Germany’s Repurposed World War II Bunkers

By Simone Preuss

From: http://1800recycling.com/

Could you imagine living in a bunker? Far from drab and depressing, repurposed bunkers take on a life of their own, providing peace, quiet and safety.

Image via treehugger

Military bunkers have long been an eyesore for those living close to them. Like gray behemoths, they stand around, waiting to be used again for their original purpose. Luckily, though, they don’t necessarily have to go back to being used for warfare — in Germany, many were recycled as homes decades ago by students and people living alternative lifestyles.

Three old military bunkers refurbished as stylish houses by Luczak architects in Cologne. Image via aknw.

However, now there seems to be a new trend: refurbishing old military bunkers and turning them into high-quality apartments. Germany has a treasure trove of these kinds of conversions, as many architects are rediscovering old bunkers as sustainable and easy-to-maintain residential buildings.

Not pretty but functional: the old German submarine bunker in Trondheim

Image: Aslak Raanes

Architects Rainer Mielke and Claus Freudenberg of mielke+freudenberg specialize in converting old military bunkers in the northern German city of Bremen into living quarters. Their reasoning: “Bunkers have been built to receive people and to shelter them. Because of their massive construction, they last even without costly maintenance efforts.”

Image: Emder Muschelschubser

And indeed, many architects appreciate their sturdiness and low risk of geological disruption, making them safe, lasting and stylish buildings, too. A prime example of this is the remodeled bunker in the northern German town of Emden (above). Here, only the strict square form reminds one of the building’s original purpose.

Military bunkers were built to protect troops and civilians, but also machinery and important equipment from air raids. There was a bunker building boom during World War II due to the development of aerial warfare and the existence of aircraft which could transport heavy bombs. In Germany especially, bunkers were built in abundance, as is still apparent today.

A bunker with a cool blue roof at Claussenstrasse in Bremen

Image via thelocal

Many of them were industrial bunkers, built to safeguard important industries but also food, materials and files from aerial bombardment. Many also served as living quarters. On their website, Mielke and Freudenberg explain why it makes sense to repurpose old bunkers: “Because of their central location in many suburbs, many of them are ideal for living. We convert these bunkers into residential buildings in a modern and sustainable fashion and integrate these historical buildings into the cityscape without denying their own identity.”

A bunker turned studio in Frankfurt

Image via treehugger

The story behind this bunker is quite intriguing. Admittedly not the prettiest, Frankfurt’s residents too found it an eyesore but had to live with it, as demolishing the extremely compact bunker would have been too costly. Turning it into living quarters was also out of the question, as it is located in a non-residential part of town, between junkyards and shipping container depots. Finally, Index Architects came up with a practical solution and, using the old bunker as a giant table, added artists’ studios and a space for the Institute of New Media on top. And the old bunker? It’s now housing musicians’ studios.

Like a bird’s nest on top of the bunker

Image via thelocal

After World War II, most bunkers were abandoned, as the occupying forces had no use for them and Germany was focused on rebuilding its economy rather than its military. However, given their sturdiness, they survived all these decades unscathed and can be found in abundance around WWII hotspots like the former mining area around the Ruhr, in Berlin and Dresden, along the borders, and even on some of the beaches. In the suburb of Poppelsdorf in Germany’s former capital Bonn, for example, Scherf Architects used an old WWII bunker as the foundation for three apartments and simply built on top of the existing structure, thus guaranteeing a good view.

Image via immowelt

The “basement” that is the old bunker, houses the heating, electricity and other maintenance functions.

Image via immowelt

At the corner of Dortmund’s Wittelbacher and Landgrafen streets, the old bunker was a 20- x 20-square-meter block, 10 meters high with 2-meter-thick walls. It used to look gray and depressing…

Image via bunker-dortmund

… before it was turned into this cool building:

Image via bunker-dortmund

Here is another bunker in Emden that has been repurposed.

Image via luftschutzbunker

There are a surprising number of uses for abandoned military bunkers. All it takes is a creative architect, some imagination and innovative design. People who like peace and quiet and a feeling of safety will appreciate living in one of these constructions. For other cool uses to which bunkers have been put, take a look here.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

15 Years Ago - Stolen Tank Leads Police on a Wild Chase

youtube.com — May 17, 1995: San Diego, California - After stealing a military tank from the National Guard Armory in Kearny Mesa, a deranged man leads police on a destructive chase through San Diego, before finally getting caught on the miridian. It's a wonder how no one was hurt or killed after this man's rampage.

