As figuratively as chess simulates military combat on a game board, land mines actualize consequences of combat on wartime battlefields and beyond. Global activism for years has protested land mine use because of its nonmilitary human consequences, but land mines also have environmental consequences. Though eclipsed by the human consequences, the environmental consequences of land mine use are patent, widespread, and unarguable: killing flora and fauna, obliterating habitat, and retarding ecosystem recovery in blast and fire zones. Such consequences legitimize environmental professionals' concerns about land mine use, just as the environmental consequences of potential nuclear warfare legitimized rigorous study of (clearly more severe) “nuclear winter” effects.