> while on a relaxing vacation 40 years after it was planted
Maybe we need an international treaty on maximum lifetimes for things like landmines. After 10 years they deactivate. That way if the war continues you need to re-plant but at least you have a well-defined lifetime for when an area is safe after a war.
If these were digital devices it would be fairly simple to accomplish, but I suspect a lot of these are far more primitive. How hard would it be to add an expiry that for example was accurate enough to fail reliably between 9 and 10 years after deployment?
Maybe we need an international treaty on maximum lifetimes for things like landmines. After 10 years they deactivate. That way if the war continues you need to re-plant but at least you have a well-defined lifetime for when an area is safe after a war.
If these were digital devices it would be fairly simple to accomplish, but I suspect a lot of these are far more primitive. How hard would it be to add an expiry that for example was accurate enough to fail reliably between 9 and 10 years after deployment?