1/3rd of Women in US Military Raped

Posted By Ole Ole Olson

From: http://newsjunkiepost.com/

^[1]

According to NPR ^[2], “In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed.”

The BBC ^[3] recently reported on The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq by Helen Benedict. This book examines the extreme difficulties female soldiers have in serving abroad. Benedict interviewed several women in the military to get a deeper understanding of the issue, and some of their stories were real eye openers.

Army specialist Chantelle Henneberry spoke of some of her experiences in Iraq, “Everybody’s supposed to have a battle buddy in the army, and females are supposed to have one to go to the latrines with, or to the showers – that’s so you don’t get raped by one of the men on your own side. But because I was the only female there, I didn’t have a battle buddy. My battle buddy was my gun and my knife.”

Another study concluded that 90% of all women serving are sexually harassed. Another one estimates that 90% of all the rapes do not get reported, despite supposedly easier ways to report the crime with confidentiality since 2005. Either way, this appears to be an epidemic that needs to be dealt with.

An online discussion from a former soldier whose identity is being protected had this to say, “At least a rape ends. It’s the day-to-day degradation that eats at you. None of my friends who were raped on active duty reported it. Or if we tried, we were told to shut up for ‘morale.’ Working with your rapist on a daily basis isn’t a lot of fun, believe me.”

How the military is dealing with this appears to demonstrate a pattern of sweeping it under the rug. In 2008, 62% of those that were convicted of sexual assault or rape received very lenient punishments such as demotion, suspension, or a written reprimand.

^[4]

This problem is not confined to the US military either. This abuse is rampant among private defense contractors overseas as well, as recently highlighted by the recent press about Jamie Leigh Jones. Ms. Jones was in Iraq in 2005 when seven Halliburton/KBR employees drugged and brutally gang-raped her. Her injuries were so extensive that she had lacerations to her vagina and anus, her breast implants were ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn. The response of KBR was to lock her in a shipping container with only a bed, and to deny her food, water, and medical treatment. The rape kit that was taken after she regained consciousness was mysteriously lost.

This crime eventually led to an amendment being added to the defense appropriations bill by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). This would require defense contractors to allow their employees access to US courts in cases of rape or sexual assault, regardless of where they are stationed. The 30 Republican senators voted against this amendment are currently being humiliated on the Republicans for Rape website and by John Stewart on the Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The culture of sexual violence against women that is allowed to exist in both the US military and private contractors needs to come to an end. When almost a third of all women serving are raped, and over two thirds sexually assaulted, this problem is rampant and systemic.

Boston Dynamics Robots Tiptoe Toward Terminator

BY Kit Eaton

A new video of a Boston Dynamics robot has surfaced--possibly the scariest yet. The company's name alone should give you the willies if you've watched the Terminator movies or seen the previous chilling robots BD makes. We've rounded up the videos for you. Happy Halloween.

Boston Dynamics is a small engineering and robotics firm spun off from MIT in 1992. According to its own Web site it "builds advanced robots with remarkable behavior: mobility, agility, dexterity and speed." Those parameters sound kinda military-like for a reason: BD has worked with DARPA, the Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the more innocuous-sounding Sony. Their current starting lineup:

Petman

And before you think that sounds pretty Cyberdine Systems-sy, check out the video of Petman in action. It's a prototype bipedal robot from BD that walks with extraordinarily human-like gait--it even heel-toes, and does so with a dynamic sense of balance that means it can take a solid kick and still keep walking.

Makes the cute Asimo seem like the walking equivalent of a robotic grandpa doesn't it? Technically BD says its an "anthropomorphic robot for testing chemcial protection clothing [...] Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically an had a limited repertoire of motion, Petman will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling [...] Petman will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by [...] sweating when necessary." But if you didn't get a shiver from imagining the next gen of the sweaty thing with arms and a head, painted silver instead of black and wielding a gun then ... well, you've not got a very active imagination.

