It's as easy as that. Guess we better start movin' back now, huh?

July 9, 2014 8:45 AM

The Redneck Rocket Launcher: 8,500 bottle rockets launched in just under a minute.
posted by shiu mai baby (32 comments total)

Wow, it's like Jim Varney reincarnated. Ernest goes to the Emergency Room?
posted by leotrotsky at 8:50 AM on July 9, 2014

Anyone know how much 8500 bottle rockets cost?
posted by bondcliff at 8:51 AM on July 9, 2014

Very well designed and executed. I would have loved to have done a post-mortem on how many rockets didn't fire and why.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:51 AM on July 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ingenious and apparently foolproof...
posted by jim in austin at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2014

I had a very redneck upbringing and people always think it's odd that my friends and I had bottle rocket fights and shot Roman candles at each other. I distinctly remember using a metal tube like a bazooka with a crew lighting bottle rockets and tossing them in the back so I could shoot them at other friends.

But this video was like seeing a Katyusha truck. Glorious.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 8:56 AM on July 9, 2014 [6 favorites]

Ingenious and apparently foolproof...

Except now they can't find their damn dog because someone left the gate open.
posted by srboisvert at 8:57 AM on July 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

First Google result suggests you can get about 70 of them for $7.99, which would put 8500 somewhere in the order of $1000. I imagine you can get them cheaper in bulk, though, especially if the fireworks stores of the rural South are anything like the fireworks stores of the rural Midwest.
posted by aaronetc at 8:58 AM on July 9, 2014

From the appropriately named YouTube user jbooom: 10,000 bottle rockets, 11,000 bottle rockets (much faster rate of fire from the beginning), 20,000 bottle rockets (daytime setup and lengthy pre-lighting footage at night), 28,000 bottle rockets with 36 roman candles (with footage of the setup in daylight), 30,000 bottle rockets, and 45,000 bottle rockets.

If that's too low of caliber, why not try 980 shot roman candle set-up, from Nicks Fireworks Demos.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 AM on July 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

how about 20,000

on preview...never mind...
posted by HuronBob at 8:59 AM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I had a very redneck upbringing and people always think it's odd that my friends and I had bottle rocket fights and shot Roman candles at each other. I distinctly remember using a metal tube like a bazooka with a crew lighting bottle rockets and tossing them in the back so I could shoot them at other friends.

I was Joe Suburb and we had 'wars' where we rode around on bmx bikes firing bottle rockets at each other using 19cent (plus deposit) glass coke bottles. I'm not sure we ever hit anything but it sure was fun.
posted by srboisvert at 9:00 AM on July 9, 2014

Le Mariage de stupide et impressionnant.

'Murica

(Side to Ghostride, we did the same thing but shot the roman candles first then used the used cardboard tube as our launcher. I did not grow up in the South.)
posted by Dagobert at 9:03 AM on July 9, 2014

Years ago my brother was in the hospital over the Fourth of July. We went to visit him and my brother in law just happened to have some bottle rockets with him. To cheer up the ward, he shot them out the window using one of those hospital bed urinal things. Only a few but the effect for the kids in the hospital was huge. No, we didn't get caught.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:05 AM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Bottle rockets are cheap. They are usually give-aways when you buy larger sets (ie "the cheap shitty filler" of a combo-package of fireworks -- them and firecrackers). Or you get a bunch when you spend $xx or more on fireworks (eg buy $50 worth of things, get a gross of bottle rockets).

Would be more interesting to see this done using whistlers.. Those aren't as cheap.

(the lack of good guidance on these -- that they fire off in all directions, is I guess both a deficit and an attribute .. )
posted by k5.user at 9:11 AM on July 9, 2014

This looks like the same design principle as the Mythbusters used to test the medieval Korean hwacha.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:15 AM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

This probably raised CO2 globally by 1ppm
posted by crayz at 9:21 AM on July 9, 2014

To cheer up the ward, he shot them out the window using one of those hospital bed urinal things. Only a few but the effect for the kids in the hospital was huge. No, we didn't get caught.

You realize this is one of the things where if it goes wrong, the ensuing newspaper story is going to be less than favorable to you ...
posted by crayz at 9:23 AM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

1000 sparklers is pretty cool, too.
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:30 AM on July 9, 2014

"Don't have to be perfect or anything."

That's an ethos I can get behind.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:32 AM on July 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dude's smokin' a cigarette in a few frames there.

♫ God shed her grace on theeee..... ♫
posted by benito.strauss at 9:32 AM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Alright alright alright
posted by Flashman at 9:33 AM on July 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dude's smokin' a cigarette in a few frames there.

I don't think he is. I think he's holding some kind of twisty-tie or something that he's using to rig the frame up.
posted by yoink at 10:06 AM on July 9, 2014

The Chinese tend to spread it out a little more so it's not a concentrated ball of flame over in 60 seconds, or even 30 minutes.
posted by stbalbach at 10:10 AM on July 9, 2014

I feel like more rockets were making it out at the beginning and towards the end most of them just sat and combusted where they were.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:14 AM on July 9, 2014

It looked like he had them packed so tightly that most were unable to actually launch and exploded on the pad.
posted by sotonohito at 10:39 AM on July 9, 2014

I want to introduce them to the Thai bamboo rocketeers.
posted by ntk at 11:18 AM on July 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Anyone know how much 8500 bottle rockets cost?

Less than $200 easily... A gross is less than $3 in my neck of the woods at a tent... You'd need 59 gross to get you just shy of 8500. Probably get them even cheaper than $3/per in that kind of volume.
posted by Jacob G at 11:39 AM on July 9, 2014

"I was Joe Suburb and we had 'wars' "

Me too. Our advanced launch device was a scrap 1x4 with a line of a couple dozen 3/8" holes bored through, spaced 3/4" and connected by a single shallow groove made with a circular saw. Bottle rockets were loaded in each hole, one at a time, placing each fuse in the groove so that it would overlap (and be triggered by) its predecessor rocket.
posted by klarck at 12:44 PM on July 9, 2014

I enjoyed the edit that went from mid-WOOOO—to lighting the conflagration.
posted by carsonb at 12:55 PM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

What is the fusing material he has attached to the gate? It doesn't look like crappy "cannon fuse" to me, it looks like some sort of legitimate blasting fuse almost, and then he's got it crimped together somehow. (But it's not modern blasting fuse, because that stuff is basically high explosive in a plastic tube and is only good for detonating blasting caps.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:45 PM on July 9, 2014

Why not just put 5½ tons of them into a shipping container?
(previously)
posted by MtDewd at 1:46 PM on July 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

it's awesome when 2006 feels like ancient history and the image quality is a step above my Mom's old 8mm film camera. but damn the simple pleasures rule sometimes.
posted by TMezz at 9:28 PM on July 9, 2014

Honestly this doesn't compare to the crazy uncle walking by the small fire of assorted fireworks detrius that had accumulated by the end of the day and quietly dropping a single gross, which is 144 bottle rockets if I recall, into the small fire.

About 15 seconds later the situation morphed very quickly into something out of boondock saints.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:18 PM on July 10, 2014