Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia | Hacker News Reader

Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

sapiens.org

195 pointsdanso128 comments

African giant pouched rat. Cheek pouches. (not marsupial). Poor eyesight so the sniffing is presumably evolutionary advantage for the niche they'd normally occupy.

Given enough time, I wonder what other social adaptive qualities could emerge in a species like this? Domestication of dogs and cats had huge longterm upsides for both species and humans. Most rats by number are now co-occupants of human space but by species I'd be less sure. I had no idea how big the genus is until I dived into the rabbit hole.

(If you like large rats, look out for the Rakali or water-rat: web footed, and quite large. They live in the lake of Canberra amongst other places. I don't think they are trainable or economically exploitable beyond nature tourism. They are very very cute. Like Otters sort-of, but .. rats)

These pouched rats are very cute. And doing amazing work.

I've owned multiple (fancy) rats as pets in my time. The species is somewhat split into domesticated and non-domesticated.

My rats would probably never have survived in the wild (due to their appearance, sand/tuxedo coloured, instead of just gray/brown), and likewise wild rats wouldn't be possible to domesticate.

There's quite a few videos on YouTube of the social skills they can develop. Quite amazing animals, but incredibly short lives. Most people who have them don't get new ones after the originals die because it can be so heartbreaking losing a pet every 2 years or so.

“My rats would probably never have survived in the wild”

I remember watching a video where they released some pet rats into the wild. They adapted very quickly and did well. These little buggers are very smart.

Most domesticated animals that I can think of do just fine when they're released into the wild. In fact, I don't think there's any domesticated animals out there that don't have a feral population running around somewhere.

Cattle?

Apparently:

https://news.csu.edu.au/feature/are-feral-cattle-the-brumbie...

Good find!

I think you would be very surprised how quickly animals can adapt. Same for humans. Most of us have no clue how to live without modern conveniences. But I think if we took away these, a lot of people would adapt. A lot wouldn't survive, but a lot would learn quickly.

So I thought from the title that they were releasing a bunch of rats to a minefield and let them trigger the mines. But apparently mines are sensitive to much larger weights and it does not work like that. Rats are trained to sense the mines via smell. Neat.

I had several thoughts while reading this article.

> Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s.

Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mines would look like. What happened to Southeast Asia during the 20th century was so sad and tragic.

> Rats have been so successful that the rodents are now seen as competition for the more traditionally used military dogs for mine clearance.

I didn't know dogs were used to clear mines. I would have thought they would be too heavy to walk on mines, considering that mines can kill children, and military working dogs have a weight comparable to children.

Lastly, I wondered whether it would be both possible, economical, and militarily sensible to create mines that expire after a certain time, due to an engineered deterioration process for the detonator or for the explosive charge. A form of planned obsolescence. Few conflicts last more than a few years. Is a five year old mine really that useful militarily? Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised. The Korean Demilitarized Zone is the most obvious example I can think of where old mines might still serve a future purpose.

>to create mines that expire after a certain time

Some modern mines have a programmed self destruct time. An additional safety is an electrical detonator system that is powered by a battery with a limited capacity: once the battery runs out, it can no longer fire the detonator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GATOR_mine_system

A mine with a discharged battery is not exactly safe, but without the detonator it requires extreme conditions or decades of aging to explode.

There should be international laws where after wartime, governments are responsible for clearing out any leftover ordinances and must perform ecological cleanup. One would think the U.S. government would be in support of this because it would make wars too cost prohibitive for other nations, and the contracts would be an excellent profitmaking opportunity for the military industrial complex.

That only makes any sense if the government that laid the mines still exists after the conflict and wasn’t entirely insane in the first place. Read about the Khmer Rouge.

Arms need to come from someplace. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, those landmines were made by the chinese government 1. Sanctions could therefore land on china for not accounting for mines they created. For the case of governments that truly have no responisble parties remaining afterwards, say the land is littered with IEDs, then the UN should have funds set aside to go towards these efforts, just like how they have funds going to other humanitarian efforts. But when its possible its best to charge the offending governments if they are still around than to have the world subsidize them.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia

You’re basically describing the facts as they are now. It is a massive international effort involving the UN the US and many other countries.

Oh and Cambodia itself which has agency even though it’s poor.

The US war in Cambodia preceded the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

How exactly do you enforce such a law? If the victor refuses to follow the law, invade their country, set up a new puppet government, and put them on trial?

