What's inside a flare?
 

Hello hello,

I apologise if this has been asked many times before but a google
search isn't helping me. I can't believe I can't find the answers to
what I thought would be simple questions!

1) What is inside a flare? What part glows and flies in the air?

2) If hit in the face at close range (1 - 2 metres) what would the
effect be? Knocked out? Dazed? Nothing?

3) If someone were foolish enough to fire a flare inside, could it
bounce off a wall and set fire to curtain, rug etc.?

I'm a writer and need to know if what I'm writing is plausible or utter crap.

Cheers

cant tell you 100% for certain, but i believe its phosphor. I can tell
you for sure that it bruns at an extremely high temperature and that
there are a lot of accidents with flares that lead to boat fires,
especially the 'rocket type' flares. the handheld ones are also
occasionally dropped. When i was a volunteer in the new zealand
coastguard we had to rescue people on two occasions who had set fire to
their boats with flares.

Flares will burn through just about anything, including aluminium. I
was a spectator at a coastguard run 'do's and dont's of flare use' day
held in christchurch. The demonstration was very informative and
showed the use of rocket flares, handheld flares, smoke pots and all
the different mechanisms used by different manufacturers. at the end
everyone got to fire a few off to see what it was like. All the flares
used were well past their expiry dates, and had been donated. Some
were as far as 20 years past expiry but almost all worked. The real
danger is with most rocket flares they fall *upwind*, so if you do what
most people think is lgical and fire them safely a little down wind so
they wont come back on you they do actually come back on you (and
sometimes set your boat on fire). It is difficult or impossible to
pick up a rocket flare that has landed and water doesnt help.

One of the participants fired a rocket flare that landed inside the 6
metre aluminium coastguard first response jet boat and burned a neat 2"
hole right through! hate to think what they'd do to human flesh.....


Shaun

If you want to see a good flare demonstration, rent the movie Cape Fear
JIMinFL.
"atreus" wrote in message
...

Hello hello,

I apologise if this has been asked many times before but a google search
isn't helping me. I can't believe I can't find the answers to what I
thought would be simple questions!

1) What is inside a flare? What part glows and flies in the air?

2) If hit in the face at close range (1 - 2 metres) what would the effect
be? Knocked out? Dazed? Nothing?

3) If someone were foolish enough to fire a flare inside, could it bounce
off a wall and set fire to curtain, rug etc.?

I'm a writer and need to know if what I'm writing is plausible or utter
crap.

Cheers

Gotta be a better way to do this. Maybe compresssed air launch
followed by discharge of a capacitor to fire sequential flashbulbs.