I was thinking as a firebreak tool or something. But I thought they just plow or bulldoze, not pre-burn.
Quite obviously it would be the perfect steak sear tool.
“Can I get that medium rar----”
tosses burnt chip onto plate
“Here ya go, mate.”
This actually made me laugh out loud.
It’s not actually a flame thrower though. It’s a propane torch. I have an almost equivalent torch head in my garage. So I would never spend $600 on one, but I did enjoy watching Elon troll the government and reporters.
Yup, and at $19.99, a hell of a lot cheaper than $500.
What’s the difference? It doesn’t use jellied napalm?
Can you use when hunting deer?
I’ve been told that flamethrowers are used in Texas to destroy unwanted cacti. I’m only 95% sure she was just pulling my leg.
In the comments, the video poster said they burn it to feed the young cacti to the cattle. The prickles are burned off. That’s a bit better then. I was a bit sad someone’d destroy an adaptable piece of greenery in such an arid place for no reason.
That’s so much cooler than a weed-whacker.
That’s almost biblical.
I swear I heard the cacti screaming at the 4:56 mark.
Not only that, but a human can survive in the desert for a lot longer if certain types of cacti are nearby. You can cut 'em open and get water.
I actually read that in the 1934 (?) version of “The Mark On The Door”. Yeah, an old Hardy Boys book. Back when they were good, before the entire series was re-written (along with Nancy Drew and others) starting around 1959 or 1960.
I cannot believe the Hardy Boys would give me a bum steer.
Okay, so your chances out on the desert wouldn’t be good unless you’re a cacti expert with these two species available, and even then your chances wouldn’t be too great, there was at least a kernel of truth in that book.
Prickly pear would be, relatively speaking, easy to identify for most. I can occasionally find their fruits and tuna on sale here in Chicago, and so being able to extract some sustenance would be plausible.
So while I wouldn’t use it as plan A, if I was ever in dire straights I would have some hope, I think.
How about this then, which I got from a “Rick Brant Science Adventure Series” book? (I read a lot of series books as a kid.)
The following works only if you prepared yourself by bringing along a big sheet of plastic and a cup or container of some sort:
Dig a big, wide hole in the sand.
Place a cup or a container down in the center of the hole.
Lay the plastic sheet across the hole, and anchor it around the edges with rocks or something.
Place a small rock in the center of the sheet, directly above the container.
Overnight, condensation will collect on the underside of the sheet, and gravitate toward the lowest point, where it will then drip into your container.
Sounds plausible, but I imagine it would be heavily dependent on how much moisture there is in the ground, which probably wouldn’t be much in a desert.
Yeah, if it’s either that or face certain death, I’d certainly give it a shot.
Some other tips for desert survival:
I saw a variant of that on Man vs Wild I think. One of those survival shows discovery was obsessed with a decade back.
Anyhow the setup was similar to what you described, but placed over where he had urinated. Basically recycling the waste.
We did this back in my Scouting days. it does work, though you need to be in an area with decent humidity and a good shift between daytime and nighttime temperatures.
unwanted
You seem to think there needs to be an adjective here. You pretty much can’t kill prickly pear cactuses fast enough. Machete is fun, but too short. I’d like to get a machete-glave, if such a thing existed.
Prickly pear absolutely dominate overgrazed fields in parts of Texas - thousands of acres of scrubland essentially taken over by them. Real environmental problem caused by irresponsible schpeep ranching. Once they’re dominant in the environment they tend to outlast most other vegetation as they’re quite drought resistant, though they will die off in the increasingly common +110f summers.
If you’re ever lost in the desert, don’t panic. 1) Walk back the way you came. You can walk 50+ miles if you have to, i’d wager there isn’t a single place in the US that’s 50 miles from a road, and is also a desert. Eventually you can flag down some help. The worst thing you can do is wander off in some random cardinal direction using imaginary logic. Just go back the way you went in and you’ll be fine. 2) Don’t dig holes, look for windmills. The odds you’ll encounter a windmill and find some water for livestock are far, far higher than you digging a hole in the ground and mashing up a cactus and hoping you get a mouthful of water.