If man instinctively fears fire, what reaction can be expected from a high-speed jet of flame (whether liquid fuel or gas)? Unfortunately, flamethrowers are impractical—for various reasons—yet they remain impressive nonetheless.
Flamethrower Clone Troopers – Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In addition to their distinctive Geonosian-camouflage armor, flamethrower clone troopers make their debut against a Geonosian colony (with the expected results).
Flamers and melta weapons—Warhammer 40k: to hunt the alien, purge the unclean, and slay the heretic, flamers are a more than acceptable choice—available in all sizes, from hand-held flamers to heavy flamers that spew vast quantities of promethium. And for those requiring greater armor penetration, there are meltaguns—a sort of hybrid between a flamer and a plasma weapon capable of melting through the heaviest armor.
Greek fire—the real life: the ancestor of the flamethrower and one of the secret weapons of the Byzantine Empire—or rather, the Eastern Roman Empire. It was key to maintaining its naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, to the point where its production was a state secret.
Its a shame that they are an extremely niche unit. Unless you're going up against only zerglings and infested Terrans, they wouldn't last long without any support.
The Soviets too have flamethrower soldiers and defensive turrets in Red Alert 1. But they are omitted the 2nd and 3rd entries. Tricky to use due to their tendency to explode on death.
China in Generals made extensive use of napalm… except for infantry. Flamethrower infantries for China only ever existed in mods.
Yea honestly I was gonna come in here and say a lot of fictional representations don't even do real flamethrowers justice. I mean just look at that shit.
In most video games, shotguns suck ass past a very short range. In real life, shotguns will fuck you up to great distances. It just doesn’t play well for game balance.
Also all US medium tanks leading up to WW2 and during WW2 had a flamethrower variant M2, M3 and a fewM4variants as well. Reddit only allows one photo so the rest are hyperlinked
Battletech:
Firestarter), a light battle mech mounting 4 flamers which instead of firing flaming fuel they vent hot gases/plasma from the mech's fusion engine.
I remember reading that after the war the British army did a cost analysis of all weapons used and the Crocodile won hands down. When one was on the battlefield the enemy surrendered MUCH more easily, and the flamethrower itself gave off an insanely menacing sound when it fired so everyone knew it was there. The idea of dying to this thing instead of a bullet or bomb turned the tide of a lot of battles for just having one relatively cheap piece on the field. I assume there were similar results for other flame throwing tanks as well.
Two things that are missed in a lot media are how far they can shoot and that flamethrowers and flame tanks were mainly used for anti fortification. The smoke and oxygen depletion were as much a danger as the fire.
The UNSC makes use of Hellbringers; squads of specially trained Marines who wield flamethrowers and occasionally retrofit existing vehicles and mechs to add napalm-based weaponry.
Other Marines are wary of Hellbringers as even against genocidal aliens, burning things alive is stomach churning. Ironically though, the Hellbringers are a vital resource in combating the Flood as they can deny the parasite access to corpses and biomass.
Hyde from Evolve. He uses a flamethrower, minigun, and chem grenades. He's basically a Mad Max like Australian who is a crazed military chemical engineer.
There are several things wrong with your premise. First, that Man instinctively fears fire. I don't know where you got that idea. Why would we have fireplaces or candles if that were true? We have true fear of what we have no concept of or no control over. Not true with fire after hundreds of thousands of years.
Second, flamethrowers are very practical weapons, when used in the correct environment. Bunkers, caves, jungles, cities...
I’ll grant you the first point, but as for the second—well, it’s 50/50; flamethrowers have been phased out of arsenals in favor of incendiary ammunition and bombing runs using napalm and other substances designed to burn at high temperatures.
These units are deployed to zombie-filled cities in order to wipe them out. Sure, it's pretty effective, but they're garbage against your human soldiers. Their flamethrowers have a solid chance to straight up MISS your units even if they're not behind cover.
Purifiers do have a genuinely threatening move though: if your units are too close together, they can lob an incendiary grenade.
Zhuge Liang invented them to counter an army of war beasts. Although in the novel they are supposed to just shoot firework/flaming arrows, but total war just made them into a full blown flamethrower.
There is no equivalent to the Geneva Convention in Star Wars, so... that might explain the pre-pubescent psychic kids commanding battalions of cloned battle-slaves.
Fire Throwers(Pinky Guard): After an Eldritch Titan crashed onto Earth with the power to endlessly regenerate, the Government just hired a bunch of people to constantly burn them alive with flame throwers.
The Tempest Dynasty's Ignitor Corps from Tempest Rising.
Originally founded to as a defoliant corps to counter the spread of Tempest vines throughout Dynasty (read: former Soviet Union) territory, the Ignitors were later repurposed as anti-infantry specialists.
They also have the Pillager Tank, which is - you guessed it - a pair of flamethrowers on treads.
The Cleaners from Tom Clancy’s The Division. Admittedly they do use conventional firearms and other weapons, but their signature weapon of choice is fire, mainly to eradicate the dollar flu and whoever they think is carrying it.
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u/Rum_N_Napalm 9h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xUA7b0iuZ5kQ4UGnAY
Need a light?
Firebats from Starcraft