My high school chemistry teacher (he was kind of a mad scientist) said that he had figured out that Greek Fire had Lithium as the igniting source. He said that his hypothesis is that the ancient Greeks found a source of lithium carbonate and then couldn't make it again when their source was played out. They wrapped it in tar and sheep wool soaked in natural oil. Then they lit that and launched it out. If it hit the ship and the enemy crew tried to extinguish it with water, it would explode. If it hit the water, it would explode. To demonstrate, he blew up the duck pond next to the school with a football-shaped grenade he made of this concoction. I remember it hitting the pond, nothing happening for a second, then nearly all the water exploded out of the pond and there was water/feathers/fish falling all around us. I don't think anything legally bad happened to him, but he said the principal warned him not to do it ever again (it was a different time).
Quick tip from a chemistry student: please clean the ground glass joints in your distillation setup. Anything in the joints will probably cause leakage. You probably don't want that for your safety and yield. And for safety purposes please ventillate well during distillation or do it outside.
The addition of pine tar was most likely to facilitate pumping and spraying. The U.S. Navy had the same thought among others when they were developing what we now know as Napalm. The name Napalm comes from Naphtha and Palm oil, which was their first successful recipe, before they moved on to a fully petroleum mix, which quickly became the standard. The reason it needs a thickener is that straight gasoline actually burns too quickly, and disperses in the air, resulting in a dramatic loss of potential and effective range when projected under pressure.
@@minhuang8848 Does it reliably work? I feel like it wouldn't be spot on, and sometimes I want to watch, or w/e. Idk, don't need control taken from me. I'm really good at skipping the ads.
Maybe this might help: Naphtha (refined crude oil, boiled to extract compounds that evaporate at lower temperatures just like what you did), quicklime (as a fine powder), calcium phosphide (produced by boiling crushed bones in urine in a sealed earthen or copper container), turpentine (extracted from pine resin), sulfur (as a fine powder), and niter (potassium nitrate). The working principle involves the reactive ingredients, calcium phosphide and calcium oxide (quicklime). The key question will be the proportions-whether the mixture should have a paste-like viscosity or be more oil-like. I think the solution will require testing and adjusting the oxidizer.
That sounds like a very effective recipe! It's definitely something I'd wear a respirator around, but ignoring the obvious hazard of phosphine, I don't dont see why it wouldn't work. Is there a source to this recipe or did you come up with it?
@@Oystercaulk based on a lot of research, I looked at the tech and what they were using and trading as well as using for medcine. All these things were at their diposal so its stands to reason with a bit of experimenting they would figure it out.. Another thing they had was alcohol but didnt find any evidence of distilling it to a pure form.
@rishia8908 id imagine given its secrecy any literature that may have been produced by someone with high testicular density regarding the production of Greek fire, its constituents, or its precursors would have been found and consequently destroyed since there likely weren't too many people to keep tabs on that knew the recipe. Anyways, this recipe seems quite plausible, and regardless of its potential differences in composition to the original recipe, it sounds like it would produce all the effects that define Greek fire in literature and have been possible for them to produce at the time. Good job, man! Hopefully, someone will come along and test this recipe because god knows im not going to chuck anything containing calcium phosphide into water in my backyard to find out. Then again... Idk. Maybe one of my neighbors has a pool they don't use /s 🤔😂
I wonder if the "burning on water" thing is aided in anyway by the presence of salt in the water? This stuff was used primarily at sea, not in fresh water locations.
Fortunately the salinity of sea water is well known (I know it varies by location and temperature, but the battles the Greeks were fighting were most likely in the Mediterranean sea so that'll limit the variation)
I doubt he'll stop with them, I haven't seen them sponsored with anyone else in a long time so he's probably one of the few that kept them on. and because of that he probably paid well and to be honest he doesn't get the views he used to so he probably needs the money. I'm not condoning it just what I think
@@bigbird4481 They are making a big push, of integrated ads i have seen these past 2 weeks were, a third of them were BH. It makes sense. We're in an economic downturn, people get fired, start getting dark thoughts, it's their big opportunity. If only they weren't a scammy company.