Sanction them until their oligarchs turn on the executive.

I don't think I've seen any examples in real life of this actually working, even though it seems to be the normal enforcement mechanism.

IMO because they don't sanction nearly enough

With your approach there's always the risk that your sanctions are worse for the population than the consequences of the mines, particularly because economic damage is compounding.

How do you deal with that?

You can sanction the individual oligarchs versus the country wholecloth perhaps. Ban the oligarchs from travel, deny their private jets over allied airspace, deny their boats a right to port, offer a bounty for their boats in international waters. Seize their foreign assets. Ban them from participating in your markets. Make participating in the fun of the global high society annoying to impossible, and force them to be on house arrest in their own country. Do the same for their extended families living abroad and their close friends. Kick their children out of foreign private schools. Jail the kids. Do the same for the oligarchs in any country who doesn't want to align with the UN on this issue.

There's plenty of things that could be done beyond what has been done typically.

They've done all that stuff and more (including seizing their boats) for Russian oligarchs and it hasn't changed anything. In fact, a bunch of those oligarchs have committed suicide as a result, frequently by shooting themselves in the backs of their heads and then jumping out of windwos.

In theory, it’s irrational to give into threats in iterated games, or in one-shot games where your opponent can look at your code. (“We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”) So threatening sanctions shouldn’t work.

But in practice, when everyone knows you have a bazooka, you might not ever have to fire it.

Sanctions aren't a magic wand. Stop waving them around like one.

Imparting economic sanctions that constitute an existential threat to a country or its government have a history of less than stellar results.[1]

[1] https://cdn-us.anidb.net/images/main/40430.jpg

What could go wrong?

And who enforces international law? Are you gonna put on a blue helmet or make your kids do it?

There is no international government with enforcement power. International relations are governed by game theory, not law.

> I didn't know dogs were used to clear mines. I would have thought they would be too heavy to walk on mines, considering that mines can kill children, and military working dogs have a weight comparable to children.

Remember that a dog almost always has two of its paws on the ground. Forgiving for dynamics, if a 50lb child is walking, it could place all 50lbs on a trigger. A 50lb dog should only be able to place 25lbs.

I would think they just use smaller dogs. And maybe some do still blown up, we wouldn’t have any idea.

Even a light dog can put a surprising amount of pressure through its feet if it wants to. Tiny paws mean it's all concentrated in a small area. My 10kg dog feels like he weighs a ton when he puts his front paws on me and leans into it.

I've no idea what it takes to trigger a mine, and I don't know if it would be enough, but a dog can press down harder than you'd expect.

I know what you mean, when they stand on you wrong it's surprisingly heavy. But it's point loaded. A dog doesn't do that while walking around on even-ish ground. The point is it would take unusual scenarios for a dog to get 100% of their weight on one foot, but any toddler does it every step.

I would think this works both ways though. Yes, smaller surface area is bad, but also reduces the chance the dog presses down on a trigger. But then again... they have four feet, but then they a narrower track, but then they probably take more steps. It's complicated I suppose!

Specifically anti-tank mines tend to be designed NOT to detonate with only a person walking on them, so maybe dogs are more useful for clearing those

If you want to learn more about the mines in Camobida I highly recommend the low-budget documentary Until They're Gone[0], which features a small human-based mine removal effort promoted by Landmine Relief Fund[1]. I read an article in the Economist a couple years about the lingering impacts of mines and ordinance in Cambodia, and it struck me heavily and I looked up more information and came across those. It's horrible that all these ordinances are still maiming people decades after a war that their country was hardly even involved in, but there's also a lot of exciting work and progress being made. A mine-free Cambodia really is possible, and in not that many years!

[0]http://www.untiltheyregone.com/

[1]https://www.landmine-relief-fund.com/

A better idea is to just get rid of mines entirely:

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

These treaties are largely useless because certain large powers refuse to sign them. Sure, it's nice if Switzerland or Norway signs such a treaty, but that doesn't exactly change anything.

Ukraine has ratified the Ottawa Treaty linked above.

I'll note that it only bans the use of all non-remote-controlled anti-personnel landmines.

