Article on WW I France "Zone Rouge" area as of a few years back

[Lex Luthier]

The epic thread drift in the Revolver forum made me think about the repercussions of a devastating event on a country's ability to grow and change.

Linked below is an article on the devastated areas of WW I France from the Firearms Blog from 2015, with links to another article from the general interest site "MessyNessyChic.com".

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...ance-from-wwi/

Imagine having maybe 5-10% of your country *that was productive for a thousand years* suddenly be made so dangerous that it is now uninhabitable and unusable for a century or more. And that 60% of the male population aged 18 to 45 was either killed or permanently maimed in a four year period. Astonishing.

[revchuck38]

Imagine having maybe 5-10% of your country *that was productive for a thousand years* suddenly be made so dangerous that it is now uninhabitable and unusable for a century or more. And that 60% of the male population aged 18 to 45 was either killed or permanently maimed in a four year period. Astonishing.

And then doing pretty much the same thing about 25 years later...

[Caballoflaco]

Hey, looks like they found some of those surplus French rifles somebody was asking about in the other thread.....(each of those rifles more than likely represents someone wounded or killed in action)



On a less snarky note. I remember seeing that when it came out and despite the photos I still can’t really wrap my head around that level of destruction. It’d be a hell of a thing to get killed by a 100 year old mustard gas shell, but it’s still happening to this day over there.

[Welder]

The linked article links a much larger article with lots of pictures, well worth reading. I spent part of a day last month touring the Wilderness and Chancellorsville battlefields. It's a strange feeling standing in the old trenches and wondering what's under your feet.

[Hambo]

"Zone completelydevastated." That's the kind of language you'd expect to be used in reference to Chernobyl.

[Lex Luthier]

Hey, looks like they found some of those surplus French rifles somebody was asking about in the other thread.....(each of those rifles more than likely represents someone wounded or killed in action)

Yep. (the sarcasm emits a fine reflection. /Chapeau.)

On a less snarky note. I remember seeing that when it came out and despite the photos I still can’t really wrap my head around that level of destruction. It’d be a hell of a thing to get killed by a 100 year old mustard gas shell, but it’s still happening to this day over there.

Yep again. Every few years, I read of a new bit of trench or a previously unmapped dugout being unearthed, still full of it's former inhabitants and all of their gear.
The linked messynessychic article noted that at current rates of recovery, the French authorities responsible for the efforts still have between 200 and 700 years worth of cleanup work. That is an awful lot of ordnance and corpses, N'est-ce Pas?

[mtnbkr]

The linked article links a much larger article with lots of pictures, well worth reading. I spent part of a day last month touring the Wilderness and Chancellorsville battlefields. It's a strange feeling standing in the old trenches and wondering what's under your feet.

Yup. I've visited Shiloh and Manassas/Bull Run (20 years living in Manassas and a lot of hiking around that one) and got the same feeling.

Chris

[RevolverRob]

still have between 200 and 700 years worth of cleanup work. That is an awful lot of ordnance and corpses, N'est-ce Pas?

The scale is intense - Or rather maybe the scale was small, but the volume was intense. ~40 million casualties in WW1 (remember casualty means both KIA and WIA) 13 million of those occurred in the Western Front alone. The front was 700km long, just about 435 miles. Which for folks trying to scale that, basically the entire Western Front was the size of the flaccid dong portion of Florida (length and width, a bit deeper in places, but not much). Put ~30 million people there and then slaughter 6 million of them and permanently maim another 7 million.

And that was the Western Front.

And France is kind of good at telling people about this and reporting the findings, etc. Can you imagine how much isn't reported about the Eastern Front?

[Lester Polfus]

It is always good to fight wars in other countries vs your own. See also dioxins and UXO in Vietnam.

[Hambo]

The linked messynessychic article noted that at current rates of recovery, the French authorities responsible for the efforts still have between 200 and 700 years worth of cleanup work. That is an awful lot of ordnance and corpses, N'est-ce Pas?

Mercury that will last 10,000 years and areas where 99% or plants and animals die, and no medical studies or tracking of people in the area. Radiation levels in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are almost indistinguishable from normal trace amounts, and there were medical studies.