I was a combat engineer in the Marines. It was literally (one of my) my (many) job(s) to know how to emplace and remove landmines. I've had people tell me to my face that I'm wrong when I've brought this up. The bouncing betty scene in behind enemy lines was the one that immediately comes to mind. That being said, anyone that might have tested the "don't move when you step on a mine" theory probably didn't live long enough to tell anyone it didn't work.
@@fifth.In 2007 I was in Iraq and posted my own personnel carrier, which I called a tank. Everyone thought I was so stupid but like I know what a tank is obviously, I just used a general term.
The mine you are seeking is made by ACME. They also make 32 round submachine gun magazines that can hold unlimitted rounds unless its a crucial moment in the film, weapons with no recoil and everyday cars with bullet proofing only on the front doors. They are better known for making sky pianos and anvils.
And portable holes that you can just unroll or paint on to stuff to make tunnels and pits and other useful stuff; yeah, I watched way too much Wile E Coyote as a kid, meep meep.
Combat engineer here. About anti vehicle mines, it's true they aren't meant to go off with the weight of a person. However it's important that most mines you'll encounter in the world have likely been buried for decades and are extremely unpredictable. They could never work, or randomly detonate, or ..... Just keep your distance
I read an account of a battle in Italy, possibly in the Liri Valley, where a company was attacking across a road that turned out to be mined. A soldier looks briefly down the road as a dashed to the other side and sees his sergeant a couple hundred feet away. The sergeant tripped a Teller mine and the bottom half of his body vanished. Either the antitank mine was defective or the running sergeant happened to stomp it with sufficient force.
Some anti Tank mines can be modified to set off at a lower weight though. Theres an yellow italian one for example, which lets you cut/remove some of the Bars Holding the pressure plate making it easier to detonate
I would not try a modern AT mine either. The fuses are quite varying and can be triggered by as little as 150kg of pressure in some of the mines. While 150kg men don't generally make good soldiers, a soldier with heavy gear that's running may just be able to set one off if he gets lucky... or unlucky.
UXO is truly terrifying when not properly dealt with and dealt with quickly. Places like Ukraine are going to have areas polluted with the things for years to come even if the war stopped tomorrow. Add in the fact that you rarely have *just* landmines in an area but other UXO like cluster bomblets, grenades, etc and it gets quite nasty. There's a reason why nations in the modern day are supposed to keep good records on the use of such weapons (something Russia isn't doing). It is important for both the militaries to know for after the war but also NGOs involved in demining efforts and protecting civilians.
I was standing not more than 10' away from a 9-year-old girl who stepped on a toe-popper in Bosnia. The blast was loud and she was blown into the air and her leg was gone below the knee. Blood tissue bones everywhere. The Turkish troops who's sector we were in sprang right into action they had her in a tourniquet and on a stretcher in less than 2 minutes and tossed her and her mother (They had to throw her in) into a vehicle to their HQ and the medics. I'll never forget her screaming.
Mines should all be banned in warfare. If they banned cluster bombs due to the danger of duds remaining after the wars, why allowing mines? Then again, not like "banning" has any effect on parties thristy to win. If only we could ban wars.
@@Secret_Moon war is such a desperate struggle that people are fighting to the death: there is no banning of anything that will hold in the face of the risks threatening to reach the decision-makers. "Soldiers dying is fine, but if we're maybe going to lose the war which could affect ME then we should modify our tactics to include things previously unthinkable."
my guess is that survivorship bias always plays into it, imagine if someone steps on a mine, notices it but its a dud, now someone else will come and defuse it and you'd think it didn't detonate cause he kept staying on it, while if it weren't a dud it would've immediately exploded and then no one could verify if it exploded when stepped on or when the foot got lifted
Not a bad theory. But I think it's just Hollywood polluting peoples mine. When an actor steps on one and they stand there hoping it doesn't go off, it makes an intense drama filled scene. And it also makes the audience think what they would do in that situation and gets them engaged. That's why people think they work that like, hollywood
@@douggaudiosi14probably, Hollywood shows snipers using laser, supressors being whisper quite, thermal Imaging seeing through walls, unlimited magazines, body armor being much better than it should be or the opposite, etc
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Technician here. As with most dudes who have input their experience I'm glad someone like you can spread the truth to a significantly larger casual audience than most guys who did the work in real life. I remember in EOD school when we were going over landmines, we quickly dispelled the idea of the "Hollywood" landmine, which functions on a "pressure-release" system in many movies and shows. It would make no sense for a landmine to detonate after the plunger is released because it is now up to chance for it to hit who it needs to hit. Since a majority of landmines are what we consider "blast" mines (meaning they are full of HE with no other purpose other than to harass/maim/kill) it would only make sense for them to go off when the pressure plate/plunger receives... well... pressure. Fun Fact: Anti-tank landmines are usually seen as super dangerous. But you have to think that this thing is targeting a 1-3 ton vehicle, WHY would you want it to go off if Joe Schmo accidentally walks over it when he goes to take a piss? AT mines are actually safer than APERS mines in terms of sensitivity, just don't think because of that you should kick them around like that video of Ukranians kicking them off of a road.
funny enough one of the comments mentioned a Yugoslavian PM-2 mine and it’s one of the movies that encouraged the misconception he shows. I remember that scene, pretty good Owen Wilson movie
I always heard that, should you tread on a mine, you're supposed to jump 200 ft in the air and scatter yourself over a wide area. Captain Blackadder taught me that.
My Uncle went ashore at Normandy on June 7th. His recollection of German S-mines was "Inconsistent, but not in a won't explode way". When they were learning about them they were told the 4 or 5 seconds before it bounced. Some exploded instantly, some took one or two seconds longer, some just exploded without bouncing. His first experience was with the latter, when a member of his platoon stepped on one and "vanished, except for his left boot- which is all we sent home".
At least he talked about it. My great uncles, one was a paratrooper in Germany one ended up in Singapore, neither of them were ever in a state to say what happened. Nobody ever really wanted to talk about the uncle who fought the Japs, except to say the poor fucker was the only survivor in his unit and the way England built its regiments at the time he'd gone to school with all of the other members, so had to go around telling everyone's parents how their sons died. After that he was pretty much insane. The paratrooper had bad spells and would wake up in the night sweating, later in life he nearly killed a nurse thinking she was a Jerry.
@@richarddavis2605 it's common that delay elements fail in a non-delay manner. When you get cracking in the delay element, it propagates much faster than it should.
No but honestly, just a character like that makes it like 3/4 of the movie. All saying everything about the baby and his wife. And then in one supposedly relaxing scene he just blows up. Nothing else, just gone. Truly a gruesome reality of war
Just thinking about it, the explosion on stepping off would make for a more complicated trigger and one that gives victims some chance of escaping. At the very least it gives people nearby time to get to safety. Who would design a mine like that? But for movies this is a good source of drama, so makes sense for them to portray a mine like that. Maybe based on a story of a malfunctioning mine that didn't go off immediately
It's one of those right tools for the right job sort of a thing. It all depends on what you're wanting to do with those explosives. It's less than ideal to have people walking over your minefield and having to worry about safely resetting things. Which is part of why minefields are sometimes labeled as such. The point of the minefield is often just to discourage people from taking that path.
I don't know about a trigger for stepping off, but a few second delay makes sense for that type of landmine, so that the victim has time to step off of it. The first charge that launches it up is there because the shrapnel will hit a wider area if the mine is up in the air, and it has to be a small enough charge not to set off the rest of the mine. This means that if the victim is still standing on it when it goes off, it may not launch up properly, and is less likely to hit the victim's squadmates. It occurs that this could also be a less benevolent reason why the myth of standing on a mine to avoid setting it off was perpetuated. The guy that stepped on it is doomed, but he might save lives by staying on top of it and yelling out to his squad that he stepped on a mine.
the only conceivable reason you'd want that is for something like a bouncing betty, where the soldier being off the mine means their body won't block it flying up into the air, but a 4.5s fuse is far simpler and does the job just as well so it is again unnecessary even in the best case scenario
To answer your question as to who would design a mine that goes off when pressure is released, the answer, a very insidious person. Lets say you're storming the beach, high pressure high intensity situation, couple of lads go up in a poof of sand and reddish smear. Oh, they stepped on a mine. Fighting calms down, enemy retreats, you're a few miles inland when you hear a *click*. It doesn't go off, the fear, uncertainty, and tension are there for you and everyone else. Luckily you got your friends to help you which they do. Some more walking, the occasional bit of fighting, but now a period of calm again. You're walking through the fields, *click*, *boom*. That's the fear of not knowing.
Back in the 70's one of my neighbors encountered an S type mine in Vietnam and it went off while he was standing on it. The force knocked him backwards, removed half his foot and lightly peppered him, but most of the balls went above him. Unfortunately, a man near him was killed.
not uncommon for the guy steping on its only majory injury is the mine and charge actuly going through thier foot rather then then shrapnel payloadwho normally gets anyone standing near them
A similar thing happened to my father in Germany. He stepped on a mine and one foot was shattered, but he survived, while the two men beside him were killed.
12:10 The double impulse mine: A relative of mine was in the army and he was in that first vehicle. He survived, but the ones on the second vehicle all died. It's been almost 20 years since then. He's retired now and still with us. Very tough thing to live through.
Arguably the best depiction of a landmine was in Tropic Thunder when the director Damien Cockburn steps on an old French landmine and get blown to pieces. We don't know if it was a pressure release mine but it can be argued that it was a pressure-detonate mine that had a delay due to it being old and in the elements for 60 years.
Almost all land mines (by most countries) are either pressure detonated, or toggle detonated (toggles work great in an area with tall grass, or for light-skin vehicles). And yes: Tropic Thunder was fairly accurate in that. Afghanistan is filled with abandoned minefields like that. That happens all the time over there.
Another good depiction of mines, trip wire ones specifically, was in one of the Episodes of Dusty faces, where Soviet POMZ mines (I think) are hidden behind the trees and go off the moment someone touches the wire.
I lived in Okinawa in 1965, only 20 years after the great war. A group of us military dependents found what looked like an inverted bucket with a "periscope" under a bridge and hauled it up. Although we eventually called Unexploded Ordnance Removal, we played around with it and even dented the periscope part. It turned out the device was a Japanese anti-tank mine which blew up as they were about to explode it themselves. No one was hurt and, thankfully, I am still alive today as a 70-year-old.
Guess that shows that it really needed some pressure to be set off. Guess it'd have been a different story if the mine had been very old as then it might've been easier to set off than it'd be intended to do.
I believe double impulse anti tank mines are used to defeat mine rollers set in front of a tank to clear the mines before they can explode under a tank
indeed, Other approaches include remote (manually) detonated mines, and mine stacking, ie two antitank mines on top of eachother, can sometimes even destroy mineclearing equipment
Not sure that's ever been made. I have seen setups where the enemy anticipate the likely movement of a clearance vehicle and have a set up where the flail hits an initiator, then det cord connects with a large charge under where the clearance vehicle is expected to be. Unfortunately quite effective in Afghanistan against humanitarian deminers in the nineties.
