Artillery fire on both sides was constant this. Entire villages were wiped off the map and. Never before had so many soldiers been killed in such a limited area. Or Dead Mans Hill was the scene of particularly bitter fighting. At the end of the Battle One Of The Hills Two summits was ten meters lower than it was before. Served as a laboratory for testing new weapons the german army fired poison gas in shells here for the first time. This allowed for more accurate targeting. The effect on french troops was devastating. The battle lasted from february to december one Nine Hundred Sixteen. A total of about Sixty Million shells were fired. When these missions corrode the casing comes off of it a lot of them youre left with stuff like t. N. T. High explosive which is a percentage of so now you have the constituent weight on the bottom of the ocean which will continually. Put stuff in the environment like that for the next thousand years. These materials accumulate in the ecosystem and pose a major Health Threat both for marine life and for humans. And its personal to me because i come from cape breton where we are basically a Marine Community that real lawyer on earth being straight from the ocean we the fish from there and we do have a high cancer rate here right across the province and it was cool so. Terry long worked for years as a Munitions Disposal Expert with the Canadian Army hes diffused tens of thousands of landmines his expertise is in demand worldwide. Powerful. No one knows how many tons of munitions are lying on the seabed. Long estimates that there could be up to a million tons off the coast of nova scotia alone. But only a few of the locations have so far been identified. And its by no means clear which kinds of munitions are involved what. The situation is not confined to North America the first shots of World War Two were fired at the Polish Port City Of Good Danes On September First OneNine Hundred Thirty nine. Now polish scientists are searching for Hazardous Wartime materials. Theres no documentation so they have to search the seabed inch by inch with a sonar device. Theyve been scouring the entire baltic coast for several years now it will take decades just to complete the search of
good and square. Its like looking for a needle in a haystack. When the scientists find something suspicious they send down an underwater vehicle thats outfitted with a camera. You can see the next moment youre there are conflicts which will be why the news so weve called the look of the dead youve got contamination to survive and bacteria is not growing in the community. Its not clear what effect these worktime materials might have on the marine ecosystem. Tests of the sediment on the seed. Have shown that some Hazardous Materials have leaked into it. One of the alarming news. Is to maintain the rate of corrosion there should be
a corrosion mark simone real easy to talk sense to environments about sixty years past the ward war tool iraq for bombs and Something Like hundreds and ten for Artillery Shells so as for the bombs its about now. Scientists have just begun their assessment of the threat posed by these Hazardous Materials but the preliminary results are dramatic. Marine life near the areas where the munitions were dumped shows an alarmingly high rate of deadly disease. The ocean is a continual. You both so. Great that it will eventually find a way. To keep you in the box. There are enough abandoned munitions in the baltic sea alone to wipe out the population of europe. Bodies of water in europe contain quantities of cyanide atom Zite Mustard Gas and tabung a nerve agent. Two hundred fifty thousand tons of conventional and chemical weapons have been dumped in the North Channel between ireland and scotland. One hundred fifty thousand tons of munitions have been disposed of in the barents and kara seized in the arctic ocean its a time bomb thats been ticking for nearly sixty years. Scientists suspect that along canadas east coast these toxic materials have long since found their way into the food chain. The effects of possibly contaminated seafood on local residents have not yet been studied. Terry long is trying to track down as many of these munitions as he can. A me. His research took him to washington d. C. Where he studied materials on weapons disposal sites. Through files at the pentagon he made a startling discovery. The documents were open to me i was a lot of. There was one in particular the. Special weapons which secure. The local weapons in the court of the european. Came across the ship that was disposing of nuclear weapons. Page by page. Forty six all hands on deck. Fifty three disposal commences thirteen fifteen disposal of thirty tons of special weapons complete. Nothing. Nothing changed the
course of Twentieth Century history more than the development of nuclear weapons. Beings now had the power to destroy themselves. I think thats the norm you know Military Operation Hunger i think that its much more difficult to regulate military activities on ethical safety related or legal grounds compared to civilian activities as well i mean in the ministry of a civilian life is all about managing Prosperity Version but the but in military situations the top commanders can do pretty much what they want when the us and they do it or they have to do it tighter because the enemy can to see if they dont theyve lost the battle that happened be a fun for you or. Approximately
two thousand Nuclear Devices have been tested since the dawn of the atomic age. This has contaminated thousands of Square Kilometers in the worlds oceans from the arctic to the south pacific. It has also led to more than Four Hundred Thousand cases of cancer. Gary mack lasses a professor of conservation at the University Of Idaho and an expert on how warfare affects the environment and local communities. The Twentieth Century. Is a time were warfare preparations violent conflict and what happens after war all defined as warfare has had a Significant Impact on the environment its an environmental problem that we have to deal with in the twenty First Century that emanates from the industrialized war
