This week on Bad Things in History... land mines!
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In many parts of the world, people risk stepping on landmines every day.
Benoit Sangoline, a farmer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, experienced it for
himself in 2003.
One morning he was picking crops which, after a long wait, were finally ready for harvest.
A truck full of men who were going hunting drove down the nearby road.
The vehicle stopped, and Benoit’s friend Sanza got out and called out to Benoit to
join them on the hunt.
Benoit told Sanza that he couldn’t, the fields had to be harvested.
As Sanza started to go back to the truck, he stepped on something at the edge of a path
near the field.
There was a sudden and violent explosion.
Sanza was killed and Benoit was knocked to the ground.
People who heard the explosion found Benoit.
They used a bicycle to take him to a nearby doctor.
He lost a lot of blood but survived.
His body was also full of shrapnel from the explosion.
Benoit’s left hand was so damaged it was rendered nearly useless.
And while Benoit was recovering in the hospital, someone stole his crops.
Benoit, incidentally, is one of the lucky ones.
Most landmine stories have far worse outcomes.
A landmine, in case you didn’t know, is a concealed explosive device designed to disable
or destroy enemy targets.
It is an indiscriminate weapon which, in practice, mostly kills civilians.
A large number of the civilian deaths are also children.
When did people first create these troublesome weapons?
And why are they still used today?
One of the earliest accounts was provided by a 14th century military treatise from China
called “The Fire Dragon Manual”.
The first landmines were hollow cast iron cannonball shells.
They were filled with gunpowder.
Multiple fuses were run to the gunpowder, mostly as a failsafe in case one of the fuses
failed.
The fuses were long and also took a long time to burn.
So knowing enemy movements far in advance was the only way that early landmines could
be useful.
Early military engineers quickly recognized that if a landmine was going to be useful,
then it needed to be triggered by enemy movement.
The Chinese managed to meet that challenge with an ingenious design.
A nine foot section of bamboo was waterproofed by covering it in leather and oil.
Inside, the bamboo was stuffed full with gunpowder.
Lead or iron pellets were also mixed into the gunpowder.
The entire mechanism was sealed at both ends with wax and concealed in a trench.
A wooden board above the trench worked as the triggering mechanism.
When an enemy stepped on the hidden board, it would dislodge a pin that in turn allowed
a weight to fall.
The weight turned two steel wheels that struck a flint, which made a spark and lit the explosive
device.
It was basically a larger version of the mechanism used in European muskets.
The Chinese did not find landmines to be very useful.
. Early gunpowder tended to absorb moisture.
Wet gunpowder, of course, does not light when encountering a spark.
So, most landmines that were left behind never detonated as intended.
The Europeans began their investment into landmines about three centuries after the
Chinese.
In 1573, a German engineer named Samuel Zimmermann invented what was termed the “flying mine”.
It consisted of several pounds of black gunpowder buried near the surface, and was detonated
by a tripwire.
The tripwire used a flintlock mechanism to light a fuse, which in turn detonated the
mine.
He also made a precursor to modern claymore and fragmentation mines that release shrapnel
as their method of destruction.
It was called the fougasse, and consisted of a cone.
The cone had powder at the bottom, and shrapnel at the top.
A tripwire was also used to trigger it.
The fougasse was typically used to guard fortifications.
It could cause high casualties, and was used in many European wars of the 17th century.
It also was used as a defensive weapon in the American Revolution.
Its effectiveness still left much to be desired.
Early European landmines had the same problems as Chinese landmines.
Moisture seeped into any devices that were left for too long.
But changes in technology soon addressed the problem.
The percussion cap was invented in 1820, and allowed engineers to move away from flintlock
mechanisms.
The percussion cap was a cylinder of explosive material that could be detonated by striking
one end of the cylinder.
It also worked in wet weather.
In 1829, the ability to detonate explosives with electricity was developed.
Thus, landmines achieved another milestone as they could be triggered with deadly precision.
Additionally, in the mid-19th century, explosives more powerful than gunpowder were developed.
Guncotton was created in 1846, and was roughly four times more powerful than gunpowder.
It was the preferred explosive for most militaries until around World War I.
Even with all of these improvements, landmines still were not very effective weapons of war.
In the American Civil War, Confederate Brigadier General Gabriel Rains tried to use makeshift
landmines to stop the advancing Union troops.
He took artillery shells and rigged them with pressure caps so they could be detonated by
enemy actions, such as with trip wires or stepping on the shell if it was buried.
Even though the mines would reliably explode if triggered, they only caused a few hundred
casualties at most.
And many of them were not the intended targets.
The Union dealt with the mines by making Confederate prisoners search for them.
And when a prisoner found a mine, it usually meant death or disfigurement.
But mostly death.
The Confederates soon quit using landmines as a result.
The British in the 19th century were almost enthusiastic in their use of landmines.
In 1884, they used them as defensive weapons to hold off a larger Sudanese force for ten
months.
