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Landmines are insidious, patient killers. Lethal for up to 40 years, in the right conditions, abandoned mines maim and kill about 25,000 people per year.
The solution seems simple enough. Include in each mine a packet of seeds of a very distinctive or thorny shrub, in a gel capsule that takes between
3 months and 2 years to degrade. Most mines are intended for use for a period of less than 15 days.
In Spring there's a field of regularly spaced, bright red flowers, waiting to be demined. Alternately, there's a patch of nasty, iritating burrs and thorns that only biomechanical mineclearing equipment (err... goats) will dare venture into.
Breeding a specific, distinctive hybrid that is incapable of reproducing seems to be the most logical way to prevent the unwitting spread of these plants.
Found it! It's called MATRIX
http://www.military...ech_Matrix,,00.html
Like Minesweeper, in reverse. [UnaBubba, Oct 13 2005]
Bombardier Beetle
http://www.talkorig...aqs/bombardier.html
A creature that has evolved explosive weapons as a means to defend itself. [spiritualized, Oct 14 2005]
[link]
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Bright red flowers for the uneducated (in regards to this crucial knowledge.) to pick. Boom!!!
Yeah, it's a neat idea. |
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I don't see a flaw. Brilliant! |
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Couldn't use that degrading gel capsule to disarm the thing, eh? |
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Could, but the hawks would probably nix that idea. Something that takes a couple of years to sprout would be more likely to get the nod. |
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I picked red because it's highly visible and usually means danger. If people pick them then we give them thorns... sharp, painful, nasty thorns. You can't completely idiotproof everything. The world keeps coming up with better idiots. |
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It's a shame that mines don't use urea-based explosive, or this would be even better, with every mine filled with fertiliser. Talk about swords into ploughshares. |
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I think that if self-disarming landmines were desirable to those who deploy them there would be self-disarming landmines. A soldier could add these independently without modifying the mine. |
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There is a new mine system being developed. It deactivates after 90 days, unless it has some input from a computer control centre. I'll see if I can Google up some info on it. |
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Red flowers AND thorns: Rose |
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There might be a problem unless the flower/plant involved were sterile. If the plants begin to propogate (and are a non-native invasive species) then the landscape would be littered with these thorny plants that nothing will go near to eat/destory. If the plants were genetically engineered (or bred for that matter) to be sterile then you only have them where there are landmines. |
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Must toss in my applause. Humanitarian, and beautiful. (Thinking in very desert-like terrains, even more so.) |
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Here in the UK at the moment we have an excess of badgers. What would be extra-useful would be to have red flowers AND some sort of chemical combination which attracts vermin (cf. moles, snakes, what-have-you). Thus as the flowers grow, more vermin make their homes in the area, and voom! Kill 2 badgers with one landmine. |
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Oy! leave them badgers alone. |
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[-] Anyone willing to use mines in warfare is not going to pay for these new mines that have seed packets in them. |
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Wouldn't the goat realize after several generations that these plants lead to petting zoo masacres, to leave the plants alone, letting the plants thrive to a point which they were never meant to? |
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Also, the plants have an amazing self-defense mechanism. |
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//the plants have an amazing self-defense mechanism// I'd say. It's strange that nature didn't think up explosives before us. |
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//Anyone willing to use mines in warfare is not going to pay for these new mines // |
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They will if they're the only type available. |
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couldn't the gel capsule just deactivate the thing when it ruptures ? |
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//They will if they're the only type available.// |
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If this is meant to be funny, I don't see the joke. |
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And I don't think Kim Jong-Il or Zarqawi are going to add seed packets to their landmines. |
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//I don't think Kim Jong-Il or Zarqawi are going to add seed packets to their landmines.// |
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Perhaps not, but have you asked them? China and Russia are the main manufacturers of landmines. It certainly isn't unimaginable to build support in these countries for a ban on non-seeded landmines. If you convince either of these countries to do this then you can concievably save thousands of lives. In the case of China you really only have to convince a small handful of people that this is a good idea. |
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"It's strange that nature didn't think up explosives before us." |
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Supernova with a seed packet at its' core. |
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//I don't think Kim Jong-Il or Zarqawi are going to add seed packets to their landmines.// |
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And you think Bush or Blair will? |
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//supernova// I just meant for self-defense. I probably wouldn't pick apples if every now and then one blew someone's hand off. There's certainly enough stored energy in fruit for such an explosion, if stored in a different form. |
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//It certainly isn't unimaginable to build support in these countries for a ban on non-seeded landmines.// |
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Okay, now it's funny. You think Putin and Hu Jintao give a damn what their people think? You think a free press exists in these countries through which you could "build support" for this stuff? |
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What if you found a mine and dropped a packet of seeds from a dying species of plant on it? |
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Blair isn't the problem. Britain faced a dilemma of conscience, in going to war in Iraq alongside the US, who were going to use landmines. |
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And Brazillian monkies to set off the invisible enemy's mines. |
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//You think a free press exists in these countries through which you could "build support" for this stuff?// Nah. You're right that public opinion isn't what creates change. Economic sanctions, direct bribes, military force (heh), blackmail, and kidnapping of loved ones are all options. |
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In any case, restricting availability of certain types of landmines comes under "let's all" or "advocacy". |
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In the case of landmines I prefer the idea of self-expiry rather than just self-identification, but anything's better than what has been used in the past. |
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// I just meant for self-defence. I probably wouldn't pick apples if every now and then one blew someone's hand off.// |
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Apples and other fruits are there to be picked, and the seeds later dispersed in a nice warm dollop of natural fertiliser. |
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As for natural explosives, doesn't the Bombadeer beetle use a kind of chemical explosive as a deterrent? |
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Yes, it does use a crude explosive. |
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On thinking about it, I imagine that planned obsolescence would be a good idea. It would nee to be something done at the time of arming. |
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The US have developed a mine that detonates after a preset period, but that just means that there are minefields that erupt without warning, at some point. |
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Well, where’s the fun in announcing when they will detonate? |
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I think the protests are about the fact they detonate long after the soldiers have left, during peacetime. |
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How does this create a solution? The only good landmine is a dud. Any idea that makes "improvements" to the technology will only create additional excuses to plant more weapons in the earth. |
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//only create additional excuses to plant more weapons in the earth// |
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The excuses were there long before this idea came along. This idea fixes one of the many problems with land mines (and does so extremely well in my opinion) After it is implemented we can talk about getting rid of landmines completely - hopefully someone will come with a better idea than "let's all ban land mines" .. which apparently doesn't work by the way. |
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Shouldn't we ban our own (US) explosives before asking some foreign country (that speaks a "funny language" and therefore cannot be trusted) to ban theirs? |
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We should certainly stop manufacturing landmines. |
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//that speaks a "funny language" and therefore cannot be trusted// I don't think the Australians are the problem. |
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// It's strange that nature didn't think up explosives before us. // |
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The bombardier beetle comes pretty close (see link). When in trouble, the bombardier beetle fires explosive chemicals from out of its arse. It seems that this trick is an example of convergent evolution: I do exactly the same thing when I'm nervous. |
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How exactly does a landmine talent contest help? |
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The field demines itself. You put a karaoke machine in the middle and the Japanese mines just can't resist the urge to come out and sing "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da", badly. |
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