WEBVTT - Why Landmines Are The Deadliest Legacy Of War 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.560 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:13.720 dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.320 and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. Back 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:22.079 together again at last, Just like last week. I was 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.720 about to say, what are you talking about? You know 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:29.040 what I'm talking about? Oilis what you're talking about. Um oh, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:35.080 that's a pretty good one. Subtle, understated. Um So, Chuck, 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.800 how are you feeling today? Mm hmm, I'm kind of 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.760 tired of this weather. Yeah, it's pretty nasty. Huh. Yeah. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.320 I mean it's almost April in Atlanta and it's still 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.760 cold at night, it's um and during the day for that, 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.320 but it's usually like the way that Atlanta is for 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.000 those who don't know, it'll be cold, cold, cold, like 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:56.480 really cold down in the freezing. Sometimes it'll snow and 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.200 then it'll start to warm up, and then at the 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.160 end of February, boom, one more snow out of nowhere 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.000 and then spring. That's not how it's going this time. No, 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:12.760 it's been like real gloomy and dismal. Huh. It's okay, 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:15.800 it'll it'll clear up soon enough. Easter is on its way. 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.800 Peter Rabbit's gonna bring us some sunshine and springtime and 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:26.200 poison eggs. Poison eggs. Now, you're you're thinking of Halloween candy. 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.600 So um today, Chuck, we're not talking about Halloween or 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.119 Easter or even the weather. We're talking about something, um 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:43.200 that has become kind of a international global issue, rightfully so, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.800 and like the best way possible because in this case, 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:49.880 the international community, the global community has kind of come 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:55.720 together to try to alleviate a really overlooked problem, literally 0:01:55.760 --> 0:02:01.000 and figuratively overlooked problem, um land mines. Yeah, and has 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.760 been This isn't like a brand new effort, no, but 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.640 it's a little daunting to say the least, and depressing 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.240 it is. Um. There's something like I saw. There's all 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.440 these really, like you said, depressing statistics all over the 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.920 place when you look into land mines. Fortunately, although they 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.920 are daunting, they're not so daunting that people are just like, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.440 forget it, We're not even gonna do this. But I 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.920 saw something like it would take eleven hundred years at 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.680 the current pace of progress to remove all the land 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:33.120 mines on Earth right now that are buried on Earth. 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.399 If not another single one is laid yeah. Well, part 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.000 of the problem though, was the number of they're laying 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.600 land mines twenty five times faster than we're gathering up 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:47.480 old land mines. Yes, yeah, that's the issue. Yeah, it's 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.280 like I saw us between two and a half million 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.600 and five million land mines are laid every year new 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:57.920 ones and more than a hundred million and over seventy 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:02.720 countries around the world. Uh, that's a lot in places 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.119 where there's no war conflict going on any longer. That's 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.680 the big problem with land mines. Well, there's a couple 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:13.080 of problems. One, they're indiscriminate. They don't they don't recognize 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:18.440 whether you're a civilian or um a soldier. They stick 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.919 around long after the conflict is over, and they still 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.720 managed to kill in maim thousands of people every year 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.120 around the world, which and apparently it's on an upswing 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:34.560 thanks to um the conflicts in Yemen, in Syria and 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:36.840 in some of the work of ice is as well. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.840 It really is. There's like there's nothing that really more 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.960 that like kind of embodies like just the mute killing, 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.560 maiming aspect of war than a landmine. It's just a 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.360 dumb lump of explosive that you step on and it 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:57.920 blows you up, you know what I mean, And especially 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:02.920 the the years later effect, which is maybe there hasn't 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.800 been war for two decades and a little kid can 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:10.160 still come along and say, oh, what's this thing? And 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.080 then they don't have legs? Yeah, and the kids thing 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:19.240 is is real. So apparently land mines kill disproportionately kills 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:22.479 civilians way more than soldiers because of their ability to 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:26.600 be left over after war, and the most recent statistics 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.840 from two thousand sixteen, the majority of the civilians killed 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.560 were children. Yeah, I was, I was, actually I was 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.839 talking to you me about it. She grew up on 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.919 Okinawa and there's a lot of World War two unexploded 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:40.440 ordinance around there, and she was telling me that they 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.520 used to watch like educational films, saying like, if you 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.320 see something metal in the woods, stay away, go tell 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.680 an adult. She was like the movies they were they 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.160 were taught you know. