
Germany's forest fires come with an explosive twist:  WWII munitions - MilnerRoute
http://fortune.com/2018/07/27/germany-brandenburg-forest-fire-munitions/
======
Someone
Earlier this week, in Sweden:

 _”a […] forest fire is located in an old firing range littered with
unexploded military ordnance, making it hazardous even if fire crews could
reach the area.“_

So, they

 _”launched a flight of Gripen fighter bombers loaded with GBU-49 laser guided
bombs. The Gripens dropped one bomb at an altitude of 9,800 feet. The bomb
exploded on target, extinguishing flames up to 100 yards from the impact
point”_

([https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a22550688...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a22550688/sweden-
dropped-a-laser-guided-bomb-on-a-forest-fire/). Video on
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f18EZZA3SQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f18EZZA3SQ))

~~~
1996
I am not sure bombing fires is cost effective or applicable in most cases.

~~~
pasta
It was a last resort action.

But I wonder why oxygen extracting bomb are not used more often.

Firefighters here (Netherlands) sometimes use them in old wooden houses. They
are like grenates that extract all oxygen so the fire dies.

~~~
josh_fyi
That is strangely reminiscent of Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away."

------
weinzierl
In Germany every year about 5500 WWII bombs are defused. According to a 2013
estimate there are about 100.000 left [1].

My personal experience - living in Munich, Germany - is that approx. one or
two times per year I am late because of traffic problems caused by bomb
disposal activities.

Another source of explosives in the forests here are blanks that were left by
NATO troops during maneuvers.

[1]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindg%C3%A4nger](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindg%C3%A4nger)

~~~
phobosdeimos
Yeah its amazing how all over Europe after 70 years they still regularly find
bombs.

The Wehrmacht also laid millions of mines but thanks to German obsession with
administration those were all removed in a few years (with the "assistance" of
German POWs)

~~~
gsnedders
> Yeah its amazing how all over Europe after 70 years they still regularly
> find bombs.

Note in various places it's WW1 munitions as well (and some of those being
chemical and biological weapons).

There was just _so much_ used in both wars that it's practically inevitable,
because much is now below the surface and exposed through ploughing.

------
Tomte
There is a company renting out firefighting tanks to fire brigades. Really:
[https://www.inforadio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/int/20180...](https://www.inforadio.de/programm/schema/sendungen/int/201807/27/257458.html)

------
krylon
I am still baffled that back then people could not build mechanisms to set a
bomb off reliably, yet could build bombs that remained deadly while lying in
the ground for what now amounts to a decent human lifetime. And I am
deliberately ignoring the legacy of World War I here, which according to the
latest forecasts will still take _centuries_ to clean up.

~~~
pjc50
The difficult bit is making a bomb that goes off reliably _but not before_.
Explosive stabilisation is the innovation that made the Nobel fortune,
remember.

------
qop
Do countries like Germany, with rich, relatively recent military history have
schools where people go to learn all the different models of bomb that they
used back in WW2? How do they keep all that important knowledge circulating
for defusal techs after all these years?

Quite interesting

~~~
nasredin
Related.

There's actually not a lot of primary sources on the reticles used in German
armour.

So developers of some of these WWII "realistc" shooters have to design new
ones.

I would guess there's better documentation of mines and bombs.

~~~
qop
I've actually wondered about that too! My uncle has a bunch of old rifle
optics equipment. Very unusual reticles on some of them!

------
mirimir
> Thanks to soaring temperatures, the northern hemisphere has recently been
> struck with an unusual spate of wildfires, from Greece, Sweden, and the U.K.
> to Canada and United States.

I'm reminded of Peter Watts' _Echopraxia_ :(

~~~
duxup
> It follows the story of a biologist who gets caught up in a voyage into the
> heart of the solar system among members of a transcendentalist monastic
> order and allies (including a vampire escaped from a research facility and
> her cadre of zombified soldiers) to investigate a mysterious signal
> seemingly coming from the mission sent to initiate first contact

You're reminded because of the space vampires?

~~~
mirimir
You gotta read the novel to get it. I did search for a quote, but Google
didn't have one. I could explain, but that would be a major plot giveaway.
Let's just say that GCC-driven wildfires are a major problem then, and that
they need _lots_ of energy to pump sulfates into the stratosphere.

------
pmontra
Instead of the article I'm prompted with a privacy policy page.

> You always have the choice to experience our sites without personalized
> advertising based on your web browsing activity by visiting the DAA’s
> Consumer Choice page, the NAI's website, and/or the EU online choices page,

The latter page, the one relevant to me, is a 404. Is it an ironic adblocker
on my phone or is it 404 for everybody?

[http://www.youronlinechoices.com/](http://www.youronlinechoices.com/)

~~~
jwilk
FWIW, it's not 404 for me, but I don't understand what's the purpose of this
page.

I couldn't get past the nag screen. :-/ Fortunately archive.org has a working
copy:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180728201531/http://fortune.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180728201531/http://fortune.com/2018/07/27/germany-
brandenburg-forest-fire-munitions/)

------
SubiculumCode
I was worried about contaminants, but flame retardants are quite bad also.

Edit. I thought this was in regards to a story about using bombs to extinguish
forest fires that I heard on the news a day ago.

------
_Microft
Should or could defense contractors/weapon manufacturers be held liable for
bombs that did not explode when planned and the damages and costs that this
occurs later? Frankly I find the idea almost entertaining to bill them the
direct (and maybe indirect) costs of for example a nowadays evacuation of a
city because a bomb needs to be defused.

~~~
_Microft
Oh, and ... reimburse the buyer of the weapon as well?

~~~
tzs
Shouldn't they have the option of dropping a working bomb on the location,
thus delivering the explosion that their defective bomb failed to deliver?

