A device that didn't explode isn't a failed device. It's an armed device that's waiting, and that's why it's more dangerous than one that worked.
This sheet completes Récupérer sur une épave militaire, Salvaging from a tank, Récupérer sur un avion de chasse and Récupérer sur un hélicoptère, which all say the same thing in one line: you don't touch it. Here's why, what you need to be able to recognize, how to live next to it — and what can really be salvaged, because there's a lot to take.
UNDERSTAND
How it's built
Every explosive munition comes down to four parts. Knowing their names lets you reason instead of guessing.
- The body, steel or alloy, which produces the fragments.
- The filling, the explosive itself, chemically stable as long as nothing initiates it.
- The fuze, the detonator and its mechanism. It's the only truly sensitive part, and it decides everything.
- The propellant, powder or rocket motor, which sent it on its way.
A shell's filling is hard to set off: you can burn it, strike it, pierce it without it detonating. The fuze, on the other hand, is designed to be sensitive, and it arms itself in flight — through the acceleration at launch and the spin.
Hence the central fact: a fired device that didn't explode has an armed fuze whose sequence stopped somewhere. Nothing is missing for it to resume, and nobody can tell from the outside how far along it got. It's exactly the opposite of intuition: the projectile that fell to the ground without a sound is more dangerous than the one still in its crate.
What gets worse with time
Explosives age, and they age badly.
TNT sweats. As it ages, and in heat, it exudes compounds that migrate and crystallize.
Picric acid, used in old munitions, attacks metal and forms picrates, far more sensitive to shock and friction than the original explosive. A First World War shell is more dangerous today than the day it was made. That's why tons of them are still collected every year in some regions, and why nobody ever touches them.
Powders lose their stabilizer. Nitrocellulose slowly decomposes, and that decomposition speeds itself up. Powder that is too old can ignite on its own. That's why doubtful stocks are stored under water.
White phosphorus reignites as it dries. A buried, damp fragment that looks inert catches fire again as soon as it dries in the air, and it burns through flesh without going out.
What kills civilians, in practice
Demining organizations' statistics are consistent from one conflict to the next, and they don't look like what people imagine.
Submunitions are the first killer. Small, the size of a can or a ball, sometimes brightly colored, scattered by the hundreds, with a high failure rate. They look like an object, not a weapon. Children pick them up.
Most victims are local people, adults at work or children playing, and they're hit long after the fighting ends — for decades. The field, the spring, the firewood: accidents happen where people have to go, not where the fighting was.
The second cause is deliberate handling: picking things up to move them, to sell the metal, to recover the explosive. That's the act this sheet asks you not to do.
ACT
1. Recognize it, from a distance. Any machined metal object, cylindrical or egg-shaped, with a pointed nose, a base, copper bands, fins, a threaded end, a military color or painted stripes. When in doubt, it is one.
2. Don't touch it, don't move it, don't turn it over, don't scrape it, don't clean it, don't throw it in water, don't put it in a fire. A device in a fire cooks off and throws fragments several hundred meters.
3. Move away by retracing your own steps, exactly, without straying from them.
4. Mark it without getting closer. A marker visible from far away, placed on the safe side: painted stones, a branch, cloth, a can. The humanitarian convention is simple and worth adopting — red on the danger side, white on the safe side. A marking nobody understands protects nobody.
5. Record it and pass it on. An exact position on a map overlay, a description, a photo taken from a distance. That's what will make clearance possible one day, and in the meantime it protects the next person. See Recueillir de l'information and Lire une carte.
6. Warn people, children first. Explain, show pictures, repeat. It's the only measure that really reduces accidents in contaminated areas, and it costs nothing.
Distances, as orders of magnitude
These aren't safety thresholds, they're reminders of scale. For an ordinary artillery shell, specialist services evacuate several hundred meters, and far more for an aircraft bomb. A grenade throws fragments well beyond what a garden wall can stop.
Remember the principle rather than the number: the safe distance is always bigger than you'd like it to be.
What can really be salvaged
This is the part people usually skip, and it isn't empty. Around ammunition there's plenty of inert material, and some of the best you'll find anywhere.
Metal ammunition cans. Steel, rubber seal, lever latch, handle. Water- and airtight, stackable, nearly indestructible. It's the best container you'll find, on any terrain: a store for seeds, papers, tools, matches, electronics, a buried cache. Take as many as you can carry — see La conservation des semences and Telling what's still usable.
Wooden crates. Thick, clean wood, nailed or screwed, with rope handles. Framing, furniture, formwork, kindling.
Empty cases that have already been fired. Cartridge brass is a remarkable copper-zinc alloy: it bends, hammers and cold-forms, and it doesn't rust. A cup, a funnel, a protective sleeve, a washer, a ring, brazing. An empty artillery case is a good-sized watertight container. Empty means empty: no intact primer in the base, nothing inside.
The copper from driving bands, on shell bodies that have already burst and are inert — never to be taken from an intact device.
Straps, slings, covers, nets, transport plugs, strips of cloth.
The desiccant bags found in almost all military packaging: silica you can reuse forever after drying it in an oven, to keep seeds, papers or a radio dry.
Clips, links and loading strips, in spring steel: fasteners, springs, staples, wire.
And the information. The markings on crates and bodies give the type, the caliber and the year. Note them before you leave: they inform whoever comes to clear the area, and they tell you what's around you.
ADAPT
You live in a contaminated area. Don't improvise paths. Stay on hard surfaces, paved roads and paths that others already use every day. Never cut across fields, don't follow a riverbank, don't walk into overgrown land for firewood. The risk is seasonal: plowing, floods, frost and erosion bring up devices that have been buried for years.
You have to farm there. Do it by hand, on a plot already worked without incident, never with a rotary tiller on new ground, and never by burning the stubble.
There was a fire at a depot or a wreck. Treat the perimeter as much wider than the burned area; the devices there have become unpredictable. You don't go back to salvage anything.
Someone was injured by a device. A second device is the rule, not the exception. You don't run straight at them: you approach along the exact path the person came by, treat the bleeding as the absolute priority, then evacuate the same way. See Severe external bleeding and Examining a casualty.
You want to open a munition, extract the explosive or the powder, or use it. It's the one thing in this whole library I won't write, and the argument isn't moral, it's statistical: in every area where it's done, it kills and maims more salvagers than the devices left in place kill passers-by. Aged explosive is more sensitive than new, a partly functioned fuze has no readable state, and the accident happens in your hands, at zero distance, with no second chance. The people who do this work wear heavy protective gear, work at a distance, and destroy in place without ever taking anything apart.
You find a device at home, in a garden, an attic, a wall. It's common, and it's exactly the same subject. You don't carry it out, you don't put it in the car, you don't set it on the windowsill. You leave it where it is, move people away, and report it.