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, when you're 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.800 raised in an area where and we're talking about landmine specifically, 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.520 but in a lot of cases they're just unexploded bombs 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.000 and things like that too. Yeah, I know, like they 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.599 find something like a hundred tons of it in Belgium 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.720 alone every year, most of it from World War One 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:13.320 still wow. So, but we are talking specifically about land mines, 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.719 which seemed to kind of bear the focus of the 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.920 international efforts to to get rid of them, because they 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:25.880 are probably the biggest problem of unexploded ordinance today. Yeah. Well, 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:27.640 should we go back in time here and talk about 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.039 the history? Yeah? I think so. Yeah, this one was 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.600 interesting because I don't think a lot of people when 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.800 they hear about land mines know that they started in 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.520 like legit started during the American Civil War. No, I 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.160 thought world War two at the earliest. Yeah. So, uh. 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:48.320 In the American Civil War they were called torpedoes or 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.039 sub terra shells. That was a man, a North Carolinian 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:56.359 named Gabriel Raynes, who initially fought for the Union but 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.440 then said, wait a minute, I'm from North Carolina and 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.960 that X be sure how that switch happened. He's like 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:07.320 North Carolina's with the South. I Yi, yeah, uh. But 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.920 he was the first person to um sort of play 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.640 around with ease and eventually get a patent called the 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.880 Rains Patent on what essentially was a very sort of 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:24.480 early crude but effective land mine yeah, and so this 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.440 is at a time when like pitched battles are still 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.680 the norm, where like your your infantry meets my infantry 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.080 in a field, and like you do a bunch of shooting, 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:35.839 and then we do a bunch of shooting, and then 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.640 there's advancement and retreats and cannons and stuff like that. 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.200 It turned to shoot or their turn, I forgot, I 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.400 mean pretty much right, there's people like picnicking watching the battle. 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:49.000 Like that's how that's how staged they were. And and 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.120 the Confederacy didn't necessarily play by those rules. They did 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.279 in many battles for sure, but they also definitely had 0:06:55.320 --> 0:07:00.680 a guerrilla facet to them as well. And this definitely 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.840 screams guerrilla warfare because the the Union Army was taken 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.800 totally off guard by the early um Land minds that 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:12.280 they encountered. Yeah, and it was not something that was 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:18.080 readily accepted into warfare. The generals were, um well, everyone 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.480 was scared first of all, once they got wind of 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:22.760 what these things were there all of a sudden, like 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.880 what like I can like we're literally just walking through 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.240 the woods and now we can just die right and 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.280 with no enemy nearby and apparently Gabriel Reins himself was 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:35.080 one of the first to lay a bunch of these 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.520 from the road to Richmond after the defeat of a battle, 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.320 and that's when they first the Union army first encountered 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.800 these things. Well, yeah, so not only were they scared, 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.120 but then the the you know, the the hierarchy, the generals, 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.200 we're pretty ticked off. They were like this is you know, 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.760 one of the quotes is the rebels have been guilty 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:57.000 of the most murderous and barbarous conduct. So they were 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.960 not welcomed into warfare. They thought it was sort of 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.200 a cheap trick and a dirty, a dirty, rotten thing 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:07.640 to do. Yeah, and like you said, it scared the troops, 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:10.920 it upset the generals. And these were not just like 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.880 land mines like we think of them now. They were 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.600 like booby trapped, like they put them in flower sacks 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.880 and when you reached into a flower sack, boom that 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.240 blew up and put them around like if the if 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.800 the Confederates abandoned like an outpost, they would put them 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.320 around the well, around the water like places. They knew 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.000 the Union troops were gonna go, and you could either 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.040 set them off by stepping on them like a modern 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:34.960 land mine, or they would attach things like tools to 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.040 them with like a string, so you would bend down 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.320 and pick up the tool and set off this land 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.079 mine that was buried nearby. Um. And at first the Confederates, 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.640 to some of the Confederate higher ups, were like, I 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:51.160 don't know if this is okay, even even in a 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:55.000 civil war, and we're you know, the Confederacy were in 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:57.800 some ways a guerrilla army. I'm not sure we should 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:00.720 be using these. And then finally after a while they're like, okay, 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:02.960 we we kind of need every tool we can get 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.280 in the toolbox. And they acquiesced and started using them, 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.160 and they spread them all over the South apparently. Yeah, 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:12.920 and they don't have any figures on the soldiers that 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.920 were killed, but they do know that total between the 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.880 Union and the Confederates thirty five. Well, actually that's not true. 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:24.560 Thirty five Union ships went down. One Confederate ship went down, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:29.800 which I'm taking was an accident. Mm hmmm, I don't know. Maybe, yeah. 