@@teru797 good lord, thats the internet in a nutshell. there is always somebody questioning the truth, the experience and also the whole universe, because there was sometimes something different than the proven design. its like stating that the german flew flying wing airplanes trough the war, because some brothers had glued some prototypes together in their shed. Dude, the french maybe lost the war because they had stupid mine designs. 🤣
For a film, if a mine just exploded like they are supposed to, you wouldn't get those moments after where we grapple with the concept of the "practically dead" or quantum dead, sure, they are for all intents and purposes alive at that time, but as soon as they move, they're dead, so they might as well be dead already. This gives the 'dead' character a moment to wax philosophical while the others get the chance to say goodbye or panic, and draw the emotions of the moment out. If you're watching a completely realistic tragedy, you'd have a character remark, "Don't move! It'll only explode if you-" then gets cut off by the explosion. The tragedy is that the expectation of having that "last opportunity" to be with that character is cut off abruptly by reality.
But the real fear comes after someone triggers one. You are now in a massive psychological quandary. How far into the field are you? And which step will be your last one on two legs? Actually the real question is why are you still alive? The biggest mistake hollywood makes is not understanding the purpose of mines fields. They are to deny useful land to the enemy and funnel them into a killing zone, and you never leave one unattended. So if you are traversing a minefield then your already under attack, you can either probe for mines or dodge machine gun fire, doing both is a real feat. An australian general ordered the construction of an 11 km barrier during the vietnam war. 20,000 M16 mines were planted and 13 sappers were killed in the process. There is no way you can monitor an area that great, so not long after it was made charlie moved in and lifted most of them. Apparently most of the explosive booby traps that killed allied soldiers used those mines. It is the first lesson taught to new sappers.
Hello, retired Canadian combat engineer here. Your explanations are right on. The fear and psychological impact that anti-personnel mines created is part of the reason for the myth. Even recently, when I had to teach mine awareness classes to non-combat arms support personnel, before a deployment, I had to destroy the myth. Good videos, you can clearly see the research you’ve done.
Sometimes people will ask purposefully stupid questions to get the instructor talking, in order to 'show engagement' without having to actually think about what they are told. It is stupid but is done enough because it works.
Humans are fearful creatures that try to generate explanations when information is missing. That is to say, we are just big versions of Skinner Pigeons. Just adding a random timer/unknown factor to when a mine will detonate is bound to generate some myth of this nature.
To fix my lying chat gpt request, here is the actual quote. From Black Adder Lieutenant George: Oh, sir, if we should happen to tread on a mine, what do we do? Captain Blackadder: Well, normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump up 200 feet into the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.
I've watched Full Metal Jacket countless times and have never heard that line in it. It is in Blackadder Goes Forth though... Lt George: "Sir, if we should happen to tread on a mine, what do we do?" Capt Blackadder: "Well, normal procedure Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet into the air, and scatter yourself over a wide area."
The movie to watch for land mines is the 2015 LAND OF MINE, about young Germans ordered to remove 1 million mines on the coast of Norway, after the war ended.
Another myth is "Studded Leather" armor. Its from DnD, and is a misunderstanding of brigandine armor. But once it was invented by DnD, tons of games started copying this armor class. The irony is that studded leather is a "medium" armor in these games, when brigandine was some of the most heavy duty armor ever made.
Great vid :) I did German Pionier (combat engineer) back in the day, and read up on all the period mines. The Germans did indeed have an extensive catalogue of igniters for their mines. BTW, the S-Mine could also be fitted with a pull igniter that could be hooked up to tripwire, single or double headed. Most mines could also be fitted with pull igniters on the bottom, which could be anchored below the mine, and when pulled it goes off... another form of anti-lifting device. Mines are insidious.
Thanks for the input. Are these pull igniters designed to simply make it much harder to defuze the mines? Also, do you know how effective these S-mines were in actually killing soilders, as I could imagine that these steel balls, if the enemy doesn't get hit in a vital organ, wouldn't do enough damage to kill the person, but would still need medical assistance because they would be quite injured? What was their real effective range and what is the effective range of most anti personel and tank mines today?
@@StarWarsExpert_ Yes it's to make it more difficult to clear a path through a minefield. Also engineers are specialized troops, there aren't THAT many of them hanging around so losing a few actually hurts. However generally, you wouldn't clear a minefield by pulling out random enemy mines with no knowledge of whether they have anti-tampering devices in the first place. You'd blow them up in place. The problem is if you're trying to silently open a gap for armor or troops to sneak through unnoticed. Then you'll just have to take it very slowly and try to dig around the mine to see if it's safe to remove before doing so. I can't say anything about S mines, but AP mines are not intended to kill. If you kill a man you take one man out of action. If you severely injure him, he's out along with the 2 men that have to evacuate him. Also strains medical and other resources for the enemy. Answering questions about the range of mines is practically impossible because there are so many in various sized and with different purposes. Thousands if not tens of thousands of different types probably exist in the world. Pressure activated mines, tripwire mines, shaped charge mines, magnetic mines, vibration triggered mines, radio signal activated mines, manually triggered mines, claymores and an endless list of others. Most of the "civilized world" has banned the usage of AP mines through the Ottawa treaty. Not nations like the US or Russia but practically all of Europe doesn't use them anymore. Probably subject to change after Russia's recent actions but I digress. While some AP mines are so small they won't even blow your foot off if you step on them, most can probably be compared to a hand grenade in effectiveness. Not all AP mines are buried in the ground though, some are like the tripwire ones I mentioned and can be a steel tube with explosives in it and strapped to a tree. When you pull the tripwire the fuse detonates and the steel tube turns into shrapnel that is potentially deadly to anything within 20-30 meters. Then there are the claymores that are much more directional and shoot out steel balls in an arc in front of it. They can be different sizes which changes the answer. Could be lethal anywhere between 20 and 60 meters perhaps depending on the variant. Anti-tank mines don't have much of a range for obvious reasons. Has to be close up to knock out a huge steel monster. There are tons of different types here too. Magnetic mines that punch a jet through the bottom of the tank when it drives over it, standard pressure activated mines that are just a block of explosives with a fuse that triggers when a vehicle drives directly over it with tracks or wheels, shaped charge mines that can be positioned next to the road and triggered when a vehicle drives past in order to punch through the weaker side armor etc. There are even some AT mines these days that will jump up, aim themselves towards the very weakly armored top of a tank and punch through it from above. Anyway, the most common and most simple AT mines are the ones that just have a pressure plate and fuse which explodes when directly driven over and enough weight is applied. They don't have a "range" per say, they don't have shrapnel, they just blow the tracks off a tank to immobilize it. Usually they consist of around 7-10kg of TNT. It's highly unlikely to destroy a tank outright or kill the crew, though we've certainly seen Russian tanks have the ability to self-detonate from practically anything. However it's another bit of movie myth that a tank drives over a mine and just explodes. In reality it will just lose its track and be unable to move and the crew will abandon the tank. The general rule for these mines is to space them out by 5 meters so that if one mine goes off, it doesn't create a chain reaction. The blast and flying rocks and pieces of metal would probably kill or injure any infantry within a handful of meters but that is not their purpose.
@@StarWarsExpert_ well yes, pull igniters used as a booby trap are there to kill the impatient or oblivious mine clearers. S-mines had an effective lethal burst radius (the ball bearings) of about 20m, so the closer you were to it, the more damage of course. As WWW stated in the vid, sometimes damage could be reduced or avoided by diving to the ground since the blast more or less radiated sideways.
Mine-warfare is insidious. I read about how some miners would put anti-personnel mines into a ditch close to a anti-tank mine so that when de-miner goes to that ditch to pull the anti-tank mine off, he would set off the anti-personnel mine. So it would slow the tanks requiring expert de-miner but when he blows up, they need to replace him and slow the progress even more.
Oh mine warfare is far more insidious than that too. Give an engineer enough time to mine and prepare an area and any enemies that wander in there will wish they were in hell. Let's give a hypothetical scenario of how we could set things up. In the east of the country where our only likely enemy would arrive, it's mostly wilderness and deep forest with single roads flanked by trees and lakes. You have nowhere to go but the one road. We could start off with magnetic AT mines in the middle of the road. They can be programmed to "count" how many large metallic objects pass over them so you could for example set that it allows 3 tanks to pass and then explodes for the 4th. The 3 tanks ahead can no longer reverse because there's a burning tank behind them blocking the road and they can't get off the road since it's flanked by impenetrable forest. Only way to go is forward, where you'll have more mines. They can't get any de-mining equipment up either because the road is blocked in the other direction as well. Basically, they're stuck. If they DO have a mine clearing vehicle at the front, that can still be countered with what we called an "HP charge". It's a 20kg block of TNT that you place below the 10kg AT mine, making it 3 times as powerful. This is designed to instantly destroy the mine-clearing equipment with a single mine. Additionally the standard procedure when the column gets halted will be to dismount the infantry and have them spread out on the flanks into the forest. Guess where the AP mines have been set up with that expectation. All the while, infantry in ambush positions will be overlooking the minefield and striking with shoulder launched AT weapons, mortars and small arms fire the moment the column comes to a halt. Then after a quick and violent ambush, you disengage before the enemy can get sorted or get support from other units.
I was an ARMY 12B. The scariest mine I ever dealt with was anything with a tilt rod. I only had to work with 2. I’d rather deal with disarming a mouse trap under a mine than mess with a rod.
As a platoon medic in an engineering platoon, I hear you. Those tilt rod mines are TERRIFYING! We had three "go off" during training. Obviously dummies, but I will never forget that ominous *CLICK!* and someone in the squad going "Fuck..." or "uh oh". Had they been live mines, we'd all be dead. 12kg of TNT (anti tank mine) doesn't do nice things to nearby squishy humans.
if only he had seen this video, then maybe he wouldn't have stood there for three days or however long it was I forgot. Though come to think of it, that is a good example of how that misconception could actually harm people.
Ex army engineer here. I am impressed at your homework commitment. You are the first one i have ever heard or seen talking about the double impulse fuse in a antitank/vehicle mine. You could actually take the fuse out and use up the "first impulse" by use of a tool called the "Nut Cracker" when i was in the the mob. I was never really happy with the concept of doing so with a live fuse and thankfully never had to. Another of many variants is the tilt fuse, it will operate under pressure, however a thin carbon rod is sticking up. Usually used in long grass, so if a tank tracks were to actually bridge over the mine, the belly plate would tilt the rod and boom. Might not be a K Kill, but the crew will be very unhappy.
Kelly’s Heroes, a comedy/drama in 1970 starring Clint Eastwood accurately shows them walking into a mine field and someone walks and instantly dies on a mine. A movie about stealing Nazi gold was more accurate then the “Don’t move on a mine” myth 😂
That movie also accurately displayed that many a GI looted France, like the captain stealing the boat. They were still liberators, but plundering is a thing that soldiers do.
Yup, it's nuts. Hollywood doesn't know on most subjects. Their theory is like cocking a gun, pulling the trigger, but the round doesn't go off till you recock the gun? Nah makes no sense cause it'd really be easy to defeat a mine if you only had to stand on it or prevent the trigger mechanism from rising again.
What makes you think they dont know? They are not making documentaries, they are making entertainment. Knowing how something really works is not relevant at all to knowing what is most entertaining. You do realize these movies and shows have professionals working on them to do effects right? You think these people have no idea how anything really works?
@Maibuwolf I think they sacrifice legitimacy for drama. And no, I don't think they know much else other than films and drama because Braveheart and other "historical" films that have wildly inaccurate imagery, battles, etc, all for drama but they're panning them off as homage to real events without ever caring about being factual to historical events. Fantasy over functionality.
