These throwable fire extinguishers seem like a real-life example of xkcd.com/937 — they have really good reviews from everyone except the few people who tried using them to put out fires
In all seriousness, I have always been aggravated by people who write positive reviews of things they haven't yet used.
"Arrived yesterday, haven't used it yet but it seems good!!"
Just, why?!
I read a one star review of some microfiber towels by a guy who complained that the company had falsely labeled them (the heading said microfiber and it was mentioned several times in the description). He searched for towels, and assumed that all towels were cotton.
Because the app they buy from prompts them for a review the moment it's delivered, and tells them what a good doggy they are and gives them bonus loyalty points when they submit the reviews.
I think Amazon stops allowing you to review something after long enough? Or at least makes it much harder to do. Source: bought something in 2022 and didn’t use it until yesterday. Item included a “we’ll give you a $5 Amazon gift card if you leave a good review”.
There should clearly be a "how much have you used this product?" Field in the review forms, and filter out any reviews that say it just arrived but they haven't tried to use it.
I bought an exercise bike on Amazon. A couple days later, I got a letter from the manufacturer offering me an Amazon gift certificate if I would leave a 5-star review for it.
Oh absolutely! I hate those little cards, they’re actually against Amazon’s TOS! You can’t buy 5-stars reviews with the promise of gifts, it makes the whole review system pointless! I want people to say what they really thought of the product.
I wonder if:
1) The fine print says "novelty purposes only, not intended for fire safety"
2) They are violating laws against selling emergency equipment which is useless in an emergency
I watched a few videos about these a few months ago just out of curiosity and it seems they work very poorly outdoors so the bad review is a kind of worst-case scenario for the product. They're intended to be used in localized fires in a relatively enclosed area like a fireplace or a stove.
My grandfather had the real deal in his machine shed. Dating back to the dawn of synthetic chemistry, whatever was in those glass globes could probably make the fire grow a second head and horns or whatever
When my Uncle Sam (no, really) was in the Navy, carbon tetrachloride extinguishers were standard for handheld firefighting equipment.
And on any given inspection, up to a third of them would be empty because carbon yet was also a good dry cleaning liquid and people would use it on their Class As.
Yep.
I mean, it *does* work well for putting out fires, and given the lack of solid firefighting back then the greater danger would be a fire getting big and wiping out a chunk of town. But yeah, less than ideal.
The only thing I remember about carbon tetrachloride is that Will Robinson had to fetch it by time traveling back to Earth so they could repair the Jupiter II.
I doubt it. Selling a carbon tet fire extinguisher would be a crime (not that Amazon doesn’t sometimes sell illegal products). Most likely it is a sodium bicarbonate solution which you could make yourself for pennies and put into a water balloon.
I didn’t mean the ones in the original post, I meant the ones in the grandfather’s shed of the person I was responding to. (My grandfather also had carbon-tet extinguishers in his shed when he died, among other toxic goodies.)
They had them in the local A&P when I was growing up. The place was ancient with a tin ceiling and carbon tet globes hanging from fusible metal wire. Deadly stuff really.
If I remember correctly, some of the glass globes just contained water. The idea was that the heat of the fire would boil the water and shatter the globe, and the burst of water/steam would help stop the fire.
I've no idea how effective they were.
I'm not sure how a small bottle full of halon would do much - I thought its use as a fire suppressant meant it needed to flood a room to starve it of oxygen? Surely something like this wouldn't contain a sufficient volume of the stuff.
Somehow overread the glas part. Yeah, can't be halon in that case.
But for example fire supression systems in aircraft engines use grapefruit sized balls filled with pressurised halon that get shot into the engine. The idea being that the gas immediately pushes away all the air from the fire.
