The Claim
There was 460 square miles on the middle of France where no one was allowed to live
During the first world war millions of tons of artillery and ammunition was fired from either side, creating whole wastelands of nothing but bodies and craters, and it is within the heart of this area of devastation that you can find zone rouge.
After the war the area originally covered 460 sq miles of land starting east of Verdun and ending around Lille in the north of France. Shortly after the war, it was described by the French government as: “Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible”, and due to this classification it was prohibited for anyone to even enter the area, let alone live there again. Today the area known as the red zone is considerably smaller, but the no go areas still cover a huge area.
But why is it so dangerous 101 years after the war ended?
The reason there’s still so much land restricted to the public is due to the countless amount of unexploded shells and bodies that litter the area.
During the war both sides fired millions of tons of ordinance at each other, as well as using various types of poisonous gas. The gas has infected the ground and raised arsenic levels in the soil to several hundred times the level of what is considered “safe”, as well as seeping out into the local water supplies.
As for the unexploded shells, which are are mix of standard artillery shells and gas rounds still remain in the area, with some having trees grown around them. The amount of explosives in the area is unknown as shells and various munitions are constantly being found.
There are some companies that offer tours around the area, but these normally stick to very specific routes and don’t venture into the “true” red zone of the area, which will remain inaccessible for some time. At the current rate of clean up its estimated that it will take a very minimum of another 100 years until the area is made safe again, and that’s just from the explosives.
There was so much ammunition fired at the battle of Verdun and the surrounding areas that the lead and zinc that was used within the rounds has massed up so much that its affected the local water systems, poisoning them beyond any safe level that could be used for farming.
There were several dozen small villages in the zone that the government prohibited from rebuilding, declaring it to dangerous for anyone to go there, with farming and permanent living being well out the question.
As for today most of the shells have either rusted into nothing or pose such a small amount of their previous danger that no one has been killed by a left over explosive here for decades. The problem now lays within the contamination of the land, with some of the poisons detected in the water lasting for potentially thousands of years and no obvious way of removing them.
Recent Comments