Science Forum

zinjanthropos · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 4:21 am Post subject:

Saw a documentary the other day about some guys in France whose job it is to find and destroy old ordnance. They get a lot of help from citizens who stumble upon old bombs and the like, everything from old grenades to large unexploded shells that still litter the countryside. It sounded like they call these guys munitioneers. Every now and then one of them gets killed along with a farmer or two out plowing their fields.

One of the more interesting segments showed a piece of shrapnel from an old shell they exploded. On the outside, rusty as hell but the inside was pristine, as if it had just been machined yesterday. They say there is enough of this stuff lying around to provide work for these guys for the several decades . At the time of filming they had succeeded in clearing 25% of the country.