 was 12%). The fact that a
lot of them were spanish-speakers helped a lot, but you don't either see
problems with the muslim population (12% of the foreign population is
Moroccan, for example).

~~~
unknown_apostle
Hi julian. We're looking at the exact same page and we're seeing different
things. That happens sometimes.

I see NW EU doing way too much. I see countries on the way to Europe (Greece,
Macedonia, Serbia) doing even more. Btw as far as I’m concerned, that includes
Turkey. I see other countries who are much closer culturally and/or
geographically quite simply not doing that much.

You could say that a number of them do almost nothing. Or maybe a lot of the
refugees actually choose to travel into specific directions. I.e. they want to
use their refugee status for migration purposes into Europe.

About intra-European Syrian refugee numbers. You mention Spain a lot: 8,365
refugees on 46.5 million. Italy has 2,451 refugees on some 60 million people.
Belgium has 14,850 on 11 million.

About intra-European _muslim_ numbers. (You started mentioning those. They
seem like a bad proxy for total immigration but anyways.) 7% (or 7+%) in
Belgium. 10% in France. 5% for Spain.

About dealing with total immigration, beyond the Syrian refugee crisis. For
the past 2-3 decades, Belgian society has been sweeping it all under the rug.
That includes minimising and censoring events, coming up with dubious
comparisons (like the WW1 canard), campaigns focusing on the racism of
Belgians. There’s been a lot of social engineering and it’s not working well
for anybody, immigrants included. Enough with the sweeping already. Let’s
start with regaining control over the borders.

------
kybernetyk
>The youngest person to be executed was a four year old.

German efficiency eh?