@@Maibuwolfit's very bad argument, most people don't think too much about what they see in movies and don't have enough expertise to understand if something they see is wrong. So they just assume that things work like this in real life. Generally this is the reason why nobody knows basic things about medieval times for examples and just uses stereotypes from movies. And though I think that this is already pretty bad, mine myth can easily cause death, since around the world there is a lot of old mines still in the ground. And it would be fair to hold filmmakers accountable for this things
To be honest the lack of delay is in my opinion far more terrifying, mines are horrific and delay or not, I don’t ever want to encounter one. Great video!
Having spent time in some infantry and combat arms units, I can say VERY LITTLE training is done on mines, except how to look for signs of them. We never had any training on placing them, and only engineers or EOD would be tasked to remove them. This is a GREAT explanation of how they actually work. I think "booby trap" is a better way to describe "anti-handling" devices, although the former is clearly a more technical military term.
I mean it does make sense, avoidance is the only real way to deal with landmines without specialist training. There's not really anything more you can teach someone without giving them a full training in mineclearing that would be effective
Its not the common infantrys job to lay or clear mines, for that combat engineers exist. All the Infantry needs is a "first aid" course in how to avoid mines, how to get out of a mine field and how to mark found mines, not how to handle them
As an EOD instructor and someone who has trained mine awareness trainers I can certify that this is a pervasive myth. At least one person in every class asks the question “what do we do if we step on a mine”? I use the Blackadder clip at this point…recently I’ve added the clip from ‘Generation War’ that shows the myth, plus an extract from ‘Kajaki’ which shows what really happens. One thing about the Hollywood Mine though, it occasionally flushes out the odd Walter Mitty* who regales you with his “once in Vietnam my buddy…we put a bayonet…” story. Oh no you didn’t… * Stolen Valor to our American friends
Land mines are just scary as hell Your marching through a field trying to keep your eyes on the ridge then all of a sudden “Click” In a blink of a eye your dead
This seems like another misconception. Most AP mines are designed to injure rather than kill. Step on one and you lose a foot but the chances of survival are fairly good. A tourniquet will cut the blood flow completely. In fact that is what happened to my great-grandfather in WWII.
From personal experience in Afghanistan, the only time that you'll come back and tell a story about how you stepped on a landmine is if you stepped on an anti vehicle mine. They have pressure set weights of around 500 pounds and above. They definitely aren't wasting that much munitions In that landmine for one soldier.
I imagine some guerrilla out there has built a pressure-release IED in their garage and may have even been inspired by the movies to do it, operating under the assumption that it makes a great weapon of terror.
Yeah I could possibly see it there, the delay for that purpose could even be useful since it potentially results in the sort of tense situation that news media are likely to show up and cover in real time. Which if your goal is to terrorise a population could indeed be considered a feature possibly even with the increased risk that this means it never goes off it would still at least be as good at causing disruption as just a plain old bomb threat. Albeit with extra drama that would probably get more media attention and spread fear more effectively.
I thought a cellphone-activated IED was closer to a command mine. Making your own fuse system in a garage is difficult in the already gnarly field of homemade explosives.
a new movie called "Canary Black" is a perfect example of this myth, when Kate Beckinsale steps on a bouncing betty, and then doesn't move. Another horrible myth is how long it takes for a hand grenade to detonate. Most movies allow way too much time before they explode.
"LANDMINES HAS TAKEN MY SIGHT TAKEN MY SPEECH TAKEN MY HEARING TAKEN MY ARMS TAKEN MY LEGS TAKEN MY SOUL LEFT ME WITH LIFE IN HELLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!" - Metallica
If I wanted to be _really_ mean, I could think of ways to deliberately exploit this false belief. Maybe a fuze with a really long delay (say, 10 seconds). When someone in a group steps on it and doesn't immediately die, they assume it works like the Hollywood mines do (or that it's a dud). That way, the mine explodes just as people are coming over to try and help. (This ruse would only work once or twice before people get wise and use the long delay to try and run for cover instead, which is when you start switching to fuzes with shorter delays, or even mixing the two types of fuzes together in the same minefield.)
Just a thought on the dual fuse anti vehicle land mine, it could be good for troop carriers, like trucks as well, the front tire rolls over it, then it goes off when one of the rear tires does next. This ensures it goes off under the troop section and not the engine and driver. Now the vehicle is disabled just as much, but you've dealt with a bunch of dudes instead of one or two.
a large majority of humans will never see a landmine or be close enough to one to need that knowledge. if we weren't nerds then it would be likely we would think like that too
This myth has lived rent-free in my head ever since I saw the movie "Double Take" starring Dennis Rodman and Jean Claude Van Dam. The villian (played by Mickey Rourke) said the iconic line: "Watch your step Jack... Nothing wrong with stepping on a mine... its stepping off it that counts." Man I miss the 90's lol
Can you release a shorter, to the point version of this video please, for people who just stepped on a mine. Like, I just did, and came across this video while googling what to do. Instead I got a history lesson. Thanks.
Having been a US Army Combat Engineer for 10 years, …we could set up land mines with booby traps that even we could not safely remove. There are several kinds of land mines. For anti personal, they are really designed to slow down troops and funnel them into another path.
That's why I like the idea of many of the modern US mines that rely on vanadium oxide batteries to power the fuze. Not only do they have various time settings after which they self-detonate but even if that fails the battery will run out in a few months and it's quite inert. Can even drop these types of mines from planes or artillery shells.
Former combat engineer, here. Got buddies that have spent time overseas helping to clear minefields post-conflict. I've never heard of nor seen an S mine or a release fused mine in the wild, and neither have they. Probably because it's overall a less efficient design based on cost and complexity of manufacture combined with negligible gain over standard designs. It's overcomplicating a thing without good reason.
15:00 - I'm just imagining a scene in a black comedy war film where a character stands on a landmine, says a whole thing about how it'll only explode once he steps off, and that he needs to dive in a specific way to ensure he survives. He then dives off of the mine he stepped on, only to land on another mine, which explodes normally. The first mine was a dud 😂
A mostly correct explanation of how APMs work. As a former engineer officer, who tought recruites the handling and tactics of mine warfare, IEDs and so on I always appreciate such corrections, as done here. Kind Regards Th. Krapf
Imagine you’re making a design for a mine (with the purpose of war/kill as many as possible) what would be the optimal design choice. 1. A mine that immediately explodes when stepped giving the rest of the enemy squad no time to runaway and survive 2. A mine that has a distinct sound that gives everyone how much time they want to get away except for the poor soul on the mine Mines used for war is obviously gonna chose the design that kills the most and most importantly doesn’t leave witnesses of the mine to warn others about them but in films of course the second option will be chosen since it’s more dramatic and makes you feel emotions as you realise that it’s that person last seconds knowing that if they take another step they’re dead opposed to them just walking and randomly they explode and that’s it
I recall seeing some war movies in which when the character realizes he stepped on a mine, he shouts out to warn his teammates and hits the dirt as soon as possible instead of holding his feet there and hoping it won't explode.
THANK YOU!!!! I was a US Army combat engineer and I learned about all sorts of mines, both US and foreign, as well as anti-handling devices and improvised devices. Not a single one was activated by someone stepping off a mine after stepping on it. In every case, the mine detonates immediately after being activated. And, as you pointed out, the only exceptions are mines like the German S-mine and US M-16 mine that work on a time delay so they can "bounce" and explode after the soldier has passed.
I know of a mine that works like that. I served for 5 years in the Norwegian military in various roles. Now, where have I seen, planted, and stepped on these types of mine? Training exercises. We trained with a parter nation, and they used a type of repurposed mine, without explosives naturally. but with a blank inside. these had to be stepped on and of. step down released a safety pin, step up cleared the path for the plunger to hit the blank and it made a tiny pop sound and you would be called out for being fried.
I remember watching a very good ten-part 1987 Aussie miniseries called "Vietnam" where one of the actors, portraying an Aussie soldier in Vietnam during the war, steps on a land mine that goes click, but doesn't explode until he tries to step off it. I also remember my 24YO self thinking at the time, "What would be the point of that?" regarding the way that that land mine allegedly worked. Now I know that it was simply to build tension for that episode of the series. We didn't have the internet back then, & I doubt that the Encyclopedia Britannica that our neighbours owned would likely have had much info on the subject.
I'm shocked anyone thought mines worked by anything other than the first contact, however that is engineered to be identified. The mine trope is right up there with car doors stopping bullets and weapons on full auto with seemingly limitless magazine capacity.
Or cars that explode when they go over cliffs or run into walls. (It's always Sunny in Philadelphia had an episode where they tried to blow up Dee's car by running it into a wall... then with a grenade.)
It's not surprising to me; considering the fact that... Post WW2; a series of top grossing; famous war movies (many about the British Long Range Patrol Groups in Africa)... depicted mines in this way. This occurred regularly in film, from the Early 1940's until the 1980's.
My DI back in the eighties specifically said "this is not like the movies, they don't go boom when you step off them, they do that when you step ON them."
Combat engineer. You are completely right about landmines. Closest thing I saw was an IED made with an old bathroom scale that would have the wire swing back on the dial and hit a 9volt once you took your foot off. Some kid came up with it… unfortunately for him the wire to the payload was broken so it did not work. Lucky us… if the wire was good… that would have worked.
@ hahaha. Nah. It was neat and pretty clever but not really efficient or practical as some of the other designs we had seen. We knew which local kid was running the parts cause we would see the ingredients used and recognize where they came from due to regular patrols, but command did not designate our deduction worth any significant action beyond having his family’s house checked over. We found about a pound of 9 volts and one AK-47 that belonged to the father and he had all the right work done to keep it so we weren’t confiscating it. Got to keep the batteries though. Nothing warranting any significant action… our unit was being rotated out soon and the higher-ups probably did not want to prolong any involvement that could be handled by the next guys. Kid got a slap on the wrist from us cause they were just using him as runner mostly and to gather ingredients. Also he was not the one actually planting them so we could not really say he was taking action directly against us. For a few smokes he did tell a buddy of mine that he came up with the scale trick but someone else actually fabricated it. We could not get much more out of him than that. Good on him for not squealing though… if word got out he talked too much then they would take care of it. Also his own father who was against both the local terrorist cells and the American occupation had already kicked the kid up and down the street one for being involved with the BS and two for giving away the family’s bathroom scale. Good news is though some local drama with the particular kid and the father having some vaguely respectful position at the mosque had the kid simply not be allowed to participate with the groups anymore. They knew he did not snitch…but they did not want any liability so they told him get lost any time he tried to join up. Kid spent the last few weeks we were there scowling at us for making it so he can’t play with the big boys. Looked at us like it was our fault he was not allowed to go to summer camp. Utterly brainwashed… though I get it… can’t say most of me and my buddies were not brainwashed to be somewhere we should not have been. Kid was probably within 3 or 4 years our age. Hell… i would not be surprised the kids chances of joining up to play Jihad Joe when he got older were dashed. He probably had to get a new hobby. Good on him… we all know now that most of that crap was utterly stupid. If you ask me and I know I ain’t making some unique or truly profound statement. It was just young blood for dino juice.
I always thought the idea is that some rare landmines work like that and for dramatic reasons the heroes always find one like that. It's like how a serious injury is always a breathing problem solved by cutting a hole, which is a very specific problem that might be interesting for dramatic reasons, but most of the times that's not the injury one gets.
I think a common misunderstanding people may have are that there are variations of mines, but ALL OF THEM are detonated by pressure. Anti-Personnel mines only need pressure applied by a human, whereas an Anti-Tank mine generally wont detonate if a human steps on them due to them being designed to detonate from tanks.
I always knew that was a hollywood trope but I never realized they used to have such long fuses and seeing why the misunderstanding got so common is really interesting. Great video!
