Similar approach though I guess? Blow it up / set it on fire and hope for the best
> That an unlimited number of mines may be simultaneously fired by passing electric currents through the platinum wire bridges of detonators.
Was this really the first time anyone really 'went for it' with detonators? Surely there's an upper limit to how many it can set off
The no damage being caused on the surface was a “new fact”. That would never fly today, for better or for worse.
Aside from that, culturally the value we impart on a single human life has also changed too - death used to be much more common, infant death in particular - its not uncommon to go to an old cemetery and see a single family having buried three or more children, with another 2-3 having survived to adulthood. This was not something limited to the lower classes either, Calvin Coolidge had a son who died of sepsis from a blister while he was president.
I've watched plenty of youtube videos that say something like 'But management needed dem profits so they took the risk'
So... let us not pretend we don't cut corners and take risk. There are plenty of modern deaths and environmental destruction because people take risk.
What I think should be more acceptable, is that people take personal risks. Nothing wrong with accepting risk being the first person in an unregulated prototype space ship or taking unverified medicine.
People, individually, should take risks if that's what they want, and it's not going to hurt others. I'm totally fine with skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing, whatever. I'm not fine with pumping chemicals into the local water table because that's the way Grandpa do.
An illustrating example might also be the US cities like Seattle that have their "vision zero" programs. A "vision", and related actions, to get to zero traffic related deaths or serious injuries every year. It's the official position of these city governments that literally any non-zero death rate is unacceptable. No matter how low the death rate is (and it's already very low). They officially accept zero risk. Is that reasonable? Is it even about the death rate or something else? Either way, it's fully undebatable.
