31–40 of 181 posts
Oh, and another one that has been popping up a lot around here lately is "vanishingly" (I've noticed Patio11 likes it a lot!).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sadly, 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 eff…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Better sheep than the children who get blown up in the absence of sheep.
Also, it suffers from the same problem as the Mine Kafon, in that it's a more-or-less random walk and you won't know whether the whole area is cleared.
Sadly, 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.
This method won't make the land usable safely, so the reality would see a bunch of cheap partial clearances with no real benefit - the areas will still be no go zones.
Sadly, 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.
1. Is it really useful at all to only clear half the landmines? I would assume the area is still too dangerous to be useful even with only 40% of the landmines remaining.
2. Given #1, it would follow that additional (expensive) land mine clearing technologies would always be needed in addition. I don't know how these work or are billed out, but if the cost is per square mile or some similar area-based unit (instead of say, per mine), then clearing out 60% of the landmines first would not affect the supplemental cost. You've still got to cover the same area to catch the other 40%.
Anyway, you've had my disclaimer at the top, and I could be totally wrong about this :) Just some thoughts.
Sadly, 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 Mine Kafon has just been tested by the Dutch Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, which has concluded that it is not suitable for mine clearance (which requires a more systematic approach), but at $50 each could be used as a cheap and safe way to identify dangerous areas that need demining."