There
is a lot of hoopla over Trump’s border wall.
Personally, I don’t support it.
Even if Mexico was paying for it, I’d still say it was a waste of
money. Mainly because walls just drive
people to find ways to go over, under, around, or through them. I think even during the campaign there was a
point where Trump admitted that ladders could be used to get over his
wall. Hell, a couple of weeks ago I saw
a video on Facebook of some Mexican politician who climbed a section of the
existing wall and just sat on top of it.
A wall is just an obstacle to be overcome.
The
other night I was thinking about this, and I wondered if there was a better
solution. What I came up with was barbed
wire. Now this isn’t the kind you see
keeping cows in pastures, but the kind they used in World War 1. They used a deep, mass thicket of wire. (Here’s a YouTube video talking about it.)
Putting up a twenty yard deep tangle of barbed wire would probably be cheaper
and faster than building a wall.
The
way the armies got through the wire in World War 1 were prolonged artillery barrages
and tanks; two things people running through the desert don’t have. Yes, people could use wire cutters, but if
you make the thing dense and wide enough, there’s no way they could get through
it without being discovered by drones or regular patrols. Also, a bomb powerful enough to put a hole in
a wall large enough for a person to slip through would do nothing to a tangle
of barbed wire.
Now
in World War 1 the wire was often used to funnel people into spots where they
could be mowed down with machine guns.
And while there are some people who would be okay with that on the
border, especially if they are serious with the “invasion” language they often
use, I’d say don’t make a funnel, just have a solid defense.