The US committed to the treaty with an exception for its existing use of mines between North and South Korea

Antipersonnel mines absolutely should have an expiry date after which they are no longer triggered by the depression of their sensor. Issue is, these things are mass manufactured and probably have some defect rate which increases with time after deployment. So they couldn’t be trusted to be ‘safe’ after expiring anyway. But still would save lives & limbs to have a mechanism like that built in.

That’s just not how explosives work.

Any detonator explosive to set of a main charge must be reliable for dozens of good reasons. Over time an as a required condition. Asking for something decays or approaches an unreliable state after time is a non-starter.

Another user pointed to a basically failed electronic program, but even then, you have to detonate the mines, you can’t just disarm them and make the highly efficient explosives ready for other uses. You wouldn’t ever give your enemy deliveries of repackagable charges.

Another user pointed out [0] that such a system does exist.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33797151

From a strategic perspective, obsolescent mines make total sense. I wonder why it is not the norm.

Country usually don't wage war just to destroy (Seeing Ukraine, not so sure anymore). But to own and use the land. This allow to keep the territory futureproof. While for the defender it's even more logic.

Long live mines are only useful around long term places: military base, korean border, ...

So in your post to incorrect others on 'thats not how explosives work' you got absolutely everything wrong about how explosives work. Typical HN.

> You wouldn’t ever give your enemy deliveries of repackagable charges.

Where did you get this preposterous idea? Do you imagine a major military will send out it's soldiers to collect labdmines on purpose to dissasemble them and take out tiny amount of explosive? And after loosing dozens of soldiers and huge amount of time to get explosives of dubious age and quality, do what with it?

>Do you imagine a major military will send out it's soldiers to collect labdmines on purpose to dissasemble them and take out tiny amount of explosive?

I literally said the complete opposite of that by saying the mines have to self-destruct. They still need to explode. Try another read of the original post.

I worked with an EOD group in OIF. Where do you think IEDs come from? You think farmers and merchants are mixing ANFO in their huts? No, it's all seconardy explosives they we "donate".

Tell me more.

'Where do you think IEDs come from? You think farmers and merchants are mixing ANFO in their huts?'

Tell me whwne I am wrong:

You don't lay down square miles of landmines in a conflict against insurents, i.e. Taliban. You only do area denial against real militaties.

In a conflict between any real militaties, like the recent Russia vs Ukraine, no-one is wasting their time making IEDs.

> Millions. I can't process numbers that large.

You should read about Laos then, which has the largest amount of UXOs, and specifically the consequences, and how they got there. It's infuriating.

> Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised.

How would this work? Surely the impact would trigger detonation.

Mines and bombs can be complex objects, especially bombs that are intended to not immediately explode and thus deny access | use up human resources due to the poised threat.

Even as far back as WWII bombs from aircraft included booby trapped "anti personnel" bombs with secondary fuses hidden back to kill bomb disposal experts.

In the case of your concern, bombs can be released with "chemical burn safeties" (for example - when released from an aircraft two agents are released that start a timed burn that arms the bomb after X minutes (and the ground is reached).

Other technicques can use the impact force to arm a mine, it's not dangerous until after it's been slammed into the ground, etc.

How the bomb disposal experts first learned their craft is insane. https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Uxb-Heroic-Story-Disposal/dp/0... has the story.

Short version, the person working with the bomb would call out what they saw, then do what the partner said. The partner had a book and was out of the blast radius. They recorded it all, and if the bomb blew up would write down not to do THAT again!

Eventually they learned to somewhat reliably disarm the bombs by this type of trial and error. And then the other side would add better booby traps to stop them from succeeding.

Crazy.

The way to do that safely (for your own people) is to use enemy POWs to disable the bomb.

Which of course is a war crime.

And of course, it absolutely happened during WW2.

Denmark did it with captured German soldiers, so also after WW2.

Explosives are not generally very fragile. They require special detonators to go off and are otherwise mostly inert.

Landmines have already been dropped from aircraft for decades - and also by rockets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRt_v51Io4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=456A_GTWEZI

They can even be dispersed using mortars and artillery, like what has been done in Ukraine recently with butterfly mines.

Naval mines have dropped by parachute.

You could drop them with mechanical timers before they arm. There are reminiscent of Swiss watch mechanisms for munitions already.

I imagine a shape that will definitely land in one direction could have a pressure switch on the other.