13:56 I have an answer. It's impractical, but it's an answer: to waste the enemy's time. There are situations where wasting the enemy's time would be very useful. That said, there are plenty of better ways to do it than something like this.
I can imagine myths like these have caused quite a bit of injuries and deaths. Making people think they should stay on the mine instead of at least attempting to run away
The bloop is just a sound effect to reflect an action. Movies and tv shows realized in the 50s that if you add a sound effect to something, it has a more kinetic sense of action. So nothing should ever be done with zero sound effect. It's why things like swords going SHIIING from leather scabbards exist. A sound effect should be added like an anime girl squeaking on every expression. Who cares if it doesn't do that in real life.
Honestly designing mines in unexpected, confusing ways is just a warcrime waiting to happen I mean what about after the war is over and someone has the audacity to try and walk through a particular section of the wilderness “oh nope not allowed” KABOOM congrats some random soldier has just added a civilian to their irl KDR.
It's happening in iran after 4 decades there are still some land mines from 8 years of war and people and children's are sometimes trigger them and then like you said kaboom dead because army never bothered to clean those lands
That's why proper armies map and record their minefields - which is a pain in the backside having been trained to do it, back in the day - unfortunately there's a lot of State and non State cowboys.
Two other occurrences of "This will explode if I step off it/unbalance it": 1) The Odd Angry Shot - Australian Vietnam War movie (the guy can't stand the stress of standing there any more, since he might soon come under fire, and tries to step off; it explodes). 2) Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks (The Doctor manages to avoid the explosion).
USMC Vet here. You are absolutely correct. Mines don't have pressure release triggers, we don't have lasers on claymore charges, and grenades don't make fireballs (and you won't save your friends by diving on one). The absolute closest thing I can think of to what Hollywood claims are "scatterable mines" like the M56 Volcano mines. But even that's a far cry from 'safe until you step off it' and we don't use them anymore since they've been effectively banned in the Geneva convention as a 'indiscriminate weapon'. Helicopters don't barrage buildings or do 'strafe runs' in urban areas, jets can't fly between skyscrapers in a city, HMGs or 'crew-serve weapons' are actually very accurate, and we haven't 'painted a target' with a laser since the gulf war. I could go on forever about how bad Hollywood is on getting any amount of accuracy of military tactics, equipment, personnel, or general warfare. I think the closest I've ever seen was from an anime that actually showed the full setup of a saber missile system. Including the 40lb battery and FTS. It might have been Black Lagoon? Point is the more you know about warfighting, martial arts, cultural weapons and general technology the less you want to watch movies depicting it lol.
There are VC and MOH citations of people who dived on grenades and saved their buddies. You taking all the frags from a grenade stops other people from being hit by it, not really surprising. Geneva's convention did not prohibit the use of anti-personnel mines. It was the Ottawa treaty. It was not ratified by the US, and they actually continue to operate anti-personnel mines. SALH is absolutely still a thing. Turns out being a clerk in the marines doesn't really give you a lot of exposure
@@R0ckmans Everything in movies is based on entertainment value. These are not documentaries. Anyone who was incapable of figuring this out on their own needs to accept the fact that they are not very smart. This is not hard to figure out.
To add to what others have said, Russian helicopters absolutely barrage buildings in urban areas. It's been their modus operandi since inception. Fighter jets often use urban areas as cover, and only refrain from flying down streets when a war isn't on to avoid harming onlookers. Laser designators are one of the most accurate ways of delivering precision weapons, and you can find OSINT videos of their use dating from this decade. Also, blue is the best crayola flavor.
Another way to think about it would be "what purpose does the alleged pressure release mechanism serve other than giving the recipient a final dramatic moment?" I kinda doubt weapons designers optimize for dramatic effect in the field.
After holding more mine awareness classes than I like to think about it is incredible how well different mine myths lives and thrives. It doesn't help that officers that means it well to themselves keep these myths alive because they don't want their soldier to worry to much about mines. One of the worst examples I came across was this guy that stated that in case he stepped on a Yugoslavian mine called PROM-1would have the time to cut the wire of the grenade as it wizzed passed on its way up to go boom.
There have been multiple movies made around the plot point that someone stepped on a mine and now they can't move. To think that you waste time, money and so on, on something you don't even research is possible.
Its not just movies, had to read a book called "boy overboard" in primary school. A large part of the plot hinges on a landmine not exploding while someone kept standing on it.
@ the one that the first person shooter guy is holding doesn’t look like a PPSH 41 to me. The second guy that appears in the frame appears to be holding a stick modified PPSH 41.
It comes from the German Tellermine 42. The AT mine could be fitted with an anti-tampering fuse that would make an audible snapping sound when armed. If the mine's pressure plate wasn't screwed down properly the anti-tampering fuse might not activate, but if someone came along and stepped on it, it might be activated by the pressure plate being pushed down. This wouldn't detonate the mine because it needs a lot more weight on the pressure plate, but stepping off it again could raise it just enough to set off the anti-tampering charge and detonate the mine.
My approach to explaining this to people Step 1 - ask them why mines exist in the first place Step 2 - ask them to explain why a mine would be designed to function like this Step 3 - ask them if designing mines this way would be easier, simpler, and, cheaper than an alternative Step 4 - Tie the two points together Mines are designed the way they are specifically to avoid situations like seen in the movies where people have a chance to get off them. You, as someone employing mines, do not want the enemy to have a chance. And it's just cheaper and easier if a mine goes off as soon as it's triggered.
The (untrue) "explanation" is that it waits until whatever set it off is out of the way so that it has a clear path to "bounce" up. But asking your questions about how it really works I'm not sure why they decided on a 4.5 second fuze which seems kind of long.
@@EkajArmstro The theory behind asking them questions is to sound less confrontational. Rather than "you are wrong", it's a "well, why do you think that is" and "let's think about the best way for it to work". The other reason is to help them arrive at the conclusion themselves. Rather than impose the answer, let it form naturally.
@@owlson2527 if it doesn’t explode immediately that means you don’t have to see it if it blows up instantly you’re gonna see it and probably be covered in it
@ a bullet only has the ability to take one out, landmines can take out an entire fireteam. If you don’t know much about the military, then please don’t talk about them.
I'm like a minute in and just wonder why people wouldn't ask themselves WHY you would manufacture a land mine that gives your enemies a chance to convey to their comrades that they should get away instead of just exploding instantly? Also I think exploding on release would be a more complicated mechanism therefore more expensive to manufacture? Like it doesn't make sense practically.
I was a combat engineer in the Marines. It was literally (one of my) my (many) job(s) to know how to emplace and remove landmines. I've had people tell me to my face that I'm wrong when I've brought this up. The bouncing betty scene in behind enemy lines was the one that immediately comes to mind.
That being said, anyone that might have tested the "don't move when you step on a mine" theory probably didn't live long enough to tell anyone it didn't work.
Arguing with a combat engineer about how landmines work is crazy work
Army sapper here and yes you are 100% correct
@@fifth.In 2007 I was in Iraq and posted my own personnel carrier, which I called a tank. Everyone thought I was so stupid but like I know what a tank is obviously, I just used a general term.
Does anything help when you step on mine though?
P.S can y'all stop answering rhetorical question?
@@aisir3725 No. If it's in full working order, unless you're wearing MOJINAR Armor like Master Chief, you're going to be severly injured or dead.
The mine you are seeking is made by ACME. They also make 32 round submachine gun magazines that can hold unlimitted rounds unless its a crucial moment in the film, weapons with no recoil and everyday cars with bullet proofing only on the front doors. They are better known for making sky pianos and anvils.
And portable holes that you can just unroll or paint on to stuff to make tunnels and pits and other useful stuff; yeah, I watched way too much Wile E Coyote as a kid, meep meep.
Cars with a second and third reverse gears.
And bullets that will make a fireball explosion if it hit a car from behind.
Don't they also make those special propane tanks that explode if you shoot them?
The car front doors are made out of Plotium - a rare metal, the physical properties of which can change depending on the plot needs.
Combat engineer here. About anti vehicle mines, it's true they aren't meant to go off with the weight of a person. However it's important that most mines you'll encounter in the world have likely been buried for decades and are extremely unpredictable. They could never work, or randomly detonate, or ..... Just keep your distance
I read an account of a battle in Italy, possibly in the Liri Valley, where a company was attacking across a road that turned out to be mined. A soldier looks briefly down the road as a dashed to the other side and sees his sergeant a couple hundred feet away. The sergeant tripped a Teller mine and the bottom half of his body vanished.
Either the antitank mine was defective or the running sergeant happened to stomp it with sufficient force.
Some anti Tank mines can be modified to set off at a lower weight though. Theres an yellow italian one for example, which lets you cut/remove some of the Bars Holding the pressure plate making it easier to detonate
I would not try a modern AT mine either. The fuses are quite varying and can be triggered by as little as 150kg of pressure in some of the mines.
While 150kg men don't generally make good soldiers, a soldier with heavy gear that's running may just be able to set one off if he gets lucky... or unlucky.
UXO is truly terrifying when not properly dealt with and dealt with quickly. Places like Ukraine are going to have areas polluted with the things for years to come even if the war stopped tomorrow. Add in the fact that you rarely have *just* landmines in an area but other UXO like cluster bomblets, grenades, etc and it gets quite nasty. There's a reason why nations in the modern day are supposed to keep good records on the use of such weapons (something Russia isn't doing). It is important for both the militaries to know for after the war but also NGOs involved in demining efforts and protecting civilians.
Yup, degrading explosives have a mind of thier own. Plenty of 1 legged & 1 armed children can attest to this.
I was standing not more than 10' away from a 9-year-old girl who stepped on a toe-popper in Bosnia. The blast was loud and she was blown into the air and her leg was gone below the knee. Blood tissue bones everywhere. The Turkish troops who's sector we were in sprang right into action they had her in a tourniquet and on a stretcher in less than 2 minutes and tossed her and her mother (They had to throw her in) into a vehicle to their HQ and the medics. I'll never forget her screaming.
As a medic myself, a screaming child is horrible, but a blessing in disguise. If an infant or child is silent there's more injury than an extremity.
Mines should all be banned in warfare. If they banned cluster bombs due to the danger of duds remaining after the wars, why allowing mines? Then again, not like "banning" has any effect on parties thristy to win.
If only we could ban wars.
@@Secret_Moonits all theatre. The winners will just say they did nothing wrong anyway
@@Secret_Moon they have banned mines, it's just not everyone signs the treaty
@@Secret_Moon war is such a desperate struggle that people are fighting to the death: there is no banning of anything that will hold in the face of the risks threatening to reach the decision-makers. "Soldiers dying is fine, but if we're maybe going to lose the war which could affect ME then we should modify our tactics to include things previously unthinkable."
my guess is that survivorship bias always plays into it, imagine if someone steps on a mine, notices it but its a dud, now someone else will come and defuse it and you'd think it didn't detonate cause he kept staying on it, while if it weren't a dud it would've immediately exploded and then no one could verify if it exploded when stepped on or when the foot got lifted
Not a bad theory. But I think it's just Hollywood polluting peoples mine. When an actor steps on one and they stand there hoping it doesn't go off, it makes an intense drama filled scene. And it also makes the audience think what they would do in that situation and gets them engaged. That's why people think they work that like, hollywood
It makes it possible for the old guy with a death wish to sacrifice himself.
Interesting theory, but you can easily just check and see that mines are meant to immediately detonate when stepped on or within a few seconds.
