Monday, July 02, 2012

1938 - Boom or bust

The headline..


Illinois recycling company finds land mine in trash


The landmine...


Landmine? This looks more like an old WWII anti tank mine. How would I know? I remember the demonstration in basic training. They had one of these with a firecracker fuse out on the stage. The instructor said 'This is why you don't want to run down a road'. 

He stood on top of the mine trigger. Nothing happened. He then went to one side of the stage and ran across hitting the trigger on the way. POP!

He weighed about 180 pounds. But he generated over 400 pounds of force on the ground while running. The mine trigger is typically set for 400 pounds to catch tanks and not people.

Somebody threw this away in the recycle trash. They could have gotten big bucks for this at a military swap meet.


6 comments:

eViL pOp TaRt said...

Couldn't it go off unexpectedly?

Amanda said...

You mean the people that made these were trying to be 'kind' and only kill tank drivers?

Elvis Wearing a Bra on His Head said...

Having that kind of military hardware around can be dangerous if the material in it is unstable.

I'm With Stupid said...

That's a pretty explosive story.

Jay

Mike said...

Angel - Like most WWII momentos it's 'probably' been decommissioned. I have a Japanese anti-aircraft shell. All the explosives have been removed.

Amanda - Exactly, or not. They didn't want to waste an anti-tank mine on some dumb soldier.

Elvis - It 'probably' doesn't have any explosives in it.

Mike said...

Jay - Or it may be just a dud.