There are mines that set themselves up in the proper orientation after deployment, the AT2 for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT2_mine

I would prefer to use US senators who refuse to ratify the Mine Ban Convention. They won't need any particular skills or training, just have them wander around possible UXO sites until they find one with their foot. The great thing about this is, US senators are a 100% renewable resource.

An interesting idea, although I think the US is actually ahead of the curve on mines. From Wikipedia:

>> Opponents point out that the Ottawa Convention places no restriction whatsoever on anti-vehicle mines which kill civilians on tractors, on school buses, etc. The position of the United States is that the inhumane nature of landmines stems not from whether they are anti-personnel as opposed to antivehicle but from their persistence. The United States has unilaterally committed to never using persistent landmines of any kind, whether anti-personnel or anti-vehicle, which they say is a more comprehensive humanitarian measure than the Ottawa Convention. All US landmines now self-destruct in two days or less, in most cases four hours. While the self-destruct mechanism has never failed in more than 65,000 random tests, if self-destruct were to fail the mine will self-deactivate because its battery will run down in two weeks or less. That compares with persistent anti-vehicle mines which remain lethal for about 30 years and are legal under the Ottawa Convention.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

Well, my comment was highly abbreviated for the sake of pithiness, but US ratification of the treaty would be more meaningful than the US simply not employing landmines itself. (NB While I place all the blame on senators for not ratifying it, technically no US president has signed it, so the Senate hasn't actually had the opportunity to ratify, but Senate leaders have made their opposition clear for decades so they definitely deserve the blame I'm pointing in their direction.)

Furthermore, landmines haven't actually been a weapon that the US military has considered tactically useful in nearly 50 years, so saying that we won'ist use them (because they're not useful to us), but not pressuring other countries which may find them useful despite their horrific downsides, isn't exactly upstanding. And, the article title on HN is misleading, because this isn't just about landmines, it's about unexploded ordnance (UXO) more generally. The US, in addition to not signing the Mine Ban Convention, refuses to sign/ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and has significant quantities of cluster munitions in the inventory, with an alarmingly high failure rate (meaning the munition doesn't detonate when it is supposed to, leaving dangerous UXO that only becomes more dangerous over time). So, yes, there's nuance, but honestly not enough to let US leaders off the hook for these horrors.

I'm not sure why the blame would rest on the political side. Yes, they are the ones who would ratify the treaty, but I'm sure they would be happy to do so unless the DOD was whispering in their ear (or shouting) that it would damage their warfighting capabilities. Maybe there are some special interests too but I'm skeptical the industry is big enough to have that kind of pull, whereas SecDef telling a Senator on SASC not to do this is probably enough to make a treaty a nonstarter.

The Democrats are for the treaty, so the Republicans are against it, just to own the libs, no matter what the cost or consequences or morality, regardless of the facts or anything based on reality or science or humanity.

>2014: The United States under President Barack Obama mostly accepted the terms of the treaty by ceasing to acquire anti-personnel land mines and prohibiting their use outside of the Korean Peninsula.

>2020: The United States under President Donald Trump reversed the Obama policy change and restored the George W. Bush administration position on anti-personnel landlines, authorizing Combatant Commanders to employ "advanced, non-persistent landmines".

>Trump eases restrictions on land mine use by U.S. military:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-war-landmines-idUSKBN...

>2022: President of the United States Joe Biden reverses the policy of his predecessor, Trump, and continues disarmament, saying that the United States will not produce or acquire anti-personnel mines, will not support any other country in its use of these mines, and commits to destroying all existing anti-personnel mines in its possession (excluding those on the Korean Peninsula).

>Biden administration commits to limiting use of land mines:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/21/biden-land-mines-tr...

"Sorry, having morals is partisan and since they were there first I am against acting morally."

Remember, these are the same brilliant moral "leaders" who murdered their own base en masse just to own the libs, by telling them not to listen to what medical professionals were telling them to do, not to wear masks, not to get vaccinated, not to self isolate, but instead to inject disinfectant into their veins, shove ultraviolet flashlights up their wazoos, eat horse dewormer pills, then mount a violent insurrection by storming the US Capitol. Leaders who don't believe in evolution or science or medicine or empathy, but are actively reducing the gene pool of people stupid enough to follow them. Not to mention stealing classified documents and dining with white supremacists. So yes, a lot of blame rests on the political side.

