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Commercial Flamethrower Successfully Crowdfunded
ColdWetDog writes: You've always wanted one, of course. Zombies, the occasional alien infestation. The neighbor's smelly roses. You just need to be prepared for things. You can get freeze dried food, AR15's, enough ammo to start a small police action (at least here in the U.S. -- YMMV), but it has been difficult to get a modern, portable flamethrower until now. CNET has a brief explanation on the XM42, which doubled its Indiegogo funding target in just a few days.
"....where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.... The kids love this one."
Chris Byars, CEO of Ion Productions, the company behind the XM42, told me: "It is legal where there are no laws or codes written against such a device."
Incoming legislation in 3... 2... 1...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It's legal in all states except MD and CA. There generally hasn't been a big problem with drive-by flamethrowings.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I know from Myth Busters they are not legal in California.
Is anything legal in California these days?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
no, there are different types of flamethrowers with differing fuels, see my other comment.
The Geneva convention only forbids flamethrowers in certain situations, look it up. Two armies roasting each other in a field is perfectly fine by the GC
The U.S. military still has flamethrowers and practices with them
On a more serious note but nonetheless just as funny, the liability suits from this should be hilarious.
I'm sure this has hundreds of uses!
Such as erm...... uh....... well... bonfire lighter! Er, and you know.......... other things!
Now this on the other hand....
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
A flamethrower is primarily useful for clearing bunkers.
Squirt a jet of flame through the firing slit on a concrete bunker, and it quickly ceases to be a threat to the guys on the outside.
Like a demolition charge, it's utility is pretty limited, but when the right (or wrong, depending on perspective) situation comes up, there's no substitute....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
As someone else pointed out far above, there is actually a variety of legal uses for flamethrowers. I've seen them used by landowners to conduct controlled burns to keep underbrush down and help prevent wild brush fires.
I know from Myth Busters they are not legal in California.
Is anything legal in California these days?
Idiot politicians who waste taxpayers' money are legal in California.
Also, idiots who make frivolous lawsuits against their former employers
appear to be legal.
All in all, it is a good place not to live.
Gasoline and vaseline.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Sorry to the 90% U.S.ians here on /. for my upcoming rant, but bear with me please:
WTF? I mean, seriously, WTF??? Who in hell would think that what the world needs now is a small concealable commercially available *FLAMETHROWER* ?!??. This is so bizarly US american, words fail me.
When's the first one going to run amok with one of these? Who's gonna pay the medical bill of the first rampage victims with 80% burnt skin for life? The people who built this thing? ... I hope as soon as the first one falls victim to one of these, that these people get sued into next wednesday big-time USA style. Better would be they'd abandon the project alltogether.
Does anybody here know what a gastly cruel final effort weapon this is? Seriously folks. Even as a military weapon Flamethrowers are about as wicked as it can get - even hardboiled hardcore SS members would instantly surrender at the mere sight of the "Churchill Corcodile", a british tank with a flamethrower attached. Which shows they actually can, in rare cases, have a 'use' - if I may use this notably unfitting verb in this context - as a last ditch (no pun intended) effort in marginal scenarios, such as finally and once and for all bringing down a totalitarian regime bent on ruling the planet by ethnic cleansing and such. And communicating to members of such a regime that you're effing serious and now won't stop short of total surrender.
But a commercially available flamethrower for "normal" people? "normal" in double quotes(!!). Jebus H.B. Crickey, this is so sick words fail me. However, this guy pretty much puts the finger on the insanity.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, if you have a shotgun that you don't care much about, you can buy some "Dragon's Breath" shells for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If ever there was a weapon that would be classified as only a weapon of terror with no practical application beyond fear.
This is it.
I hope this fails, and i'm an NRA member who is often caught saying things like "from my cold dead hand"
The only time I ever used a flame thrower was to put out a forest fire. I don't doubt that the deer were frightened of me, but in my defense I was trying to protect their home.
Why are NRA members so dim-witted? Do you even understand your own propaganda, or do you just spew it like a mindless zombie? It isn't the flame-thrower that scares people, it is the asshole waving it around.
I wanted so desperately for there to be a comment on this that I could mod flamebait. Thank you for your contribution.
Good we don't want any tea-baggy cry babies here anyway
Having fun isn't necessarily stupid. Having fun with flamboyantly dangerous things isn't necessarily stupid. It's endangering unwilling bystanders that's stupid.
Some people like to build and shoot powerful crossbows, or even replicas of medieval siege weapons. These are extremely dangerous and useless things. The dangerous power of a trebuchet to throw an upright piano 150 yards is part of the charm.
But a trebuchet is something that takes certain amount of thought and sacrifice to obtain and use. This flamethrower thing is more like a powerful handgun. There's been a recent fad for ridiculously overpowered handguns, which pack superfluously fatal power into a convenient, affordable form factor. The recent brouhaha over "armor piercing" ammunition was a side effect of a manufacturer selling a cut-down semi-automatic carbine as a "handgun", even though if you look at videos of people using them they're obviously terrible as handguns. This raised the question of whether 5.56 NATO ammunition should be regulated as "handgun ammunition", and in the end I think the decision not to was reasonablee. These aren't cop-killing or military handguns. They're extremely dangerous toys designed to get your rocks off.
