France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War (2015)

http://www.messynessychic.com/2015/05/26/the-real-no-go-zone-of-france-a-forbidden-no-mans-land-poisoned-by-war/

by ourmandave • 8 years ago

155 54 8 years ago

dang• 8 years ago

Discussed in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9609091.

cletus• 8 years ago

I've just been listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast and it's amazing. I'm listening to Blueprint for Armageddon, which is a 6 part series (3+ hours each!) About the First Works War and it's fascinating and horrifying.

He speaks at length about the Battle of Verdun. And it toss house list of places and battles he's never want to be at.

tenaciousDaniel• 8 years ago

It's the best. I love Dan Carlin.

prawn• 8 years ago

I was a late Carlin convert. For anyone on the fence, give it a shot - his material in Blueprint is rarely over the top, it never feels unduly expanded, etc. He shows it respect, but you can feel his passion for the subject and he makes every detail interesting.

I also enjoyed Celtic Holocaust, which is a more approachable length.

ansible• 8 years ago

Related to this, there is a video series called "The Great War" hosted by Indy Neidell, which covers the war on a week-by-week basis:

http://www.thegreatwar.tv

Clubber4• 8 years ago

Seconded. I've listened to the entire series 2 or three times now. I put it on when I go to sleep. His other stuff is good too. He puts out a lot of material.

sengork• 8 years ago

They say that a photo is worth a thousand words. This is certainly the case with the the last few photos of the landscape how it looked before and after.

Likewise Black Adder series concluded with a similar visual contrast: https://youtu.be/vH3-Gt7mgyM?t=176

zeristor• 8 years ago

Thanks for that

mdturnerphys• 8 years ago

"German researchers found extremely dangerous levels of up to 17% arsenic in the soil"

That seems too high to be true. The page doesn't give the source, but I wonder if something like bioavailability got misinterpreted as composition.

valinor4• 8 years ago

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge) states that "as arsenic can constitute up to 17% of some soil samples" and references "Bausinger, Bonnaire, and Preuß, 2007".

I found this study (https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01267232/document) but I am afraid I don't know how to read the results.

I assume that 17% is the absolute maximum proportion of arsenic ever found in a single small sample.

tom_mellior3• 8 years ago

I don't really know how to read this either, but the number 17 as such does not appear anywhere in that paper. This quote may be relevant: "Concentrations of As vary between 72,820 and 1,937 mg/kg" (page 13).

These commas appear to be thousands separators, so that's a maximum of 73 grams per kilogram or 7% per mass of a soil sample. I'm not a doctor, but I would advise against eating significant amounts of these soil samples.

interfixus• 8 years ago

Swedish historian Peter Englund, writing about French and Belgian WW1 front-zones in the early nineties, claimed that the risk of tetanus-poisoning was still highly elevated if you happened to cut yourself in such a place, and that in damp weather the smell of rot decay was still discernible.

I always found that hard to credit, but the man is otherwise always sober in reporting, so perhaps not.

mstade2• 8 years ago

I’d imagine the smell of decay is taking creative liberties with the truth. Any damp forest will have a certain smell of decay to it, more likely due to the fungus and rotting wood, than the smell of rotting bodies. That said, I’m sure being in the area will amplify this, given the gravitas of the event. I visited Normandy a couple of years ago and seeing the beaches, the American cemetery, the bunkers... it was like a punch to the gut. I’d imagine going to Verdun or Somme has a similar effect, even if you’re only slightly aware of history.

stupidcar• 8 years ago

There's something very sci-fi seeming about the idea of a huge battlefield from a long-ago war, still too contaminated with old poisons and weaponry to safely enter. Which nature has mostly reclaimed, except in dead zones so toxic that not even plants can grow there.

And yet, this is a real thing that happened, and is a part of our past. A generation who very soon will only be ancestors the living participated in battles so destructive that they did this to the land they were fought on. I find that difficult to fathom.

Of course, humans have only gotten better at killing each other since, and WW2 was more destructive overall. But the static nature of the Western front, combined with the unrestrained use of artillery and gas, and the total commitment of manpower on both sides in places like Verdun, gave its battles an apocalyptic intensity that I think is unmatched in any war before or since. And that, hopefully, we won't ever see again.