@@Uncle_Red a huge FTC fine, 3 class action lawsuits due to them mishandling health and other deeply personal data continuously for 8 years, while attempting to look more trustworthy than they are.
Normally the sharing of this type of information would be illegal under HIPAA. But Better Help doesnt actually do the therapy so HIPAA doesnt apply to them. They just connect you and actual therapists. When I'm looking for a Therapist having a Therapy company say "Everything we're doing is legal because we aren't actually therapists" doesnt inspire great confidence that what they are doing is ethical.
I remember reading somewhere that Greek Fire was preheated before battle, which might affect the results. Also, it seems to me that adding small bits of sodium, lithium, etc. to the mix might be a good way to ignite the mixture in water. Sodium is often stored in mineral oil, so it's safe-ish to transport. Then during a sea battle, as the oil spreads on water it seems plausible that the sodium would eventually touch the water and ignite.
@@SuperEmmetMan I don't know if they did or did not, but they did work with other metals. I think there's at least a possibility that some sort of highly reactive metal might have been part of the secret formula. Besides, I'd like to see a video of that concoction, even if it's not all that plausible.
@@Neal_White_III Highly reactive metals are that way because they're made that way. Unless you have the technology to reduce alkali to metals, or to make something like pyrophoric aluminum, you don't have such highly reactive metals.
@@goodmaro Agreed. The question in my mind is: Could they have discovered a method to make such a material in antiquity? Considering that it was so secret, unfortunately, it's likely no evidence would remain.
If you've already got pine resin, its a short jump to get turpentine, which is super flammable... and is basically just distilled from pine wood, easier to get then pine tar, possibly just mix it with the raw crude, you have the sticky icky, and the easily ignitable? a simple easy to replicate with Byzantine tech recipe. Maybe add some phosphate as a thickening agent?
Terpentine is a low viscosity fluid, so it’s not sticky. Phosphate is ionic, and as such is very polar. That means it’s not soluble in non-polar organic compounds like those in petroleum. It would just sink to the bottom of the mix, and not do anything
@@ashe1.070 egg is an emulsifier. so is blood. they're both albumen. So is lecithin which is in most plants. terpentine + phosphate + eggs or blood. sounds like alchemy to me.
@@Rizzob17 I think it's automatically generated with AI or something. Not a command by the commenter. I noticed that they appear and disappear in different comments as I refresh the page.
Alt: while trying to crack the code on Greek fire, spent hundreds of dollars on a cheap, common commodity, and demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic chemistry.
If you want to experiment further with fire bottles (molotov cocktails, essentially) I highly suggest you contact the guys from Ordnance Lab TH-cam channel, so you can you do your research under their supervision, as they are officially certified by the ATF for doing such work. For example, each individual fire bottle needs to be officially registered as a Destructive Device with the ATF, to avoid the chance at a ten year stay in a federal prison. Not trying to piss on your parade. Just trying to keep you out of prison. Also, please drop Better Help as a channel sponsor. They are an extremely shady company, that not only offers terrible quality service, grossly under pays their therapists, but they also sell their clients' personal information to scummy data brokers for profit. I understand that you need to eat, but I really don't think you want your name associated with these people.
Maybe when it gets to the homemade flamethrower stage; that might alarm the neighbors. But there has to be a point before which this is just silly. What was being destroyed, a pool of water with a rock in it and oil on top? Or a model boat not even as big as a piece of firewood?
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648The ATF doesn’t have a sense of humor. Doesn’t matter what common sense says. And you can buy a flamethrower off the shelf with no background check anyway.
Please don't ruin this channel with Shawn. The only thing he knows how to do is copy memes and inside jokes found on the NFA facebook group. He's the person that annoyingly ruins the joke every time he catches on to one. His serialized one time use shiner bottle molotovs were the result of finding out I serialized a cage that you could put a beer bottle in and reuse as many times as you wanted, on any surface, including sand or meat popsicles.