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.160 But remarkably it says here in this article you said 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.920 that they found them, they were still finding them in 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:40.560 the nineteen sixties and Alabama, Yeah, which makes you wonder. 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.040 I wonder, like, how many are they're still out there, 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:46.319 like in around Atlanta. You know, I don't know, I mean, 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:51.400 surely none. Right well, you would hope also that after 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.680 this time the explosives would have decayed enough after being 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:58.000 exposed the weather for this long. One of the articles 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.280 that we used said that the um that land mines 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.960 modern land mines have a useful life of over fifty years. 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.040 Surely by now whatever they had attached to the Confederate 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:12.440 land mines are no longer useful even if you did 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:14.400 find him in the woods, I would think so, which 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.040 is not to say you should do like a belly 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.559 flop on it to test it out. You find something 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:21.160 that even vaguely resembles a land mine in the woods 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.600 of the southeastern United States, run and tell somebody that 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.280 is the worst way to test out whether or not 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.280 a land mine is still capable of working, agreed, is 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.320 the belly flop method. So the Civil Wars where they 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.360 got their start, and and they came into use pretty 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:41.559 quickly after they were invented, but it was World War 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.600 One and then really World War Two where they really 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.200 came into focus. And our article from how stuff works 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:54.400 Um says that the land mines for World War One 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:59.400 and two were invented to prevent people from picking up 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:04.760 the land minds that were originally invented to blow up tanks. Yeah, 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.199 I mean there were certain they realized that there were 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.880 a few uses. They could either uh lay a minefield 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.400 to keep a group of troops and or tanks from 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.280 going to a certain place. Uh. Sometimes it was too 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.000 reroute a group of people in tanks to a different 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.160 area because they're like, oh, well, we know that's minefield, 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.520 so we gotta go this way, which might play right 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.600 into the plans of the opposition. Uh. And then sometimes 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.960 it's just to slow slow everybody down until they can 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.040 get reinforcements. Right. So, I mean there is a use 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.079 for this besides just blowing somebody up. There's a larger 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.240 strategic use For me. I hadn't really thought about. I 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.840 always thought it was just, you know, a nasty way 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.760 of blowing somebody up by chance, you know. But it 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.880 really does send a message to which is don't keep 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.640 going straight. You're gonna have to go one way or 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.720 another because obviously this place's mind and and really there's 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.160 only one way to find out whether a place's mind too, 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.640 especially during warfare. Like it's not like the the enemy 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:08.040 posts a sign that says we've mined this field. Suckers, 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.120 like you find out because one of them goes off, 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.040 either on a tank or one of your soldiers. You know, well, yeah, 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:15.120 and if one of them goes off, it's there. I 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:18.760 don't think they were using like random rogue land mines. 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:23.360 It was more likely a minefield, right. So, um, World 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.520 War two is where they really kind of came into play. 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.520 One of the things I saw is that one of so, 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:33.280 I guess by the numbers, the most mind place in 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:36.880 the world as far as countries go, is Egypt. Oh really, 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:39.840 I was like, what I mean by a long shot, 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.600 Egypt has something like, um, I think two hundred and 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:50.200 thirty million No, sorry, twenty three million minds unexploded around Egypt. 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.320 Egypt is not that big, right, I think they have 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:57.880 like sixty per square kilometer square miles something like that. 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:00.040 So they've got twenty three million miles And I was like, 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:04.400 why Egypt? And it was the Nazis during the North 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:08.720 African theater fighting in World War two. The Nazis mind 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.360 all over around there. But apparently Egypt got the brunt 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:15.200 of it, and there's still twenty three million unexploded minds 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.920 they estimate in Egypt from World War two. Should we 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.840 take a break? Yeah's all right, We'll take a break 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:23.560 and we'll come back and we'll talk about the two 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.840 main types of land mines that we're going to cover 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:40.720 today right after this definite should I sk as watched 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:54.040 by SKO should know? All right? So, uh, for the 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.560 purposes of this. And you know, there are more than 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.600 three hundred and fifty types of mind so that would 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.640 be ex austi to go through all those. But the 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:04.840 way our article breaks it down, which makes sense to me. 