• moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com
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    4 hours ago

    After we’re gone, subsequent species will discover a mustard gas cylinder, and think it’s some advanced sign of civilization.

    Then it’ll go off and they’ll hate us as much as we hate ourselves.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        Archeology in the distant future will be metal. Literally and figuratively.

        One might find a mechanical clock, gears seized but maybe still coherent enough to reverse engineer it (though the precise timing we set up might not make much sense to them because the days could be longer, depending on how much time has passed), while another needs to spend great effort to break into a metal tomb only to find it doesn’t contain artifacts from one of our deaths but just causes it to anyone that enters it quickly or anyone who spends time close to artifacts taken from it more slowly.

        And anyone that finds computer parts will probably have no idea what’s going on with them.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    Every year across the nation, Belgium’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Destruction Service responds to more than 3,000 calls and disposes of 200 to 250 tons of munitions left over from both world wars.

    Charlotte Cardoen-Descamps points out different types of World War I shells that were found on her farm in Poelkapelle, Belgium, May 4, 2007, in what is known as the "iron harvest". (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

    That’s a lot.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
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    13 hours ago

    Makes you wonder if dropping them all over the damn place is such a good idea.

  • Mihies@programming.dev
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    12 hours ago

    Yep, this is the usual scenario in Slovenia as well and makes firefighting much more problematic and dangerous than it already is. Luckily we bought a bunch of air tractors to do the job from the above.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      13 hours ago

      Exposed to the air / elements I guess?

      Fueled by climate change, the fires and explosions show that the continent’s “climatic luck” is running out, said Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Steady temperatures and predictable rainfall once ensured that most buried weapons stayed dormant.

      “Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable,” Njeri said. Fires can ignite old munitions but can also burn away the scrub and brush that hides them.

  • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Anyone complains about the fires in North America needs to be sent to fight those. Either they’ll do the job, or the job will do them.

    • auzy1@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Kind of a silly comparison. A lot of the fires in US are because they imported eucalyptus trees from Australia, which have literally evolved to grow oil on their leaves and want to burn.

      That’s why Aussie bushfires are so insane every season too.

      Here in Australia we don’t need unexploded ordinates. Our trees are basically barrels of petrol, and in minor gusts even, firefighters can get overrun by a wall of fire quickly