
Controlled detonation for WWII bomb found in Munich - spdy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19400974
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codeflo
I might add that WW2 bombs are found every week somewhere in Germany. They're
dug up when old buildings are demolished, when rails are repaired, sometimes
children find them while playing in the woods. I don't understand the
technology behind bomb disposal and consider it a small miracle that rarely
anything ever happens. In fact, bomb defusings are so routine that they don't
usually make it the national news.

(This one is noteworthy only because it had to be actually detonated, and in
the process caused quite a bit of damage.)

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gadders
Ditto for the UK :-(

Although one of the biggest _known_ unexploded bombs is a US ship that was
sunk in the Thames Estuary:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery>

"According to a BBC news report in 1970,[9] it was determined that if the
wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 1,000-foot-wide
(300 m) column of water and debris nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 m) into the air
and generate a wave 16 feet (5 m) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (pop.
c20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast. However
news reports in May 2012 (including one by BBC Kent) stated that the wave
could be about 4 feet (1 m) high, which although lower than previous estimates
would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal settlements."

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darklajid
Was on the radio news today. It seems a huge crowd was using this 'chance' to
have a party with cocktails and beers, making this some kind of .. event.

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didsomeonesay
Sounds like they were having a blast.

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afc
70 years later we're still paying the costs for WWII. Interesting that the
best option was to detonate it in place, with all the damage that caused.

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jessor
Better quality of the video (Original, CC): <http://vimeo.com/48399328>

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chr4004
As I understood they tried to mitigate the explosion by putting sandbags and
straw bales around the bomb. The burning straw is what I guess you see at the
top of the explosion/fire. The straw also caused surrounding roofs to catch
fire. Not sure why they didn't think of this and used fire proof stuff.

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ars
Do old unexploded bombs ever just go off on their own, or do they always need
a trigger? (Moving them, etc.)

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ovi256
They rarely, if ever, go off on their own. Modern explosives (and WW2 era
explosives qualify as quite modern) are pretty inert and safe to handle. The
fuses and cases are designed to be robust and safe to abuse - after all, they
have to be transported in rough conditions, thrown about in a hurry, mounted
and dismounted. A fuse has to do a lot of things to get the main charge to
detonate.

The main danger is that the fuse is damaged by rust and erosion, and not all
fuses were designed to be fail-safe. Such a damaged fuse can then activate on
being tampered or moved. But a burrowed, undiscovered bomb going off on its
own, I don't think such a thing ever happened.

~~~
Someone
It does happen. For an extreme example, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines#cite_note-83> (I could not
find a better link)