Big Dog

This is perhaps BD's most famous 'bot, designed to act something like a robotic packhorse to aid soldiers in the field of battle. Its four legs make it highly sure-footed, and it'll be smart enough to be able to maneuver semi-autonomously when it hits its final military specification levels.

Little Dog

Think Big Dog but more petite--and try to banish thoughts of tiny robots creeping into buildings via drains or under fences, all to assassinate bad guys.

RiSE

The last beastie is a six-legged smart climbing robot that has adhesive feet to let it scale even the most unforgiving and sheer building walls.

All that's left for us is to wonder what Petman and Big Dog and all the rest will evolve into over time: We're pretty sure we heard Petman muttering something about his plan to "be back."

[Via LiveLeak]

Father shows off device he dug up in back garden... unaware it's an unexploded anti-tank grenade

By Daily Mail Reporter

A father-of-two posed for photographs unaware he was holding a live Second World War anti-tank grenade after digging it up in his back garden.

Paul Davies, 32, found the undetonated bomb and thought it was part of an old lawn mower or machine.

He took it into his house, where his friend used a camera phone to take a picture of him joking and holding the eight-inch device.

Explosive: Paul Davies, 32, poses with the anti-tank grenade he dug up in his back garden. Twelve nearby homes were evacuated after he realised what it was

Mr Davies, a window cleaner, then placed it near his sink next to some washing up where it sat for more than two hours.

But later in the morning he had a 'bad feeling' and after checking the internet, he realised the rusty lump of metal was an anti-tank grenade.

He threw it into his back garden and called police, who evacuated 12 nearby homes and summoned bomb disposal experts.

They set up a 100 metre exclusion zone around the house before taking the bomb - which was still live - to a nearby field to blow it up.

Mr Davies, of Exeter, Devon, said: 'I couldn't believe what was happening. I dug this thing up and it looked like a part of some old machine.

'I took it inside so I could show the kids when they came home from school and my mate took a photo of me for a laugh and I put it down the side.

'A bit later on I suddenly thought it might be dangerous and had a look on the internet. I said "I think it's a bomb".

'I can't believe I had it in my hand and was posing for a picture. The bomb team told me it was still live.'

Lucky escape: The unexploded grenade next to the sink. Bomb disposal experts safely detonated it in a nearby field

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said the anti-tank grenade was detonated by experts at 12.50pm on Friday.

He said: 'The bomb disposal team took it away and blew it up. We visited homeowners and asked them to leave their houses to retreat behind a cordon. Twelve properties were affected.'

Mr Davies added: 'It wasn't buried that deep in the earth. I've asked around and apparently the guy who used to live here years ago had an air raid shelter.

'It must have been buried then. I'm glad I didn't hit it with my spade when I dug it up - it could have been kaboom.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213144/Father-poses-photograph-digging-unexploded-anti-tank-grenade.html#ixzz0R7PjcdK6

Top 10 Most Expensive Military Planes

As the Senate votes to cut military spending on the
$350 million F-22 fighter, here's a look at the military aircraft with the biggest price tags

click here for the gallery:Top 10 Most Expensive Military Planes

Military Developing Half-Robot, Half-Insect 'Cybug' Spies

By Charles Q. Choi

DARPA

Researchers are now experimenting with developing insect cyborgs or 'cybugs' that could work as spies.

Miniature robots could be good spies, but researchers now are experimenting with insect cyborgs or "cybugs" that could work even better.

Scientists can already control the flight of real moths using implanted devices.

The military and spy world no doubt would love tiny, live camera-wielding versions of Predator drones that could fly undetected into places where no human could ever go to snoop on the enemy.

Developing such robots has proven a challenge so far, with one major hurdle being inventing an energy source for the droids that is both low weight and high power.

Still, evidence that such machines are possible is ample in nature in the form of insects, which convert biological energy into flight.

• Click here for FOXNews.com's Patents and Innovation Center.

It makes sense to pattern robots after insects — after all, they must be doing something right, seeing as they are the most successful animals on the planet, comprising roughly 75 percent of all animal species known to humanity.

Indeed, scientists have patterned robots after insects and other animals for decades — to mimic cockroach wall-crawling, for instance, or the grasshopper's leap.

Mechanical metamorphosis

Instead of attempting to create sophisticated robots that imitate the complexity in the insect form that required millions of years of evolution to achieve, scientists now essentially want to hijack bugs for use as robots.

