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Comment by kwhitefoot | Hacker News Reader

What are flame throwers for? Apart from the obvious people killing purpose.

Melting frozen driveways (residential). Burning land (commercial)

>> Melting frozen driveways

Please do not do this. Use a propane torch. A flamethrower literally throws burning fluids. It will melt the ice, then a ribbon of fire will flow down your driveway. It may then melt or even ignite your asphalt.

Does this actually work? I tried using flame once on a 0F day but it barely made a dent. The heat content of water is staggeringly high.

It's not just the heat capacity of water, but also the energy required for phase-change from solid (ice) to liquid (water). That's why throwing salt on ice will melt it but also lower the temperature.

Yes and no. To melt/dry an entire driveway would be silly. But if you need to melt/dry a crack to make a repair then a propane torch will work. We have all seen them used by road crews. Million-btu torches are available on amazon for about fifty bucks.

Short answer, yes[1] but it's pretty inefficient[2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/rkxlz1/cl...

[2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/

In combat, flamethrowers were rarely used to kill. They are meant to terrify. Point a flamethrower at a bunker and those protected inside will surrender.

Did you literally just make that up and try to pass it off as an authoritative fact?

Welcome to the internet and especially HN specifically, haha. Also I enjoy that someone called "shitpostbot" is the one calling this out

Read about their use. Not the propaganda clips. Read about how they were deployed, the issues with them. They had a very narrow use case in combat.

Who the hell wants to deal with a surrendering bunker? You let rip with the flame thrower and fill that bunker with carbon monoxide.

In the wars and battles flamethrowers are famous for, Marines were doing shit like collecting skulls. Neither side was in a hostage taking mood.

Testing the resistance to fire of stuff.

Since the dawn of man we've wondered: can I make fire? Can I set this on fire? And the modern conundrum: is this material flammable, or inflammable?

Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

Clearing forest or jungle for farmland and fallowing fields after the harvest.

Burning crop stubble (where that's legal) or heath control?

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