I've been reading up on these fascinating weapons and couldn't help developing a curiosity about them.1, Are incendiary weapons actually useful or it's just fuck you collateral damage? We no longer use highly flammable wood for anything important anymore.2, Do they work like in my tacticool games of Counter Strike or are they different? I mean, I'm sure they are not supposed to fizzle out after 7 seconds...3, What's the better fuel for Molotovs, alcohol, ethanol, gasoline, diesel or a mix of them? All of these are treated equal but I'm sure each has their own characteristics like flash point, so I'm wondering if there is a best overall recipe.4, What situations can you imagine incendiary weapons being useful in a modern battlefield? Burning down entire forests I can understand, but why risk using them in CQC?
>>647411901. I can imagine willy pete geing a better deterrent than smoke grenades in Vietnam during retreat2. WP grenades were used to torch communications materiel or machinegun nests in enclosed rooms3. depends on your use, but styrofoam dissolved in petrol/gasoline/paint thinner makes for a gel that burns for ages, for the base.Actual cocktail will be anything flammable, alcohol above 40% ABV will work, diesel needs pressure.Make sure to tape around the bottleneck, rely on the burning rag to ignite a broken bottle, otherwise you are liable to throw flammable shit on yourself, with an open fire a meter away.A fully filled bottle will be heavy as shit, regarding throwing range.4. Ive seen combat footage of dudes trying to clear out pits with several grenades, but the enemy kept shooting. If you have no morals, it could work out to be a more practical option.Carrying several molotovs on your vest is the wildest shit, thats why it never actually happens and they are used in riots, or from static positions. WP grenades on the front of your LBE is also a liability.
>>64741190>Are incendiary weapons actually useful or it's just fuck you collateral damage?They're for destroying things, theyre useful for that. Like getting rid of sensitive electronics when risk of capture is high. Its not really meant for defoliation or open combat like they were in previous eras.>Do they work like in my tacticool games of Counter Strike or are they different? I mean, I'm sure they are not supposed to fizzle out after 7 seconds...Yes, they basically are. They burn hot enough to melt most metals, but fizzle out after maybe half a minute max.>What's the better fuel for Molotovs I vaguely recall a recipe that involved magnesium strips that would self-ignite when the bottle was broken, but otherwise idk.>What situations can you imagine incendiary weapons being useful in a modern battlefield?Generally thermobarics are the flame weapon of the 21st century. Though tbf, their killing method is overpressure; the heat and flame being a secondary effect.
>>64741341>1. I can imagine willy pete geing a better deterrent than smoke grenades in Vietnam during retreatYeah, nothing beats a commissar when it comes to preventing Cowardly Pete from running away during combat.
>>64741400The difference between Tojo running through thick smoke and blasting away with his SKS/AK/whatever and throwing grenades, vs Tojo being held up by a wall of flaming shit, then throwing grenades.
>>64741341>>64741394Torching electronics is an interesting use case, though I imagine a bit too niche to always carry equipment just for that.Fizzling out after half a minute is surprising, even the few videos of it on Youtube last longer than that. Even considering the heat, I can't see it causing that much damage against electronics, especially when enclosed by some metal case.>I vaguely recall a recipe that involved magnesium strips that would self-ignite when the bottle was broken, but otherwise idk.Magnesium is notoriously crap at starting fires, so I'm curious how that would work. You would need to hit a specific type of surface with the magnesium and even then it's a roll of the dice.
>>64741447>>64741190>why risk using them in CQC?It's a tool, not a weapon. Stop thinking that Joe Infantryman is going to be carrying them and throwing them at people. It's a portable, self stable bottle of instant fire. That's all.>but they only last X seconds!They either started the fire that they needed to or they only needed to burn that long anyways. >molotovsAre improvised weapons for rioters and the desperate. You just use whatever liquid fuel is most convenient at the moment you make them. Getting retarded about fuel mix is pedantic min-maxing and doesn't matter at all.
>>64741447>Torching electronics is an interesting use case, though I imagine a bit too niche to always carry equipment just for that.It is a specialty tool carried by operatives during a mission regarding exactly thatm destroying comms. Not like an average GI would just carry one for "whatever".>Fizzling out2500+ C° in an enclosed room sounds bad for electronics, or anything else in the room, for that matter.
>>64741456>>molotovs>Are improvised weapons for rioters and the desperate. You just use whatever liquid fuel is most convenient at the moment you make them. Getting retarded about fuel mix is pedantic min-maxing and doesn't matter at all.What if I'm spoiled for choice? Do I add a bit of diesel to increase safety and burn time? Do I use alcohol when I have access to ethanol? How do I make a diesel-heavy mixture workable?That min-maxing part is what I find intriguing. If I were a chemist and it weren't illegal, I'd probably cook drugs and test them on the homeless just for the fun of it.
