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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2026
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I doubt there's a safe way to make explosives degrade.
There definitely is, but there is no doubt a challenging engineering problem to make something that will release as high energy as possible over short time with intent to destroy also disarm and dissapate harmless energy over long time with intent to preserve ;)
A very noble effort to take on, though.
I'm an absolute layperson in chemistry, but I'm reminded of something from Ryan McBeth's earlier content. It was around the start of the war in Ukraine, and someone had asked him about self-destruct explosives on personnel or personnel carriers. His answer was dismissive on the grounds that manufacturing, handling, and more importantly combat application of explosives always carries a combination of unreliability, both to explode and not to explode. Basically, the failsafes needed to safely and reliably implement self-destruction on a large scale will eventually result in troops getting blown up by their own equipment.
My take from this, is that if you would manufacture degrading mines in huge numbers, the degradation mechanism might very well make some mines a random time bomb, simply because of the inherent properties of explosives. I can't argue for or against the plausibility of chemically engineering a safe and reliable temporary mine, but I would only take expert opinions into consideration.
The internet has a tendency to enable laypeople to act as if they're entitled to be given the same consideration as an expert in any given field. This is why I think taking a big step back from this question is the right thing to do for me and for those who I think are no more qualified to make statements on this than I am. But it's good to be hopeful.
Well duh, that's why we're still distributing the Nobel Prize