Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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> Major annoyance in Germany: If you find a mortar or a hand grenade in your garden. Do not try bring it to the police.

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...

Gosh, [2] there is annoying with the line breaks or perhaps paragraph elements breaking up sentences.

It really hinders my browsers’ built in translation trying to translate these sentence fragments as sentences.

The tl;dr is basically some 51 year old dude had a laaaaarge cache of weapons and other explosives (e.g. from parachute emergency openers), of which some exploded for unknown reasons, firefighters and police showed up and found the remainder of the stash.

Ammunition is generally not an issue, at least not small arms ammunition.

Shells, grenades, and bombs are.

I'm not a native English speaker, in Germany "Munition" also encompasses this kind of stuff.

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.

In the US Munition covers ‘big stuff’. Like tank shells, artillery, grenades, etc.

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.

50 BMG had API rounds, I'm not sure how dangerous those might be today but I wouldn't be eager to risk it. Also it wasn't common, but snipers on both sides of the eastern front did have explosive rounds for their rifles and those can apparently do some damage. Probably enough to take off your hand if one went off.

API rounds are generally pretty innocuous except for some minor fire danger, same with tracers in general. Possible to get burned if someone insists on holding it when it’s going off, I guess.

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...]

Small arms ammunition is a tiny pop if you get it off outside of a gun. Grenades are designed to be dangerous, but small arms ammunition needs a gun barrel otherwise it just pops. The gun barrel confines the charge and forces it to accelerate the bullet to get out. Without a gun barrel the bullet pops of the casing but doesn't have enough energy to be dangerous and then the charge takes the path of least resistance. You can get some nasty burns and lead is still a neurotoxin, but unlikely to do anything more.

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.

> You can get some nasty burns and lead is still a neurotoxin, but unlikely to do anything more.

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_...

Are you one of these persons who like to have cops on their property?

Compared to your prior "Major annoyance" descriptive (for having the police visit), how would you rate being maimed or killed by exploding ordnance?

As unlikely.

I’ll take some police briefly on my property over that gamble any day.

Letting cops on your property is not a gamble to you?

In Germany?

If you hate the cops so much, that's all the more reason to let them deal with the sketchy bombs!

Very few industrial countries where that is a gamble.

Certain DIY things reliably cause questioning or even an investigation by the police despite being legal.

*May depend on race

True. OTOH - I suspect that OD specialist officers, summoned to your property by your "I found something in my garden that looks a lot like that WWII mortar shell in your Call-us-immediately-if-you-see Guide" phone call would be far more benevolently inclined than regular police officers coming to your property for most other reasons.

All alternatives are a gamble. In many cases letting cops supposedly trained in the matter is the least risky gamble - if they are trained as they are supposed to be there is no risk.

If you call them to pick up dangerous material, in Germany? No. Plus, if you have neighbours, it's not only about you anymore.

Your funeral. Quite literally.

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.

> If you grew up in the US

Yeah which isn't the case.

feel free to add "or any other country where that is the case" at the appropriate place in my comment so that it applies to you, if you need to be spoonfed.

Hey, you may have not intended it, but your response comes across with a bit of a condescending tone. Please help promote HN as a place for continued civil discourse.

Thank you for pointing that out. Too late to edit, unfortunately. What response would you have given to the comment I replied to?

I’m not sure what they meant, so tbh I probably just wouldn’t have replied. You made a good point that for someone in the US (or any other country that hasn’t experienced modern war), unexploded ordinance isn’t even on their risk radar, despite the US being a major contributor to the problem. It’s unfortunate how many people continue to face that reality.

The argument relies on the insinuation i would not live in an affected area. Right now from where i sit i can see a rubble pile from USAAF/RAF bombings.

I despise cops as an institution, but I'd rather have someone actually trained and especially equipped deal with that mess than risking to blow myself up.

The level of PPE and training required to safely dispose of explosives far surpass what I can afford financially.

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