@@stevexracer4309 Yeah, he made a vaguely destructive device the way one tapes a lighter to an aerosol can. So should I expect to see you with hicks in 4 months when you lose the election?
@@aerindinescarro47 You're arguing with a bot: "Most comments are satire and sacastic unless stated otherwise. Other questions and comments made by thisnaccount are designed to test logic. This is a role play account designed to test the psychology of others through comments and questions. In no way does this account represent a real human. Any interaction with this account should not be taken seriously."
@@aerindinescarro47 You'd be surprised how many "Average Americans" are actually office workers in Russia. I always check the account creation date and the bio on rabble rousers and troll comments.
My first question on this would be whether or not some of the later results were contaminated by not using a fresh pool with every single different test. Is it possible that some of the later tests did not ignite or may have interacted differently with the water because of the contamination of the crude oil and prior failed tests?
This is your first question? The professor says it's crude oil based and the first thing the dude does is distilation. Anyone can make anything flammable by mixing it with gassoline/diesel and call his video "I recreated lost recipe for greek fire".
Greek Fire nowadays, mostly as a nickname, is what Greeks use for BBQ/Grilling. You use the ashes from the current grill and mix it with something like lamp oil or candle wax and you get a deep grey paste that you can use for the next time and it burns super easily and extremely long compared to a regular fire starter.
So I recently saw the video about the mechanism behind the proto-flamethrower - the recipie itself is not particularly novel, but the mechanism is extremely cool. Using bronze piping to boil a small vesssl of the fluid, building pressure to project it at range is so, so cool.
The Byzantine museum in Greece has the recipe for Greek fire that you can see. Interesting how the historian you used did not use one source written in Greek, he even called them Byzantines instead of Romans lol
It absolutely has to have oil in it because it needs to be: 1. less dense than water so it remains on the surface 2. not water soluble 3. stick to things
Maybe the reason greek fire has never been recreated is because nobody thinks they were capable of using more complex chemicals. Maybe they used something thats difficult to be recreated like some sorta chemical that explodes whrn it touches water, which causes the lime to react properly
My guess would be asphalt, pine tar and beeswax with wood shavings. It has to burn readily and yet be thin enough to pump a considerable distance when it's hot. It also has to be something that is relatively easy to make in large quantities. I don't think it was self-igniting, just easy to ignite with a torch when it's liquid. Bees wax becomes volatile when heated fairly hot and would congeal when it hit a cold surface. It's also pretty easy to come by. They could just dump the ingredients in a cauldron and heat it up until everything melted and hope to heck it didn't explode on them. I suspect it did sometimes. The wood shavings would absorb volatiles and make it burn longer.
I love that a historian said damp squid, the expression is damp squib, which was a type of firework, when one wouldn't go off the disappointed kids would say it was a damp squib.
i saw video where they tried recreating it, i believe they used olive oil, beese wax and animal fat as the recipe for it, and it seems to work similariy to the described concotion. i think the tar seep mixed with quick lime and pine resin might be a good combo, the pine will give it the stickiness, the pine seep seems to be the most resistant to being extinguished in water, and perhaps due to both the pine and the tar, the quicklime could ingite it if the quicklime was mixed with the resin beforehand
When we collect the petroleum from the ground, the petroleum is not liquid fide as like a can of oil we see in the stores. We actually called the the crude oil petroleum mud. Cuz it's got the consistency of mud. It's got sand dirt organic matter. The mud is then cooked in a cracker and then distilled into what products we have today.
