The Historic Innovation of Land Mines—And Why We’ve Struggled to Get Rid of Them

Decades of internecine fighting and invasions by foreign forces into Afghanistan have left a deadly legacy for the country’s residents. In 2016, nearly 1,000 children were killed in Afghanistan, the most since the United Nations began keeping track seven years ago, in large part due to a 66 percent increase in casualties from land mines. With Islamic State (ISIS) militants making indiscriminate use of these violent, hidden weapons across Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the problem is far from over.

How did this insidious weapon, with its long-lasting consequences that disproportionately affect civilians, come to be so prevalent?

While the use of explosive devices goes back to 13th-century China, when the Song Dynasty military used bombs to fend off invading Mongolians, the land mine didn’t take its modern form as a metal container rigged with gunpowder, a fuse and a detonation cap until the American Civil War. These “torpedoes” or “subterra shells” were pioneered by Gabriel Rains, a native North Carolinian who began the war fighting for the Union, before resigning to join his fellows in the Confederate Army. Rains, whose U.S. Military Academy records indicated a high aptitude for chemistry and artillery, first experimented with a tactical explosive device in April 1840, during the Seminole Wars in Florida. But it wasn’t until the Civil War that his invention was put to wide use.

The “Rains Patent” was a mine made of sheet iron, with a fuse protected by a brass cap covered with a solution of beeswax. It was detonated either by direct contact with the friction primer of the buried shell, or movement of an object attached to the primer by strings or wires, such as a tool like a hammer or shears.

Following the Siege of Yorktown in the spring of 1862, Rains and his men planted land mines along their route as the Confederate Army retreated. The explosives lined the road to Richmond and the abandoned fort, and were a horrifying surprise to the Union soldiers, writes historian W. Davis Waters. “Periodic explosions disturbed the quietness of Yorktown as unsuspecting Union cavalrymen and their horses moved through the abandoned Confederate fortification only to have the ground ripped beneath them.”

The soldiers were petrified and the generals appalled. “The rebels have been guilty of the most murderous and barbarous conduct in placing torpedoes within the abandoned works near wells and springs, and near flag-staffs, magazines, and telegraph offices, in carpet-bags, barrels of flour, etc.,” went the statement from Union General George McClellan in the May 12, 1862 edition of the New York Herald.

Even Confederate generals expressed some qualms about the use of these subterra torpedoes, and briefly banned their use. But as the tides of war continued to turn against the Confederates, the generals grew less reluctant. Eventually Confederate Secretary of War George Randolph drafted the ethical standards for the use of the torpedoes. As Rains himself said, “Each new invention of war has been assailed and denounced as barbarous and anti-Christian. Yet each in its own turn notwithstanding has taken its position by the universal consent of nations according to its efficiency in human slaughter.”

Before long, Confederates had found ingenious ways to hide the bombs, wiring them so that they detonated upon direct contact, or by moving the articles attached to the primer. An especially well-disguised version was the “coal torpedo,” whose iron container was coated in beeswax then powdered with coal dust. Confederate soldiers could slip these into Union coal supplies, and when the fake nuggets of coal were unwittingly placed in the burner of a steam engine, the whole vessel would explode.

Although there are no precise figures on how many soldiers were killed and maimed by land mines, what’s known is how many ships they wrecked: 35 belonging to the Union and one of the Confederates. Rains reported 2,363 land mines were hidden around Richmond, and more were buried elsewhere throughout the South. They were so widespread that land mines continued to be recovered as late as the 1960s in Alabama.

From the Civil War, land mine technology spread rapidly around the world. The use of the devices was widespread throughout WWI and WWII, and in regional conflicts that occurred during the Cold War. By the 1990s, more than 26,000 people were victims of land mines each year.

“In the post-Cold War years—1989, 1999—the largest refugee population in the world were Afghanis and Pakistanis. They were being blown up by the thousands,” says Ken Rutherford, a professor of political science at James Madison University and the director of the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery. “What we’re talking about is a weapon of mass destruction that moves in slow motion.”

So began efforts to launch the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The group organized a Mine Ban Treaty that called for banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel land mines and required countries to destroy their stockpiles, clear affected areas of mines, and assist victims. Rutherford, who is himself a bilateral lower leg amputee due to a near-fatal land mine injury he sustained in 1993 in Somalia, played a role in bringing the treaty to fruition.

“For a year I really believed my story was kind of different and odd, a freak accident,” Rutherford says of the period immediately after he was injured. “I’m a Colorado boy, I’m telling people and they don’t believe it and I don’t believe it. But my story wasn’t unique, it wasn’t special at all. The real strange thing is so many people were being maimed and killed and nobody was writing about it.”

When the final draft of the treaty was written in 1997, over 120 countries became signatories; now, 162 have signed it, including all countries in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba and the United States. The U.S. is a leader in combating land mines, Rutherford says, and was the first country to permanently ban the export of land mines. The refusal to sign the treaty comes down to North Korea; if North Korean forces invade South Korea, the U.S. wants to be able to deter an invasion with the weapons of our choice.

“I’m proud of our country that we [support demining and help victims], but I’m not so proud because there are a lot of countries that look to the U.S. for leadership,” Rutherford says.

Today a number of organizations focus their energy on assembling a toolbox of technology for the continuing effort to eradicate land mines. One example is TIRAMISU, a research program that received funding from the European Commission and has collaborated with 26 groups around Europe for the research and development of new demining tools. The goal of these toolboxes is to assist in locating the mines, excavating them, and defusing or detonating them without any loss of life.

“I am very optimistic in our ability to create demining technology or to use at our advantage technology developed for other purposes, such as drones, tablets, etc.,” said TIRAMISU project coordinator Yann Yvinec by email.

The most widely used tools are metal detectors, Yvenic said, which have become so sensitive that they can detect tiny pieces of metal. But using metal detectors is a time-consuming process, since they require deminers (who work on the ground with various tools to locate, excavate and deactivate land mines) to investigate all kinds of metal, not just land mines. In some cases, an area that is mined can be up to 98 percent mine-free, making it a time-consuming process. When Cambodia cleared 54 square kilometers of land and destroyed 20,000 land mines in 2014, the country accounted for 27 percent of the worldwide total clearance for that year. Demining is a slow, dangerous business, with no obvious end in site.

“More than 100 tons of unexploded ordinance are found in Belgium alone every year, and most of it dates from WWI,” Yvinec said. “I’ll therefore not venture an estimation of the time it will take to remove all mines and unexploded ordinance.”

But there’s plenty of new technology coming onto the market that might speed the process up—though Yvenic cautions it can be hard for humanitarian organizations to afford the new technology and to convince operators to use it. Nevertheless, he’s excited by the innovations that are emerging.

Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/