More Republicans Died Than Democrats after COVID-19 Vaccines Came Out:

https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2022/11/more-republicans-died-...

Thank you. That matches with my own understanding better than "usa doesn't practically use or procure mines " from previous posts.

Senators > Generals.

The Senate has a lot of power and is insulated from the electorate in such a way as an issue like this is not a threat to them. For whatever reason, the leaders who control what makes it to the Senate floor did not send it there.

They own that - it’s their call.

It's not their call. A President has to sign a treaty for it to go to the Senate, and no US President has ever signed the land mine ban treaty.

Not when there is a war - generals can and likely will shoot senators. US generals are patriotic enough to not kill US senators, but foreign generals that the US might be fighting in the future will target senators.

A reality check history reminder: a certain US President sent a mob of raving mad racist violent lunatics to storm the US Capitol and assassinate the US Vice President and US Senators, in a failed attempt to overturn the results of the election that he lost.

Remember the gallows that Trump's mob built and chanted "Hang Mike Pence"?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/jan-6-gallows...

And how Trump reacted approvingly?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/us/politics/trump-pence-j...

The same US President who eased the restrictions on land mines.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-war-landmines-idUSKBN...

This is a comment out of a fantasy world.

That is how WWI started. It wasn't a US politician, politicians are targeted at times.

This isn’t Guatemala. LARPing maga types may have fantasies about this, but don’t have the ability to execute and follow through.

Unless some god has told you the world will end tommorow, you have no idea what the future will bring. Over the next 1000 years things will change and we have no clue what (again, except of course if the world ends).

3 presidents have already been shot (that I remember). while the secret service is getting better, it wouldn't be hard for someone who wanted to get the next one. Senators are even easier.

Is this a case of “If you pressure others to not use mines, you cannot sell them mines afterwards”?

Yes.

The US also has a voluntary ban on any submunitions with a greater than 1% dud rate. This forced the destruction of quite a bit of ordinance such as MLRS rockets with cluster warheads, huge stockpiles of 155 mm DPICM, etc. There's no question these weapons are devastatingly effective on the battlefield, but the US doesn't want to own the horrific aftermath.

So yeah, this is one area where the US is actually setting a good standard.

Also you see this pattern with quite a few similar treaties, where the US kinda wants to have its cake and eat it too, by not actually signing the treaty but adopting a similar or better standard voluntarily.

It's ok if we kill a hundred thousand Iraqis, we just have to use bullets to do it.

We dont like to be remembered of the War on Terror.

See we're fundamentally nice folks who make well meaning mistakes. So when we get out of a quagmire we should be immediately absolved of all culpability.

Unlike those dirty <insert rival country>. They're fundamentally evil and we should remember all their sins going back centuries.

There is a big difference between anti vecicle and anti personal mines.

First, they are way easier to detect, as they are bigger and have more metal/explosives to spot.

Also the risk is minimized for the people clearing those mines, if they know they only have to deal with the big ones.

Secondly, it is easier and more practical to mark a field as not save for big vecicles for some time, compared to unsafe for everyone. (schoolbuses usually don't drive through fields)

So yeah, ideally we would not have any kind of mines or war, but we do. And when you want to stop lots of russian tanks for example, I totally would use anti tank mines.

They just won't cripple random children, like the anti person mines will do. And you can clear them out quite easily and safe with just a metal detector and a minimum of training.

But if you have a field with both types of mines, yeah than it is really expensive and dangerous to clear it. And I am amazed by the concept of using rats for help.

And about the self destroying mines - if they would always work like this, it is indeed a big improvement. The concept that they only can go off as long as the battery has power, sounds quite failproof. I remain sceptical though.

> All US landmines now self-destruct in two days or less, in most cases four hours.

Supremely commendable, but it does seem remarkably short windows. I do wonder what troops on the ground, in 'busy', and highly stategic defensive positions, feel about having to re-lay the same mines every two days, let alone four hours: surely the enemy could take severe advantage?

You lay those mines with an aircraft or missile, I'd suspect.

It's like a sleeping cluster bomb - one of the worst (in terms of humanitarian problems) antipersonal mines out there, the Russian PFM-1 butterfly mine [0] is a cluster munition that simply floats to the ground and stays there.

The PFM-1 also has a deactivation mechanism but it didn't work well enough in practice.

