From what I've heard from my Vietnamese colleagues the situation there is similar.
https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/909216/a5448dd84ac14a...
and
"In Berlin alone, 1.8 million pieces of ordnance have been defused between 1947 and 2018."
and many other European countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_bomb_disposal_in_...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/05/26/the-real-no-go-zon...
Well they didnt go off when they were supposed to and haven't gone off in 80 years -> there's a good chance there's something about them preventing them from going off.
The main danger is that disturbing them could remove the inhibitor. Also, age can make them unstable.
This is why we blissfully ignore the known unknown bombs that are everywhere in Europe but are extremely careful when we discover and try to remove one.
Leave it in place and call them.
That's not an annoyance, that's common sense.
I mean, I get it, it's not like in Croatia or Bosnia where every child ever since the 90s wars gets "the talk" not about condoms but about "this is how ammunition looks like, and remember that the enemy also placed mines in everyday waste like cola cans or in children toys, DO NOT pick up random stuff you find while playing and stay THE FUCK out of fields and forests marked with 'Pažnja mine' signs"... but hey even in Germany everyone should know that picking up ammunition is one of the dumbest ways to off yourself.
The only ones actually dumb enough to do that are people harvesting leftover ordnance for its explosives or to sell it on to "memorabilia" collectors [1], and headlines like [2] are routine whenever one of these collectors/harvesters either mishandles one of the items or they go off on their own.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWWGdxhSsS4
[2] https://www.rheinische-anzeigenblaetter.de/rhein-sieg/c-blau...
It really hinders my browsers’ built in translation trying to translate these sentence fragments as sentences.
Shells, grenades, and bombs are.
Besides you should not deal with "small arms" ammunition either, the explosive charges are no joke either and can seriously hurt you if you manage to accidentally ignite them, additionally lead is an issue.
That doesn't mean I'd pick up small ammo in the field. If it is there there is probably something more around it - grenades, land mines, bombs, explosive artillery shells and so on - all of which can explode and be deadly.
Yeah but I was talking about children here, the ones most likely to end up playing around with stray ammo, ordnance and IEDs.
Children can be pretty ... let's call it "innovative" or "experimental" in playing (up to and including improvising guns out of pipes), and it's best to teach them that all kinds of stuff associated with weapons should be left very well alone and that they should call in their parents or the police directly if they discover such items. I do not expect a child to be able to make a qualified decision if that's "just" a relatively harmless 9mm round or some sniper munition with a serious explosive charge.
Maybe at age 16 or whatnot, the kids get a real gun safety talk and what they can, should and absolutely should not do, but until that all ammo should be considered unsafe to touch, much less play.
For reference, I'm half-Croat half German, I got the "don't play with shit" talk, I reasonably know how to deal with guns and I know of more than just one road in the backwaters of Croatia where almost three decades after the war, there are "warning, mines" signs plastered alongside the fields. In 2022, a Redditor created a very illustrative map, a lot of areas are still marked as "suspected mines" [2]. The fighting back in the 90s was very extensive, the only places it didn't hit are the northwest and Istria. And even what has been nominally cleaned up isn't safe for children either, there are a lot of farms, sheds and underground ammo caches from the army where children can pick up instruments of war.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/vt39zf/minefields_...
Small arms ammunition doesn’t have explosive charges? (20mm is about the smallest ammunition that does, with exceptionally rare exceptions, and that is generally considered ‘cannon’ ammunition, not small arms).
Or do you mean primers? If so, those are exceptionally unlikely to hurt you or anyone else.
Safety glasses are sufficient protection from literally setting small arms ammunition on fire.
Raufoss/Mk211 50BMG should be more dangerous, but that is pretty modern stuff.
Exploding sniper rounds yeah could be a danger, but I haven’t found much concrete info on them. Being on the eastern front (or in Finland) though, plenty of really nasty stuff mixed in around them probably.
Edit: found something! And damn that does look downright nasty/awesome. [https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t/7-62-x-54r-explosive...]
If you grew up in the US and didn't have the background "pensioner dies after discovering WWII ordinance in field" story every couple of years, it must seem unlikely indeed. But for those who do, they're not as stupid so as to think so.
Yeah which isn't the case.
If you hate the cops so much, that's all the more reason to let them deal with the sketchy bombs!
The level of PPE and training required to safely dispose of explosives far surpass what I can afford financially.
I see it in countries eastward from Germany that from time to time some old fool brings such things to police station (either 'heritage' from previous generations or found in the field), with corresponding panic reaction (its not like your local police station are bunch of old bomb defusal experts).