Napalm

Echidne doesn't have the stomach for it. Luckily, I'm a morbid fucker.

The idea behind napalm is that it's a slow-burning version of gasoline. The government makes it with gasoline and liquid rubber. You can make it at home by using a semi-retardant substance like styrofoam (according to the Anarchist Cookbook) or even common laundry detergent (according to my friends). Mix your substance with gasoline.

The idea behind napalm is that it's more painful than merely setting someone on fire. Cover them with sticky substance that burns slowly so that it melts into their flesh, causing maximum pain and suffering before death. As far as I can tell, there is no good reason to use napalm. The human fireballs described in this story make it sound nicer than it is. It's better to die by going up in a fireball than it is to die from the slow burn of napalm.

Napalm is a cheap weapon, so cheap that you can make it. Right now, no trip to the grocery store necessary. We spend billions of dollars in weaponry every year and we resort to this, if that is what we do.

Like Echidne, I hope this is not true. There is no reason, no excuse, no humanity behind the use of this weapon.

A lot of people suffer from thinking of the young and innocent suffering. This causes me pain. But the thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night with nightmares is the pain of those who have some life under their belts. I can imagine what it would be like to have the ripping pain bearing into my flesh and grasping for those memories I hold--nights of love, sunny days, family hugs, meals with friends--hanging onto those things for one last second before those memories disappeared forever in a torrent of pain. That makes me not sleep at night. Please, please don't be true.