As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Be Warned
January 28, 2004
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
A company in Denmark is developing a flower that changes color when planted near a landmine. They have genetically encoded the plant to react to nitrogen-dioxide (which is emitted by the explosives in the landmine) by turning red.
When I first saw this I immediately wondered just how they would sow the seeds, but the article mentions either clearing a path using conventional methods or using a plane.
Link via Slashdot.
Categories: Technology
It would make sense if they could seed the flowers from an airplane or some sort of launcher that would scatter the seeds over a wide area. But then you have to wait for them to grow and turn colors. If you planted the seeds, then someone planted the mine, I guess it would help to figure out where the thing was.
Knowing where the mine is located doesn’t help you get rid of the thing though… and look at the pretty yellow and red flowers!! Let’s pick some! – since no one explained why some are red and some are yellow….
Yeah, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how effective this would be.
I think they were aiming for the areas where people know there are mine fields leftover from long-ago wars. If these flowers were reliable (i.e. no false negatives), then they could be used as a rough indicator for where the disposal teams could start looking (keeping them from wasting their time poking their way slowly across the whole field).
If you know its a minefield, why would you go out into it, without clearing it, and plant flowers – risking being blown up? The latest large area clearing machine is a tank hull with a large rotating arm that beats the ground with chains, called a flail, figured out in World War 2. Bosnia used that, they also burned fields to expose mines in the brush. The last resort is using people on mine detectors (not all mines have metal in them) and probing. Not too many mines are removed by hand any more since the anti-handling devices are very dangerous, usually just a block of explosive on top with a fuse and let it blow up there. It an interesting idea, but I am just having some difficulty with the big benefit for all the effort put into it.