Clubber4• 8 years ago

It's just not WWI, there are minefields all over the world that still kill people that wander into them.

The only reason WW2 had more combat casualties than WWI is that the USSR decided to defend their country with a meat wall of unprepared soldiers. That generation of Russians had like an 80% casualty rate or something crazy like that. Nearly wiped out an entire generation.

John_KZ• 8 years ago

Let me correct that phrase: One of the main reasons WW2 ended, was because the Russians defended their country fiercely with their lives, and because the communism establishment industrialized Russia enough to produce war munitions and equipment. I hate to see people injecting anti-communist bullshit everywhere, even when it's irrelevant.

The Russians, and the people of the USSR, like all the allied forces, died heroically in the battlefield fighting fascists. Calling them a "meat wall" really fucking grinds my gears as it's extremely insulting and derogatory to the dead.

hh3k0• 8 years ago

The only reason WW2 had more combat casualties than WWI is that the USSR decided to defend their country with a meat wall of unprepared soldiers. That generation of Russians had like an 80% casualty rate or something crazy like that. Nearly wiped out an entire generation.

I read that claim quite often, it's not entirely accurate: "The Buzzfeed claim is overstated, although not by a wide margin. Around two thirds (more exactly, 68%) of the original 1923 male birth cohort did not survive World War II. But the war is not the most important reason for the poor survival rate; almost half of them died before the war broke out."

More: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet...

dmichulke• 8 years ago

Verdun and the 30 years war are to me symbols of what happens if you follow people greedy people with an inflated ego.

In each case, there's were lot of red lines that threatened the "country's honour" (read: the governments credibility), quite a few powerful factions that were to gain of a war and somehow , partly with the help of those factions and those read lines, it all spiraled out of control.

Not unlike what we see today with US (or NATO) vs Russia/Iran/Syria/NK and China to a somewhat lesser extent.

Fradow2• 8 years ago

It's important to keep in mind most of those zones are not a No Man's land anymore. I often go around Lens, Béthune and Arras (family live in that area), and never heard about or seen anything like pictured in the article, except in museums.

People live there, there are farms everywhere, and many, many small cities and villages.

Some forbidden areas might still exists, and I wouldn't be surprised about people finding relics of the war (bunkers ruins are a common sight on the nearby beaches for example), but it's nowhere near as pictured on the map.

philjohn• 8 years ago

Yeah, I spent a summer in Arras 20 odd years ago and don't remember seeing anything either.

ItsMe0000012• 8 years ago

You can't see soil contamination though. The visible scars are the least of the problems.

Until the mid 1970s, much of the “clean-up” was only done superficially, destroying hundreds of thousands of unexplored WWI chemical bombs without considering the leaks and contamination to the soil and water.
Alarming amounts of lead debris scattered by shrapnel were also left in place, contaminating the soil with non biodegradable lead, mercury and zinc likely to remain for at least 10,000 years to come.

In addition, you don't get obviously sick from heavy metals such as mercury or lead unless it's a large enough amount to result in acute poisoning symptoms. It has an effect in the tiniest amounts though, and it bio-accumulates.

Fradow2• 8 years ago

I can see land is actively used for farming, which means it's probably not contamined anymore.

I never saw any of the "forbidden" signs anywhere on the other hand.

Which doesn't mean it's not a thing, I don't pretend to know all the area, it just means it's small enough in size and in remote areas, so that a local don't stumble upon this anymore.

kakwa_4• 8 years ago

I used to live in the area of the Battle of the Somme. Red zones are not common, nearly all the land of the former battlefield is now cultivated.

In fact, after the war, the red zones were quite extensive, but there was an intense lobbying to reopen these lands to agriculture.

In the 20ies, a farmer detonated an unexploded ammunition was not an uncommon occurrence.

Nowadays, this is a really rare event, I think there was a case in Belgium about 10 years ago, but it's quite uncommon.

However, when you dig, you always find something. My mother started a small garden (about 4 x 8 meters) a few years ago and when she worked the soil for the first time, she found various leftovers like shell heads, shell fragments, bullets, lead spheres used in shrapnel rounds, etc.

And it's not uncommon to find unexploded shells on the side of the roads, farmers when they find them, put them on the side of their fields.

