Awesome Fire

Physics and illusion tinkerer Brusspup compiled this assortment of tricks, hacks, experiments and generally fun things you can do with fire. Proceed with great caution if you decide to try any of these yourself.

There’s just something immensely satisfying about watching 5,000 matches go up in flames. YouTuber David Hill says he took over 10 hours to painstakingly glue together his creation, only to destroy it in about 10 seconds.

The dangerous tradition of Dashuhua has been practiced by blacksmiths as part of the Lantern festival for over 500 years. It involves throwing scraps of molten iron towards the bricks of the city gate, resulting in a fiery visual spectacle.

This portable fire burner works as both a charcoal grille and a reliable, self-contained campfire. The vertical log position promotes airflow and helps direct heat where it’s needed. The propane option allows for woodless fires.

A visually stunning promo for Cascade Juggling in which fiery bits of steel wool were spun into the air. The film was then slowed down and played backwards to spectacular effect. Its maker assures us they didn’t start a forest fire.

Pyro is a remote-controlled and wrist-mounted flash gun – a prop used by magicians and theater performers to shoot fire using nitrocellulose. It can be controlled from up to 30ft. away and can shoot up to four small fireballs per charge.

Getting a campfire started can suck. This simple, but ingenious cardboard rack gets wood up off the ground, dramatically improves airflow, and burns slowly to help get your fire crackling. Includes three firestarters.

For National Geographic’s Die Trying, adventurer George Kourounis zip-lined over a flaming gas crater in Turkmenistan, on an exploratory mission looking for “extremophile” microbes which can survive in such insane conditions.

Like BioLite’s charging stoves, Pelty uses heat from a fire to power its electronics. A lit candle can power Pelty for up to five hours. The speaker is made from glass and ceramic and connects to devices via Bluetooth.

Madman Colin Furze continues to build his own personal arsenal of X-Men abilities, this time replicating Pyro’s fiery skills with tiny, but mighty wrist mounted flamethrowers. Impressive, but we don’t think he’ll be able to do Deadpool.

While it’s not as easy to pull off as putting out a fire with a jet boat, this contraption that uses a decommissioned Russian tank and MiG fighter jet engines can put out those notoriously difficult oil field fires. (Footage from Fires of Kuwait)

The BaseCamp is more than a bigger version of the Camp Stove. Its thermoelectric generator can now store electricity for later use and charge gadgets at 5W. It also comes with a USB gooseneck light and can be used to grill or boil.

While it’s not nearly as perilous as playing drums with your drumsticks on fire, we still were entertained by drummer Tyler Williams showing off LiveSpark’s FirePixels which can map digital triggers to fire an array of propane torches.

A Houston construction worker was trapped on the ledge of a flaming building, and pulled off an incredible ninja move to extract himself from impending doom to give himself enough time for the firefighters to rescue him.

To promote its line of worker safety garments, Norway’s Devold Protection lit Base jumper Tom Erik Heimen on fire and asked him to jump off a 3900+ foot cliff. The biggest risk was that his small pilot chute might catch on fire.

Buzzfeed Yellow catalogs nine everyday items which will flare up big time when exposed to an open flame. Man, those ping pong balls and non-dairy creamer are pure evil. It goes without saying – do not try any of this at home.

It’s a simple head of a match that’s been set ablaze, but the way it acts when recorded at 4,000 frames-per-second makes it look like the surface of a planet which has spontaneously caught on fire and then collapsed upon itself.

We can’t really recommend covering your skateboard with gasoline and kerosene. We suggest leaving such dangerous stunts to boarders Jonathan and Jason Bastian, and the watchful 2000fps eye of BeyondSlowMotion.

A dangerous trick achieved with soapy water and butane fuel is made just that more awesome to watch by capturing it in slow-motion. Go behind the scenes with BeyondSlowMotion here. Needless to say, do not try this at home.

Similar to the BioLite Camp Stove, the FlameStower has a generator that turns heat into electricity, letting you charge devices via any open fire. It can’t be used as a stove, but it is cheaper and smaller than the Camp Stove.

This ridiculous truck not only shoots flames from its smoke stacks and from its tail, its powered by a massive jet engine that launches it down the track at 210mph in 7 seconds. Where it’s going, it won’t need roads – it’d just melt them anyhow.

The 12th man for the Ukrainian soccer club Sevastopol is not the Human Torch. Fans lobbed burning projectiles onto the field causing play to be suspended when the opposing team got in scoring position during a recent match. Lame on!

We’ve shown you the mayhem caused when liquid nitrogen is applied to ping pong balls. Now let’s look at the other end of the spectrum by seeing what chaos ensues by introducing fire. No wonder flaming ping pong never took off.