How do mines work

More than 40 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed, and assistance has been provided to survivors and populations living in the affected areas. Vast numbers of mined and suspected hazardous areas have been declared free of landmines and released for productive use.

As a result of these efforts, the number of casualties has sharply declined. Other welcome trends include: increases in national capacity to manage complex mine action programmes; the great progress in framing victim assistance in the wider context of disability; and the development of improved risk-reduction tools.

The Mine Ban Convention has been a central framework for States in conducting mine action activities that led to all these remarkable achievements.

However, well over 10 million stockpiled mines await destruction. Massive tracts of land are still infested and thus too dangerous for productive use. Mines are typically placed in the ground by hand, but there are also mechanical minelayers that can plow the earth and drop and bury mines at specific intervals. An army also will use landmines to slow an enemy until reinforcements can arrive.

The basic function of both of these types of landmines is the same, but there are a couple of key differences between them. Anti-tank mines are typically larger and contain several times more explosive material than anti-personnel mines. There is enough explosive in an anti-tank mine to destroy a tank or truck, as well as kill people in or around the vehicle.

Additionally, more pressure is usually required for an anti-tank mine to detonate. Most of these mines are found on roads, bridges and large clearances where tanks may travel. In the next two sections, you will get a closer look at a few landmines and the parts that make them work.

Anti-personnel landmines are designed specifically to reroute or push back foot soldiers from a given geographic area. These mines can kill or disable their victims, and are activated by pressure, tripwire or remote detonation.

There are also smart mines , which automatically deactivate themselves after a certain amount of time. These are the most common types of mines currently used by the U. There are several-hundred different kinds of anti-personnel mines in use by many countries. For the purposes of this article, we have chosen two landmines developed by the United States military that demonstrate the varying characteristics of landmines. The first landmine, the M14 , is a pressure-operated blast mine.

The M14 is a small, cylindrical, plastic-bodied blast mine. It is just 1. It was originally developed and used by the United States in the s, but it has been used and copied by many nations around the world. This particular anti-personnel mine contains only a small amount of explosive, about 31 grams of Tetryl. It is designed to cause damage to people and objects in close proximity to it. The M14 is initially equipped with a U-shaped safety clip , which is fitted around the pressure plate.

In order to activate the M14, the safety clip is removed and the pressure plate is rotated from its safety position to its armed position. The letters A armed and S safety are embossed on the pressure plate. Soldiers simply align an arrow with the A to arm the mine. Once it is armed, any pressure of at least When the proper amount of pressure is applied it pushes down on the Belleville spring underneath the pressure plate. This spring pushes the firing pin down on to the detonator , which ignites the main charge of Tetryl explosive.

Bounding mines fire up out of the ground and then explode. The M16 is made of three main parts: a mine fuse , a propelling charge to lift the mine and a projectile contained in a cast-iron housing. It is 7. The M16 mine contains about 1. The fuse extends through the center of the mine to the bottom, where the propelling charge is located. To arm the mine, a safety pin is removed from the striker on top of the fuse.

There are three prongs located on top of the fuse, connected to a spring-loaded wedge. The fuse encloses a percussion cap , a delay element and a black-powder charge. They pose an obstacle to peace missions, stabilisation programmes and access for humanitarian agencies. They also make it harder for internally displaced persons to return home and for the necessary reconstruction to take place. Mines also mean that many people cannot use their agricultural land or forest areas, and so lose a vital part of their livelihood.

Ukraine is now one of the most contaminated countries in the world in terms of mines and explosive remnants of war ERW. In eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Government and separatists supported by Russia are engaged in an armed conflict, which has already claimed the lives of more than civilians.

Thousands of mines, booby traps and munition remnants lie along the km long contact line. Since , at least people have died and have been injured as a result. Petro Mykolayovych explains what the contamination really means in practice. The team offers one of the few tools available to defuse mines without exploding them. A second machine will then enter the area to excavate the mines.

What do bees, rats and elephants have in common? They can all be trained to sniff out land mines without detonating them. If you compare that to a deminer, maybe two or three days. The deminer will pick up all the fragmentation, the metal in the ground, but the rat picks up only the smell of TNT.

As for the elephants, they too can smell land mines , an ability they seem to have developed after years of encountering and being injured or killed by the mines.

Instead the U. Army hopes this line of research can help develop more effective mine detectors. Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. Children have been crippled by land mines in Cambodia. A military engineer of the Russian Army's international counter-mine center helps conduct a demining operation in eastern Aleppo, Syria. Sputnik via AP The most widely used tools are metal detectors, Yvenic said, which have become so sensitive that they can detect tiny pieces of metal.

Robots and Drones Mine Kafon Foundation As the issue of land mines has become more visible, a number of innovators have taken to their personal laboratories to concoct machines that can eradicate land mines more rapidly.