@@CommonCentrist82 Who the heck checks *anything* anymore?
@@douggaudiosi14probably, Hollywood shows snipers using laser, supressors being whisper quite, thermal Imaging seeing through walls, unlimited magazines, body armor being much better than it should be or the opposite, etc
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Technician here. As with most dudes who have input their experience I'm glad someone like you can spread the truth to a significantly larger casual audience than most guys who did the work in real life.
I remember in EOD school when we were going over landmines, we quickly dispelled the idea of the "Hollywood" landmine, which functions on a "pressure-release" system in many movies and shows. It would make no sense for a landmine to detonate after the plunger is released because it is now up to chance for it to hit who it needs to hit. Since a majority of landmines are what we consider "blast" mines (meaning they are full of HE with no other purpose other than to harass/maim/kill) it would only make sense for them to go off when the pressure plate/plunger receives... well... pressure.
Fun Fact: Anti-tank landmines are usually seen as super dangerous. But you have to think that this thing is targeting a 1-3 ton vehicle, WHY would you want it to go off if Joe Schmo accidentally walks over it when he goes to take a piss? AT mines are actually safer than APERS mines in terms of sensitivity, just don't think because of that you should kick them around like that video of Ukranians kicking them off of a road.
funny enough one of the comments mentioned a Yugoslavian PM-2 mine and it’s one of the movies that encouraged the misconception he shows. I remember that scene, pretty good Owen Wilson movie
I always heard that, should you tread on a mine, you're supposed to jump 200 ft in the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.
Captain Blackadder taught me that.
Outstanding soldier!😂
Ahhh, of course!!
What a spectacularly cunning plan. 🤔🤠😂🤣
Well ofcourse! It's much harder for the mine to target you, if you are all over the place.
The cool thing is if you're not good at it, the mine will help you out!
I'm sure Captain Blackbladder had too much rum.
My Uncle went ashore at Normandy on June 7th. His recollection of German S-mines was "Inconsistent, but not in a won't explode way". When they were learning about them they were told the 4 or 5 seconds before it bounced. Some exploded instantly, some took one or two seconds longer, some just exploded without bouncing. His first experience was with the latter, when a member of his platoon stepped on one and "vanished, except for his left boot- which is all we sent home".
At least he talked about it. My great uncles, one was a paratrooper in Germany one ended up in Singapore, neither of them were ever in a state to say what happened.
Nobody ever really wanted to talk about the uncle who fought the Japs, except to say the poor fucker was the only survivor in his unit and the way England built its regiments at the time he'd gone to school with all of the other members, so had to go around telling everyone's parents how their sons died. After that he was pretty much insane.
The paratrooper had bad spells and would wake up in the night sweating, later in life he nearly killed a nurse thinking she was a Jerry.
Sounds like quality control issues, sometimes the fuse failed, sometimes the spring, sometimes both
@@richarddavis2605 it's common that delay elements fail in a non-delay manner. When you get cracking in the delay element, it propagates much faster than it should.
@@richarddavis2605could have been slave labor Sabotage.
with beard, you look like an insane 250 pound marine
without beard, you look like a drafted 120 pound army grunt
This is scarily accurate what the hell
Yup!!!!
Enlisted vs drafted lmao
@@Halozocker104 More like volunteer vs. drafted since enlisted refers to your rank status, as in enlisted vs. officer.
Yup
15:24 To be honest your face does give the same vibes as the characters who say things like “I’m gonna propose to my girlfriend after we get home!”
No but honestly, just a character like that makes it like 3/4 of the movie. All saying everything about the baby and his wife. And then in one supposedly relaxing scene he just blows up. Nothing else, just gone.
Truly a gruesome reality of war
@@eelkesneijders6180 why’d my first thought go to fma
I love how he’s very polite about dissing the hell out of people
The best part is he’s just talking about factual history and the only people ‘dissed’ are just incorrect so the politeness is even more strong
Speaking FACT is not "dissing" people. Facts don't care about your feelings...
I truly trust everything that he says
While almost never blinking. Jesus it's freaky
@ffjsb yeah he isn't disrespecting anyone just spittin facts
Just thinking about it, the explosion on stepping off would make for a more complicated trigger and one that gives victims some chance of escaping. At the very least it gives people nearby time to get to safety. Who would design a mine like that?
But for movies this is a good source of drama, so makes sense for them to portray a mine like that. Maybe based on a story of a malfunctioning mine that didn't go off immediately
It's one of those right tools for the right job sort of a thing. It all depends on what you're wanting to do with those explosives. It's less than ideal to have people walking over your minefield and having to worry about safely resetting things. Which is part of why minefields are sometimes labeled as such. The point of the minefield is often just to discourage people from taking that path.
I don't know about a trigger for stepping off, but a few second delay makes sense for that type of landmine, so that the victim has time to step off of it. The first charge that launches it up is there because the shrapnel will hit a wider area if the mine is up in the air, and it has to be a small enough charge not to set off the rest of the mine. This means that if the victim is still standing on it when it goes off, it may not launch up properly, and is less likely to hit the victim's squadmates. It occurs that this could also be a less benevolent reason why the myth of standing on a mine to avoid setting it off was perpetuated. The guy that stepped on it is doomed, but he might save lives by staying on top of it and yelling out to his squad that he stepped on a mine.
the only conceivable reason you'd want that is for something like a bouncing betty, where the soldier being off the mine means their body won't block it flying up into the air, but a 4.5s fuse is far simpler and does the job just as well so it is again unnecessary even in the best case scenario
To answer your question as to who would design a mine that goes off when pressure is released, the answer, a very insidious person.
Lets say you're storming the beach, high pressure high intensity situation, couple of lads go up in a poof of sand and reddish smear. Oh, they stepped on a mine.
Fighting calms down, enemy retreats, you're a few miles inland when you hear a *click*. It doesn't go off, the fear, uncertainty, and tension are there for you and everyone else. Luckily you got your friends to help you which they do.
Some more walking, the occasional bit of fighting, but now a period of calm again. You're walking through the fields, *click*, *boom*.
That's the fear of not knowing.
Same people who make grenades to maim instead of kill. The point of mines isn’t to eliminate the enemy, it’s area denial.
Back in the 70's one of my neighbors encountered an S type mine in Vietnam and it went off while he was standing on it. The force knocked him backwards, removed half his foot and lightly peppered him, but most of the balls went above him. Unfortunately, a man near him was killed.
Did they manage to reattach the balls later?
@@VikingTeddy i read it like this at first too, unfortunately..
not uncommon for the guy steping on its only majory injury is the mine and charge actuly going through thier foot rather then then shrapnel payloadwho normally gets anyone standing near them
@VikingTeddy You're killing me.😂
A similar thing happened to my father in Germany. He stepped on a mine and one foot was shattered, but he survived, while the two men beside him were killed.
12:10 The double impulse mine: A relative of mine was in the army and he was in that first vehicle. He survived, but the ones on the second vehicle all died. It's been almost 20 years since then. He's retired now and still with us. Very tough thing to live through.
Arguably the best depiction of a landmine was in Tropic Thunder when the director Damien Cockburn steps on an old French landmine and get blown to pieces. We don't know if it was a pressure release mine but it can be argued that it was a pressure-detonate mine that had a delay due to it being old and in the elements for 60 years.
Almost all land mines (by most countries) are either pressure detonated, or toggle detonated (toggles work great in an area with tall grass, or for light-skin vehicles). And yes: Tropic Thunder was fairly accurate in that.
Afghanistan is filled with abandoned minefields like that. That happens all the time over there.
also the delay was necessary for the comedic timing of him going "oh" before exploding into chunks
why did this make me think the actual director actually exploded (ive never seen said movie before)
Another good depiction of mines, trip wire ones specifically, was in one of the Episodes of Dusty faces, where Soviet POMZ mines (I think) are hidden behind the trees and go off the moment someone touches the wire.
That's not how delay's work. That would be a malfunction. Delay's are intentional and usually part of an anti-handling device.
"i procrastinated for 2 full years"
can't relate... these are rookie numbers.
I lived in Okinawa in 1965, only 20 years after the great war. A group of us military dependents found what looked like an inverted bucket with a "periscope" under a bridge and hauled it up. Although we eventually called Unexploded Ordnance Removal, we played around with it and even dented the periscope part. It turned out the device was a Japanese anti-tank mine which blew up as they were about to explode it themselves. No one was hurt and, thankfully, I am still alive today as a 70-year-old.
Thank God.
Guess that shows that it really needed some pressure to be set off. Guess it'd have been a different story if the mine had been very old as then it might've been easier to set off than it'd be intended to do.
The Great War was world war 1 not world war 2.
Are you american? Or the enemy?
@@douggaudiosi14 From the landmine's point of view, anyone is the enemy.
I believe double impulse anti tank mines are used to defeat mine rollers set in front of a tank to clear the mines before they can explode under a tank
indeed, Other approaches include remote (manually) detonated mines, and mine stacking, ie two antitank mines on top of eachother, can sometimes even destroy mineclearing equipment
Not sure that's ever been made. I have seen setups where the enemy anticipate the likely movement of a clearance vehicle and have a set up where the flail hits an initiator, then det cord connects with a large charge under where the clearance vehicle is expected to be. Unfortunately quite effective in Afghanistan against humanitarian deminers in the nineties.
@@paulsaccani1115 That may work with rollers, but very unreliable with flails.
To design a mine that only detonates if someone steps on and then of would be stupid, and rather pointless
It'd also be pretty hard and overcomplicated I'd imagine
@@kerosene143 No there was a french mine that activated when you stepped off. It was rare.
@@teru797 Hard to manufacture I mean, obviously not impossible, but alot of effort would be put into the whole stepped off thing.
@@teru797 You sure about that?
@@teru797 good lord, thats the internet in a nutshell. there is always somebody questioning the truth, the experience and also the whole universe, because there was sometimes something different than the proven design. its like stating that the german flew flying wing airplanes trough the war, because some brothers had glued some prototypes together in their shed.
Dude, the french maybe lost the war because they had stupid mine designs. 🤣
For a film, if a mine just exploded like they are supposed to, you wouldn't get those moments after where we grapple with the concept of the "practically dead" or quantum dead, sure, they are for all intents and purposes alive at that time, but as soon as they move, they're dead, so they might as well be dead already. This gives the 'dead' character a moment to wax philosophical while the others get the chance to say goodbye or panic, and draw the emotions of the moment out.
If you're watching a completely realistic tragedy, you'd have a character remark, "Don't move! It'll only explode if you-" then gets cut off by the explosion. The tragedy is that the expectation of having that "last opportunity" to be with that character is cut off abruptly by reality.
But the real fear comes after someone triggers one. You are now in a massive psychological quandary. How far into the field are you? And which step will be your last one on two legs?
Actually the real question is why are you still alive?
The biggest mistake hollywood makes is not understanding the purpose of mines fields. They are to deny useful land to the enemy and funnel them into a killing zone, and you never leave one unattended. So if you are traversing a minefield then your already under attack, you can either probe for mines or dodge machine gun fire, doing both is a real feat.
An australian general ordered the construction of an 11 km barrier during the vietnam war. 20,000 M16 mines were planted and 13 sappers were killed in the process. There is no way you can monitor an area that great, so not long after it was made charlie moved in and lifted most of them. Apparently most of the explosive booby traps that killed allied soldiers used those mines.
It is the first lesson taught to new sappers.
Hello, retired Canadian combat engineer here. Your explanations are right on.