Deactivation mechanisms are one thing but what the explosives do over time is a big deal, even if the trigger/fuze is guaranteed to be inert after a short time.

Explosives can be like mayonnaise, they can separate after a while, forming sensitive mixtures, making the 'inert' mine suddenly dangerous again.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1_mine

> Explosives can be like mayonnaise, they can separate after a while, forming sensitive mixtures, making the 'inert' mine suddenly dangerous again.

In the 1970s, there was a Friedkin movie, that used this as a plot point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_(film)

I'd imagine that this simply means that the DoD expects to use them tactically as opposed to strategically in the field

Right but if enemy takes the terrain do you really want it to be "clear" off mines in a day or two coz they self-detonated ?

If the mines are known about, and prevent a location from being used for 2 days, I'd argue that they've done some job of area denial.

If someone is sitting next to the minefield waiting for mines to expire, they're not doing as many other soldier-y tasks like shooting people.

It’s common to update treaties over time and to limit their scope to increase adoption. Failing to ban anti vehicle mines is no more relevant than the Ottawa Treaty failing to limit CO2 emissions.

Sadly, the Ottawa Treaty is a meaningless bit of political theater. Precisely zero of the major mine producers & users (US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, nearly the entire Middle East, etc) have signed up, and many of those that did, particularly in Eastern Europe, are having second thoughts after seeing what's happening in Ukraine (a signatory).

The main issue is that by nature, the convention only "punishes" responsible actors: it weakens the country that keeps its mines safely in a warehouse and has plans to deploy them within hours in clearly defined and well mapped minefields to defend its borders, and does nothing to prevent others from indiscrimately spraying plastic landmines that look like fun toys [1] from helicopters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1_mine

> Sadly, the Ottawa Treaty is a meaningless bit of political theater. [...] The main issue is that by nature, the convention only "punishes" responsible actors

Calling it "theatre" seems unnecessarily cynical. Couldn't you say the same about any legal/treaty constraints on state violence? E.g the Geneva Conventions or the Chemical Weapons Convention? Do you really think that all such agreements are futile?

Yes, irresponsible actors are not going to abide by by a landmine (or CW) ban, and yes there was an element of self-interest in creating them, but also I think a real recognition of the unnecessary suffering that they cause to civilians. I think thats something worth being a bit proud of.

Pretty much everybody has signed up to Geneva Conventions and the Chemical Weapons Convention, so while not quite perfect, they're effective. For example, it's virtually impossible to buy chemical weapons, you need to DIY.

But when the Ottawa Treaty was being negotiated, the big boys made it very clear from the outset that they would not accept the terms, so it's been a dead letter since day one.

Let political realities not interfer with my utopian vision. Mines prevent more slaughter by a belarussian invasion right now. The truth is, all those dictatorships with operett emperors out there, are super fragile and will lean into external conflict as soon as internal strife boils over. And if you dont want a world armed to the teeth with nukes, you will have borders like the north south korea ones, were mines prevent these failing societies from becoming clinging boxers.

A nightmare? Yes, see it every morning in the mirror. Reality is pain, accepting real human nature and its limitations, learning to embrace this, turns one into a grown up adult.

Your discusson spam of a world made for unicorns is not helping anyone.

I do think it's symmetrical that, if we use senators to clear land mines, we should use rats to ratify the convention.

I see what you did there

Maybe we should use internet commenters who refuse to learn about a topic before casually suggesting we murder people over it?

I resent your assumption that only US senators should do mine hunting. Surely politicians everywhere of whatever stripe are good enough for this job?

PBS Newshour also did a segment on this a while back if you prefer video: https://www.pbs.org/video/how-giant-african-rats-are-finding...

Slightly OT, but there's a great podcast about the era when these landmines were laid, In The Shadows of Utopia: https://www.shadowsofutopia.com/ The presenter takes the time to give a lot of historical context before getting into the Khmer Rouge etc. It's been a real education for me.

This is a serious question:

In a place like the DMZ, are mines really immoral? Are land mines universally immoral? Anymore than any other weapon of war? Does this immorality extend to naval as opposed to land mines?

No one is walking freely in the DMZ. Certainly not children. If land mines are effective (US generals say no, but they don't win too many wars.) they raise the cost of attack almost for free.

This stabilizes the situation avoiding what would be a devastating war.

