I search through various news sources every day to bring readers the latest news pertaining to the environment. And as much as I try to be unbiased or non-judgmental, I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the Yahoo! News headline ‘Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned.’

After the initial shock of the headline, I decided to read the article first to try and understand the sense in using eco-friendly bombs that would destroy things over toxic bombs that would destroy things.

Here’s a summary of the article:

Scientists in Germany have discovered a more environmentally friendly alternative to the regular materials that are used in explosives.

Instead of using TNT, RDX and other common explosives that contain carbon, they decided to use a safer class of materials called tetrazoles, which contain nitrogen.

The results of the ’safer’ explosions were less toxicity and pollution in the environment. And by mixing the two tetrazoles known as HBT and G2ZT with oxidizers, the bombs also avoided releasing hydrogen cyanide gas, which regular bombs usually emit after exploding.

Quoted German researcher Thomas Klapötke, ‘These compounds have great potential, especially for large caliber naval and tank guns.”

You can read the entire article here.

I’m hoping that I’m not the only one who finds this ‘discovery’ quite disturbing.

Instead of writing out my opinion (which would be long), I came up with a few questions for these scientists to think about:

• Maybe it’s just me, but regardless of what materials are in the bombs, when they explode, don’t they all destroy the environment and whatever else happens to be around? Is that safer?
• Does it really matter if hydrogen cyanide gas is released after the explosion if there is nothing alive to be subjected to those fumes?
• Nitrogen can cause asphyxiation, it can severely damage your mental judgment and liquid nitrogen can cause frostbite. Is it really that much safer than carbon?
• If you want to shoot eco-friendly explosives out of naval and tank guns, why don’t you just fill the guns with fruit? The sheer speed of the flying fruit would surely create an explosion upon impact, and the seeds would even replant themselves in the freshly exposed holes in the ground.

Okay, the last one was kind of sarcastic, but I personally think that every kind of explosive is dangerous. It seems silly to me to try and put a ‘green badge’ on something that is only used to de-green the planet.

But I still have faith in the advancement of technology. Maybe one day people will build zero emissions electric Hummers that will be used to transport food to impoverished third-world countries.