The fear and psychological impact that anti-personnel mines created is part of the reason for the myth. Even recently, when I had to teach mine awareness classes to non-combat arms support personnel, before a deployment, I had to destroy the myth.
Good videos, you can clearly see the research you’ve done.
Sometimes people will ask purposefully stupid questions to get the instructor talking, in order to 'show engagement' without having to actually think about what they are told. It is stupid but is done enough because it works.
Humans are fearful creatures that try to generate explanations when information is missing. That is to say, we are just big versions of Skinner Pigeons. Just adding a random timer/unknown factor to when a mine will detonate is bound to generate some myth of this nature.
To fix my lying chat gpt request, here is the actual quote.
From Black Adder
Lieutenant George:
Oh, sir, if we should happen to tread on a mine, what do we do?
Captain Blackadder:
Well, normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump up 200 feet into the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.
Is this right? Can't remember anything about mines in FMJ or find it in the script.
I've watched Full Metal Jacket countless times and have never heard that line in it. It is in Blackadder Goes Forth though...
Lt George: "Sir, if we should happen to tread on a mine, what do we do?"
Capt Blackadder: "Well, normal procedure Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet into the air, and scatter yourself over a wide area."
I was thinking the same thing but the version from Blackadder.
@BigDaz whoops I was searching the line ave the AI got it wrong!
why would you use chatgpt to look up movie quotes
it's not a search engine
The movie to watch for land mines is the 2015 LAND OF MINE, about young Germans ordered to remove 1 million mines on the coast of Norway, after the war ended.
correction the coast of Denmark
Oh boy, that one was gut wrenching
@@johnbarnett7092 German soldiers were also required to "clean" minefields in Norway after the war (as they should). Several died as a result.
Mein
@@MaCabaret I'm pissed that made me laugh
Another myth is "Studded Leather" armor. Its from DnD, and is a misunderstanding of brigandine armor.
But once it was invented by DnD, tons of games started copying this armor class.
The irony is that studded leather is a "medium" armor in these games, when brigandine was some of the most heavy duty armor ever made.
Studded is always light, chain shirt was light in 3rd, and medium in 5th.
We usually equated it with a gambeson or buff coat or boiled leather etc.
Great vid :)
I did German Pionier (combat engineer) back in the day, and read up on all the period mines. The Germans did indeed have an extensive catalogue of igniters for their mines. BTW, the S-Mine could also be fitted with a pull igniter that could be hooked up to tripwire, single or double headed. Most mines could also be fitted with pull igniters on the bottom, which could be anchored below the mine, and when pulled it goes off... another form of anti-lifting device.
Mines are insidious.
Thanks for the input. Are these pull igniters designed to simply make it much harder to defuze the mines?
Also, do you know how effective these S-mines were in actually killing soilders, as I could imagine that these steel balls, if the enemy doesn't get hit in a vital organ, wouldn't do enough damage to kill the person, but would still need medical assistance because they would be quite injured? What was their real effective range and what is the effective range of most anti personel and tank mines today?
@@StarWarsExpert_ Yes it's to make it more difficult to clear a path through a minefield. Also engineers are specialized troops, there aren't THAT many of them hanging around so losing a few actually hurts. However generally, you wouldn't clear a minefield by pulling out random enemy mines with no knowledge of whether they have anti-tampering devices in the first place. You'd blow them up in place.
The problem is if you're trying to silently open a gap for armor or troops to sneak through unnoticed. Then you'll just have to take it very slowly and try to dig around the mine to see if it's safe to remove before doing so.
I can't say anything about S mines, but AP mines are not intended to kill. If you kill a man you take one man out of action. If you severely injure him, he's out along with the 2 men that have to evacuate him. Also strains medical and other resources for the enemy.
Answering questions about the range of mines is practically impossible because there are so many in various sized and with different purposes. Thousands if not tens of thousands of different types probably exist in the world. Pressure activated mines, tripwire mines, shaped charge mines, magnetic mines, vibration triggered mines, radio signal activated mines, manually triggered mines, claymores and an endless list of others.
Most of the "civilized world" has banned the usage of AP mines through the Ottawa treaty. Not nations like the US or Russia but practically all of Europe doesn't use them anymore. Probably subject to change after Russia's recent actions but I digress.
While some AP mines are so small they won't even blow your foot off if you step on them, most can probably be compared to a hand grenade in effectiveness. Not all AP mines are buried in the ground though, some are like the tripwire ones I mentioned and can be a steel tube with explosives in it and strapped to a tree. When you pull the tripwire the fuse detonates and the steel tube turns into shrapnel that is potentially deadly to anything within 20-30 meters. Then there are the claymores that are much more directional and shoot out steel balls in an arc in front of it. They can be different sizes which changes the answer. Could be lethal anywhere between 20 and 60 meters perhaps depending on the variant.
Anti-tank mines don't have much of a range for obvious reasons. Has to be close up to knock out a huge steel monster. There are tons of different types here too. Magnetic mines that punch a jet through the bottom of the tank when it drives over it, standard pressure activated mines that are just a block of explosives with a fuse that triggers when a vehicle drives directly over it with tracks or wheels, shaped charge mines that can be positioned next to the road and triggered when a vehicle drives past in order to punch through the weaker side armor etc. There are even some AT mines these days that will jump up, aim themselves towards the very weakly armored top of a tank and punch through it from above.
Anyway, the most common and most simple AT mines are the ones that just have a pressure plate and fuse which explodes when directly driven over and enough weight is applied. They don't have a "range" per say, they don't have shrapnel, they just blow the tracks off a tank to immobilize it. Usually they consist of around 7-10kg of TNT. It's highly unlikely to destroy a tank outright or kill the crew, though we've certainly seen Russian tanks have the ability to self-detonate from practically anything. However it's another bit of movie myth that a tank drives over a mine and just explodes. In reality it will just lose its track and be unable to move and the crew will abandon the tank.
The general rule for these mines is to space them out by 5 meters so that if one mine goes off, it doesn't create a chain reaction. The blast and flying rocks and pieces of metal would probably kill or injure any infantry within a handful of meters but that is not their purpose.
@@StarWarsExpert_ well yes, pull igniters used as a booby trap are there to kill the impatient or oblivious mine clearers.
S-mines had an effective lethal burst radius (the ball bearings) of about 20m, so the closer you were to it, the more damage of course. As WWW stated in the vid, sometimes damage could be reduced or avoided by diving to the ground since the blast more or less radiated sideways.
Mine-warfare is insidious. I read about how some miners would put anti-personnel mines into a ditch close to a anti-tank mine so that when de-miner goes to that ditch to pull the anti-tank mine off, he would set off the anti-personnel mine. So it would slow the tanks requiring expert de-miner but when he blows up, they need to replace him and slow the progress even more.
Oh mine warfare is far more insidious than that too. Give an engineer enough time to mine and prepare an area and any enemies that wander in there will wish they were in hell.
Let's give a hypothetical scenario of how we could set things up. In the east of the country where our only likely enemy would arrive, it's mostly wilderness and deep forest with single roads flanked by trees and lakes. You have nowhere to go but the one road.
We could start off with magnetic AT mines in the middle of the road. They can be programmed to "count" how many large metallic objects pass over them so you could for example set that it allows 3 tanks to pass and then explodes for the 4th. The 3 tanks ahead can no longer reverse because there's a burning tank behind them blocking the road and they can't get off the road since it's flanked by impenetrable forest. Only way to go is forward, where you'll have more mines. They can't get any de-mining equipment up either because the road is blocked in the other direction as well.
Basically, they're stuck.
If they DO have a mine clearing vehicle at the front, that can still be countered with what we called an "HP charge". It's a 20kg block of TNT that you place below the 10kg AT mine, making it 3 times as powerful. This is designed to instantly destroy the mine-clearing equipment with a single mine.
Additionally the standard procedure when the column gets halted will be to dismount the infantry and have them spread out on the flanks into the forest.
Guess where the AP mines have been set up with that expectation.
All the while, infantry in ambush positions will be overlooking the minefield and striking with shoulder launched AT weapons, mortars and small arms fire the moment the column comes to a halt.
Then after a quick and violent ambush, you disengage before the enemy can get sorted or get support from other units.
I was an ARMY 12B. The scariest mine I ever dealt with was anything with a tilt rod. I only had to work with 2. I’d rather deal with disarming a mouse trap under a mine than mess with a rod.
As a platoon medic in an engineering platoon, I hear you. Those tilt rod mines are TERRIFYING! We had three "go off" during training. Obviously dummies, but I will never forget that ominous *CLICK!* and someone in the squad going "Fuck..." or "uh oh".
Had they been live mines, we'd all be dead. 12kg of TNT (anti tank mine) doesn't do nice things to nearby squishy humans.
@ we had a 45 primer in ours. Just a primer will make you soil yourself if you’re not expecting it.
7:19 Actually, the movie Mine doesn’t inaccurately portray a mine. The mine he stepped on was actually a tin can the locals placed.
That's crazy
if only he had seen this video, then maybe he wouldn't have stood there for three days or however long it was I forgot. Though come to think of it, that is a good example of how that misconception could actually harm people.
Yeah the whole premise of the movie is based off the misconception that if he stayed on the mine it wouldn't go off 😂
@@RussianBiasEnjoyer His buddy wouldn't have shot himself either.
These days, those are called IEDs
13:17 Aaaannnnd now you're on a list.
"This video is sponsored by NordVPN"
Ex army engineer here. I am impressed at your homework commitment. You are the first one i have ever heard or seen talking about the double impulse fuse in a antitank/vehicle mine. You could actually take the fuse out and use up the "first impulse" by use of a tool called the "Nut Cracker" when i was in the the mob. I was never really happy with the concept of doing so with a live fuse and thankfully never had to. Another of many variants is the tilt fuse, it will operate under pressure, however a thin carbon rod is sticking up. Usually used in long grass, so if a tank tracks were to actually bridge over the mine, the belly plate would tilt the rod and boom. Might not be a K Kill, but the crew will be very unhappy.
Had me at 0:45 when he said, "stepping on vs. stepping off. You put it that way it makes so much sense.
Kelly’s Heroes, a comedy/drama in 1970 starring Clint Eastwood accurately shows them walking into a mine field and someone walks and instantly dies on a mine. A movie about stealing Nazi gold was more accurate then the “Don’t move on a mine” myth 😂
That movie also accurately displayed that many a GI looted France, like the captain stealing the boat. They were still liberators, but plundering is a thing that soldiers do.
wait a MINUTE! are you seriously trying to say, that Kelly's Heroes wasn't a documentary ? :)
@@brianbalster3521 negative waves... ALWAYS WITH THE NEGATIVE WAVES
Great movie. Best dialog in the movie was when Don Rickles' character announces that he found a mine, and it's asked, "What kind is it?"
@@Dan_Gleebalz The kind that blows up! How the hell do I know what kind it is?
Yup, it's nuts. Hollywood doesn't know on most subjects. Their theory is like cocking a gun, pulling the trigger, but the round doesn't go off till you recock the gun? Nah makes no sense cause it'd really be easy to defeat a mine if you only had to stand on it or prevent the trigger mechanism from rising again.
Hollywood doesn't care about accuracy they care about drama.
What makes you think they dont know? They are not making documentaries, they are making entertainment. Knowing how something really works is not relevant at all to knowing what is most entertaining. You do realize these movies and shows have professionals working on them to do effects right? You think these people have no idea how anything really works?