of the Twentieth Century. The Nuclear Arms Race determined the course of the Cold War Nuclear technology not only has the power to destroy it can also be used to power conventional weapons of war like submarines. The soviet union had a large fleet of Nuclear Submarines at one time one fifth of all the worlds Nuclear Reactors were used in submarines of the soviet Northern Fleet. And the possible risks posed by these reactors remained top secret. Until a former Russian Submarine officer spoke out. Alexander nikitin also worked as a Nuclear Security inspector for the u. S. S. R. Defense ministry. In one Nine Hundred Ninety Four started working with a norwegian Environmental Group and raised allegations about Safety Problems in
Northern Fleet subs two years later he was arrested and tried for treason. The prosecutor said im the prosecutor theres the Defense Attorney and you are the criminal you will go to jail that was right after i was arrested. It was the first time anyone in the soviet or Russian Military establishment had dared to talk about the potential dangers of military Nuclear Waste. When the u. S. S. R. Collapsed in One Thousand Nine Hundred one it had a fleet of approximately Two Hundred FortyNuclear Powered submarines. The nuclear fuel on those subs had to be replaced regularly and that creates Nuclear Waste. An average Nuclear Submarine can generate about two hundred cubic meters of Nuclear Waste over the course of ten years. Some of it ends up in the ocean. But they did it all the time or. At that point when i was serving on submarines russia had not signed any agreements that would have banned the disposal of Radioactive Waste. All the officers thought it was. Some Radioactive Waste in the car seat and nobody gave it a second thought. It has not yet been documented how much Nuclear Waste was dumped after the fall of the soviet union many of the nuclear subs were taken out of Service Crews began dismantling the. Network continues even today. Were going to look no one knew what was going to happen to these subs after they were dismantled. And no one figured that this process would
take some time. There were no instructions and there were no rules to follow. What i personally wrote the First Official instruction on how to dispose of a Submarines Nuclear reactor. Is explore parts there but were going to look. Nikita is case was a landmark. He was charged again in One Thousand Nine Hundred nine and then fully acquitted at trial. He thus became the first person in soviet or post soviet history to be found innocent of treason charge. He continued to work with the norwegian environmentalists that should come as no surprise they headquarters of russias Northern Fleet is located about One Hundred Fifty kilometers east of the norwegian border. Even closer is under way of the Northern Fleets primary Storage Facility for spent
nuclear fuel and Radioactive Waste. No one has documented the scope of the radioactive pollution here or how much of it has leaked into the bay. Sometimes open containers of waste were left lying around here. Or. Weve been saying all along that the facility at Andre Eva Bay is the most dangerous of its kind in the world its a time bomb that could go off at any moment. When a country is fighting a war the only thing that matters to the generals is winning they dont spend a lot of time worrying about what to do with stockpiles of dangerous military waste. Environmentalists problems that might be caused by that waste like those in norway and russia are considered collateral damage. Generals dont usually think much about the environment unless it somehow becomes a Strategic Military asset that the other side might be able to use to its advantage. Over four months in one Nine Hundred Sixteen one of the bloodiest battles of World War One was fought in Northern France the battle of the some. The british army suffered nearly Sixty Thousand casualties on the first day of fighting july first. Three times as much artillery was used there as in the Battle Of Very Dumb even today tons of unexploded munitions are found here every year. When the battle ended in november a total of one million men on both sides had been either killed or wounded. The allied offensive prompted German Forces to make a strategic withdrawal to their main line of defense if. The devastation caused by
the battle signaled a new horrific phase in the conduct of modern warfare. Who preached live from wooden to im in the fire areas were obliterated and we all the way back to the german Defensive Line the villages were wiped out if there wasnt a tree stand down the roads were impassable and the wells were contaminated all that was left was smoldering rubble a barren desolate. Field of fire as far as the eye can see. Too but this is all good. As german troops pulled back to their main Defensive Line they adopted a Scorched Earth strategy destroying everything that might prove useful to the enemy and the strategy was effective some experts have referred to this as an
example of modern eco side. The goal of this operation was to clear a Twenty Kilometer Buffer Zone in front of the german Defensive Line. The entire area was simply flattened looked and political. But the intentional destruction of the local environment during conflicts started long before World War OneScorched EarthOperations Date back to ancient times. But the systematic planning and conduct of such campaigns began during World War One. And there was worse to come. The destructive power of the us military it reached new heights during the vietnam war. During the conflict the us dropped more than Seven Million tons of bombs. Thats three and a half times the amount used in World War Two. The scope of the destruction was unprecedented. Is in plenty of no doubt and that tactically weaker opponent can survive only because he is able to withdraw into an environment that makes him difficult to find. It could be a jungle or mountains or the civilian population. On. Those if