That was a really interesting video! 😁 It’s awesome that the quest to reignite Greek fire is still ongoing! 🔥 I do have a theory about it’s properties but I’m no historian so take it with a grain of salt. Auto ignition: It seems many in history have claims about it’s self igniting properties, however I have a hypothesis that the Greek fire would be ablaze before it hit the water and cause an oil fireball when it made contact, instead of it igniting on contact as claimed. Reason #1: the administration device As said in the video, it was claimed that in leaving the device, it was already superheated to a degree that would auto ignite almost any pyrotechnic mixture the moment it touched the air. Reason #2: steam explosion The material would be hot enough to cause a steam explosion on contact with a body of water, causing a massive fireball tangential to an oil fire as demonstrated in your video. Reason #3: Perspectives This is the one I would like to really be contemplated on. Say that onlookers on a pier watching a ship battle off at sea and the Greek fire is used, they would more than likely not notice the fire leaving the device especially at midday, but they would notice and record the massive fireball created upon impact. Leading to the assumption about its auto igniting properties. Now there is a counterclaim to this argument in which I lack a rebuttal for until tested: Scale. If the quicklime and ether recipe was to be scaled higher like to ship levels, it might auto ignite due to the shear bulk of the the material, and the latent heat of the Mediterranean sun and sea. Either way I hope this helps you on your quest!
Please stop advertising better help. They were recently investigated for selling private user information- information they explicitly promised to never distribute. They also prioritize efficiency and speed over actually getting people help, and they make it very hard to cancel subscriptions, meaningt hey essentially take your money while stalling. They are awful and it's not difficult to look up why.
Glycerin from Animal Hooves and also Beeswax was used in ton of things by Human Cultures all over the World for 5,000 Years or more so you could've tried that. I mixed Glycerin, Gasoline, 195 Proof Alcohol, Pine Resin, Straight Animal Fat, and Beeswax, and got an interesting result. Took 3 Fire Extinguishers to put it out.
Here's my mix suggestion. Distilled tar seep, Pine resin, Ether, and either wool, or saw dust. Here is my reasoning. the distilled tar seep and pine resin mix was the 2nd most effective, but most difficult to extinguish it seemed, but the mix of quicklime and ether had far FAR more fire once actually lit and was the actually most apparently effective, though the quicklime probably doesn't contribute much. Lastly, the wool helped contain it on target. I would suggest using sawdust however because, I'm fairly certain it would also float on water, and be more readily available for the greeks to burn, rather than wool, which had far more uses in textiles, and burning it would be a waste. sawdust however, Is already waste product.
@@fishstix4209 What does terms of service have anything to do with the service being horrible on multiple etical levels, and someone pointing it out? If any one is annoying then it would be you, for feeling the need to bitch and moan about people pointing out that this sponsor have a terrible trackrecord. + the wast majority of people do skip past it. They just feel the need to make the content creator aware of that he is aiding a scummy organisation, that have caused more harm than good. And being asosiated with them can hurt him in the long run. I for one would not want to be assosiated with a bad company, If i were trying to create somthing good.
@mr-x7689 no one is forcing you to sign up....read the terms of service, see what they have the right to do if you accept, don't click accept, and move on with your life. Betterhelp isn't the only company that does it btw
@mr-x7689 No one is forcing you to sign up....read the terms of service, see what they have the right to do if you accept, don't click accept, and move on with your life. Betterhelp isn't the only company that does it, btw Screenshots on this one because it keeps getting deleted
You could try dissolving the pinetar in the alcohol before adding to the distilled oil. As for the power , could be a separately prepared mix used to make the fire on the enemy ship worse after it was scorched and oilly. Just imagine your sails are on fire and the decks an oilly mess when a clay pot lands on the deck, igniting the whole mess and making it hard to put out. One suggestion from the past was that it could be put out with urine but not water. Perhaps this could hint at the mix.
the greeks had no conception of oxygen, they're operating on the principals of the classical elements. they couldn't have even done that on accident. How would the greeks even generate pure oxygen.
I don't know how you would get it but I remember reading that some North Slope Crude was so pure that they took it out of the ground and ran their diesel vehicles on it. Take a vacation up to Alaska and see if you can lay your hands on it.
