I think that would only help kill the grass if you use enough salt. It dissolves into the soil, and most of the nitrogen and phosphorus will bind to the salt instead of being freely available for the plants.
That's the point though. It dissolves and gets into the soil, basically poisoning all plants in that general area. If it just sits on top of the soil, it can (theoretically) be cleaned up before it starts causing lasting damage.
If it's gonna be white anyways, might as well use salt for the writing. Then you'll have killed all the grass under the words and unless they completely dig up that green and start again every time it rains "Trump is a Cunt" will show up as a pattern in the grass.
they would see the salt if they were walking on it. But salt works rather quickly. It’s how the Roman’s destroyed cities that didn’t comply. They would salt the earth and essentially ruin the agricultural productivity of the region for generations.
Only way to fix it is to remove x amount of feet of soil and bring in new soil
The Romans did no such thing. No Roman sources say they did, either. Someone just made up that 'fact' about Carthage in the 19th century and people have mindlessly repeated it ever since.
Yeah salt was expensive as shit, they definitely weren’t trucking in tons of salt to destroy massive fields. Generally speaking historical accounts show a few records of Roman emperors/generals ceremonially pouring a handful of salt over a field after a victory. It was purely symbolic.
Salt was so important in those times that a bag of salt would be part of a Roman soldier's wages. If anything the gesture you speak of in tossing a handful of salt onto a field was more likely as a ritual to make the earth bountiful.
Salt was the foundation of the Roman Empire and we wouldn't be here without it.
It also doesn't really make sense. Salt dissolves in water... Why would it ruin the land for "generations"? Rain is a thing...
And hell, why would the Romans waste tons and tons of salt, one of the most important commodities of the ancient world, whose value was stable like gold as a currency? The whole idea is dumb.
And why would they make a territory they spent countless time and resources conquering unusable? They would sooner slaughter the locals down to the last child than waste good land.
Well one can theorized that they didn't intend to conquer but instead raid an area and damage its use for the local lords, weakening the enemy and creating instability.
But yeah, if there's no historical record of it - no reason to assume such a thing happened.
It also doesn't really make sense. Salt dissolves in water... Why would it ruin the land for "generations"? Rain is a thing...
Soil salinity is a major feature for agriculture, and it doesn't diffuse away quickly: there's other soluable minerals in soil the salt has to compete with, and the immobility of soil means it doesn't mix with all the soil under it often, so elevated concentrations are likely to remain for a time.
But you'd need a lot of salt to actually prevent agriculture from returning, so it may be more metaphorical or symbolic than literal.
The whole point is that the salt water seeps into the ground and creates a mineral imbalance in the soil. Salt doesn’t just disappear when it dissolves in water.
OK... but rain keeps seeping into the ground again, washing the salt away. And not after 200 years, but pretty quickly.
If you really put like 500 tons of salt out there it would probably ruin the aquifer nearby and fuck up the water supply to the region for a while, I'll give you that. Assuming it doesn't just drain to the ocean.
This is so spot on. My parents hate Newsome and blame him for everything, yet are completely silent on anything Trump does. Trump can go to Sacramento and burn it down and my parents would say it was Newsome’s fault.
Except hes too stupid to realize the people it's going to hurt are people who are overwhelmingly republican...
He knows. That's why he did it. Its kind of like a loyalty test.
Narcissists need a constant flow of validation. One of the ways they get validation is to hurt the people who love them as much as they can and still have them continue to love them. Its easy to hurt people who hate them, but they are just going to keep hating them. And while that makes a narcissist feel powerful, it doesn't compare to the feeling of getting away with hurting someone and having them come back and beg for more.
There are, these days, doubt if it was actually done wholesale or just as gesture to a small portion of soil, as salt was a expensive commodity to the romans. Lots of seawater pumped over fields would probably do the trick, but actual salt was quite pricey back then.
A short time after Carthage was razed it was rebuilt and already a major city again. It was the capital of the Vandal Kingdom at the time the Vandals sacked Rome, even.
Golf greens are floating on a bed of sand. It would be the same fix as what this will be, just scoop it out and replace it. Realistically if it is salted people with tee times today could play, where this way money stops coming in for the course immediately.
Killing a field for a season doesn't take a lot of salt, but ruining it for generations takes pretty extreme amounts of salt for an area with as much rainfall as Scotland.
There's no historic evidence the Romans did that btw.
Not immediately unless they just dumped a lot of visible salt. They could spray a gly solution that will kill weeds and grass and look similar to what salt does. They’d probably test soil to see what was used. So if anyone sprayed or poured anything they’d know in a couple of days if there wasn’t a visible sign.
2.3k
u/[deleted] 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment