I like YouTube, but it scares me silly, sometimes.
I had no idea you could fill a plastic drink bottle with water, then shove a chunk of dry ice down the neck, screw the cap on quick, and then pitch the bottle onto a hard surface to watch it explode violently. But if I had when I was a kid, I’m sure I would have merrily whiled away several afternoons, blowing plastic drink bottles into oblivion.
Oh, wait, they didn’t have plastic drink bottles when I was a kid. We had to blow up GLASS bottles. With live ammunition. Whoopsy, sorry 'bout that.
I’ve run across all sorts of bizarre things on the internet. Bomb recipes. Explosive mixes. Incendiary surprises. Improvised fuses. But YouTube may be the first actual source to provide how-to videos that will get someone killed.
I speak of the improvised flamethrower. I’m not gonna post a link; I figure if you want to know that bad, you can go there and use their search engine. It explains in pathetically easy-to-follow detail how to convert a high-quality plastic water weapon into an actual flamethrower.
I watched the video twice. It looked remarkably fun. It also made it clear (although some might not notice) that the Super Soaker’s use as a flamethrower is remarkably limited, as the effective range of the thing isn’t more than a few feet. You’d do better simply tying a burning rag to an axehandle and whacking your opponent upside the head with it.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that filling a Super Soaker – a pressurized plastic chamber – with flammable substances, then increasing the pressure, then sticking a burning object on the front –
:eek:
–is NOT the most effective way to live to a ripe old age. At least, not with your original face. Molten styrene is nasty stuff, like napalm – it sticks to your skin and keeps burning, and transmits every erg of heat directly into your flesh, oh yass.
I learned that when I was a kid, you see, screwing around with things I shouldn’t have been. Luckily, we didn’t have high-tech water guns back then, so my learning experience was limited to a half-inch square scar on the back of my left arm, where hair has not grown since I was eleven. All the lesson I needed, thank you very much.
I feel like the great hypocrite of all time, ranting about this. Ghod, I played with bombs when I was a kid; did more research on explosives chemistry than on any subject I ever studied in school until I reached college. But we started small! Our first tests were no more than squibs, little tiny things, just fireworks!
Perhaps I should go out and buy a Super Soaker, and convert it into a flamethrower. Perhaps then I should dress a mannequin up in my clothes, and position my new flamethrower in its arms, pump up the pressure REAL good, and then set the torch.
Perhaps I should film this from several angles, showing what happens when the heat softens the plastic enough towards the front of the Super Soaker that the pressure blasts a hole outward, exposing the explosive in the reservoir to the flame at the front of the gun.
I wonder: would it simply blast outward, from the front of the gun in a great gout of fire? Or would the thing simply explode, coating the entire dummy with flaming molten styrene?
Keep an eye on YouTube for further developments. Or perhaps CNN.
