Clearing land mines isn’t an easy task usually requiring something heavy equipment that costs several million dollars in order to do it safely. It’s for this unfortunate reason that many places around the world are still littered with ordnances left over from conflicts that have long since passed. They’re such a large problem that they account for more than 15,000 deaths each year and for every 5000 mines removed it’s likely that one removal worker will die. The following clip demonstrates what can be done when a little ingenuity is applied to the problem and could very well be the solution that sees wide spread use in places that can’t simply afford to remove mines the traditional way.
It’s an amazing piece of engineering as it’s incredibly simple, cheap to produce and solves an incredibly complicated problem that’s traditionally been out of reach of the people it will help. Although the device might have limited application currently I can easily see the design being adapted and improved for use in other areas of the world without too much trouble. It might not be the most time efficient solution but its a lot better than the alternative.
I just love ideas like this as they remind me that even the most perplexing of problems can have a simple, elegant solution to them. When that solution will go on to save thousands of lives per year that’s just even better, especially when its in impoverished countries that still dealing with a war that has been gone for so long.
