Incendiary device
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact are designed to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start and or maintain the reaction. Napalm for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a 'gel' to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression.
See also
- Arson
- Bat bomb
- Driptorch
- Early thermal weapons
- Fire accelerant
- Fire balloon
- Firestorm
- Flame fougasse
- Flamethrower
- Greek fire (Historic Byzantine incendiary weapon)
- High explosive incendiary (HEI)
- Incendiary ammunition
- Meng Huo You (Historic Chinese incendiary weapon)
- Molotov cocktail
- Napalm
- Pen Huo Qi (Historic Chinese flamethrower)
- Stinkpot (Historic Chinese incendiary weapon)