Greek fire was said to be self igniting upon contact with air (not water). So something needs to be added to the mix, and then immediately sealed in the glass ball so that there is very little air in side. When the ball breaks the mix reacts with air and ignites, it also needs to float on water and be a little sticky so it doesn't run off the sides of ships but clings and burns. Making something sticky and also lighter than water and flammable is pretty easy, the mystery is how to get it to self ignite (and its up for debate if it ever really worked that way). Also you don't want to aerosolize the mix, napalm in flamethrowers is NOT delivered as a mist, rather its a dense stream ideally made with the minimum of atomization. Therefore a better choice would be to develop a device that delivers a laminar flow of the fuel out of the nozzle .
Sodium metal shavings are safe under mineral oil but burn when exposed to air. That might ignite some fractions of the oil, they would ignite the rest. But making Sodium metal, or White Phosphorus, that's a problem.
@@20chocsaday sodium generally does not ignite in air, not unless its really shaved thin and exposed to humid air and HOT like over 200F hot. Its reactive to water. Maybe you meant white phosphorous that you mention later in your comment (which is wicked dangerous and probably not something the ancient Greeks had access to) but is very reactive to air.
@@heathbecker420 Thanks. Trouble is, you can't keep the metal except under oil. The same goes for Potassium. But as for a way of reducing these metals to purity or making White Phosphorus in those days, that is a problem.
Pine tar/pitch, gasoline and crude oil. Sulfur as well. All of which were available naturally. Getting natural gasoline without all the added chemicals could be a challenge though. The mix has to be thin enough to flow freely and thick and sticky enough to cling to any surface it contacts. The pump mechanism is simple enough, they had bladder bellows for various things like moving air for forges and water for agriculture, no reason one could not be used to create a venturi effect and draw the liquid out f a barrel into a fast moving airstream and ignited in the air. One of the things that I was told as a kid when I first heard of it was that it could not be extinguished by water and only spread faster when that was tried. Sounds exactly like a grease fire to me. (Maybe it was called Greek Fire because it was first called Grease Fire and just evolved the way words do over time.)
Some naval deaths in WWII were men who had to abandon ship and jump into diesel that had spilled into the ocean and caught on fire. Diesel as I understand it, is distilled crude and the Romans knew about distillation. It's all very interesting and disturbing.
so the greeks made diesel fuel and metal tanks with tubes, one full of diesel, one full of regular compressed air that they pumped manually, and the air pressure goes into the diesel to force it out of a different tube with a nozzle. The greeks invented the Flammenwerfer (it werfs flammen).
The ships in WW2, and in some cases today, actually run on bunker fuel, usually bunker B. It's consistency is closer to Vaseline than a fuel as we would recognize it. The ships used piping that ran through tanks carrying live steam to heat the bunker fuel up enough for it to be pumped to the boilers. It's really nasty stuff.
@@792slayer that's genuinely interesting. unfortunately, all it does is give me horrid ideas for things to do with vaseline, like using the heating of it with an emulsifier to make the worlds nastiest milkshake as a prank.
The reaction of quicklime and water produces acetylene. I think if quicklime was used, it would be primarily for this effect, and also could be an aspect of it being difficult to put out with water since the water would cause the release of very flammable acetylene gas which could easily reach an ignition temperature because it would not be in contact with the water that would keep a liquid or solid cooled below an ignition temperature.
Crude oil varies wildly in its composition. It ranges from a jet black, nearly asphalt/tar in consistency and difficult to ignite, to a lighter color than 0W synthetic engine oil, about as viscous as water, and more flammable than gasoline. It all depends on what formation it came out of and how long the oil has been cooking down there. The crude oil you got was likely of the former, and was a little more "undercooked", if you will. If you want some of the better stuff, reach out to a lease operator in West Texas, they can probably get you a jug of it for free to test. Interesting side note, in the old days when they hit a pocket of that gooey trash and it ended up being too thick to pump out, they would make a loop of rope that went down to a pulley at the bottom of the hole and then back up into a tank, where the rope was threaded through a rubber hole that wiped off the oil that got stuck to the rope as it ran through in the well. Most of them used steam power that came from burning the very oil they were extracting, so with a little maintenance and a water supply, they'd run free of charge until there was no more oil to extract out of the ground.
