Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years

(glashrvatske.hrt.hr)

133 points | by toomuchtodo 4 hours ago

5 comments

  • ra 2 hours ago
    I stayed near Dubrovnik in the summer of 2005. There was a wildfire burning on on the hills behind us.

    The fire traversed the hillside, and every hour or two a landmine would explode.

    This was ten years after the war.

  • locusofself 25 minutes ago
    I had the good fortune of going to Croatia (as an American) for work about 10 years ago, and I milked that trip hard. What a beautiful country. Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar Island, it was pretty magical.
    • yieldcrv 19 minutes ago
      Conflict zones are the most beautiful places

      They make me immediately go “oh I get it”

  • gregjw 1 hour ago
    I wonder when/if places like vietnam will ever achieve this.

    Hell, Australia still has WW2 mines.

    • Animats 1 hour ago
      France still has WWI unexploded ordnance, and keep-out areas are still being de-mined. This has been going on for a century now. About 900 tons of explosives are removed each year. Completion in 700 years at the current rate.[1]

      [1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-red-zone-la...

    • strken 13 minutes ago
      Does Australia have any landmines? I was under the impression that we had some areas with sea mines which had been swept but still weren't guaranteed safe, and that was it.
    • riffraff 1 hour ago
      Is that actual land mines or generic lost explosives and unexploded bombs?

      Cause the latter is pretty common in Europe too, but I'm surprised you have actually minefields which haven't been cleared up in Australia.

    • MattGaiser 1 hour ago
      I imagine a lot has to do with motivation. Canada has UXO that it doesn't clean up as land is abundant.
    • adamnemecek 26 minutes ago
      This feels like a perfect use case for AI.
  • KingMob 20 minutes ago
    I visited Vientiane in Laos a couple years ago. One of the more depressing places to visit there is the COPE Center.

    It's a group that provides prosthetics to people who have lost body parts due to landmines left over from the Vietnam War.

    Even decades later, there are areas in Laos that have so many unexploded bomblets, it's dangerous to do stuff there, or even build.

  • toomuchtodo 4 hours ago
    • bobmcnamara 1 hour ago
      Oof, only 90% survival rate for deminers.
      • smokeyfish 43 minutes ago
        Drones can help these days
        • lukan 15 minutes ago
          Can drones sniff explosives? I think that would be very expensive, they can have metal detectors, and mark suspicious sites for someone (or something, like a different digging drone) else to check.

          But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magawa