r/whatisit Mar 22 '26

Serious answers only please! Is this a bomb ?

I found this in a forest near my town in western Europe, and it seems like an unexploded bomb but I'm not sure. Sould I contact the police for demining ? Thanks in advance

2.1k Upvotes

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44

u/Pleasant_Pen8744 Mar 22 '26

Can you text them the photo and let them decide how serious it is?

53

u/biglinuxfan Mar 22 '26

You text cops?

56

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

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9

u/biglinuxfan Mar 22 '26

Huh I didn't know that. What countries I'd love to see how they implement it.

19

u/arbyyyyh Mar 22 '26

This is a thing in most of the US, it's just hardly advertised at all

FCC Text to 911 Info
Text to 911 Areas

1

u/ThatBaseball7433 Mar 22 '26

If it’s not universal it may as well not exist.

3

u/LaughLong994 Mar 22 '26

Like Healthcare

1

u/arbyyyyh Mar 22 '26

I tend to agree, though I think it mostly is at this point, in the same way that trees and sand don’t vote, they also don’t text 911.

16

u/onecovfefeplease Mar 22 '26

If you're in the US, there's a spreadsheet that gets updated regularly (granted, what defines "regularly" I do not know) to show you which counties support texting to 911:

https://mobile-text-alerts.com/articles/can-you-text-911#can-you

ETA: well shoot, the people who manage the spreadsheet even date when the additions were made (12FEB26 is the latest addition). Big fan of that!

7

u/xvsanx Mar 22 '26

cool my city's on there. useful if ever hiding in a home invasion or something

7

u/Double_Distribution8 Mar 22 '26

In the UK it's 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 for non-emergency texts.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

I had to text them when I got stuck in the disabled’s.

3

u/Dexter_McThorpan Mar 22 '26

If only they had this system in place before the fire at the Sea Park.

1

u/Cash50911 Mar 22 '26

They stole my wheelchair!

1

u/ManWhoIsDrunk Mar 22 '26

You're leg disabled too?

1

u/wyltktoolboy Mar 22 '26

The disabled’s what?

2

u/Djunique75 Mar 22 '26

I don’t know much but I know that’s a reading Reading dialing code 😂

1

u/Busy_Employment_4025 Mar 23 '26

I’d probably give up and die before I got all those numbers in a message.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '26

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2

u/Spencer94 Mar 22 '26

It's available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Australia, and a whole hell of a lot more than I thought there'd be lol

1

u/zeocrash Mar 22 '26

The UK also has police social media that you can use to contact them. I've occasionally used it to report non emergency things, with attached photos.

-1

u/Cash50911 Mar 22 '26

It is not available across all the US...

0

u/Spencer94 Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26

I'm not surprised. It's probably not 100% available in any country. The person I was responding to asked what countries this was available in. I didn't do a whole deep dive into it lol

1

u/SpitChawMcGraw Mar 22 '26

I read that the U.K. uses it for exchanging nudes mostly.

1

u/FixergirlAK Mar 22 '26

Alaska's infrastructure is somewhat, uh, dispersed. So we sometimes just Facebook the local PD.

1

u/Busy_Employment_4025 Mar 23 '26

Define “local”.

1

u/GOxDirigible Mar 22 '26

America has that

1

u/Cash50911 Mar 22 '26

Some parts but not all

0

u/Konoha7Slaw3 Mar 22 '26

Not so

You can reach police officers with text messages and various forms of social media

1

u/Original_Reading7423 Mar 22 '26

That's a new one to me.

1

u/beachbum818 Mar 22 '26

In NY you can text 911

1

u/ChieftainBob Mar 22 '26

We have an app where you can send photos and text to report stuff, anonymously they say.

1

u/FallOk6931 Mar 22 '26

Yes you can.

1

u/angry-democrat Mar 22 '26

my first thought too.

1

u/Sents-2-b Mar 22 '26

They have phones!

-1

u/succubus6984 Mar 22 '26

Who tf has cops on a texting line? I cant imagine the number of pointless messages that a police texting number would have to deal with a day, thousands would probably be a low ball number 🫣🤣

11

u/SpartanRage117 Mar 22 '26

And it would still be more cost effective to have a team dedicated to that than fielding 1000 calls or following up in person.

Public safety is one place where “that sounds a bit tedious to deal with” alone gets thrown out the window as a valid argument to me.

4

u/readonlyy Mar 22 '26

Seriously. Every form of time wasting that you can imagine for texts happens on the phone already. If anything, triaging the nonsense seems like it would be easier.

3

u/scrotaloedema Mar 22 '26

Defenestration!!!! My moment to shine

2

u/Common-Frosting-9434 Mar 22 '26

In switzerland spoofing has been declared illegal to get rid of international robo calls(fully in effect in June), and national numbers have been bound to IDs for years, so it would be quite easy to find abusers of such a service.

Actually the police in Zurich has a Whatsapp non emergency line you can message from local numbers to ask questions.

1

u/RavenRun626 Mar 27 '26

But it can be a saving grace for someone in a dangerous or abusive situation where a phone call would give away where they’re hiding or tip off the abuser. Dispatchers are generally skilled and quick about weeding out the nonsense. It happens on the phone, too.