What goes up must comedown… this has been known for as long as anyone has known anything, and I’m sure some apes and some birds understand this too. Using fire as a weapon has also been known for a long time, throwing flaming things at others, using something else to throw a flaming thing, or attaching a flaming thing to a spear or arrow was an almost universal concept. sending up flaming things for them to eventually drop on something to set it on fire… what a great weapon of war. How about small easily transportable items which don’t need any power except the heat of the flaming thing to fill a bag which is attached to it with warm air? You could destroy your enemies crops, you could set their thatched roofs on fire, you could injure their livestock which accidentally eat the metal or plastic things which attached your flaming thing to the bag to be filled with the aforesaid warm air?
Chines lanterns… those creepy floating, flaming things which rise into the sky on all sorts of occasions; to celebrate something, to mourn something, just for the sake of doing it…
For years farmers have been complaining about them; crops and haystacks, barns and hayricks, animals injured by eating the dead lanterns hiding in the grass. Thatches have been set on fire, outbuildings destroyed. Now 100,000 tons of recycled plastic has caught fire near Smethwick in the West Midlands, causing £6,000,000 worth of damage. 200 firefighters were involved in tackling it and three have had to go to hospital. The fire started on Sunday night and has only now been contained. And what caused the fire (the 15th this year)? Guess… Something beginning with C….L…
The wretched things should be totally banned… before some poor soul loses their life in a fire caused by them.
Lois Elsden 