I wonder if you could offer £10 per retrieved landmine as a bounty, and let local entrepreneurs try and work out the details...
Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
21–30 of 181 posts
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#22This is a great solution, but it seems like it is designed to follow a random path (that is, where the wind blows). How do you prevent this from creating a false sense of security, when in fact there are areas of the desert which have not been tested? I remember when I was little I built a small platform high up in a tree. My father refused to let me put a rail around it, because the sort of rail I could build would…
One alternative to this is to just create lanes with rope.
i.e. you drive a stake in the ground on either side of the field (if that's even possible) and just create a lane where each of these rollers roll through.
It won't work in every single landmine, but it can provide a 'grid' within which you know what has been cleared and what has not.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#23I wonder if you could offer £10 per retrieved landmine as a bounty, and let local entrepreneurs try and work out the details...
iirc, The British did this in India but with snakes.
It wasn't long until the locals just farmed snakes to sell to the British.
Plus, retrieving landmines would be a pointlessly dangerous task, when all you really need to do is blow them up when nobody is around.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#24Sadly, demining is not this simple or easy. Mine rollers and mine flails like this have been tried and tested since WWI but none have proven completely effective in finding and clearing mines. This is partially because they only work well on totally flat terrain and rapidly lose effectiveness in rougher terrain where a large number of mines are typically buried. In practice, solutions like this achieve only 50-60% ef…
[deleted]
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#25This is a great solution, but it seems like it is designed to follow a random path (that is, where the wind blows). How do you prevent this from creating a false sense of security, when in fact there are areas of the desert which have not been tested? I remember when I was little I built a small platform high up in a tree. My father refused to let me put a rail around it, because the sort of rail I could build would…
A truly random path would be pretty good, since you approach perfect coverage with repeated runs. Alas, the wind direction is not random, particularly in this kind of environment. An interesting demining approach is to buy the local villagers lots of sheep and pen them in the areas of concern. Once in a while a sheep goes boom. Meanwhile: wool and baby sheep as a side effect.
Truly random paths would give you the 97.8% probability that there are no mines left, over a course of N field traversals. Obviously, that ain't good enough.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#26I wonder if you could offer £10 per retrieved landmine as a bounty, and let local entrepreneurs try and work out the details...
This creates an incentive to clear only first few mines, because they will become progressively harder to find and an hourly reward rate would quickly fall to near zero.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#27Sadly, demining is not this simple or easy. Mine rollers and mine flails like this have been tried and tested since WWI but none have proven completely effective in finding and clearing mines. This is partially because they only work well on totally flat terrain and rapidly lose effectiveness in rougher terrain where a large number of mines are typically buried. In practice, solutions like this achieve only 50-60% ef…
That's an informative posting. But does it hurt to get about half the landmines by cheap means and do the rest with more thorough methods?
That's not a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely interested.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#28This is a great solution, but it seems like it is designed to follow a random path (that is, where the wind blows). How do you prevent this from creating a false sense of security, when in fact there are areas of the desert which have not been tested? I remember when I was little I built a small platform high up in a tree. My father refused to let me put a rail around it, because the sort of rail I could build would…
A truly random path would be pretty good, since you approach perfect coverage with repeated runs. Alas, the wind direction is not random, particularly in this kind of environment. An interesting demining approach is to buy the local villagers lots of sheep and pen them in the areas of concern. Once in a while a sheep goes boom. Meanwhile: wool and baby sheep as a side effect.
Er, that's incredibly cruel, since most landmines are designed to maim, not kill, eg. by spraying shrapnel at knee level.
That might kill sheep outright, but I doubt it.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#29Sadly, demining is not this simple or easy. Mine rollers and mine flails like this have been tried and tested since WWI but none have proven completely effective in finding and clearing mines. This is partially because they only work well on totally flat terrain and rapidly lose effectiveness in rougher terrain where a large number of mines are typically buried. In practice, solutions like this achieve only 50-60% ef…
The difference is this costs 40 € and can clear a couple of mines for that money. Afghanistan is not exactly rolling in cash, so any cheap improvement is a valuable addition to the toolbox - it provides a way for poor communities to do something while they're waiting for America to donate enough money to clean up their mess.
My guess is that demining NGOs will be using something like this soon enough if it proves effective, though, so any donation dollar really is best sent there for maximum effectiveness.
Re: Low-cost Solution to Clearing Afghan Landmines
#30Sadly, demining is not this simple or easy. Mine rollers and mine flails like this have been tried and tested since WWI but none have proven completely effective in finding and clearing mines. This is partially because they only work well on totally flat terrain and rapidly lose effectiveness in rougher terrain where a large number of mines are typically buried. In practice, solutions like this achieve only 50-60% ef…
There was a great Ted Talk on using rats for this a couple of years ago [0]. An interesting discovery is that they're also really good for finding TB.
[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/bart_weetjens_how_i_taught_rats_to_...