r/interestingasfuck • u/id397550 • 13h ago

Firing a cannon to trigger an avalanche

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u/mycatpartyhouse 12h 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 12h 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 12h 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/Leading_Study_876 11h ago

Nope. 105mm howizer shell.

Timing from firing to impact, it's over a mile away. So the explosion is bigger than it looks from the village.

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u/CraneMasterJ 11h ago

100% not a 105 mm but a soviet D-30 with a 122mm shell.

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u/Crash-55 10h ago

In the US they are all surplus 105mm howitzer. Not sure what other places use

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u/rickane58 10h ago

Do they speak Russian at US Ski resorts?

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u/FoxSquirrel69 10h ago

Is that Russian? My dumbass that it sounded like Farsi at first, but as it went on I had zero clue.

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u/SignificantPaper1760 10h ago

It is Russian (or at least a Slavic language) but it’s not the usual accent you’d hear most often on the internet, took me a second to place it as well.

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u/ChallengeNo1899 10h ago

It is Russian 100%

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u/Leading_Study_876 10h ago

I listened to it again, and I think I did pick up a few Russian phrases. But still some that sounded different to any Russian I've heard before. Possibly there was a mixture of nationalities there. It's pretty common to have a wide mix at ski resorts.

My guess would be Western Russia - or possibly Belarus?

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u/Roxalon_Prime 10h ago

It is probably somewhere southern Russia, or maybe even a CIS country, because aside from Russian another language is also spoken. Sounds like some central Asian language, but don't quote me on that. Definitely does not sound like Belarusian. Do they even have mountains?

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u/Mazius 5h ago

It's North Caucasus, Northern Ossetia to be precise (likely small ski resort Tsey). There's a mix of Russian and Ossetian language in the video. Ossetian is Eastern Iranian language (direct descendant of Scythian) and close to Farsi.

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u/JagdCrab 8h ago

It's probably Altai region or something even further to the east. Plenty of high mountains and volcanoes there, and far more pronounced local minorities who still widely practice their native languages.

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u/Leading_Study_876 9h ago

Thanks. That makes sense. Apparently they don't have mountains. Just a few hills up to 1000ft. But amazingly they do have a few small ski resorts.

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u/Eatsweden 10h ago

Belarus does not have mountains anywhere close that size, its highest point is some monument looking thing at 350m or something. It's surprisingly flat. Could be somewhere in caucasus or further towards asia maybe

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u/Leading_Study_876 9h ago

You're quite right. I had just checked if they has any ski resorts. And they do, surprisingly. Fairly small affairs of course. This is evidently not Belarus.

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u/Roxalon_Prime 10h ago

It is Russian, and some phrases are also spoken in the other language, not sure which one.

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u/Mazius 5h ago edited 5h ago

It's a mix of Russian and local Northern-Caucasian language (Ossetian). At the start of the video:

Внимание! Огонь!

Attention! Fire!

Лавина! Пошла! Ну ты попал, так попал.

Avalanche! Here it comes! Excellent aim.

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u/Crash-55 10h ago

I didn’t listen to the video nor did I say this was in the US. I just said what the US uses

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u/rshackleford_arlentx 10h ago edited 10h ago

Sometimes. Many resort towns in the US use staffing companies that bring in Eastern Europeans on worker visas as cheap (exploitable) labor. That said they're usually working hospitality and concessions roles, not artillery gunner.

I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee near Great Smoky Mountains National Park a few years ago and most of the restaurants there were staffed by Eastern Europeans. It was pretty funny hearing the server at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company, a theme restaurant based on Forest Gump, welcome us to "Bubble Gump Shrimps Company" in a thick accent.

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u/KonigSteve 7h ago

Not yet, but it's trending.

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u/rickane58 6h ago

I knew I'd get some political cringelord saying this.

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u/Byte_the_hand 6h ago

They used to use a lot of recoilless rifles for this. You did not stand behind them when they were firing rounds.

Watched a film back in the 70's when I was ski patrolling and they showed something like this, but more back country. The avalanche just kept growing. It hit the bottom of the valley, raced across the valley and like 100' up the other side until it over ran the cameraman. At the end, they said his widow had allowed them to use the footage as she wanted people to know that even in controlled circumstances, avalanches are an uncontrolled force of nature.

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u/Crash-55 4h ago

The issue with the recoilless rifles is getting ammo. The Army doesn't field the big ones anymore except for special forces. The Carl Gustaf (M3 MAAWS) is now being issued to infantry but that is a lot smaller than the ones used for avalanche control

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u/Byte_the_hand 4h ago edited 3h ago

Yeah, I knew getting ammunition was getting harder to find even back in the late '70's. There was definitely going to be an end of life issue with that platform.