There are some who'd say that because these guns are dangerous and impractical they should be banned. But I don't agree. "Impractical" isn't the same as "useless" because getting your rocks off is a legitimate use for a thing. I think people should be able to enjoy their ridiculous firearms as long as they do it at some kind of appropriate range. I also think there's a real danger though from stupid people who will go plinking in the woods with the things like they were BB guns.
That's really the only problem I have with this flamethrower, whether it's gold, chrome, or gunmetal gray. Any idiot can buy one, but it'd take someone reasonably intelligent and determined to find a place where it can be used safely. I'm not against people buying them, but I am for coming down hard on people who use them where they're a danger or public nuisance.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Using the flameCloud4000 app, you can quickly access your flamethrower controls from around the world. Do you not want to to put a cloud-controllable flamethrower on top of your roof, to get rid of stupid flanders neighbours showing up, or pidgins shitting onto your roof? Using our patented BirdAway algorithm, the cloud-connected camera quickly scans for birds on your roof and roasts them with the remotely controllable 360 degrees flameWielder flamethrower[1]. With the flameCloud4000 app, you can access your flameWielder to control your roof to be free of pidgins. It also features roast statistics, together with a flameCloud4000 share-this button, where you can share images of the roasted pidgins on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
[1] might roast cats too.
We played around with what were known as 'Flame Effects Generators', also known as 'Fire Cannons', for years out at Burning Man. We even shot them directly at people, clad in fire suits of course (search YouTube for 'Dance Dance Immolation'). As far as I know no one ever got hurt, or even burned a little, and we compared notes a lot. But these were all pressurized propane. The subject line above was something of a motto. These things use liquid, and the potential for an accident is pretty high. I've used FEGs for years, but I wouldn't want to be within a city block of a liquid based flame thrower.
One early year a guy had a kerosene-based torch, a big one. I heard him tell the Black Rock Rangers, "You know, if anything goes wrong here you're gonna have to move 2,000 people 100 yards in about 20 seconds".
Oh come now folks, just look it up.
It's practically on Recipes.com.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Let's be clear, absolutely no-one is going to be using this as a weapon. It's not even a "last line of defense" weapon for home invasion, because while some may want to watch the world burn, they have different feelings about their own home specifically.
There are actually some pretty valid uses for this thing - farming an pyrotechnic displays being just two. There are a lot of people in the U.S. with large properties that could have very good uses for these things.
But basically, this is just fun, because fire is fun. Anyone who fails to see that has had irrational fear of EVERYTHING so deeply ingrained into them I cannot possibly see how they can function in real life.
People always accuse people who like guns, and now fire, of being fearful. But it seems to me like instead, those afraid of such things are the ones always afraid, and without any real joy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A flame thrower, however powerful, is a short range weapon. A zombie by definition doesn't feel pain. Result? Getting up close and personal with a zombie . . . only now it's a flaming zombie.
Medical marijuana, gay marriage, conceal/carry.
Say you're not really pissed that fucking flamethrowers aren't legal there, are you? I don't know if you've gotten a look at your fellow man in the United States lately, but are these really people you want to be able to have flamethrowers? Geez, louise, there can't be more than maybe 1 in 100 that I think should be allowed to drive a car. Maybe 1 in 10 should be allowed to have shoelaces for chrissake.
Although I'm sure we can find someone reading this that believes "More flamethrowers = Less crime".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Says you.
I've been itching to whole roast a deer mid jump.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Killing isn't bad when it's mosquitoes. You've supped your last on me you little bloodsucking bastards!
Stupidity. It's not merely legal - it's a requirement.
linquendum tondere
If something goes wrong, you're carrying a boatload of highly flammable material while playing with fire. Sounds like a setup for a Darwin award.
linquendum tondere
Er, when you say "clearing".....? [fearing the worst].
Burned the people inside to death or near enough so they stopped fighting. What do you think the flamethrower did? Spewed chocolate bunnies inside to make the enemies lapse into a diabetic coma?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Likely to be hot burning hands. An ex-army guy I know who got to play with military flamethrowers before training on them became limited noted that they are tempremental things that don't just roast the thing you are pointing them at unless you are out in the open on a perfectly calm day. Such weapons are "on the backburner" due to it being a real bitch if the bad guys have them, it looking really bad in the press to roast kiddies with them and difficulties in operating them without burning your own guys located anywhere near the operator.
That sounds a bit like claiming to be celibate while boasting that you've the neighbourhood's biggest and best porn archive.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Spewed chocolate bunnies inside to make the enemies lapse into a diabetic coma...
I think that's a wonderful idea. Say, I've been looking for a potential Kickstarter for some time now...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.