and when that opponent is operating over an area that covers hundreds of Square Kilometers the other side naturally wants to remove his cover was agony in this time thats like the north Vietnamese Army and vietcong guerrillas made excellent use of Mountain Jungle Terrain as they carried out their operations. In what was called Operation Ranch Hand the u. S. Sought to deprive the vietcong of that cover by spraying an estimated Twenty Million gallons of defoliants and herbicides over parts of South Vietnam from one Nine Hundred Sixty Two to one Nine Hundred Seventy one. The most common herbicide was known as agent orange one of the goals of this operation was to expose the supply route known as the trail to u. S. Air strikes. The use of these chemicals eventually destroyed fifteen percent of the regional ecosystem. This area near the border with laos was
once rich an Animal Species but no longer many of the weapons that were used here contains dioxins which are known carcinogens. I thought. There used to be elephants and tigers here all sorts of species even rarer kinds of buffaloes than apes but after the Bombing Campaign they were all gone. By october nineteenth seventy four everything here it was. Not a single living thing survived. Is a lecturer and researcher at the university of agriculture and forestry in one day. Hes been studying this region along the border with laos for years but the scope of the environmental damage is so great that he and his colleagues can scarcely come to grips with it. One of the local officials says that there used to be a u. S. Air force base here. In the plains dropped agent orange in the surrounding area. This section covers about five and a half to tears. Theres a really unpleasant smell here during thunderstorms and also when its sunny. The local authorities suspect theres an agent orange storage dumped here. But the officials have no documents to prove that its been confirmed that the aircraft that sprayed the chemicals were decontaminated here but its not clear whether any of the chemicals got into the soil. A few years ago the local mayor put up barbed wire and other barriers to keep cattle from Drinking Water from pools that had formed in bomb craters. After the war people started moving back into the area later there was an increase in the number of miscarriages. It wasnt until Two Thousand And two that local residents first heard reports about the dangers of dioxin they used to drink water that came directly from a nearby river. This is capital of vietnam experts at a Research Institute here have been studying the effects of the war on the environment. The late dr for quis
work focused on local wildlife. I was working in the area around the way in One Thousand Nine Hundred eighty and came across a buffalo that had two heads. And the origin of this deformity is the same as it is in humans. And. A large number of women in vietnam who live in contaminated regions gave birth to children that had such abnormalities including two heads you know. On the. The situation is much the same for animals. They. Ive mentioned the buffalo. But ive also same too had an exe and cattle know. What neal it was surprising and its one of the more visible effects of dioxin poisoning that poor people know. And estimated Three Million vietnamese came into direct contact with defoliants that contain dioxin. Its not known what long term effects this exposure may have had on their health. This woman was at the battle of Hamburger HillShe Couldnt Leave her infant daughter behind because she was still breastfeeding the americans flew over and sprayed agent orange the child was directly exposed to it and has been paralyzed ever since. But its extremely difficult to prove the presence of dioxin in vietnam theres only one laboratory that has the capacity to do it. The most toxic element in
agent orange is a dioxin known as t c d d for short even microscopic amounts can cause Health Problems in humans. These scientists are conducting tests to see whether dioxins have gotten into the local food chain. Were analyzing Dioxin Levels in fish and among the local residents who eat those fish so our Research Indicates that the concentrations of dioxin in their blood are the highest that have been recorded anywhere in the world. Even today more than forty years after the end of the vietnam war scientists are still finding traces of toxic chemicals in the local Environment Dioxins decompose quite slowly and can work their way into the fatty tissues of animals. For example its been found recently in the blood of local residents and in the milk of nursing mothers. Dioxins can also alter genetic structure this can have serious consequences for people who werent even involved in the war. American troops who worked with these chemicals were also at risk the commanders who ordered the use of these weapons endangered the lives of soldiers and civilians. And the full extent of the environmental damage has not yet been calculated. The use of these chemicals was yet another example of industrialized warfare. The use of Talk Slick Thoughts and throws coast back all the way to greek tops what is new is Twentieth CenturyIndustrial Chemical production being able to be projected into warfare so nature has always been collateral damage. The issue increasingly because. Nature is more fragile or and warfare is more robust and powerful. In the late one Nine Hundred Seventy s. The use of agent orange was sharply restricted by the United Nations but the u. S. Military continued to deploy weapons that contain other toxic substances. Doug rockey is a retired u. S. Army major and former director of the militarys depleted uranium project. In one Nine Hundred Ninety One during the First Gulf War Rocky was assigned to. Paratroops on how to respond to biological chemical and nuclear warfare. Whats wrong where were going to have. To go from a russian