>>64741489Diesel needs pressure to combust, as I stated before, and does not bring much in a mixture, maybe used oil is a better option.Alcohol in drinkable form should be used to keep up the spirits of the folk.Denaturated alcohol/ethanol/methyl is a good ingredient, gas station benzin/petrol will be just as good.You can put bits of the long-burning paste at the bottom of each bottle, as I wrote earlier.Anecdotal advice: less is more, meaning, produce more bottles with less content as opposed to a few huge bombs.All of this information was hypothetical, and only to be used in online games, Mr/Mrs/Diverse/ glownigger.
>>64741553Thank you, I'll make sure to only utilize this knowledge in Minecraft, pyromaniac backyard experiments and against demon lords of other realms.I was skeptical about diesel, since I knew it's explicitly preferred by militaries due to its less explosive qualities. Probably some schmuck got diesel / petrol / gas / gasoline / benzine / benzene / fuel confused as usual and that got me confused as well. These terms mean different things in english than in other languages / countries.
>>64741394There's a few ways to create a self igniting molotov and none of them use magnesium.The only time magnesium as a molotov cocktail ingredient comes up is AFAIK, in Jin-Roh
>>64741489>what if I'm spoiled for choice?Then you pick the one that is cheapest and most convenient to get. It does not matter.>inb4 but theoretically...It won't change things enough to matter, so stop.
>>64741686Don't EVER question autismCreating a perfect recipe is a goal ALWAYS worth pursuing
does anyone have a video of one of these going off? the only video I've been able to find is very clearly NOT an M34.
>>64741341>fully filled bottle will be heavy as shitAlso surprisingly resistant to breaking due to fluid incompressibility. Better to only fill it halfway.
>>64741553>Diesel needs pressure to combustNo it doesn't>oil is a better optionDiesel *is* an oil, it's just a thin oil, that happens to be significantly more flammable than ordinary motor oil. The best option is gasoline with a bit of styrofoam or liquid soap dissolved in it to increase stickiness.
>>64741190They are not fire balls or wall of fire. If you are lucky, they can ignite suitable environmental hazard into that. Still these hazards can be suppressed beforehand and common fire propagation speed is slower unless aided upward by natural buoyancy of the hot smoke, or wind in the horizontal direction which is not your ally. It is too much work to have fire entraping the enemy on open ground but higher floors of tall buildings are natural dead ends that can be sealed off by flame on the bottom floor and inch its way upwards. Once again it is an opportunistic check on the enemies fore awareness, you can guarantee a building demolition if and HE warhead with delay fuse landed there.Incendiary grenades are just thermites that melt other metal witht their hot puddle. Some steel parts are just too heavy to be destroyed by blasts on the outside.They can ignite hydrocarbon fuels if placed on top, but so are high explosives that can eject a can of liquid fuel into the air, dispersing the content with the blast if placed on the bottom. In the end, a fire ball barely do anything to armored vehicles.Without an active flame, temperature alone often result in just smoldering, or ignition then go back to smoldering, very far from continuous burn or propagating flame.The amount of fuel needed is ridiculous if environment hazard are not suited. You will be sacrificing an entire vehicle loaded with fuel as seen in fireship and wagon in limited history, and those has to be launched from a superior position, like upwind and highgrounds for it to roll down as planned. Not even cattles or soldiers wants to do this, so such weapon are sub optimal due to a lack of intelligent and willing controller at the helm.and those architype quickly switched to HE that are much efficient and smaller in size like torpedos, missiles and Goliath mine/vbied and their target implemented fire code.
>>64741341>3. depends on your use, but styrofoam dissolved in petrol/gasoline/paint thinner makes for a gel that burns for agesExperiencially I have found the whole styrofoam napalm thing to be largely a meme, at least with gasoline. It does sorta work but it doesn't burn nearly as well as you'd think and the consistency is too thick for a good Molotov. Might work as part of an explosive actuated device, they tend to like thicker mixes. You really want a mix of stick, spread, and persistence for a good molotov. Your best bet out of reasonably available stuff is actually one of the easiest. Fuel-oil combinations work very well, you can also adjust the amount of oil by quite a bit up or down depending on how much spread/whoosh factor you want vs stick. A good starting ratio, which can be made in just about any garage or shed in the world is 70% gasoline to 30% motor oil. >Diesel needs compression to burnAbsolutely not the case
Is that a flammewehrfer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
in RisingStorm2 the WP granades fucked
>>64742057How does natural rubber work? It's in a lot of WW2 molotov recipes
>>64741341>Make sure to tape around the bottleneck, rely on the burning rag to ignite a broken bottleThat's the gay version for the niggers. White men use storm matches.
