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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

France has a much worse disposal problem. They're still cleaning up unexploded WWI artillery shells. That's been going on steadily for a century, and there are still large keep-out zones. Estimated completion in another century.

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I'm pretty sure if you've seen figures in the 100 year range, that's something that was largely aspirational, put out after the 100 year anniversary of the armistice. Some of the experts in France still say over 500 years at the current rate of remediation.

I wonder how F up Ukraine is going to be in the future. I know that the thousands of kilometers of drone fiber wire is probably going to be a problem, but are there other horrible things to be wary of? (mine I assume?)

Oh yeah, definitely mines: both sides are mining heavily, including using air dispersed mines whose final position is impossible to record accurately. Both sides also use cluster bombs which are like air dispersed mines but more prone to become duds and look somewhat like toys.

In France and Belgium it is common for farmers in the area of former battle of WWI to collect unexploded ordinance while ploughing in autumn. Sometimes the bombs have been dropped and not exploded. Sometimes it is an old stock along the line that was not used as the line moved.

Here in the states, the main WWI issues are stockpiles of chemical weapons that were buried and then forgotten about. They pop up from time to time, and we've only recently started cleaning them up. Ironically, the ones that were stored somewhat deliberately with safety in mind end up being some of the worst to dispose of, because the poorly-stored ones can be largely thrown into a blast-resistant washing machine, popped open with a small charge, and then scrubbed with all sorts of fun chemicals to neutralize the toxins.

Fun fact: One of the best analogs available for phosgene that's been sitting in cold water for a hundred years is Wintergreen DOTS candy, if you can keep the engineers and military brass from eating all of them.

Surely, these rouge zones can be turned back into useable areas- after the bombs are defused. If there was lots of lead, then the produce from those areas would be poisonous though..

Lead, mercury, arsenic... Some places will never be settled again.

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

(to top that some ammo dumps were simply dumped in holes in the ground at the end of the war and are slowly diffusing there toxic compounds via under ground rivers)

How do we as a species communicate for the next ten thousand years, that these places are poisoned and dangerous? The answer- statues of Goatse..

You may be riffing on it already, but for those who aren't familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin... ("this is not a place of honor" has already become a meme that has escaped containment)

That's an easier problem. The conclusion for the Onkalo nuclear fuel repository was, once it's filled and sealed, not to mark it at all. A marker would create attention, and any future society capable of mining deep enough to get in would probably know about radioactivity.

Here's the sign at the SL-1 site, which is not a deep burial.[2]

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SL-1Burial.jpg

Same with parts of Germany, there are signs along the side of the road telling you not to stray from the road. Most recently it's affected firefighters fighting forest fires where the forest is full of UXO.

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