Despite this, the British were overrun and massacred.
During the Boer War in South Africa in 1899, the British used landmines to greater effect.
They created a mixture of real and fake minefields, and also placed them near railroad tracks
to discourage sabotage.
The landmines were used to affect enemy psychology rather than inflict mass casualties.
Mines were also used in water, often to much greater effect.
Sea mines were used to defend harbors and were devastating to naval vessels.
They were first used on a large scale basis in the Russo-Japanese War between Russia and
Japan in 1904 and 1905.
Unlike landmines, though, these were usually tracked more closely.
Most countries don’t want shipping traffic in times of peace to randomly explode.
Technology increased quickly in the early 20th century as the first World War approached.
In the 1870s, the typical landmine would explode into about 20 fragments.
By 1914, landmines usually exploded into over 1,000 high velocity pieces of shrapnel.
Another advance in technology was the development of tanks.
The British used them late in the first World War to overrun enemy positions.
The Germans responded by mass producing mines.
These were used to create entire minefields which did stop the tanks.
In World War Two, millions of mines were buried under the ground.
The first country to use them in the conflict was Finland.
They were facing a Soviet invasion of over 6,000 tanks.
Finland dealt with this by covering their country in landmines, and to a large extent
it worked.
The Germans also invested heavily in mines once they had to fight defensively in the
latter part of the war.
The Germans would lay anti-tank mines, but also included anti-tampering devices.
If someone removed the device to try and get to the mine, the mine would explode.
They also sometimes buried mines directly under each other to improve the yield and
increase the odds that anybody tampering with one might trigger the others.
Although landmines were not very useful against infantry, they were very effective against
enemy tanks.
And as the British demonstrated in 1899, landmines could be used to funnel enemy movements by
denying them access to certain areas.
By the end of World War two, almost every major power was using them.
Technological improvements over the past 80 years have definitely improved the yield and
delivery mechanisms where landmines are concerned.
They are more destructive than ever.
And in addition to burying them, they can also be delivered by airplane, with bombs,
or dispersed by a cruise missile.
For instance, planes might be used to bomb an airfield, then later they also drop mines
to kill anyone trying to rebuild it.
So why are these military weapons killing so many civilians?
One of the most important reasons is that their locations are not known.
During a conflict the military might create a minefield but not map it very thoroughly.
Years later when the war is over, nobody will remember where the weapons were buried.
So unsuspecting civilians find them by accident.
Sometimes the weather causes problems.
Rain and floods can change the landscape.
So, a minefield can be relocated without anyone knowing for sure where.
In countries prone to conflict, many of which are in Africa and parts of the Middle East,
minefields are created by both sides to try and prevent enemy movement.
So even though most developed nations have stopped deploying landmines, other countries
still use them.
Many organizations and governments do try to remove landmines, and thus save lives.
But there is no one single method that is 100% effective.
The military will usually clear a path through a minefield using machinery designed to detonate
the mines.
But, this doesn’t work for removing all the mines.
In order for civilians to safely use an area again, most or all of the mines have to be
discovered and removed.
Mines made of metal can be found with metal detectors.
Of course, militaries know this and purposely design mines that are difficult to detect.
So it is also possible that landmines can be made of wood or plastic.
This means the most effective way to remove landmines is for a person to physically prod
the ground and look for tripwires.
It is laborious and dangerous work.
Dogs are also used to find landmines due to their ability to smell the explosives used.
But, they usually only narrow the search area.
A person still has to do the dirty work.
New methods of landmine detection are in development.
But none have proven reliable enough to replace humans entirely yet.
Assuming militaries around the world stopped using landmines today, how long would it take
to remove them all?
A 2003 report from the RAND corporation estimated there are a total of 40 to 50 million mines
currently deployed.
Under the best of conditions, only about 100,000 are removed each year.
If removal efforts continue at their current level, it will take 500 years to clear all
of the landmines buried in the earth.
Landmines are a troublesome technology.
Their main impact is not felt by military targets.
Instead, this weapon of war mostly targets civilians long after conflicts have ended.
The earliest versions of landmines were almost completely ineffective.
But as technology improved, military tacticians couldn’t resist giving the weapon another
chance.
And except for limiting enemy movements, even the most modern creations fail to help win
conflicts.
And although most modern countries have agreed to stop deploying landmines, at least in most
cases, many smaller countries in conflict with their neighbors keep using them anyway.
As long as mines remain buried beneath the earth, innocent people will continue to die
or become seriously maimed.
Do you think we will find a way to safely remove these destructive devices?
Or will humanity be plagued by random explosive death for the next several hundred years.
Please, let us know what you think in the comments below.
We hope that you and those you care about most are doing well in this stressful period of human history.
And we hope Bad Things in History is helping to take the edge off.
If you watched enough of the video to make it to this point, you certainly have our appreciation.
As always, thanks for watching Bad Things in History.
Bad Things Trivia: Harvey is an alien artificial intelligence activated and held captive by the writers.