But the question caused me to speculate on what life would be like in Canada if there were such a problem. . . Imagine you're on your usual drive to work when you get a flat tire and pull over to change it. You step out and off the shoulder of the road and suddenly the ground explodes. What happens next depends on what type of device you've detonated. Ingeniously designed fragmentation mines have a highly explosive core surrounded by a steel casing, pre-formed in such a way that they disintegrate into multiple potentially lethal fragments upon detonation.
Actuation is accomplished by an almost invisible nylon tripwire.
The projectiles yield a killing range of up to 50 m. When dropped from an airplane, the cluster bomb explodes at a preset distance above the ground, creating a 5,000 m2 shower of bombies. They, in turn, explode after spinning a certain number of rotations either in the air, bouncing off the ground or being picked up by an inquisitive child. Blast mines differ from fragmentation mines in that the former rely on an extremely high pressure shock wave to destroy tissue and to transform earth, stones and portions of victims' footwear and anatomy into projectiles. They are cheap and easy to manufacture.