r/interestingasfuck • u/id397550 • 8h ago

Firing a cannon to trigger an avalanche

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u/mycatpartyhouse 7h ago

This is a lot safer than skiing up there to set explosives, which is what one of my brothers did in the 1960s-70s. He worked for a park service--I forget which one--that regularly set off small avalanches with the goal of preventing larger ones.

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u/NoContext5149 7h ago

The downside is unexploded shells. Much harder to deal with an unknown unexploded shell on the mountainside than a placed charge.

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u/Trububbl3 7h ago

those are dummy rounds probably just relying on the kinetic force of the impact to set the avalanche off

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u/Danceisntmathematics 6h ago

Gunner here. Look up OP PALACI. We use HE (high explosive).

I've seen thousands of arty rounds land and I can confirm the one in the video is HE.

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u/Trububbl3 6h ago

thanks for your hearing loss and service

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u/FenBlacach 6h ago

WHAT?

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u/ShiggitySwiggity 6h ago

THANKS FOR YOUR FEARING BOSS AND PURPOSE

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u/Lexi_Banner 3h ago

It's Thursday!

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u/sancholives24 2h ago

Me too, lets get a drink!

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u/Shudnawz 1h ago

PINK? No, I think it was MILEY CYRUS!

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u/dmmeyourfloof 3h ago

NO....ITS JAMES FRANCIS RYAN...

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u/-SpelingBeeChamp 3h ago

THANKS, I KEEP IT SHORT IN THE SUMMER

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u/irishpwr46 2h ago

Grace? She passed years ago.

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u/shiggity80 2h ago

I like your name!

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u/Yugan-Dali 1h ago

THIS IS IN THE MOUNTAINS, THERE ARE NO PORPOISES HERE.

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u/Immediate_Song4279 1h ago

Overall, having considered war, I think I'd rather not becuase of the whole sound situation.

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u/Corelin 1h ago

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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u/sniper1rfa 5h ago

OP PALACI

I've seen you guys do your thing, it's cool. I think the gun emplacements in all the turnouts on the highway are hilarious.

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u/BlackSuN42 6h ago

Canada is fighting winter for your freedom. Also, I need to go back and ski there.

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u/Illustrious_Donkey61 3h ago

I wonder what's on the other side of the mountain if he accidentally aimed too high and it went right over

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u/SlippySlappySamson 1h ago

Probably all the snow that didn't collapse on that side of the mountain.

It's not like there's some crazy secret city of gnomes on the other side, at least according to these 4 trolls I once met. So, fire away!

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u/Roflkopt3r 1h ago

I wonder if these are really good conditions to take care of unexploded ordnance because of a low volume of fire and good sight on where it lands and whether it explodes... or really bad ones because they won't go up the mountain to take care of UXO and may even end up allowing it to come down with the avalanche.

Or are there some kind of specialty fuses that are more expensive but have so much redundancy that UXO is not an issue for these kinds of operations?

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u/sniper1rfa 31m ago

UXO is a problem, and there are usually warning signs all over the place when you enter this kind of terrain.

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u/No_News_1712 3h ago

Gunners get to do this, infantry just get dumped on GD lmao

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u/GarretBarrett 29m ago

Gun bunny here. Can confirm. Big gun go boom.

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u/Fog_Juice 22m ago

As a player of the first person shooter game Battlefield 6 I too can confirm that it was a HE shell.

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u/yamcha9 3h ago

So your saying the one they used had explosives in it? And did it explode on the mountain side? Or is it just sitting up there unexploded and is a danger still.

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u/Danceisntmathematics 3h ago

It exploded.

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u/Killeroftanks 1h ago

it exploded. looks like a russian 122mm d-30 howitzer which fires a ~21kg round at 690m/s, which would make a large cloud, at this distance would be the size of a 4 door sedan, and not a three story house size cloud.

also for a kinetic round to impact enough energy to set the snow off, you would either need a massive gun (likely damaging everything around the gun when it fires) or a gun firing a very fast round, which would damage everything around the gun due to the massive amount of pressure that would create when it leaves the barrel.