> And if the latter, why the hell haven't they removed them yet?

Apparently Argentina used plastic land mines (I believe they were new at the time) which are difficult to detect. After the war Argentina gave the British military a map of where they had placed the mines but because the mines had mostly been placed in sandy or swampy terrain many of them had shifted so they’re difficult to locate safely even with a map.

This was maybe the most interesting part of visiting the Islands for me because it’s a very contentious topic among locals. Some want the mines removed (and I was told they are working on that with a specialized company from Africa but it’s apparently a slow, expensive and of course dangerous process). There has been at least one death in the removal process so a lot of the locals feel its better/safer to just leave the mines were they are and things are fine with the clearly marked signs that show which areas of the islands are off limits.

Also, in case you were concerned for the safety of the penguins like me, they don’t weigh enough to trigger the mines so they walk over them all the time without issue.

At first I thought you were saying you were a penguin.

> Also, in case you were concerned for the safety of the penguins like me, they don’t weigh enough to trigger the mines so they walk over them all the time without issue.

Sounds like the perfect setup for penguins then - hard(er) for humans to destroy your nests if they can't safely walk over to them. Sort of like Chernobyl.

Wouldn't cows be a low-tech (although cruel) solution?

I actually asked if they could drop a bunch of bowling balls from planes... like WW2 planes that dropped cannon balls instead of bombs. I was told those types solutions aren’t possible because one explosion could set off several others which then interferes with their carefully plotted (but evidently not particularly useful) map of where the mines are thought to be located.

Supposedly the only way to know with 100% certainty that an area is free of land mines is to remove them individually without detonating them. I guess I understand the logic but I also can’t help but think there has to be a better way that’s both cheaper and doesn’t involve humans risking their lives.

Perhaps one day.

There is - rats have been trained to find landmines with great success https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151006-giant...

https://www.apopo.org/en

This is incredible. (And those rats are massive!) You should submit that National Geographic article to the main page.

Huh, thanks for the suggestion - done!

Seems as though robots would do a much better job. I'm imagining a giant spider that walks into a minefield with its armored body fairly high above the ground. The body very methodically scans, probes, digs, ...whatever works. Its probes sometimes get blown off and are replaced from a quiver. A leg is occasionally blown off, but a spider can keep working without a leg or two. At the end of its shift, it walks out and has its legs fixed. A big hook on its back can be snagged to helicopter it out in case it is immobilized by an uncaught exception.

The day robots beat self-replicating devices is the day we all get retired.

Rotary chain flail mine clearing or MICLICs are rather more humane.

The Falklands are mostly boggy, mostly empty and the spread of mines mostly everywhere.

There were efforts to clear mines after the war, but the nature of mines means that it's best to play safe in the [many] decades after.

There's a reason people have tried to get mines banned - they're a pain in the ass.

> Are theses landmines to keep people on the trail or are they left over from the war in the 80's

The idea that someone would deploy land mines to keep people from straying off of a nature trail is a bit dystopian, no?

/giggle

I did some volunteer trail maintenance over the weekend, and we deployed logs and brush along the side of the trails to provide visual cues to stay on the path and block off “social trails”. The mental image of volunteers/rangers laying mines for this purpose is...quite hilarious.

They don't need to lay mines. They just need to put up signs telling people that there are (hypothetical) land mines.

Um... "just remove the landmines" isn't exactly that simple. It's difficult, slow, dangerous, and expensive work and resources aren't exactly unlimited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demining

>As of 2017, antipersonnel mines are known to contaminate 61 states and suspected in another 10. The most heavily contaminated (with more than 100 square kilometres of minefield each) are Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Iraq, Thailand and Turkey.

>A 2003 RAND Corporation report estimated that there are 45–50 million mines and 100,000 are cleared each year, so at present rates it would take about 500 years to clear them all. Another 1.9 million (19 more years of clearance) are added each year.

>Demining is a dangerous occupation. If a mine is prodded too hard or it is not detected, the deminer can suffer injury or death. The large number of false positives from metal detectors can make deminers tired and careless. According to one report, there is one such incident for every 1000–2000 mines cleared. 35 percent of the accidents occur during mine excavation and 24 percent result from missed mines.

Wow I had no idea the problem was that big. Please someone launch a mine clearing robot startup/charity.

Definitely from the war; and landmines can be difficult to find.