General Schwarzkopf and. Human guy said the clean up to be human as well. The u. S. Led forces in iraq enjoyed overwhelming tactical and strategic superiority. Their arsenal included Armor Piercing rounds that contained depleted uranium. Most depleted uranium is produced as a byproduct of the enrich uranium used in Nuclear Reactors. It has a physical half life of four point five billion years. Its also extremely dense which is why do you munitions are so effective. At the Point Of Impact the uranium starts to burn white hot increasing the weapons destructive power. The uranium is vaporized and dispersed into the environment. Iraqi tanks didnt stand a chance against these sophisticated munitions dug rocky and his unit worked to selvage us Armored Vehicles that had been contaminated through exposure to depleted uranium we collected it all together we buried a lot in the desert and we shipped a lot back to the United States have been took over three years of cleanup. Later some allied soldiers began showing symptoms of what would later be called gulf war syndrome. The depleted uranium becomes dangerous only after the munitions hit their targets and the toxic material is released into the environment the d. U. Particles are radioactive as well and release Alpha Particles over a limited area. And. Experts estimate that about Three Thousand tons of depleted uranium dust have been generated in iraq. The pentagon plans to keep using dui. But it is trying to minimize the risk to its own
troops. In one Nine Hundred Ninety Four rocky was appointed director of a Pentagon Program that aim to do just that in that event a desert he and his colleagues test fire d. U. Minissha ins into various targets. The team or a full protective gear including respirators because do you dust can be deadly if it paled. Rocky believes that his exposure to depleted uranium during his work in iraq had seriously damaged his health he continues his efforts to call attention to the risks associated with do you mean the sions move. You can tell nation incredible incredible amount. For done so Little Dont Go For Old Boy incredible distances. And the women just blow it away. It would be next to impossible to decontaminate large areas every time do you mean issues were used cruise would have to remove about thirty centimeters of topsoil in a zone about one hundred meters where. The contaminated material would then have to be stored as needed sites. For the body of your absolutely its probably impossible. But our product couldnt do it we thought we could do it. Thats scary. But despite the health risks more than twenty countries have stockpiles of depleted uranium munitions. In some parts of iraq the Child Mortality rate has increased sharply. Traces of depleted uranium have even been found in the blood of people who live in isolated mountain regions of afghanistan. In vietnam efforts to eliminate the effects of chemical weapons are only now getting started. Scientists have launched an ambitious Reforestation Project theyre using Acacia Plants Acacias grow quickly and could in a few years time create a dense canopy under which Jungle Vegetation could start growing again. The researchers hope that the toxic chemicals have seeped deep into the soil so that they wont damage the shallow roots of the acacia plants. I dont think the us paid too much attention to the collateral environmental damage
when they were using agent orange against vietnamese troops. Thats not unusual when youre fighting a war. But you. Know what but when you use toxic chemicals like agent orange. It affects not only the soldiers at the time. You know with but also future generations of innocent civilians. Although then you go. But efforts continue in this part of vietnam to restore the environment but it will take decades to rebuild the complex ecosystem that was once in place here. Is just one of many places around the world that are still dealing with the effects of wars that have long since and. Whats more Military Policy can also damage the environment in peacetime. The environmental impacts of war far exceed that during final conflict thats why our conception of warfare a call she begins with War Preparations just for preparations alone. Consume about Fifteen MillionSquare Kilometers six percent of the raw material used around the world that makes the militaristic use of the earths resources as a critical critical component to overall human use of nature. The u. S. Defense department consumes more petroleum than any other Government Agency on earth more than one hundred Million Barrels a year. During the iraq war in Two Thousand And three the u. S. Led coalition consumed about one third more fuel every month than the total amount
that was used in all of World War One. A jet fighter burns enough fuel in one hour to power five hundred compact cars. An Aircraft Carrier uses more fuel in an hour than a small city does in an entire day. And military operations around the world are responsible for the production of ten percent of global c o two emissions. The generals often cite National Security and the need for maintaining a strong defensive capability as the main reason why the armed forces should be exempt from limits on energy consumption. This is a military Training Ground in Western Germany the bundeswehr has been using it for
decades but theyve turned one hundred hectares of the zone into a Nature Conservation area a good example of Military Policy thats environmentally friendly. But if war breaks out all bets are off. On that but they wont discuss their unit in battle those who survive are those who shoot first and accurately. Based on that assumption the generals are not going to pay a lot of attention to how the forests are going to look and ten or twenty years. Or how farming will be affected. Or the health risks for civilians but their own. Father. Military conflicts take a huge toll on the environment. And as long as humans wage wars the
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