Some object that a war that gets rid of the North Korean regime is necessary and not to be avoided. I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but point out that I chose the DMZ merely as a widely known dangerous example. The example can be changed to any border dispute between two "dangerous" countries (say India and Pakistan).

Nor can the "indiscriminate nature" save the argument. A cluster bomb thrown into a city is indiscriminate and a terrible thing. But the immoral act is deploying the weapon where it acts without discretion. This is no different from carpet bombing city a la WW2.

So the question remains: why are land mines malum in se? And how are the uniquely evil compared to any other weapon of war? [1]

[1] Im not being facetious. I believe there are inherently evil weapons, chemical or biological ones come to mind, while other weapons have, if not a nobility to them, are not inherently evil: the rifle.

But this easy to answer. In a war -- as annoying as they are -- the idea generally is to kill precisely the enemy and avoid killing civilians. Once the military is eliminated, then the country surrenders and the war is over.

This is obviously NOT how it really works in practice.

But this is why carpet bombing, phosphor, mines and so on are not precise and deliberate but indiscriminate. Mines particularly persist long after wars, killing people who have presumably made peace or people who were not even involved in the war.

So immoral? Definitely if a mine kills you or someone you know while on a relaxing vacation 40 years after it was planted -- it feels immoral. So immoral? I think so.

Your example of the DMZ is not well chosen. Lots of innocent civilians try to defect across it to South Korea. Killing them with randomly planted mines seems immoral, unless you would like immediate execution of all defectors. Which I find immoral, personally.

> while on a relaxing vacation 40 years after it was planted

Maybe we need an international treaty on maximum lifetimes for things like landmines. After 10 years they deactivate. That way if the war continues you need to re-plant but at least you have a well-defined lifetime for when an area is safe after a war.

If these were digital devices it would be fairly simple to accomplish, but I suspect a lot of these are far more primitive. How hard would it be to add an expiry that for example was accurate enough to fail reliably between 9 and 10 years after deployment?

I think this is less about the casualties of war itself, but the effects of when trying to move on after the war.

If people die due to landmines many years after a ceasefire are they a casualty of the war?

I think landmines represent a physical device that artifically extends the destruction of war in a time that is way after the parties may have agreed to peace. In that sense, the landmine inflicts death on people with no agency. A bomb dropped on a someone has intent and an army responsible for it. A landmine planted decades ago is so divorced from its original intent that any resulting death or injury feels random and injust.

War has many generational effects.

Russia still has periodic fertility gaps from WW2. In Paraguay blond, blue eyed, natives who only speak Guarani are witnesses of the Triple Alliance's widespread rape (150 years ago?). Europe is littered with unexploded ordinance

A landmime is not a pleasant thing to leave behind. But if deployed strategically (not scattered everywhere as a terror weapon), and if it can avoid a war its not obvious to me that the generational effects aren't the least evil.

This may be a poor analogy:

Imagine, during a war, a missile that has been set to target a city. The casualties will be many, and random, and innocent, but this is wartime and horrible things happen.

Now, imagine that this missile is set to target the city, but will launch at a random time in the future. The missile may launch during the war, or many years after.

Now it's obvious to me that the missile that lauches at the random point in the future is more evil than the one fired immediately.

It's a poor analogy, but the random missile is how I view landmines.

Cant reply to jai's missile comment:

Targeting cities is already a war crime regardless the weapon.

Nor am I arguing that laying landmines everywhere is not immoral. Certainly not landmines in a city.

Im arguing that a concentrated land mine field across a small strategic piece of land (say a mountain passage, the DMZ) can be militarily effective and therefore help avoid war.

Does this then change the moral calculus of land mines?

Land mines persist long after the wars have ended, quietly waiting to maim the innocent.

Ok, thats a strong argument. But, Im not convinced.

For starters, if we assume humans have the ability to solve conflicts like the DMZ we should be able to put a structure in place to prohibit people from going to old mine fields. That is, fundamentally, the basis of nuclear waste storage: the belief that society can create a future political structure to keep humans out of a dangerous place. (I doubt that we can, so Im opposed to nuclear power, and I'll grant that it follows that this is an argument against mines.)

Im not arguing that land mines should be used liberally over large swaths of land. The DMZ is a narrow strip of land. If the Korean dispute ever ends (I have my doubts), it can be made into a nature preserve. Or it can be carefully de-mined over centuries like Europe has been since the wars. Continental Europeans have lived and worked around unstable explosives for over 100 years.

