Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 September 12

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September 12

Fort Knox and land mines

Hi. I read somewhere (not on Wikipedia) that the defences of the bullion depository at Fort Knox include land mines. Is that true? If so, doesn't it contravene international laws, to which I believe the US is party, against the use of land mines? 86.130.41.222 (talk) 00:11, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are signs at Fort Knox indicating such. As seen here: How To Break Into Fort Knox  —71.20.250.51 (talk) 00:25, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

That same article says towards the bottom that employees can neither confirm nor deny this, so I doubt there's a way to answer op's question... :'( ~Helicopter Llama~ 00:29, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

For obvious reasons, the details of their protection systems are a closely held secret. Most rumors are simply guesswork. 71.20.250.51 (talk) 00:31, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Landmines are banned under the Ottawa Treaty - which the USA refused to sign. So no, it's not illegal. Even if they had signed it - I suspect that the law only applies in warfare - they may be perfectly legal for defense against criminals or something. Also, only anti-personnel mines are covered by the treaty. Anti-tank (or anti-other-vehicle) mines are still perfectly legal everywhere. That said, the US claims that they only use anti-personnel mines that automatically disarm themselves two days after deployment - and which rely on a battery to trigger them that runs down after about two weeks in the event that the automatic disarming mechanism fails. Clearly those would be no use around Fort Knox - so perhaps this is an example of the US being inconsistent - but not breaking any agreement that they are signatories to. SteveBaker (talk) 00:48, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure the distinction between warfare and protecting against criminals really exists in the convention, our article seems to hint against any, as does the convention text e.g. [1] [2] [3]. These seem to ban and require the removal of anti-personnel mines point blank except for training, testing methods of destruction and similar purposes.

Note that such exceptions would need to be carefully worded otherwise any country mining their border will simply say it's to protect against criminals rather than for the purposes of warfare. See e.g. similar problems discussed here [4] (the link itself wasn't working at the time for me but an internet cache was) about the problem with the definition of anti-personnel. Actually it also mentions definition issues surrounding the ban requirements itself but not related to warfare vs criminal per se.

(Even with a very careful wording you'd still likely not cover lots of stuff, e.g. if some regime uses them to protect their presidential palaces, military bases including those where they torture people etc, or even against internal rebels, it's going to be difficult for your definition to exclude these purposes since from the POV of the state party, they are simply used against criminal behaviour. Not that such regimes are likely to have signed the treaty or will care even if they have signed and ratified, but the point of the treaty was I'm pretty sure to include such cases.)

If the US is still has a minefield in Fort Knox, whether of persistent mines or not and anti-personnel or anti-vehicle, that does seem to go strongly against their stated policy [5] [6] [7] [8]. Unless I guess Fort Knox is where they conduct their training exercises and such.

I suspect that they probably have none, although getting them to state it on record may be difficult. (However if you were to ask if their landmine policy applies to the US and whether they have any minefields in the US, they may confirm that it does and doesn't even if the same person just told you they can't confirm or deny what protections are used at Fort Knox.) It seems unlikely landmines would provide much benefit compared to whatever other measures they have there. It's not like Fort Knox is an extremely large area they have difficulty patrolling/controlling via personnel.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:52, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I would suspect that blowing a would-be thief to pieces might just push the concept of reasonable force a little too far. DuncanHill (talk) 08:53, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the odd thing though - you'd think that a minefield would principally be intended as a deterrence measure...in which case, why would you deny it's existence? It's more likely (IMHO) that there is no minefield and that they'd prefer to leak the false information that there is one, and then vigorously refuse to discuss it in order to reinforce this falsehood. But it's a long-held principle to say "cannot confirm or deny" in such situations because if you tell people everything you DON'T have, and refuse to talk about the secret things you DO have - then the bad guy can use a process of elimination to deduce what your secret is. Quite honestly, I don't understand why you need all that secrecy anyway - it's very hard to destroy a very large pile of solid gold, if you stole a large fraction of the gold, you'd have no reasonable way to transport or sell it - and even a modest amount of security is enough to prevent single gold bars from leaving the area. A large-scale "goldfinger-like" exercise would be impossible to pull off in any realistic situation. They really only need to make the place a teeny bit more secure than the local jewellery shops. SteveBaker (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful responses. I have decided not to attempt to rob Fort Knox at present. 86.130.41.222 (talk) 23:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Last updated...

Hello! SUGGESTION: It would nice to see "LAST UPDATED ON (date)" on some scientific topic entries in the HEADER of the page in question. Would please consider it. Thanks a million. [removed personal information] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaher Soliman (talk • contribs) 01:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Clicking "history" at the top of a page will give you that information. μηδείς (talk) 02:34, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

All pages on Wikipedia have a text at the bottom, "This page was last modified on <date> at <time>". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:15, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Note that an article having been last modified on a given date does not necessarily mean that it reflects all of the latest knowledge on the topic it depicts as of that date. 97.94.188.60 (talk) 15:01, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

No, the time stamp is more likely to tell you when a - was changed to a – Thincat (talk) 12:19, 13 September 2014 (UTC)