Originally researchers sought to control insects by gluing machinery onto their backs, but such links were not always reliable.

To overcome this hurdle, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program sophisticated robots is sponsoring research into surgically implanting microchips straight into insects as they grow, intertwining their nerves and muscles with circuitry that can then steer the critters.

As expensive as these devices might be to manufacture and embed in the bugs, they could still prove cheaper than building miniature robots from scratch.

As these cyborgs heal from their surgery while they naturally metamorphose from one developmental stage to the next — for instance, from caterpillar to butterfly — the result would yield a more reliable connection between the devices and the insects, the thinking goes.

The fact that insects are immobile during some of these stages — for instance, when they are metamorphosing in cocoons — means they can be manipulated far more easily than if they were actively wriggling, meaning that devices could be implanted with assembly-line routine, significantly lowering costs.

The HI-MEMS program at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has to date invested $12 million into research since it began in 2006. It currently supports these cybug projects:

— Roaches at Texas A&M.

— Horned beetles at University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.

— Moths at an MIT-led team, and another moth project at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.

Success with moths

So far researchers have successfully embedded MEMS into developing insects, and living adult insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact, a DARPA spokesperson told LiveScience.

Researchers have also demonstrated that such devices can indeed control the flight of moths, albeit when they are tethered.

To power the devices, instead of relying on batteries, the hope is to convert the heat and mechanical energy the insect generates as it moves into electricity. The insects themselves could be optimized to generate electricity.

When the researchers can properly control the insects using the embedded devices, the cybugs might then enter the field, equipped with cameras, microphones and other sensors to help them spy on targets or sniff out explosives.

Although insects do not always live very long in the wild, the cyborgs' lives could be prolonged by attaching devices that feed them.

The scientists are now working toward controlled, untethered flight, with the final goal being delivering the insect within 15 feet (5 m) of a specific target located 300 feet (100 meters) away, using electronic remote control by radio or GPS or both, standing still on arrival.

Although flying insects such as moths and dragonflies are of great interest, hopping and swimming insects could also be useful, too, DARPA noted.

It's conceivable that eventually a swarm of cybugs could converge on targets by land, sea and air.

Copyright © 2009 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Military Laser Hits Battlefield Strength

By Noah Shachtman

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time -- paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105 kilowatts of power out of their laser -- past the "100kW threshold [that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for 'weapons grade' power levels for high-energy lasers," Northrop's vice president of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.

That much power won't get you a Star Wars-style blaster. But it should be more than enough to zap the mortars and rockets that insurgents have used to pound American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The battlefield-strength breakthrough is just one part in a larger military push to finally make laser weapons a reality, after decades of unfulfilled promises. The Army recently gave Boeing a $36 million contract to build a laser-equipped truck. Raytheon is set to start test-firing a mortar-zapper of its own. Darpa is funding a 150 kilowatt laser project that is meant to be fitted onto "tactical aircraft."

Does that mean energy weapons are a done deal? Hardly. There are still all sorts of technical issues -- thermal management and miniaturization, to name two -- that have to be handled first. Then, the ray gunners have to find the money. The National Academies figure it'll take another $100 million to get battlefield lasers right.

Still, clearing the 100 kilowatt hurdle is a big deal. For the longest time, the military research community concentrated on developing chemical-powered lasers. The ray guns produced massively powerful laser blasts. But the noxious stuff needed to produce all that power makes the weapons all-but-impractical in a war zone. (One ray gun took as many as eight shipping containers' worth of chemicals and electronics to power a single blaster.) So the Defense Department shifted gears, and poured money into electric lasers. They're much less hassle to operate. And, given a steady supply of power, they should be able to fire away, almost indefinitely.

At first, these electric lasers were weak. When the military started its Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program in 2003, these easy-to-maintain lasters could barely produce more than 10 kilowatts of coherent light. Now, Northrop believes, going way past 100 kilowatts should be pretty simple.

In its lab, south of Los Angeles, Northrop combines 32 garnet crystal "modules" into a "laser amplifier chains." Shine light-emitting diodes into 'em, and they start the laser chain-reaction, shooting out as much as 15 kilowatts of focused light. Combine all those beams into one, and you've got yourself a battlefield-strength ray. Northrop's JHPSSL lasers used seven chains to get to 105 kilowatts. But there's room, at least, for an eighth. Which means an even stronger blaster.

