Very much so. As said, I have loads of stories about those brothers. For example, do you know what happens when you drill out model rocket engines, put the resulting powder into a depleted CO2 cartridge, cap it with epoxy around a wick and drop it lit into a steel fence post? I do.
Guevara suggests launching it out of a sawn-off 16-gauge shotgun with a pair of legs added so as to form a tripod together with the butt. This apparatus will fire the burning bottles 100 meters or more with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
I know it’s dated, but I figure even today all the kids read that book.
Sounds a lot like what boys used to do in our neck of the woods when it was still allowed to have fireworks around New Year’s eve. The contents of a few cobra’s in a steel pipe has led to many a blown off limb in earlier days.
And by Cobra I mean these:
Apparently the wiki only has an article in Dutch. These things were always illegal but especially in the 80s/90s pretty much everywhere.
Now I’m picturing a Molotov atlatl.
I considered starting a new thread, but decided it made more sense to ask this here.
At the start of the conflict, much was written about the huge numbers of Molotov cocktails being made. However, in the coverage I haven’t seen many photos or videos of them being used.
Do we have any idea how effective these have been in the war? Are we not hearing about them because they aren’t getting the job done? Am I just not seeing it? Anyone know?
My belief is that Molotov cocktails are used by resistance fighters in cities, often against armour. Putin’s invasion turned into a real Charlie-Foxtrot, and the tanks didn’t roll into the major cities. I think we haven’t seen Molotov cocktails being used is that there hasn’t been that much opportunity to use them.
Anther point is that, based on testimony about Bucha, the Russian soldiers were not reluctant to kill anyone on sight - torture optional. So this isn’t a case where soldiers were ignoring apparently harmless civilians until they are close enough for objects to be thrown, as is the usual case in insurrections. When human decency goes out the window, hand-thrown objects are less useful. Throw it from a building and the tanks will simply blast away at the building.
Molotov cocktails just aren’t very effective against modern armored vehicles. Apart from the aforementioned dangerous need to get within throwing distance, the primary killing/immobilizing effect caused by Molotovs during the Spanish Civil War and WWII was ingestion into the engines of tanks through the air intake vents. Soviet tanks going as far back as the immediate post-war T-54/55 were designed to prevent this from happening, and modern tanks have halon fire-suppression systems as well. A lot of the publicity surrounding civilians making Molotov cocktails was simply good propaganda, showing both the world at large and the Ukrainian population itself their determination to resist the Russian invasion. Here’s a video made a couple of weeks ago that despite its title is specifically about the vulnerability of modern Russian tanks and armored vehicles (T-72 & T-90 tanks, BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles and BTR-80 armored personnel carriers are looked at) to Molotov cocktails:
Sugar works, too. Speaking from experience.
On the topic of expanded polystyrene vs. Styrofoam, most CD cases are also made of styrene, just the solid version rather than foamed. And it’s also the “S” in ABS plastic.