re: #805 Dark_Falcon

Some 16 million acres is off limits because of an estimated 12 million unexploded munitions in the vicinity of Verdun.

While digging a rail line through the Somme battlefields in 1991-92, to connect with the “Chunnel,” the French dmineurs (“de-miners”) handled an average of five tons of unexploded ordnance per day that had been unearthed during the excavation (throughout France, the dmineurs collect some 900 tons of ordnance per year, with 30 tons of that being gas shells). Luckily, no one was killed during the “Chunneling” — although several pieces of construction equipment were totaled — but every year several French dmineurs are killed and injured disposing of gas and high-explosive shells, and in 1991 alone, 36 French farmers were killed plowing up unexploded ordnance from the Great War.

And they not only have to worry about standard munitions, but chemical weapons that lay buried all over the place (mustard; phosgene, etc.) - and the shells aren’t exactly in tip top shape such that moving them could be potentially hazardous to anyone in the vicinity.