The next step is to start trying out the ray gun, outside of the lab. The Army is planning to move the device to its High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range. Testing is supposed to begin by this time, next year.

[Photo: Northrop Grumman]

Der CyberKrieg- German Cyberwarfare

A New Breed of Soldier?: gutter (CC Licensed)

Just outside the small town of Rheinbach, the German army has begun preparations for a new kind of war. Following on the heels of attacks against the Internet infrastructure of Estonia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as a large scale hacking attack by China against a number of European countries, the German army, or Bundeswehr, has established its first unit dedicated solely to cyber war. According to a new article in Der Spiegel, the unit is still considered secret, and will work on both defensive and offensive operations.

But a technologically advanced nation developing a unit for cyber war is not itself unique. Rather, the fact that even Germany plans on developing these capabilities signals that the age of cyber war has finally arrived.

“Other than Britian and France, European countries have not been very out front about their war-making capabilities,” said Martin Libicki, author of Conquest in Cyberspace and a senior policy research at the Rand Corporation. “Since Germany is very careful about these things, the fact that they actually announced that they're doing it may mean it’s not as everyday as it seems.”

Instead, the creation of the secret unit signals that Germany will join the larger shift by many militaries towards acknowledging the importance of cyber war. According to Scott Borg, Director and Chief Economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit founded by the US government that now independently consults with the government and businesses, about a dozen countries have developed cyber war capabilities.

With the Russian cyber attack that took out Estonia’s banking, government ministries and Internet for several days in 2007, the wired world joined the land, sea and air as a standard battlefield in modern war. After the 2007 Estonia incident, Russians launched cyber attacks against Georgia during their 2008 war, and then took down the Internet of Kyrgyzstan on January 18th of this year. Since 2007, cyber attacks have been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, between Indian and Pakistan, and between China and Taiwan and Japan.

Der Speigel said that the Bundeswehr unit, lead by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel, consists of 79 computer scientists recruited from the Bundeswehr’s universities and training centers.

And while the unit won’t become fully operational until next year, Germany has a long history of cyber war. According to James Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the first case of cyber war in history occurred when the KGB hired German hackers to break into the US Department of Defense (DoD) computer system.

The impetus for creating this unit came from a spate of recent cyber attacks against Germany. In 2007, attempts by Chinese hackers to conduct industrial espionage against Germany became so bad that during a state visit to Germany, German chancellor Angela Merkel publicly asked Chinese officials to stop. Additionally, Germany has engaged in some spats over gas pipelines with Russia, a country that has launched cyber attacks every year since 2007.

“Russia has demonstrated the willingness to use cyber space, and I'm sure Germany is concerned about Russia's use of cyber force as a negotiating tactic,” said O. Sami Saydjari, chairman of the Professionals for Cyber Defense.

Of course, the creation of this new German unit isn’t the only sign that countries are paying more attention to the Internet battlefield. Just last month, the DoD published its Quadrennial Roles and Missions Report. The Report, which the DoD uses to help Congress formulate the military budget for the coming years, highlighted four areas of particular importance. Three of the areas were the obvious choices of counter-insurgency, unmanned aerial vehicles and supply. The forth area was cyber war. Looks like Germany might not be the only country increasing its focus on fighting this popular new kind of war.

Man buys used iPod, gets 60 pages of sensitive military data

After purchasing a used iPod, a New Zealand resident found that it wasn't much use for rocking out. Instead of playing MP3s, the gadget contained 60 pages of data on US military personnel, mission briefings, and equipment deployment.

By David Chartier

Flickr user larimdame

The buzz from scoring an iPod for $15 undoubtedly wore off quickly for one New Zealand man. Instead of a working MP3 player that could be loaded up with tunes, Chris Ogle found a broken iPod filled with 60 pages of US military data and personally identifying information.

Update: Sleuthy Arsians pointed out that the MP3 player in this story is in fact not an iPod. The specific manufacturer and model is not known, but judging from CNN's video coverage and interview, the MP3 player could very well be a DNT MP3 Fun200 (PDF link).