The Finns settled on 20%-30% pine tar to thicken petroleum spirit in their molotovs. 5%-15% beeswax or parafin wax also works. Bear in mind it can get bloody cold in Finland! In a flamethrower you want to throw FUEL, not fire. The additives are to stop it spreading out into a fireball and thus squirt further. In absence of napalm WW2 soldiers would mix gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil until the had a usable consistency and flammability.
Crude oil, Pine resin, Ethanol all mixed in solution with pure sodium dust. As the spray hits the water, sodium will react and create a spark, thus lighting the fire. :D
The question now becomes where did they get the sodium?Sodium was discovered in 1807 by the English chemist Humphry Davy from electrolysis of caustic soda (NaOH). Although sodium is the sixth most abundant element on earth and comprises about 2.6% of the earth's crust, it is a very reactive element and is never found free in nature.
@charlesurrea1451 it was only first documented in the 1800s. I would imagine the properties were discovered but not really understood or described due to lack of chemical understanding.
@@Jenisonc Took the words right out of my mouth. They may not of known what it was truly and since it wasn't recorded we cannot know if it was actually discovered much earlier. I only suggested it because the sodium would sit in that solution well. It's well known that oil and water dont mix so the sodium would be mostly stable in the solution. Only time it would be risky is when mixing the other chemicals into the solution. The Ethanol or pine resin may add some small amounts of water. But you cannot deny, sodium would cause ignition in that situation. Anyone else believe it's worth testing at least?
I think it would be a fun experiment to add sodium but you guys don't appreciate how unlikely it is for the ancient greeks to ever encounter elemental sodium
You could purify sodium bicarbonate into pure sodium in a coke furnace. You would have to store it in a kerosene like substance to stop oxidation. Have small beads of sodium laced within the kerosene. Could even heat the mixture enough to liquidize the sodium. Add that combo to water and yea 🔥🔥🔥
I imagine whether intended or not that sodium may have played a large role in ignition on water. Sea salt itself wouldn't have necessarily done the job but when heated to vapourise, I'm pretty sure some of the sodium seperates from the chlorine. That would also explain the "thunder" that accompanied the fire. Not a chemist though, I've just heard the sodium and chorine seperating during desalination is what makes it hard to do at a large scale
@@johnbuchman4854 I'd think that pouring all that oil and other chemicals into the pool is going to create some kind of disaster. How do you even dispose of it?
I'd be much more concerned about what the ATF says since he made dozens of unregistered destructive devices, each which can carry a sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
Greek fire was also described as green... copper produces a green flame, was readily available at the time, and was used often in alchemical explosives, as copper powder when spread through the air can combust in the same way that sawdust or flour can. Copper has a melting point of nearly 2000⁰f, so it could retain heat well during an alchemical reaction, also. Maybe pairing copper powder with the quicklime could work, as the quicklime could heat the metal powder rather than just itself and the water, potentially achieving a higher potential temperature. Having copper powder in the oil could potentially produce a green flame, which isnt particularly useful but would have been an incredibly intimidating thing to see as a soldier on a midevil battlefield, so maybe the green color was less practical and more of a shock tactic
1st Century Ignitable Mixture Recipe Ingredients: - Calcium Oxide (Quicklime): 50% - Sulfur: 15% - Charcoal (finely powdered): 15% - Pine Resin: 10% - Animal Fat: 10% Instructions: 1. Mix Dry Ingredients: - Thoroughly mix the powdered calcium oxide, sulfur, and charcoal. 2. Add Pine Resin and Animal Fat: - Gradually incorporate the pine resin and animal fat to create a homogenous paste-like mixture. 3. Storage: - Store the mixture in a dry container to prevent premature reaction with moisture. Reaction Process: 1. Application: - Apply the mixture to the oil-based material you demonstrated in the video. 2. Water Introduction: - When water is introduced, the calcium oxide reacts vigorously, generating heat - the finer the better. More surface area... 3. Ignition: - The heat produced can ignite the sulfur, charcoal, pine resin, and animal fat, leading to the ignition of the oil-based material. Explanation of Reactions: - Calcium Oxide and Water: CaO + H2O -> Ca(OH)2 + heat - Sulfur Combustion: S + O2 -> SO2 + heat - Charcoal Combustion: C + O2 -> CO2 + heat - Pine Resin and Animal Fat: These organic materials will ignite and sustain combustion, helping to spread the fire to the oil-based material. Hope this helps!
