FIRE GOOD

June 11, 2007 12:13 AM

How to build and start a fire.How to build and start a fire with stone age tools. How to start a fire in an emergency. How to start a fire without matches. How to start a fire with sticks. How to start a fire with air - and possibly inspire the birth of the diesel engine. How to start a fire with ice. How to start a fire with chocolate and a coke can.
posted by loquacious (21 comments total)

This post inspired by and in honor of me making a fire tonight with a flint and some dryer lint. Yay fire!
posted by loquacious at 12:16 AM on June 11, 2007

How can I rekindle my passion?
posted by stavrogin at 12:40 AM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

To Build a Fire
posted by hortense at 12:41 AM on June 11, 2007

"We didn't start the fire"... billy joel

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it but we're trying to fight it.
posted by infini at 2:10 AM on June 11, 2007

How to make matches.

How to try to make matches but instead probably burn your hands down to stubs and burn your eyes out of their sockets and incinerate your home and every human and animal in or near it. So don't try it.

Playing with matches, a girl can get burned.
posted by pracowity at 2:10 AM on June 11, 2007

There are several ways to start a fire with a flashlight, this probably being the most ridiculously cool way. But you can also go with the steel wool contacting the battery method.
posted by phaedon at 2:26 AM on June 11, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

How to fail to make fire without matches
posted by DU at 4:45 AM on June 11, 2007

All the paramilitary bullshit and thinly veiled homoeroticism aside, I was really glad that my parents made me do boy scouts for a couple years so that I could know things like this. Now I found out I could have learned it on the internet all along? Man!
posted by solipsophistocracy at 6:44 AM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

How to start a fire with a balloon. Or a condom.
posted by hydrophonic at 6:58 AM on June 11, 2007

"We didn't start the fire"... billy joel

I hate Billy Joel with a passion not found in any Billy Joel song.

We didn't start the fire, what fucking pap is that?

Perhaps it should be "We accept absolutely no responsibility for out disastrous foreign policy, dooo da, doobie doobie doo.. no, responsibility ohhhh yeah... "
posted by mattoxic at 7:00 AM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

MetaFire.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:25 AM on June 11, 2007

That burning sensation? Not fire.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:03 AM on June 11, 2007

Fire can be good. Fire can be fun. Fire is ecologically important. Whatever your purpose, be careful.
posted by Tehanu at 8:10 AM on June 11, 2007

Thank you, infini and mattoxic. Notice that I didn't reference Billy Joel's low hanging fruit. I did this on purpose. Namely because the guy is a unitard.

Now - thanks to the power of the internet - on a computer I don't even have speakers or headphones hooked up to - thanks for a few too casually misplaced words - I'm going to have that fucking song stuck in my head all fucking day.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Another wonder of the internet: Stalking new-found enemies and ordering up precision orbital strikes from the comfort of your own bed.
posted by loquacious at 8:22 AM on June 11, 2007

the Tao of charcoal.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:24 AM on June 11, 2007

er... how did you know I was surfing on my bed?

I like billy joel...waaaaaaaaaaaah... whatever happened to "Honesty"?
posted by infini at 9:00 AM on June 11, 2007

"But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the novice.

"Your fire will then not go out," replied the master.
posted by loquacious at 9:03 AM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Build a Fire.
posted by goatdog at 10:08 AM on June 11, 2007

Ditto, solipsophistocracy, I learned how easy it was to start a fire in Girl Scouts and spent one pre-teen summer making little fires around the house, unbeknownst to the off-doing-other-things 'rents. It was just pages from newspapers and catalogs mostly and I put them out very quickly. Thank goodness I grew out of my little leaning toward arson...Girl Scouts was a bad influence.
posted by fuse theorem at 12:58 PM on June 11, 2007

Looks like I've got a perfect activity to share with my 8 year old son. Fire building 101. Thanks a million.
posted by shimmerglimpse at 3:57 PM on June 11, 2007

One thing seems to be missing: how to keep the fire going *after* starting it when you're out in the woods, after a rain, and everything -- including the usually dry tinder hidden under matted grass, and low-hanging dead branches -- is completely soaked ... and you didn't bring anything that would burn.

(Note: assume, for the sake of argument, that tearing into the park's outhouse walls is verboten -- and that you're not driving a woodie.)
posted by Twang at 5:22 PM on June 11, 2007