𝔄𝔱𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔠 𝔟𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔑𝔢𝔳𝔞𝔡𝔞 𝔜𝔲𝔠𝔠𝔞. յգՏյ

BOMBTURBATION

Yes, it’s your new word for the day and a real phenomenon studied by today’s geoscientists – bombturbation.

Essentially, it reflects the change in a geomorphologic surface due to bombing. Whether by cannon balls or A-bombs, whenever the surface of the Earth is blown up, there is a tendency to create craters. Bombturbation was initially applied to the disturbance of soil due to warfare (Hupy and others 2006): a bomb or some sort of artillery explosion excavates a crater, ejecting soils out into a surrounding rim of mixed material. Bombing can have the effect of creating entirely new geomorphological environments as seen in photos of Omaha Beach (#37 at http://tinyurl.com/nyhdu8), US Civil War Battlefields (http://tinyurl.com/kamaebd), or as in the present photo, the Nevada nuclear test site.

As I wander our mountains here in Greece, coming across occurrences of small craters of unknown source is a common phenomenon. There is always the possibility that some errant treasure hunter was illegally excavating for something archeological in nature, or that the craters themselves are archeological remnants. But since the fronts of four wars passed through here within the last 100 years, bombturbation is a more likely explanation.

We’ve found old ammunition, trenches, shell casings, hand grenades that have set off forest fires, and mine fields. Most of our bomb craters date from WWII, following the date of October 28, 1940, when the Greek dictator Metaxas, himself a fascist, refused to give Greece over to the invasion of the Axis forces. “Bombturbation” was initiated by the Italians in the morning of the same day.

Perhaps some future geomorphologist or stratigrapher will want to analyze these scientifically, a “CSI” hunting out the chemical signature that comes from bombs. Our local landscape is forgiving, annealing the scars of thousands of years of warfare in and over Greece. But some craters, in memory of our “Oxi” day, the day that Greece rejected the ultimatum to surrender without a fight, ought to be kept as a memorial to the courage of our ancestors.

Annie R Photo: Rather obvious bomb craters from the Nevada nuclear bomb test site. Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.