When my mother was a child in the 50ies and 60ies, she used to help her parents collect these various metal fragments as it was a way to get a small additional revenue for the family. When we cleaned-up my late grand-father's house, there were buckets full of those in fact. There was also an unpinned unexploded grenade by the way. If I recall correctly, they called the local "garde champetre" to deal with it, and it's still in his attributions to deal with such finds.

However, there are some big ammunition depots in north of France with all these WWI shells collected over the years. And a lot of those shells are still not neutralized.

Also, another interesting side effect is all the cemeteries in the area, the land is literally peppered with them. And these cemeteries are UK territories (In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe). This was actually a blocker for a nearby city (Albert) when they tried to extend their airport, they were blocked by these cemeteries.

tom_mellior3• 8 years ago

However, when you dig, you always find something.

This seems to be something that some British tourists like to do. At Paris Gare du Nord where you board the Eurostar train to London there are signs saying that you are not allowed to bring explosives that you dug up as souvenirs on board a fricking train.

In fact the Thiepval monument is one of the highest structure on UK soil and in continental Europe

What do you mean? Highest in what sense? According to Wikipedia it's 43 meters high, which isn't a lot, so that cannot be what you mean.

kakwa_4• 8 years ago

Yes, that doesn't surprise me that much. Also, there is a tourism industry that has developed around the years. There are a lot of decedents of WWI soldiers coming to see where their ((great-)great)-grand father fought/died 100 years ago, we see people from Australia, New-Zealand, Canada, the UK.

As for the Thiepval monument, I meant one of the tallest building on sovereign UK soil, but outside the British Isles. However, I've heard in a casual conversation, I'm not sure it's actually true. Yet, it's definitely a big memorial monument ^^, you can see it from miles away.

mseidl• 8 years ago

In Germany we find bombs all the time from WW2. They have a specialized team for disarming these. And in the case they can't disarm they blow it up after evacuating from a certain distance.

kakwa_4• 8 years ago

I used to live in Brest which was also heavily bombed during WW2, and it's the same.

Every time they dig to start a new building, they find some exploded bombs. And each time, it's an evacuation of a lot of people in the city center to deal with it (easily a few hundred meters which in a city center means a few thousands people).

However, leftover bombs from WWII are a bit different. They tend to be bigger, hundreds of kilograms where the "typical" shell you find in old WWI battlefields are less than 10 kilograms. Also the problematic is a little different since on one side, it's a medium to big city, on the other it's mostly the countryside.

abakker• 8 years ago

This process of removing shrapnel and munitions from farmland is called the “iron harvest”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest

Someone• 8 years ago

”However, there are some big ammunition depots in north of France with all these WWI shells collected over the years”

Normal shells are fairly easy to dispose of using explosives, so those might be poison gas shells. I know Belgium had an enormous backlog in destroying such shells in Houthulst even as recent as 15 years ago (http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-houthulstn.html), but don’t know what happened with it (at the time, there were talks on the urgency of cleaning it up)

jvkersch• 8 years ago

Related: there are zones off the coast of Belgium and France that have been used as ammunition dumps after the 1st world war. There's one such zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paardenmarkt) that is close to a very busy shipping route and whose existence was forgotten until the 70s, when people realized that they had 10000 tons of unexploded chemical ammunition lying around just off the coast. In practice there's a thick mud layer on top of the dumped ammo which keeps things stable, but if e.g. a ship were to get stranded, this could cause extensive environmental damage...

madeuptempacct• 8 years ago

Pictured above is an artist’s impression of the forsaken territory, originally covering more than 1,200 square kilometres (460 sq miles) in the years following the Great War.

Yea, no, that's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept art.

duskwuff• 8 years ago

The original appears to be a piece called "Fog" by Mac Rebisz:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Dxk4E

It's been commonly used in web pieces about the Zone Rouge, but there doesn't appear to be any real connection. (And some of the details of the piece make no sense in that context, like the unburied corpse in the foreground or the heavily armed figure on the left side.)

anovikov• 8 years ago

In all of Eastern Russia, finding shell fragments, bullets, bayonets, helmets, and human bones is quite common to this day. Almost every place was an area of fighting of executions at some point in the last 100 years.

Countless millions of people were killed - not known even to the million precision - in many wars and terror campaigns there during XX century.

France’s Zone Rouge – A Forbidden No Man’s Land Poisoned by War (2015)

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