And, as long lasting as land mines are, its not obvious to me that our conflicts can not outlast them (!! I do have faith in our obstinacy). The Korean war is 70 years old, the DMZ is not a dry desert (some border regions are, however). Eventually the materials will crumble and nature will take over.

Finally, the basic question remains unanswered: are the (relatively rare) loss of life and limbs of innocents over decades or centuries worse that a war like the one that would break out between the Koreas? That's not obvious to me.

> Finally, the basic question remains unanswered: are the (relatively rare) loss of life and limbs of innocents over decades or centuries worse that a war like the one that would break out between the Koreas? That's not obvious to me.

That is a false dichotomy. There are choices between "all-out war" and "decades of needless innocent casualties," and pretending otherwise does your argument no favors.

Its not a false dichotomy because, so far, no one has argued against my argument that landmines can increase the cost of war and therefore help avoid it. The argument has been implicitly accepted.

Attack the argument, reject it, and then argue for the third way. Or argue that war is a blast.

However, Ill accept no citations from a US general or RAND corp. Itd be the "appeal to authority" fallacy and they've lost too many wars to claim expertise. You're free to restate their arguments though.

Would it be feasible for an advanced military to field remotely-deactivatable mines that could be killed after the conflict?

Itd be theoretically easy too [1] . Put a dead man switch on them. If a landmine doesn't receive a "keep alive" signal at a predetermined, known skipping frequency then self destruct.

Or use a timer and re-lay them periodically.

[1] famous last words. In reality these things don't work and landmines are a terrible legacy of conflict.

They should use AI driven mini robots that go around and blow up mines.

They should develop smart plants with a distributed root system, an overabundance of shoots, a preference for seeking mines, and a high threshold for shoot pain.

This would also prepare us with countermeasure systems control for when the AI tries to take over.

Smart plants that turn red when their roots reach explosives have been around for close to twenty years.

Why have they not succeeded? Near as I can tell the Danish company that launched them experienced huge pushback because they were GMO's and this was the height of anti-GMO hysteria in Europe. The charities that would fund distribution wanted nothing to do with GMO plants - even if they saved lives.

I found one study that said the rats were more cost effective. The seeds had to be flown over the field and a great number of them refused to germinate.

Years later grass started being seeded with a moist paper mulch that contained a small amount of fertilizer. Would it work with these seeds? Far as I can tell the Danish company abandoned development of the product.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plants_that_change_c...

That is incredible. In the literal sense of the word, I thought you were joking until I was halfway through your post.

Do you have any more links? I'd love to learn more.

What happens when the smart plants with a high tolerance for pain start taking over?

Any reason we wouldn't expect these to become invasive?

The rats are already mini, and have real intelligence unlike AI does. They also reproduce cheap.

Mines are cheap and numerous, and anything that deals woth them had to be cheap

rats take ages to train and that process is not cheap.

drones + ground penetrating radar + computer vision + machine learning is a viable option.

so, you are indirectly saying intelligent creature are cheaper than machine which uses AI ....

I am directly saying it, I can buy a rat for $10

Yes, let’s work on a solution that’s super expensive while and not known to actually work while we ignore cheaper solutions that may actually be affordable.

What would the advantage of that be? Sounds over-engineered & prohibitively expensive - this works today & scales.

In addition to mine clearance, APOPO also train rats to sniff out tuberculosis in samples: https://apopo.org/what-we-do/detecting-tuberculosis/how-we-d...

I translated a talk about these rats once. Interestingly, they are also used to sniff out tuberculosis in people, or at least were a few years ago. :)

My preyer are with those brave rats who died for the peace of mankind.

From the article:

> While large for rats, they are weightless for the land mines and can walk safely across a live minefield.

Wonder if other nations that have a high amount of land mines would adopt the same program?

A bonus is how rats are more disposal than dogs.

And cost less to the organizations raising and training them.

This being on the front page at the same time as "The Army tried to develop a missile guided by pigeons" is...interesting [0]. Looks like militaries are having fun using animals for warfare.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33779361

Two words: Bat bomb.

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

If you think that’s wild you should hear what the cavalry used to do with horses (and sometimes still do).

It’s not just the military, the rats here are used by APOPO [0] a non-profit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO

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