Mike Searle

Long after the war is over, deadly, silent killers lay in wait for their next unsuspecting victim. They are landmines. Landmines are hidden in the ground in 70 countries. Another 110 million landmines are stored ready to be used.

Nearly two thousand people are involved in landmine accidents every month - one person every 20 minutes. Around eight hundred of these will die. More than 1000 will be horrifically maimed – for life. These invidious weapons need to be banned for ever and the tens of millions of people at risk every day of death or maiming by landmines must be freed from this terror.

I am making a film about the horror of landmines, to make people aware of how terrible they are, and to put pressure on the world’s governments to fund programs to clear these fields of death, return the land to the people and eliminate these horrible weapons completely. So please, scroll down as far as you can go in the ‘Support Project’ column to the right, choose what you can give, and help me bring this message home to people around the world. Get your name in the credits of a film worth making.

Imagine your local shopping centre, or rather the land it's built on, was once home to a market. Then a war came and eventually went. But buried just a few centimeters beneath the ground where the market used to be is an unknown number of landmines. You have no way of telling where they are, or how many there are. One day a child runs across the land and is blown to pieces. A man runs to help the child and stands on a mine and is also killed. It takes days to recover their bodies by the local army, Shortly after a cow wanders in and is horribly injured and then dies a slow painful death because no one can recover it. So the land becomes a no-go area. No market is held and the fabric of your community continues to unravel.

That's what it's like in many parts of Cambodia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Tanzania and another 70 small and often impoverished countries. Millions of acres of land completely abandoned, hiding the horrific and deadly legacy of war. Sometimes areas thought to be safe suddenly reveal their murderous secret and someone is blown up just stepping one foot off a well-trodden path.

These killers cost just $3 to make, 10 seconds to arm, and 2 minutes to bury. They are cheap, effective, lethal. They are Landmines and every 20 minutes someone, somewhere is blown-up; killed or maimed by these insidious weapons of individual destruction.

I have already made about 70 films (see profile). One was a film about landmines in Afghanistan and how sniffer dogs and others are trying to clear the 10,000,000 land mines that litter the Afghanistan's countryside. This film is called Dogs of Peace and was made for Animal Planet. Here's a link: http://youtu.be/xohGv6YRsHo

Since I was in Afghanistan, we've also filmed in Cambodia, Bosnia and Tanzania. In these countries we looked at the victims and the problems of clearing landmines.

Landmines can cost as little as $3 to make but the cost to find and remove each one is estimated to be 50 times that amount. Then there's the intolerable human cost. Clearing mines is very dangerous work. For every 5000 mines that are cleared, one detector is killed and 2 others are maimed.

The cost doesn't end there. There are the estimated one million innocent victims who unwittingly step on them and are killed or maimed. That’s right, more than 1 million innocent people have had their lives destroyed by landmines in recent decades. Other costs include the pain and suffering of victims; the millions of hectares of land that cannot safely be used where animals are also constantly killed and injured by stepping on these hidden deathtraps, roads that cannot be driven, loss of agriculture and trade, loss of community and the costs of treating injured people.

All this means adds to the seemingly ever increasing flow of environmental refugees.

It's estimated there are 110,000,000 landmines scattered across 80 countries, but unfortunately landmine clearing is never a top priority. Only, about 100,000 mines are removed each year. At this rate it would take 1,100 years to clear all the landmines in the world (assuming that no new mines are laid).

These are some of the reasons why landmines have to be banned and why the governments around the world, some of whom are implicated in laying these mines, have to get serious about funding and running programs of demining. Returning the land to the people and removing the risk to animals and the environment.

This is the aim of our film to help create a ground swell to bring pressure on governments support major de-mining programs and to outlaw landmines completely, particularly in those countries that are making money by exporting landmines, often from firms whose main customers are the governments themselves in America, Russia, Italy, UK, Sweden, Iran and many more.

The Bomb Detectives: Hunting the Unseen Enemy, …is a story of tragedy, human invention and dedication. We will meet the innocent victims of this horrific global crisis and see how they survive with the daily threat of being blown up. And we marvel at the extraordinary new techniques being developed to stop these silent killers…..from tiny bumble bees and rats that are being trained to sniff out TNT, to dogs trained to track these weapons that lie buried, to massive machinery which drive over the landmines to clear the land. 

We will also meet people who dedicate their lives every day to removing the threat of landmines – one mine at a time. We ask them how they cope with the stress and fear, that one wrong move and they can be killed or seriously maimed.

We will also talk to politicians and ask why their country hasn't banned land mines. These include China, Russia, India some middle east countries and the USA.

Much of the documentary is already shot. As I've said we've already filmed in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bosnia and Tanzania. So what do we need the funds for?

We need to send a small crew back to Cambodia to complete the filming with victims. Which means hiring equipment, interpreter, local transport and accommodation; and of course return airfares.

In Post Production we need to write the script and digitise and edit the pictures into a broadcast quality documentary. Produce a number of YouTube clips. Commission music, hire of edit suite, hard drives, tapes and other storage media. Other production costs, additional research, insurance and legal work need funding.

I'm a film maker. I have made about 70 films including a number of TV series including, Before It's Too Late which is 15 x 1 hour documentaries about endangered species and what's being done to save them from extinction. There's also a website www.beforeitstoolate.org.

Animal X is another TV series I created. It's about animals and monsters that may or may not exists. What's called Crytozoology. Bigfoot, lake monsters, aliens etc. There are 26 half hours and 10 x 1 hour programmes and a website www.animalx.net.

Animal Allies is another TV series I created. 26 x 1/2 hour episodes. It's about people helping animals and animals helping people! www.animalalliestv.com.

Now I want to make a programme on landmines.

It is estimated that there are 110 million active land mines. This means that there is one landmine for every 17 children in the world. Or, in other words, one landmine for every 52 people.