Tagging Along with Italy’s Unexploded Bomb–Hunters | Hacker News Reader

Tagging Along with Italy’s Unexploded Bomb–Hunters

atlasobscura.com

The title suggests that it's the bomb-hunters that are unexploded. The title should refer to unexploded-bomb hunters; that is, the unexploded refers to bombs, not hunters.

the use of an en-dash rather than a regular hyphen implies that these unexploded hunters are in particular looking for unexploded bombs

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En-dash#Attributive_compounds

Bless you for being a rare person who understands the semantics of such things. For too long passenger carrying airplanes has struggled under such a weight.

The bomb-hunters that the author tags along with are, so far, unexploded. Both meanings work nicely in this context.

Obligatory

https://xkcd.com/37/

> The title suggests that it's the bomb-hunters that are unexploded.

They're the good bomb-hunters, then.

Or just bad at the hunting part.

Hah, I'll give you that possibility.

I'd imagine tagging along with the exploded ones to be either dull or impossible.

I came here to say this. I'll make do by seconding this motion.

I suppose tagging along with an exploded bomb-hunter is generally only applicable in the past tense.

Those old bombs are still around in Germany (unsurprisingly). This was a controlled explosion of one in munich 2012: https://youtu.be/idF3Nq11BcM

There also still are many, many unexploded projectiles dating back to World War One.

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

“Each year, several tons of unexploded shells are recovered. According to the Sécurité Civile agency in charge, at the current rate 300 to 700 more years will be needed to clean the area completely. Some experiments conducted in 2005–06 discovered up to 300 shells per hectare (120 per acre) in the top 15 cm (6 inches) of soil in the worst areas.”

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

“The iron harvest (French: récolte de fer) is the annual "harvest" of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, bullets and congruent trench supports collected by Belgian and French farmers after ploughing their fields. The harvest generally applies to the material from the First World War, which is still found in large quantities across the former Western Front.”

These also fairly frequently include unexplored poison gas shells.

Belgium als still has a few big mines with thousands of kilograms of explosives near Messines that may one day go boom. One of them did in 1955 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messine...)

American University in NW Washington, DC, had an army chemical warfare station during WW I. After the war, they suitably disposed of the remaining ordnance, according to current protocols: they dug holes, dumped in shells, and buried them. The area where this was done includes some of the most expensive real estate in Washington. Years ago one would read of old mustard gas shell unearthed at the South Korean ambassador's residence.

There’s a discovery of an unexploded WW2 bomb in and around Nuremberg at least every year or so, followed immediately by the evacuation of the neighborhood around it before the experts come in to defuse it (hopefully not have to explode it).

This is particularly exciting when they find one near a major train station, like in Nuremberg about six or seven years ago, especially midday or afternoon…

They’ll be finding those things for the rest of my toddler’s life.

Bombs are not the only issue either - leftover WW2 ammunition hampered wildfire-fighting efforts in Brandenburg in recent years. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-forest-fire-world-war-i...

Nice new (one-time) water fountain in Frankfurt: https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/weltkriegsbombe-im-main-...

Here we are today, with the Russia / Ukraine conflict and all of the leftover stuff from that which is being created on a daily basis, sigh.

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