Saw too much movies where people step on mines and they don’t explode if the foot stay on. Do real mines work this way?
In: Engineering
Most of them go boom immediately. There are some that may wait after being triggered because they work by launching themselves upward to chest height and exploding into a circle of shrapnel to take out a whole group (but those typically use tripwires and launch immediately as well).
They explode instantly. The *click* and trying to figure out how to save the person/tearful “go on without me” speech are purely Hollywood.
Movies are not reality.
Mines go off as soon as someone steps on them, because *that’s the whole point*. But the movie would end much more quickly if the main character just exploded.
It depends, most anti-personnel mines the step is the first stage in activation, sometimes this releases a spring which lifts the mine into the air where it explodes creating a lethal area around the mine. Some anti-tank (vehicle) mines explode on contact where they are designed to blow wheels or tracks off vehicles and possibly damage the underside of the vehicle meaning people have to abandon the vehicle. Anti-tank mines are often mixed in with anti-personnel mines in a mixed minefield so that the crew of the vehicles struggle to get out of the minefield.
[https://chainlinkandconcrete.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-m14-land-mine.html](https://chainlinkandconcrete.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-m14-land-mine.html)
Here is one common landmine model and how the trigger works. You step on it and your toes are gone, simple as that. No waiting to lift your foot nonsense.
They do not work that way. Pressure sensitive mines explode when stepped on. Instantly.
Some mines do have “do not explode instantly” features, but typically these are Anti-tamper devices, vehicle mines designed for convoy ambushes or smart mines triggered by some combination of vibrations, movement and sound (because you don’t want these mines to blow up just because a deer passed by).
This trope was probably started by soldiers’ experience with “bouncing” mines that use a black powder charge to launch into the air before exploding their main charge and launching shrapnel.
These sort of mines need to trigger after the enemy is no longer stepping on them to have maximum effectiveness so they have a small delay between when they’re stepped on and when they launch. This might have given the impression that they don’t explode when the foot stays on but it isn’t accurate.
However, if a soldier were very fast about slamming something heavy like his pack down on top of a bouncing type mine after it was triggered and before it detonated, its effectiveness would be significantly reduced since it might not successfully launch and its shrapnel (which is designed to explode outwards horizontally) would mostly be absorbed by the ground around it if it stayed buried.
Sir what do we do if we step on a mine?
Well, standard procedure is to jump 300 feet in the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.
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