@Maibuwolf I think they sacrifice legitimacy for drama. And no, I don't think they know much else other than films and drama because Braveheart and other "historical" films that have wildly inaccurate imagery, battles, etc, all for drama but they're panning them off as homage to real events without ever caring about being factual to historical events. Fantasy over functionality.
@@Maibuwolfit's very bad argument, most people don't think too much about what they see in movies and don't have enough expertise to understand if something they see is wrong. So they just assume that things work like this in real life. Generally this is the reason why nobody knows basic things about medieval times for examples and just uses stereotypes from movies. And though I think that this is already pretty bad, mine myth can easily cause death, since around the world there is a lot of old mines still in the ground. And it would be fair to hold filmmakers accountable for this things
To be honest the lack of delay is in my opinion far more terrifying, mines are horrific and delay or not, I don’t ever want to encounter one. Great video!
1:54 oh my god you did not have to make the entire audience blush by racking that thing I think its beauty did that enough
Has to be the most gorgeous remington on the planet. Went from a solid five to eleven out of ten.
I knew an immigrant from Burma ( Myanmar ) , he was out with 2 friends , one stepped a mine , he died , one lost a leg & the guy I knew lost an eye .
"Misinformation left unchecked becomes information." -Paul Harrell
Rest in peace.
Having spent time in some infantry and combat arms units, I can say VERY LITTLE training is done on mines, except how to look for signs of them. We never had any training on placing them, and only engineers or EOD would be tasked to remove them. This is a GREAT explanation of how they actually work. I think "booby trap" is a better way to describe "anti-handling" devices, although the former is clearly a more technical military term.
I mean it does make sense, avoidance is the only real way to deal with landmines without specialist training. There's not really anything more you can teach someone without giving them a full training in mineclearing that would be effective
Its not the common infantrys job to lay or clear mines, for that combat engineers exist. All the Infantry needs is a "first aid" course in how to avoid mines, how to get out of a mine field and how to mark found mines, not how to handle them
As an EOD instructor and someone who has trained mine awareness trainers I can certify that this is a pervasive myth. At least one person in every class asks the question “what do we do if we step on a mine”?
I use the Blackadder clip at this point…recently I’ve added the clip from ‘Generation War’ that shows the myth, plus an extract from ‘Kajaki’ which shows what really happens.
One thing about the Hollywood Mine though, it occasionally flushes out the odd Walter Mitty* who regales you with his “once in Vietnam my buddy…we put a bayonet…” story.
Oh no you didn’t…
* Stolen Valor to our American friends
Land mines are just scary as hell
Your marching through a field trying to keep your eyes on the ridge then all of a sudden
“Click”
In a blink of a eye your dead
My dead what?
Sometimes.
I think that's merciful to anyone that is instantly gone, but less so for anyone who survived the blast yet dying due to missing body parts.
@@owlson2527 he meant you’re dead but still
This seems like another misconception. Most AP mines are designed to injure rather than kill. Step on one and you lose a foot but the chances of survival are fairly good. A tourniquet will cut the blood flow completely.
In fact that is what happened to my great-grandfather in WWII.
From personal experience in Afghanistan, the only time that you'll come back and tell a story about how you stepped on a landmine is if you stepped on an anti vehicle mine.
They have pressure set weights of around 500 pounds and above. They definitely aren't wasting that much munitions In that landmine for one soldier.
I imagine some guerrilla out there has built a pressure-release IED in their garage and may have even been inspired by the movies to do it, operating under the assumption that it makes a great weapon of terror.
What's the point of it if it only potentially kill 1 person instead more person killed
Guerilla doesn't behave like supervillain doing silly thing
Yeah I could possibly see it there, the delay for that purpose could even be useful since it potentially results in the sort of tense situation that news media are likely to show up and cover in real time. Which if your goal is to terrorise a population could indeed be considered a feature possibly even with the increased risk that this means it never goes off it would still at least be as good at causing disruption as just a plain old bomb threat. Albeit with extra drama that would probably get more media attention and spread fear more effectively.
I thought a cellphone-activated IED was closer to a command mine.
Making your own fuse system in a garage is difficult in the already gnarly field of homemade explosives.
a new movie called "Canary Black" is a perfect example of this myth, when Kate Beckinsale steps on a bouncing betty, and then doesn't move. Another horrible myth is how long it takes for a hand grenade to detonate. Most movies allow way too much time before they explode.
"LANDMINES HAS TAKEN MY SIGHT TAKEN MY SPEECH TAKEN MY HEARING TAKEN MY ARMS TAKEN MY LEGS TAKEN MY SOUL LEFT ME WITH LIFE IN HELLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!" - Metallica
Darkness imprisoning me
All that I see, absolute horror
I cannot live, I cannot die
Trapped in myself
Body, my holding cell
That’s from Johnny got his gun originally
@tylernathan7985 yes we all know its based off of a film that is based off of a book
Classic
One
I hate how people can believe something that is NOT true, then defend it without ever actually looking it up. Smoothest of brains.
If I wanted to be _really_ mean, I could think of ways to deliberately exploit this false belief. Maybe a fuze with a really long delay (say, 10 seconds). When someone in a group steps on it and doesn't immediately die, they assume it works like the Hollywood mines do (or that it's a dud). That way, the mine explodes just as people are coming over to try and help. (This ruse would only work once or twice before people get wise and use the long delay to try and run for cover instead, which is when you start switching to fuzes with shorter delays, or even mixing the two types of fuzes together in the same minefield.)
2 People would die before it’s secret is uncovered and it becomes completely avoidable, try another villain plot
Just a thought on the dual fuse anti vehicle land mine, it could be good for troop carriers, like trucks as well, the front tire rolls over it, then it goes off when one of the rear tires does next. This ensures it goes off under the troop section and not the engine and driver. Now the vehicle is disabled just as much, but you've dealt with a bunch of dudes instead of one or two.
people actually believe this myth?
I know right! It’s way more prevalent than I ever expected
Crazy
These days a lot of people believe the earth is flat. Of course people probably believe that.
@@Valpo2004 it a symptom of a wider issue but yes, you are right ▶️
a large majority of humans will never see a landmine or be close enough to one to need that knowledge.
if we weren't nerds then it would be likely we would think like that too
This myth has lived rent-free in my head ever since I saw the movie "Double Take" starring Dennis Rodman and Jean Claude Van Dam. The villian (played by Mickey Rourke) said the iconic line:
"Watch your step Jack... Nothing wrong with stepping on a mine... its stepping off it that counts."
Man I miss the 90's lol
Can you release a shorter, to the point version of this video please, for people who just stepped on a mine. Like, I just did, and came across this video while googling what to do. Instead I got a history lesson. Thanks.
You have 4.5 seconds bud. Best of luck 🫡
@@WorldWarWisdom I'm gonna do the dive thing you suggested. I'll update this comment if it works.
We’ve lost another one. RIP 🫡
@@WorldWarWisdom 😂
@@kolossarthas Are you still alive bro?
Having been a US Army Combat Engineer for 10 years, …we could set up land mines with booby traps that even we could not safely remove. There are several kinds of land mines. For anti personal, they are really designed to slow down troops and funnel them into another path.
That's why I like the idea of many of the modern US mines that rely on vanadium oxide batteries to power the fuze. Not only do they have various time settings after which they self-detonate but even if that fails the battery will run out in a few months and it's quite inert. Can even drop these types of mines from planes or artillery shells.
Former combat engineer, here. Got buddies that have spent time overseas helping to clear minefields post-conflict. I've never heard of nor seen an S mine or a release fused mine in the wild, and neither have they. Probably because it's overall a less efficient design based on cost and complexity of manufacture combined with negligible gain over standard designs. It's overcomplicating a thing without good reason.
My soul left my body at 5:47
That's the whole plot device of the movie "No Man's Land" (2001). Great, underrated film, but inaccurate.
To be fair, it is a comedy, albeit a very dark one.
15:00 - I'm just imagining a scene in a black comedy war film where a character stands on a landmine, says a whole thing about how it'll only explode once he steps off, and that he needs to dive in a specific way to ensure he survives. He then dives off of the mine he stepped on, only to land on another mine, which explodes normally.
The first mine was a dud 😂
Dude this channel is so underrated
A mostly correct explanation of how APMs work. As a former engineer officer, who tought recruites the handling and tactics of mine warfare, IEDs and so on I always appreciate such corrections, as done here.
Kind Regards Th. Krapf
I love accuracy.
Thank you for addressing this
In Vietnam, my grandfather stepped on an S mine, luckily, as he said, "it bounced but it didn't Betty" the mine shot up but failed to detonate
Bruv, that Woox custom kit looks swag AF.
Bring your wallet, but damn sure worth it! Beautiful!!
Imagine you’re making a design for a mine (with the purpose of war/kill as many as possible) what would be the optimal design choice.
1. A mine that immediately explodes when stepped giving the rest of the enemy squad no time to runaway and survive
2. A mine that has a distinct sound that gives everyone how much time they want to get away except for the poor soul on the mine
Mines used for war is obviously gonna chose the design that kills the most and most importantly doesn’t leave witnesses of the mine to warn others about them but in films of course the second option will be chosen since it’s more dramatic and makes you feel emotions as you realise that it’s that person last seconds knowing that if they take another step they’re dead opposed to them just walking and randomly they explode and that’s it
Dude, I thought they didn’t work that way, and then I thought they did, and now I’m back to square one. 😂
“Hell is for Heros” (1962) depicts realistic antipersonnel mines!
I recall seeing some war movies in which when the character realizes he stepped on a mine, he shouts out to warn his teammates and hits the dirt as soon as possible instead of holding his feet there and hoping it won't explode.
THANK YOU!!!!
I was a US Army combat engineer and I learned about all sorts of mines, both US and foreign, as well as anti-handling devices and improvised devices.
Not a single one was activated by someone stepping off a mine after stepping on it. In every case, the mine detonates immediately after being activated. And, as you pointed out, the only exceptions are mines like the German S-mine and US M-16 mine that work on a time delay so they can "bounce" and explode after the soldier has passed.
I know of a mine that works like that. I served for 5 years in the Norwegian military in various roles. Now, where have I seen, planted, and stepped on these types of mine? Training exercises. We trained with a parter nation, and they used a type of repurposed mine, without explosives naturally. but with a blank inside. these had to be stepped on and of. step down released a safety pin, step up cleared the path for the plunger to hit the blank and it made a tiny pop sound and you would be called out for being fried.
Thank you for covering this
Its like a light switch, once you push it down, the light is turned on, not when you turn it back off
I remember watching a very good ten-part 1987 Aussie miniseries called "Vietnam" where one of the actors, portraying an Aussie soldier in Vietnam during the war, steps on a land mine that goes click, but doesn't explode until he tries to step off it. I also remember my 24YO self thinking at the time, "What would be the point of that?" regarding the way that that land mine allegedly worked. Now I know that it was simply to build tension for that episode of the series. We didn't have the internet back then, & I doubt that the Encyclopedia Britannica that our neighbours owned would likely have had much info on the subject.
I'm shocked anyone thought mines worked by anything other than the first contact, however that is engineered to be identified. The mine trope is right up there with car doors stopping bullets and weapons on full auto with seemingly limitless magazine capacity.
Or cars that explode when they go over cliffs or run into walls. (It's always Sunny in Philadelphia had an episode where they tried to blow up Dee's car by running it into a wall... then with a grenade.)
It's not surprising to me; considering the fact that... Post WW2; a series of top grossing; famous war movies (many about the British Long Range Patrol Groups in Africa)... depicted mines in this way. This occurred regularly in film, from the Early 1940's until the 1980's.
