By Quinn Patwardhan
“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin.” This lyric by The Temptations will survive throughout the rest of humanity. Not a single person will ever be able to justify war. Its effects include the worst that can be inflicted upon humanity: famine, illness, fire, and destruction. Many of Western Generation Z hasn’t witnessed the outbreak of war, at least on a global scale. We have been able to live with the false assumption that war is something we have left in the past, in history books. We have been told that the U.S. invasion of the Middle East was justified and had a minor impact. We have been lied to. War has been a prevalent controlling force of humanity since its very start. Weapons have gone from rocks to swords, to bows and arrows, to guns to bombs capable of wiping entire cities in seconds. When studying war, we tend to look only at the “raw” statistics: numbers like 85 million killed in World War II, 1.3 million killed in Vietnam or $1.3 billion dollars of damage. These statistics are important, but they generalize, and in doing so, gloss over the permanent environmental damage that has affected and will continue to affect every generation.
As thousands of bombs rain down from the sky in Ukraine, causing great destruction and calamity for the people of today, we must also consider the effects they will have in the future. Even 77 years after the last strike fell during World War II, the explosives contained in those strikes continue to have a large impact on communities. Just a few months ago in December 2021, a World-War-II-era bomb detonated in a construction site in Munich, injuring four. One expert estimates that up to 45,000 World-War-II-era bombs remain undetonated, with many weighing over 2,000 pounds. This poses a great risk to the millions of Europeans who may unknowingly be living atop an active bomb. Even modern weapons fail to go off about 5 percent of the time. Although clearing areas of explosives is possible, it requires immense amounts of resources and time.
When bombs function as intended and explode on impact, they have devastating impacts on the environment. When explosions go off, they leak toxic chemicals that go into the soil and end up in rivers via the water cycle. These chemicals can be absorbed by fish, flow into crops, end up in drinking water for billions of people, and get trapped in soil for long periods of time. Furthermore, explosives can quickly level entire city blocks, leaving rubble whose dust can spread toxins like asbestos, carcinogens, and silica that can negatively alter the health of humans and animals.
It is clear that the use of explosives has a significant, long-lasting impact on both humans and nature. Many people may see explosions and think only of the immediate destruction they bring, but we must also consider their widespread effects which are just as important in the battle to end all war.
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