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Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."
This would likely be used for already existing minefields. Afghanistan is the most mined country in the world, and cleanup efforts are very tedious. I think that is the market for this product.
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Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.
The largest problem with land mines is that there are so many in areas where there is no longer any kind of combat - kids or other civilians go in the fields and lose life and limb. This helps with that. We're talking WW2 era stuff here.
Modern warfare by insurgents is ALREADY past mines, since they don't have an endless amount of money to spend - they already place explosives and use remote detonators when troops come by.
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Also useful in Southeast Asian countries, where cleanup is all but ignored by local government, and the practical cost of disposal is roughly 1 human appendage per mine.
The biggest danger with mines is not that they explode - it's that no one really knows where the mines are, and that they are often right around civilian areas.
Your two scenarios would actually both be a vast improvement over the current situation.
In the first instance, you just have to get one little corner to detonate, and the entire field should go off. At that point, de-mining via artillery-shelling will actually work. If you meant to say that the mine fields are going to be much denser, great as well - you can actually employ large-scale de-mining equipment and have it be more cost-efficient than the hand-demining.
In the second instance, people sitting at a remote trigger actually make the mine safer: it means that there are less mines to go around (detonators are scarce, mines are not), someone knows where the mine is and it won't randomly go off when a kid decides to play catch in the field.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
No, you're right -- it is a very good idea.
The problem is, all these critics are a teeny bit right when they say it's not going to work. Alas.
Not so very many years ago, there was an initiative to grow flowers whose petals turn red if they hit a mine. A lot more practical than bacteria, and it seemed to work very well, too -- but they got booted out of that African country they were testing in rather rough-handedly. It's a sad tale, but the fact is there are more warmongers than do-gooders and these things are immensely difficult to see to fruition.
I do wish them luck, though.
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Why is this parent modded 'funny' ? In Eastern and African countries little kids *are* actually being used to detect mines: by blowing them up, and losing their arms, legs, or lives... I do not see what's so funny about that at all...
I don't think this invention is being touted as a militarily useful tool. It's intended to help with the cleanup of the bazillions of mines that are still hidden in many many parts of the world where fighting has long since stopped, but the mines still remain behind.
If the US military needs a path through a suspected minefield, they're not going to spray this stuff, wait a few hours, then send some soldiers out to individually dig up all the green spots. They've got machines that are basically giant armored bulldozers that they can use to cut a straight path through. They also have trucks that basically fire a chain of explosives that clear out a straight path. But it's not feasible to use these techniques for large scale clean up because there's too much ground to cover, and it's a very destructive process.
So you're probably right that if someone was laying down a minefield this afternoon they could find some fairly easy ways to counter this bacteria. Fortunately, I don't think anyone is going to spend the time and expense to spray explosive residue around a bunch of mines that were buried in WW2
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Exactly. They have the logic backwards. What if an area didn't get covered in spraying? So that area would be "dark" and they think it's safe? Yikes, that's a false negative. They need to reverse it to avoid that false negative.
If the bacteria only glow WITHOUT the presence of landmine. That way, at best you get false positives which is less dangerous than a false negative, in this situation.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Any other genius thoughts you'd like to share with us? Like how it's easy to sink a battleship, all you have to do is make a hole the right size in the right place.
Seriously, do you think military engineers haven't worked out how to set mines so that 300 mines cause more than one casualty? If one man set off an entire minefield it would hardly be worth getting your spade dirty planting them, would it? You'd do more harm to the enemy throwing the bastard things at them.
You're not an armchair general. You aren't even a moron. You're an armchair moron.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."