Why should Mother Nature have to bear the burden of man’s cruelty toward his fellow man? After all, if we can send a man to the moon, why can’t wet we find a way to kill people and break things, but still leave the battlefield in a pristine, park-like setting? Well, the Germans are working on it:
To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do. Tiny bombs were made from two promising tetrazoles with the alphabet-soup names of HBT and G2ZT. These materials proved less apt to explode accidentally than conventional explosives… In initial experiments, G2ZT and HBT produced fewer toxic byproducts than common explosives. Still, they did generate some dangerous hydrogen cyanide gas. But mixing these compounds with oxidizers not only avoids making hydrogen cyanide, but also improved performance, Klapötke said.
This is encouraging, but it’s really just a first step. Researchers should not rest until we can have a world war that’s genuinely carbon neutral. That would demonstrate that mankind has truly achieved a higher consciousness. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…