>>64742420Didn't have access to that at the time and couldn't say, most of those old napalm recipes require several oddball chemicals to actually work well like napthenic and palmitic acid n shit . Honestly I'd probably just go with the real deal if I was going to mess with knockoff napalms again. I think that the performance advantage of low effort "napalms"(usually just a volatile fuel and a thickener) are so shitty outside of niche situations as to not be worth it over super basic and readily made thickened incendiary agents like the previously mentioned fuel/oil mixtures. If you need meaningfully better performance then that you should be looking at super napalm(gasoline, styrofoam, benzene), thermite/thermate, or niche chemicals(alkali metals, white phosphorous) depending on your personal interests.
>>64742481>napthenic and palmitic acid n shitThat is the real deal.>gasoline, styrofoam, benzeneIs not super napalm. Polystyrene is different than styrene and results in an entirely different style of product.
>>64741190I’m surprised it hasn’t come up yet but one of the good things about incendiary’s is their habit of using up the oxygen when used against tunnels and bunkers, it might be fudd lore but iirc most flamethrower causalities during WW2/Vietnam where from dudes suffocating in a enclosed space rather than getting burnt alive, which seems a little bit more preferable.
>>64741703The perfect recipe is: "Which liquid fuel is cheapest and easiest to get." That's it, nothing follows.
>>64742548Had me second guessing but every source is saying polystyrene. Some claimed it turns to styrene when burning but that's neither here nor there really
>>64742776Polystyrene is the napalm we have at home. It's a accessible way to gel it which is good enough for rural kids playing in the woods but not really the intended effect.
>>64742676>Use straight gasoline>Practically explodes on contact, half the mix just immediately turns into a fireball>Fire burns out in 5-10 seconds without starting any secondary firesVs>Use a moderately thick mixture>No major fireball, all the mix is contributing to actually burning the thing your threw it at>Burns for 30 seconds or more>Lights whatever it was on fire too, producing a growing structural fireThere's a massive difference in the practical effectiveness of different Molotov mixes. Anybody arguing against this has never used them and also hasn't even done a basic amount of research on them.
>>64742800No, while exact ratios depend on source the recipe for napalm-b(in use since Vietnam era) is aprx 50% polystyrene, 25% gasoline, and 25% benzene. Id swear that I'd seen some sources claiming a small amount of barium nitrate being used(1-5% range) but I might just be crossing a wire with thermate recipes.Do you have a source for your claim? If I am wrong then I'd like to know.
>>64742776Those sources are wrong.>>64742800It doesn't gel though. You get a blob of liquid polystyrene with some gas mixed in it. Proper mixes with styrene will form an actual gel with higher amounts of gas and benzene.
>>64742832Went and did some triple checking, it's definitely polystyrene according to literally everybody. Including the chemical engineering society bemoaning the increase it caused to polystyrene costs(back in 1966) to people trying to shill using surplus napalm as a fuel source of all things and doing chemical analysis of it to determine if other solvents could be used to further stabilize it>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030438949900103X>https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cen-v044n011.p024I'm gonna need some sauce or I may have to declare you legally gay and retarded.>>64742832>You get a blob of liquid polystyrene with some gas mixed in it.This is my experience as well with simple gasoline/polystyrene mixes. The polystyrene turns into a big lump coated in gasoline. It's like a very thick tar with a good bit of rubberiness to it. Strangely enough it isn't even sticky, the gasoline film makes it weirdly slippery and resistant to sticking. Thorough enough stirring over a long period of time might help but I wouldn't expect it to. No comment on the taste though.
>>64742947>The polystyrene turns into a big lump coated in gasolineWouldn't real napalm be a bunch of individual polystyrene pellets rather than a block getting coated in it? Get the mixture right and you get your gel.
>>64741341>Burning ragYou don't know shit. You use stormproof matches or flares and duck tape. A 22 ounce beer bottle is the perfect size for throwing. It doesn't need to be glass, depending on application. Gatorade/powerade/water bottles eventually melt, if you want a delayed spread instead of instantaneous burst
>>64741724Do you need specifically an M34, or would another WP grenade suffice? Here's video clips of M19A1 WP grenades being fired. The effect of a WP hand grenade would be similar. https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-3585548301-united-states---1944-us-soldiers-loadhttps://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-3585549089-united-states---1944-us-soldiers-fire
>>64741769You could score it, provided you have tools and time. Or tape broken pieces of ceramic to the body.