David Chartier

• Gmail finally gets offline access—with caveats
• Hands on: Noovo, a confused social discovery service
• iStat for iPhone feeds your Mac stat obsession
• Create your own social issue game with nonprofit's toolkit

The files Ogle found on the MP3 player contain the names and personal details of US soldiers, including some who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no details on exactly how many personal records are contained within the documents (most of which date back to 2005), but they also have information on mission briefings and equipment deployment.

This incident is probably not the worst breach of military data in recent memory. About a year ago, a UK military recruitment officer's notebook containing over 600,000 personally identifying, unencrypted records was stolen from his car. In 2007, the US military began clamping down on "milbloggers" who may have inadvertently been giving away too much information to the enemy by posting about day-to-day base operations on increasingly popular public blogs. Of course, there is also Gary McKinnon, who is responsible for the "biggest military hack of all time." While McKinnon wasn't exactly snooping for the bad guys, he did manage to break into various systems across the US Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, Pentagon, and Department of Defense in search for proof that aliens exist.

Still, Ogle's situation is a bit bizarre in that no one knows how or why this sensitive information was stored on an iPod, or how that MP3 player slipped out to a used hardware vendor. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), some of the phone numbers from the MP3 player's records still work, and the identified individuals indeed picked up on the other end.

"The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be [seeing]," Mr Ogle told ABC. He says he will hand the player over to the US Defense Department should it ever ask.

Why is Brazil Doubling its Military Protection in the Amazon Rainforest?

Written by Levi Novey

Brazil’s government has announced plans to increase their soldiers in the Amazon Rainforest from 17,000 to 30,000 over the next 9 years, as well as build new forts and improve others. Why have they chosen to invest $488.6 million in this plan?

The answer is more muddled than I would have guessed. But what can you expect given Brazil’s recent my-way-or-the-highway conservation tactics, their boldness in announcing an unrealistically ambitious anti-deforestation campaign, and a giant oil discovery that further added to the wealth of a country that is now buying more ethanol than gas?

As part of the “Protecting Amazon” project, the military buildup will supposedly aid in the further protection of tribal reservations and the Brazilian border. Brazil shares an extensive border in the rainforest with 8 other countries, and has recently been involved in a dispute with Peru over uprooted Indian tribes. Brazilian authorities and several NGOs devoted to advocacy efforts for tribal peoples claim that deforestation in Peru’s forests is displacing tribal peoples rapidly into Brazil. But this dispute in fact, seems to have little to do with the plan for military buildup.

When I first read about Brazil’s plan, I thought they were pursuing it for conservation reasons, much in the way that Peru’s Environmental Minister has proposed a 3,000 person Environment Police to patrol the Amazon Rainforest and protect its biodiversity. It turns out that its more so about modernizing their military, for what I think are pretty lame reasons.

As mentioned earlier, last year Brazil discovered a huge oil deposit offshore. They promptly scheduled military war games as a show that they were willing to protect the oil. From who I ask? George Bush? In addition to modernizing their ground forces via this new Amazon protection plan, Brazil also wants to build nuclear submarines with the help of France, to help defend their coastline (from who I ask?–once again).

I also am not sure if building 28 new forts will do much good in Brazil’s section of the Amazon Rainforest, but I’m hoping I’m wrong. Perhaps it will help lead to greater protection of the amazing biodiversity and cultures found within the forest’s boundaries.

Photo Credit: openDemocracy on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Google Maps Mashup Combines Your Address, Nuclear Blast

By Alexis Madrigal

Nuclear weapons are often measured in kilotons, but that doesn't really tell the story of a weapon's destructive power.

Now, a new Google Maps mashup called Ground Zero lets you see the radius of thermal damage caused by a nuclear weapons blast centered at the address of your choice. In the screenshot at the right, we can see that an American-made B61 bomb hitting Wired HQ would knock out most of San Francisco.

The visualization tool comes courtesy of Carlos Labs, an Australian coding firm. It appears that they used the same (or similar) data as the Federation of American Scientists. The FAS writes that most buildings within the inner circle will be "completely destroyed." The next circle will be fire-filled, and the outer regions would experience major damage from the blast shockwave.

If you want to understand what these colored circles mean, head over to the Department of Energy's Historical Test Films page and take a look at some of the footage of the American military's nuclear weapons tests.

Via > @digidave > Digital Inspiration

Image: National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office