- Thousands of unexploded bombs from the 1939-45 war are found every year. The Berlin bomb was found last Wednesday.
It's disheartening that everybody dropped so many bombs during World War II that even decades later we're still finding them. They not only speak to the scale and brutality of the war, but they're also potentially deadly ghosts from the past. As bad as unexploded bombs are, landmines are even worse. They literally kill thousands of people a year (many of them civilians and many of them well after conflicts have ended), leave land unusable for farming, building, or traveling, and erosion caused by heavy rains or flooding is all it takes to unearth old mines and make an area that once was considered relatively safe dangerous all over again.
I'll put a positive spin on it: this bomb killed zero people. Had it exploded, it might have killed people or made them homeless (I'm sure there are war era maps that would help us verify that was there). Most Germans weren't war criminals, and maybe those not impacted by this bomb went on to help others. Maybe they had families or helped other families raise happy children who went on to spread good will. I'm hopeful we can look at this bomb and believe no harm came to others from it.