>>64742776Pic related through a cheese grater or crushed mothballs.
flamethrowers are cool for demoralizing the enemy and they are easy to make
>>64743011close enough. thanks.
>>64743026They changed the formula years ago. No actual naptha anymore.
>>64741769>Better to only fill it halfway.filling it halfway has the added advantage of making it more "explosive", because the gas fumes will fill the empty space.
>>64743035>Not struggling at all.A.I., drugged, hard as fuck or corpse tied to a tree?
>>64742981>>64742803You don't want a gel with a molotov. You throw the bottle, it breaks, it just stays as one glob. What you want is the liquid fuel to spread quickly and splash widely to cover the most target area and have the best chance of coming in contact with the burning igniter.
>>64743045it's some sort of cartel execution, in the actual video you can hear the screams for a short while. You will lose consciousness very fast because the flames will take oxygen for your lungs
>>64743043You are not achieving stoichiometric ratio from a Molotov. The space would have to be the perfect enclosed and rather small space and ignition would need to be delayed.
>>64742981So pic related? I have broken off and mixed styrofoam into gas to make them as a precocious youth. Took quite a bit of time.
>>64743035Christ, where is that from, Burma?
>>64743076Yeah, that's what i meant
>>64743080>CJNGJalisco New Generation Cartelso mexico and sometime after 2010
>>64742981The one thing the stuff is sticky towards is itself, it's not like I dropped a giant chunk of Styrofoam in or anything. I chunked it into bits. They like each other a lot and form a singular blob.>>64743006You can absolutely use a burning rag. Just cap the bottle and tie it around the neck. Lmao I've literally done that before back in the day. It's definitely less than ideal for the obvious reasons though.>>64743048Look lil bro, I've literally done the thing before on several occasions. You definitely want some sort of a thickener or at least slower burning fluid in there then gasoline. There's a very big difference in effectiveness.Seems like there are a lot of Molotov virgins in here with overly strong opinions
>>64742981Real napalm is fuel (gas, diesel, JP/kerosene) and naptha and palmitic acid.So fuel, mothballs and palm oil from the grocery store. 1:2 on thickener mix at 12-15% of fuel volume. You could add some powdered aluminum if you feel froggy.
>>64743105You can use a rag. It sucks in comparisonYou can use used motor oil as a thickener too. It is also less than ideal.
>>64743006Glass for anti-personnel. Plastic for structures.
>>64743105>>64743121tampons soaked in used motor oil works great, much better than some shitty rag
>>64743141Rubbing alcohol for fuse/ignition catches fire quicker and more reliably and provides less flame signature.Tampon is not a half-bad idea.
>>64743105Use tar.>During the Winter War, the Molotov cocktail consisted of a mixture of rubbing alcohol, kerosene, spirits (spirits), and tar in a half-liter bottle of alcohol. The igniters attached to the side of the bottle were firecrackers (Bengal sticks). One of the sticks was kept in reserve so that the bottle could be reused if it was not thrown away.[1]
>>64743168Motor oil "tar", pitch, pine tar, mystery tar, dudeweed tar, tar tar, or tatar?
>>64743020Or just fill it halfway, which avoids all that faffing about.
>>64743266Damn, forgot about soltar, solitaire, and tar-soul too
>>64742599Little-known fact: If you get directly sprayed with a flamethrower you will die from lack of oxygen and *not* from being burned alive.
>>64743150Storm matches are even better. Lights and burns wet or dry, won't go out in high winds such as between the tosser and target, and also has a low visual signature.
>>64743168>So much booze you are throwing it at commies.Finland really is like Appalachia with snow, huh?
>>64743302I am using pic related. It's a celebration, bitches.
>>64743309Yes, a lot more than you think.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ao-iNPPUc
>>64743283Lmao, but the real thing was that the CO would kill guys much further down into the bunker than the first guy or two who got lit on fire. When they'd go to clear the bunkers most of the KIA would be further in and weren't ever hit by the flames. At least that's the claim.
>>64743322
>>64743333Checked, based and Good Ol' Boypilled.
>>64741394Just like games, temporary area denial. Set the hallway on fire and make jihad joe run it blind or give up the building.
>>64741469You just try and kill me faggot.
>>64742129I want a crate.
>>64743266Tar.
>>64743076I ordered one and slept on it in the plastic because I couldn't afford a pillow casing.
>>64743390Kneel
>>64743266Tartar?
