On May 2nd, 2021, more than 3,000 local residents in the city of Vicenza, Italy, received a message from the government.

Pack a bag for the day. Leave your homes and evacuate. Now.

A 500-pound undettonated bomb left over from the British during World War II have been

discovered in the city. All residents within 1,500 feet of the device had to get out, stat, so a group

of technicians could come in and disarm the bomb. The day would become known as Bomba Day. And it all sounds pretty

dramatic to me. But apparently, this isn't a hugely unusual occurrence in Italy.

This is something that routinely pops up in national media in Italy. You know, every once in a while,

there would be a story about, hey, they found this unexploded bomb and needed to evacuate.

Alessio Perone is an Italian writer and journalist. And as he kept hearing all of these

semi-routine stories about unexploded bombs in his own country, he began to think about the people

doing this work. And so I read about these things and I thought, how exactly do they do these

things? How did they search for bombs? How did they find them? So Alessio decided to find out.

I'm Johanna Mayer and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, I'm talking with Alessio Perone about what he learned from the people who hunt for

Italy's unexploded bombs.

More after this.

Thank you. More after this. No one knows exactly how many unexploded bombs, grenades, and bullets are still lurking under the ground in Italy, left over from the two world wars.

But the country recovers about 60,000 pieces of unexploded ordinance every year.

Which made me wonder, are you walking around scared all the time?

No, no, I'm not... I guess that's one of the thing that makes this story fascinating,

is that we don't think about this.

...