Kelly's Heroes has a good landmine scene tbh
One of my favorite movies; they did a great job with that scene, accurate on getting out of the field.
My DI back in the eighties specifically said "this is not like the movies, they don't go boom when you step off them, they do that when you step ON them."
0:51 that one dude who said cool beard while everyone else was like ☝🤓. 🤣🤣
Combat engineer. You are completely right about landmines.
Closest thing I saw was an IED made with an old bathroom scale that would have the wire swing back on the dial and hit a 9volt once you took your foot off. Some kid came up with it… unfortunately for him the wire to the payload was broken so it did not work. Lucky us… if the wire was good… that would have worked.
Did you find the kid, and offer him a job in R and D?
@ hahaha. Nah.
It was neat and pretty clever but not really efficient or practical as some of the other designs we had seen.
We knew which local kid was running the parts cause we would see the ingredients used and recognize where they came from due to regular patrols, but command did not designate our deduction worth any significant action beyond having his family’s house checked over.
We found about a pound of 9 volts and one AK-47 that belonged to the father and he had all the right work done to keep it so we weren’t confiscating it. Got to keep the batteries though.
Nothing warranting any significant action… our unit was being rotated out soon and the higher-ups probably did not want to prolong any involvement that could be handled by the next guys.
Kid got a slap on the wrist from us cause they were just using him as runner mostly and to gather ingredients. Also he was not the one actually planting them so we could not really say he was taking action directly against us.
For a few smokes he did tell a buddy of mine that he came up with the scale trick but someone else actually fabricated it. We could not get much more out of him than that. Good on him for not squealing though… if word got out he talked too much then they would take care of it.
Also his own father who was against both the local terrorist cells and the American occupation had already kicked the kid up and down the street one for being involved with the BS and two for giving away the family’s bathroom scale.
Good news is though some local drama with the particular kid and the father having some vaguely respectful position at the mosque had the kid simply not be allowed to participate with the groups anymore.
They knew he did not snitch…but they did not want any liability so they told him get lost any time he tried to join up.
Kid spent the last few weeks we were there scowling at us for making it so he can’t play with the big boys. Looked at us like it was our fault he was not allowed to go to summer camp. Utterly brainwashed… though I get it… can’t say most of me and my buddies were not brainwashed to be somewhere we should not have been. Kid was probably within 3 or 4 years our age.
Hell… i would not be surprised the kids chances of joining up to play Jihad Joe when he got older were dashed. He probably had to get a new hobby. Good on him… we all know now that most of that crap was utterly stupid.
If you ask me and I know I ain’t making some unique or truly profound statement. It was just young blood for dino juice.
I think the four second delay did help spread the myth, but I also think that fuse degradation was another factor.
I always thought the idea is that some rare landmines work like that and for dramatic reasons the heroes always find one like that. It's like how a serious injury is always a breathing problem solved by cutting a hole, which is a very specific problem that might be interesting for dramatic reasons, but most of the times that's not the injury one gets.
The landmine scene in Overlord 2018 is a great example of how they work.
Wasn’t it just a tin can in that movie? 7:19
Having spent 4 years in the infantry, you're 100% correct.
Thank you for your service!
I think a common misunderstanding people may have are that there are variations of mines, but ALL OF THEM are detonated by pressure. Anti-Personnel mines only need pressure applied by a human, whereas an Anti-Tank mine generally wont detonate if a human steps on them due to them being designed to detonate from tanks.
You don't step off until someone is next to you 😅
I always knew that was a hollywood trope but I never realized they used to have such long fuses and seeing why the misunderstanding got so common is really interesting. Great video!
13:56 I have an answer. It's impractical, but it's an answer: to waste the enemy's time. There are situations where wasting the enemy's time would be very useful. That said, there are plenty of better ways to do it than something like this.
The calculation is usually that your leg will go away, and your mates will be busy treating you as a severe casualty.
I can imagine myths like these have caused quite a bit of injuries and deaths. Making people think they should stay on the mine instead of at least attempting to run away
You should do a short video about the myth of the mortar "bloop" as depicted in many movies. I've shot mortars, they don't bloop 💥
The bloop is just a sound effect to reflect an action. Movies and tv shows realized in the 50s that if you add a sound effect to something, it has a more kinetic sense of action. So nothing should ever be done with zero sound effect. It's why things like swords going SHIIING from leather scabbards exist. A sound effect should be added like an anime girl squeaking on every expression. Who cares if it doesn't do that in real life.
As a former combat engineer I thank you for this video.
Honestly designing mines in unexpected, confusing ways is just a warcrime waiting to happen I mean what about after the war is over and someone has the audacity to try and walk through a particular section of the wilderness “oh nope not allowed” KABOOM congrats some random soldier has just added a civilian to their irl KDR.
It's happening in iran after 4 decades there are still some land mines from 8 years of war and people and children's are sometimes trigger them and then like you said kaboom dead because army never bothered to clean those lands
That's why proper armies map and record their minefields - which is a pain in the backside having been trained to do it, back in the day - unfortunately there's a lot of State and non State cowboys.
I have only seen this happen in movies once, most movies I see just work like real life when it comes to landmines
Actually it isn't Hollywood's fault, I'm just dumb. Checkmate.
#teamdumb I'm with you!
Two other occurrences of "This will explode if I step off it/unbalance it":
1) The Odd Angry Shot - Australian Vietnam War movie (the guy can't stand the stress of standing there any more, since he might soon come under fire, and tries to step off; it explodes).
2) Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks (The Doctor manages to avoid the explosion).
USMC Vet here. You are absolutely correct. Mines don't have pressure release triggers, we don't have lasers on claymore charges, and grenades don't make fireballs (and you won't save your friends by diving on one). The absolute closest thing I can think of to what Hollywood claims are "scatterable mines" like the M56 Volcano mines. But even that's a far cry from 'safe until you step off it' and we don't use them anymore since they've been effectively banned in the Geneva convention as a 'indiscriminate weapon'. Helicopters don't barrage buildings or do 'strafe runs' in urban areas, jets can't fly between skyscrapers in a city, HMGs or 'crew-serve weapons' are actually very accurate, and we haven't 'painted a target' with a laser since the gulf war. I could go on forever about how bad Hollywood is on getting any amount of accuracy of military tactics, equipment, personnel, or general warfare. I think the closest I've ever seen was from an anime that actually showed the full setup of a saber missile system. Including the 40lb battery and FTS. It might have been Black Lagoon? Point is the more you know about warfighting, martial arts, cultural weapons and general technology the less you want to watch movies depicting it lol.
There are VC and MOH citations of people who dived on grenades and saved their buddies. You taking all the frags from a grenade stops other people from being hit by it, not really surprising.
Geneva's convention did not prohibit the use of anti-personnel mines. It was the Ottawa treaty. It was not ratified by the US, and they actually continue to operate anti-personnel mines.
SALH is absolutely still a thing. Turns out being a clerk in the marines doesn't really give you a lot of exposure
Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter
Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher
PFC Jack Lucas
Look it up
I personally believe that the gross inaccuracies of military action in movies is 100% deliberate. Entertainment reasons and classified doctrine.
@@R0ckmans Everything in movies is based on entertainment value. These are not documentaries. Anyone who was incapable of figuring this out on their own needs to accept the fact that they are not very smart. This is not hard to figure out.
To add to what others have said, Russian helicopters absolutely barrage buildings in urban areas. It's been their modus operandi since inception. Fighter jets often use urban areas as cover, and only refrain from flying down streets when a war isn't on to avoid harming onlookers. Laser designators are one of the most accurate ways of delivering precision weapons, and you can find OSINT videos of their use dating from this decade.
Also, blue is the best crayola flavor.
Another way to think about it would be "what purpose does the alleged pressure release mechanism serve other than giving the recipient a final dramatic moment?" I kinda doubt weapons designers optimize for dramatic effect in the field.
After holding more mine awareness classes than I like to think about it is incredible how well different mine myths lives and thrives. It doesn't help that officers that means it well to themselves keep these myths alive because they don't want their soldier to worry to much about mines.
One of the worst examples I came across was this guy that stated that in case he stepped on a Yugoslavian mine called PROM-1would have the time to cut the wire of the grenade as it wizzed passed on its way up to go boom.
There have been multiple movies made around the plot point that someone stepped on a mine and now they can't move. To think that you waste time, money and so on, on something you don't even research is possible.
1:09 So real
Its not just movies, had to read a book called "boy overboard" in primary school. A large part of the plot hinges on a landmine not exploding while someone kept standing on it.
6:09 The hell is that gun? It’s like a PPSH with an SVT 40 barrel.
Ppsh-41 I’m pretty sure
@ no the one the first person is holding
@TheRedBaron2010 what do you mean the only two guns in that cod clip are ppsh 41 s ones a box mag and one is a drum
Svt that looks like ppsh with the drum magazine lol
@ the one that the first person shooter guy is holding doesn’t look like a PPSH 41 to me. The second guy that appears in the frame appears to be holding a stick modified PPSH 41.
It comes from the German Tellermine 42. The AT mine could be fitted with an anti-tampering fuse that would make an audible snapping sound when armed. If the mine's pressure plate wasn't screwed down properly the anti-tampering fuse might not activate, but if someone came along and stepped on it, it might be activated by the pressure plate being pushed down. This wouldn't detonate the mine because it needs a lot more weight on the pressure plate, but stepping off it again could raise it just enough to set off the anti-tampering charge and detonate the mine.
My approach to explaining this to people
Step 1 - ask them why mines exist in the first place
Step 2 - ask them to explain why a mine would be designed to function like this
Step 3 - ask them if designing mines this way would be easier, simpler, and, cheaper than an alternative
Step 4 - Tie the two points together
Mines are designed the way they are specifically to avoid situations like seen in the movies where people have a chance to get off them. You, as someone employing mines, do not want the enemy to have a chance. And it's just cheaper and easier if a mine goes off as soon as it's triggered.
The (untrue) "explanation" is that it waits until whatever set it off is out of the way so that it has a clear path to "bounce" up. But asking your questions about how it really works I'm not sure why they decided on a 4.5 second fuze which seems kind of long.
@@EkajArmstro The theory behind asking them questions is to sound less confrontational.
Rather than "you are wrong", it's a "well, why do you think that is" and "let's think about the best way for it to work".
The other reason is to help them arrive at the conclusion themselves. Rather than impose the answer, let it form naturally.
@Mahbu I agree I'm just saying that people often do have at least some kind of explanation that is somewhat reasonable even though it's not true.
The first time I haven’t skipped the promotional portion of a video. Looks great.
whats the perpouse of a landmine if it only takes out 1 person lol :Edit what have I done !!!!
Getting your best friend obliterated might just make you lose your will to fight, or fight wrongly, blinded with anger.
@@owlson2527 if it doesn’t explode immediately that means you don’t have to see it if it blows up instantly you’re gonna see it and probably be covered in it
What's the purpose of a bullet if it only takes out one person? Sound foolish to you now?
@ a bullet only has the ability to take one out, landmines can take out an entire fireteam. If you don’t know much about the military, then please don’t talk about them.
a causality is a causality. and you rarely place a single mine
I'm like a minute in and just wonder why people wouldn't ask themselves WHY you would manufacture a land mine that gives your enemies a chance to convey to their comrades that they should get away instead of just exploding instantly? Also I think exploding on release would be a more complicated mechanism therefore more expensive to manufacture? Like it doesn't make sense practically.