Improvised Antitank

     Notes: This is a homemade antitank mine, consisting of a box filled with explosives and fitted with a pressure plate requiring 150kg to detonate (although this is highly variable).  Similar mines are produced throughout the world.  The mine has a 10% chance of misfiring.

Improvised APERS 

     Notes: This is a homemade Claymore mine, consisting of a metal backplate, a sheet of plastic explosive, and a layer of nails, scored wire, scrap metal, glass, and other such trash.  It is normally detonated from a remote position, but a tripwire can be improvised.  The mine has a 10% chance of misfiring.  Similar mines are produced throughout the world. 

Improvised Stake Mine

     Notes: This is a form of antipersonnel stake mine, a primitive version of mines like the Russian ROMZ-2 and the World War 2 German M-43.  It is easily-made and can actually made with parts of other mines and a grade of concrete that is home-made and not useable for building purposes.  Both the Russians and Germans in World War 2 used them, and they are or have been used by guerilla forces such as the Viet Cong, the Mujahedin, and present-day insurgents and irregulars such as Chechen guerillas, Taliban, and Al-Qaida.  The most complicated part of the mine is the fuze – it is a pull-type fuze actuated by a tripwire, and usually has to be scrounged from other explosives or explosive kits.  You may also need a blasting cap, depending on the type of fuze available. If you want to get fancy, you can add a radio detonator, but the mine is so crude that it is usually not worth going to that kind of trouble. The mine is crude, but has the virtue of being unaffected by overpressure

     Inside the mine is a small charge of whatever explosives are available – even a short length of dynamite can be impaled on the central stake.  You then surround the mine with a cylinder of concrete, cement, or clay which has a lot of pebbles, nails, screws, chunks of metal, sharp rocks; whatever is jagged and available.  You mount this on a stick of some sort that has a central spike on it, which can be as simple as a long nail.  Let the clay, concrete, or whatever dry until it’s nice and hard, then drive it into the ground like any other stake mine.  Attach the tripwire.  Voila.  Simple and nasty. Like most improvised mines, the Improvised Stake Mine has a 10% chance of misfiring.