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.400 Or and the two main groups, which are anti personnel 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:12.360 minds and anti tank minds. Um, they both do about 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:16.360 the same thing, which is explode after pressure is put 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.000 on them. But in the cases of a tank, of course, 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:23.280 they're going to be bigger with more boom and require 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.920 more weight in order to make it go boom, right, 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:33.960 more pressure. Yeah, So the the anti anti personnel minds, 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.000 those are much lighter, much smaller, much cheaper, and I 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.240 think found in much greater abundance around the world. Um, 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:45.120 there's there's one that this article covers called the M 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:48.520 fourteen blast mind. And we should say there's actually a 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.880 few different types of minds, especially as far as anti 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.880 personnel minds go. Right. Yeah, So, um, there's this the 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:58.680 standard blast mind, which as you step on it it 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.400 goes boom um and bad things happen to you as 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:08.120 a result. There's the bounding mind or bouncing mind. Um. 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.800 Basically it means the same thing where you step on 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:15.480 the mind, Uh, a fuses lit that that ignites a 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:19.680 propeller charge which shoots the mind upward from under under 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.320 the ground just barely covered over by the ground up 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.160 to about chester head height, which then the mind explodes. 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.480 So it's designed to do even worse damage. Yeah. Those 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:34.280 are called bouncing betties or German s minds um, either 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.280 for spring or shrapnel, and those I think I've seen 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:40.600 those in movies before. Uh that stuff is just nuts, man. 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:42.920 You step on something and all of a sudden it 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.440 it bounces up in the air to about your chest 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:49.280 and makes a horrible whizzing sound too, if I remember correctly. Yeah, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:54.440 I mean talk about like just sheer intimidation factor too. Sure. Um, 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.120 And so the bouncing mind or the bounding mind is 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.960 is meant clearly to kill. The blast mind is meant 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.960 to maime. It's probably it may not kill you, although 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.600 you could die of like your injuries later on from 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.440 like an infection or something like that. Um or you 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:12.520 could bleed out if it, if it, if it got 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.040 enough of your femoral artery, you would be in big 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.360 trouble there. But it's it's designed mainly just to maim you, 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.400 take you out of commission. Whereas a bounding mine is 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.880 meant to to to blow you up and kill you. 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.360 Then there's a fragmentation mind. That's the third type of 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.760 anti personnel mine. And and I don't I mean, like 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:33.600 for those of you out here you can't see me 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:35.920 and chuck, but our fingers are kind of like digging 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:40.600 into the tabletop. Now, this is just so grim and gruesome, 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:42.600 you know, it's not it's not we're not even talking 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:46.120 about shooting somebody. It's talking about these things designed to 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.160 blow somebody up or blow their leg off, you know. Yeah. 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:53.120 And I think what's most disconcerting about like like a 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.360 mine field of blast minds is the purpose to lay 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:01.680 a mine field of blast minds is to almost certainly 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.960 reroute somebody or to keep somebody from going somewhere. So 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.680 it's not like they're saying, we're gonna put down three 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.000 hundred minds here because we want to blow off three 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:15.720 hundred feet of soldiers. Uh, they just have to scatter them. 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:19.400 So a couple of people get their feet blown off 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:21.280 and they go, holy cower in a minefield. We've got 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.040 to go a different direction. But the residual effect is 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.679 there's still two d of those things out there. You know, 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:33.439 it's like a numbers game. So it's just it's like 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:40.159 the lowest common denominator of of strategy almost. Yeah, but 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.520 it's effective, which is why they keep using them. Yeah. 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:46.600 And I think also like if the army, the army 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.480 that was retreating laying those mines in their wake, if 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.160 they got three hundred feet blown off, they'd be fine 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.439 with that. Even though that, like you say, that's not 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.480 the that's not the ultimate aim of it. It's to 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.880 to redirect people or to stall them in till reinforcements 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:02.800 can come for you. Well, yeah, and you don't keep 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.440 going like after it happens a couple of times or 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.280 maybe even once, you don't think, well, man, well let's 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.600 just press on and see what happens, right, Maybe that 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:14.920 was a fluke, maybe that was a geothermal spring, and um, 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:18.399 you talked about someone's foot being blown off. Supposedly the 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:20.760 nickname for the m Fort Team blast mine, which we'll 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.359 talk about in a second, those are called toe poppers, 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:28.120 which is kind of undersells it to me, I think. So. Um, 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:30.960 the last one, the last type of anti personnel mine 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.960 um is a fragmentation mind and that's meant to get 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.399 a bunch of guys all at once, all around you. 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.800 And it may not, um, it may not take off 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:41.879 their leg, it may not kill anybody, but it's certainly 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:46.040 going to slow down several, um several soldiers at once 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:50.280 because these blow up and they shoot fragments everywhere like 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:54.720 a pretty long way, right. So the Claymore mind is 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:59.840 an example of a fragmentation grenade or a fragmentation um my. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:03.159 And then so too are cluster minds, which kind of 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:07.400 fall into a different category because there dropped out of bombs, 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:11.640 typically dropped from aircraft. They fall out of cylinders, hundreds 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.000 of them, and then when they hit the ground, they 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.240 blow up and shoot hundreds of fragments. So each of 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:21.600 those hundreds of small mines shoots out hundreds of fragments. 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.320 The reason they become de facto land mines is because 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:26.679 not all of them blow up, and so they can 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:28.720 be found later and then blow up when they're being 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.119 handled by a kid or a curious civilian or something. 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.879 Play more with claymore. Remember that from The Simpsons, No, 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.760 I think it was. It was a long time ago, 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.159 but I think that was like a poster in the 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.320 shop of like an army Navy store or something like 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.400 the guy the guy missing an arm Oh maybe so, yeah, 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:50.800 I remember that was like one of the first season ones. 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.320 I'll bet it was old for sure. I forgot about him. 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.000 Oh and by the way, our buddy Kevin Pollock just 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.200 guessed it on The Simpsons after that many years. Would 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:01.320 have thought he would have been on by now. But 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.920 he did it like two or three voices this past week. 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:06.800 I did not know that. I gotta see that one. Yeah, 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:08.480 it was good. How do you do? Did he cracker 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.800 under pressure? He did a great job. I'm sure he 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:16.840 did all right. So the M fourteen is um These 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.160 are small like it fits in the palm of your hand. 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:22.199 It's about an inch and a half one six inches 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:26.280 tall and about two point two inches in diameter, and 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.359 we developed this here in the US in the nineteen 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.320 fifties and it has been sort of a go to 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.719 around the world since then. Uh, this one is not 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:40.280 a very big boom um, but it does cause damage 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.320 with these little, these little silver beabies that it shoots out. 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.119 That's the toe popper one. So oh, it does have 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:48.720 babies that it shoots out. I thought it was just 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:50.760 a straight up blast mine and I thought this one 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.399 had babies. Maybe not. I don't know. Um, I I 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:58.000 know that this I don't know. Possibly it could be modified, 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:00.440 but it is small and it looks like a mean 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.760 little hockey puck basically the whole the and one of 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.159 the things that you're gonna find, um in minds throughout 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:11.720 the world is something that's called a Belleville spring, and 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:16.000 it's basically like a washer that you put on, um, well, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.000 a bolt. You know what else You're gonna put a 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.040 washer on, you weirdo. So it's a washer, but it's 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:26.720 kind of popped upward on one side. So the Belleville 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.080 spring holds up the firing pin. But when you put 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:32.520 enough pressure on it and you overcome the pressure, the 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:35.280 upward pressure being exerted by the belleville spring, it kind 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.719 of pops downward and when it does that, it taps 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:42.000 that firing pin which shoots down into the detonator. It's 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:46.120 really cheap, really easy to to use, and really effective, 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.320 and it's it's found through in minds of all different 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.800 types and varieties. It's usually the thing holding everything in place, 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:55.680 and then that's what pressure overcomes as a belleville spring, 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:58.960 and they're found in the m Fort team minds as well. Yeah, 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.919 it's sort of like, uh, like the hand grenade. It's 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:06.280 not a very sophisticated piece of gear. Um, it's very 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:09.040 kind of rudimentary. And on all of them there's some 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:11.760 sort of safety clip, just like a grenade. You remove 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.800 the clip and usually there's some sort of switch that 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.119 either says I mean doesn't say this, but basically it 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.639 says either boom or no boom, and you switch it 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.320 to boom and set it down and walk away yeah backwards, 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.960 yeah slowly. Um. And yeah, you cover it up maybe 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.080 with some leaves, a little bit of dirt, just enough 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:34.239 so that it can't be seen, but not enough that 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.879 you would dampen the blast at all, or make it 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:38.919 so that any of the pressure is damp them. And 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:41.160 all it takes is like twenty pounds or nine kg 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.679 of pressure from say somebody stepping on it, and that 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.600 sets off the I think it's got something like, uh, 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:53.040 how many grams of tetra in the M fourteen, So 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:55.400 that's again that's not very much, but it's enough that 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.280 you will, say, lose your foot, or if you're stepping 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:00.280 directly on it, you may lose part of your leg, 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:02.960 and not necessarily right then, but you may have to 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.080 have it amputated later on, which makes it even nastier. 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.159 I mean, I understand the point of this. It's like 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:11.360 there's one soldier who's not fighting anymore. He's over there, 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:14.960 so sapping the healthcare resources of the the the medical 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:19.359