Your final mixture may still work, depending on the conditions you're testing under. Try hitting some wet wood (the hull above the waterline) with the mix. There won't be as much water to cool the mixture, which could lead to ignition.
It may have also been pine sap dissolved in toluene or a similar solvent extracted from pine trees - but yeah the black color sounds like crude oil. Cool!
Please don't use better help. With better help you are responsible for vetting any "therapists" they give you, to make sure that they are actually therapists. I believe Better Help is a scam, do not use them.
Try a higher distillation temperature to get the higher octane fuels. Maybe even try stacked distillation since each grade boils off at different temperatures. Mix in some fresh crude to the diesel/jet fuel. Add some liquefied pine sap to thicken it. Then spray it through a crude, lit, nozzle with a hand pump. That should give you decent effects, burn easily, and stick to targets even in water. I doubt the hand flask grenades are much more than oil in a corked beaker. Pretty much fancy medieval molotovs. It's the dragon breath at the front of the ship that's really awesome.
Looking at the water level in the friggin thing.....one side was partially caved in.......BRO you dont clean that SH*T up with paper towels! That property is likely permanently contaminated.
You don't actually need much other than a flammable material that can be heated over the ignition point of its aerosol form. Oil for example, can be heated to beyond its ignition point while liquid, and it won't ignite until vaporized. Gasoline acts similarly. You can throw a match at a pool of gasoline or oil and neither will ignite. The match will just be extinguished. So in order to make Liquid Fire, all they would have needed to do was heat any kind of oil with a frothing agent (McDonald's in the United States uses a frothing agent of similar makeup to keep the fryers clean and make the oil last longer) slightly over the ignition point of oil vapor. This mix can be heated to beyond the ignition point of an aerosol spray, then forced with a pump through an opening that turns it into an aerosol, resulting in stream that doesn't ignite until sprayed, and will travel several to a dozen meters, splash onto a surface, ignite it, and ignite the rest of the oil mixture as it further splashes and mixes with oxygen. Liquid Fire was never much of a secret. Just a terrible means of transferring energy from one place to another that left the operator vulnerable to accidental explosions. The secret would have been to find an oil that can get hotter than the ignition point of typical pitch used to seal wooden ships. This would cause the pitch to act as a continuous source of rapid ignition for any oil that cooled below the ignition point and/or wasn't completely aerosolized.
It would be possible to create small amounts of metallic sodium (Making a small amount of electric current with chemical batteries would be a reasonable amount of effort for a secret superweapon of the day). Try mixing some of THAT in the oil.
Sodium was discovered in 1807 by the English chemist Humphry Davy from electrolysis of caustic soda (NaOH). Although sodium is the sixth most abundant element on earth and comprises about 2.6% of the earth's crust, it is a very reactive element and is never found free in nature.
Please do better research on your sponsorships. BetterHelp has a dark reputation, and a channel your size surely isn't having a hardship finding alternate sponsors. You can, and should do better.
The thing is that with greek fire, it's always accompanied by a flamethrower apparatus, so using glass pots will give different results than with a dusperser. But i agree that a light crude oil/pine tar mix is probably the best thing to come to what was actually used.
He probably can't stop. Sponsorships usually work by contracts which say how many videos you need to make, how long the advertisement is, how many posts you have to make, etc. Or it could be a campaign style where its 1, 2-minute advert for every video created between a start and end date. It's always different per company and usually you cannot simply drop a sponsor once you agreed and signed to it. Not at least until the contract is fulfilled or youve reached the end date.
What happens if you add rough particulate charcoal? It likely would settle or float inside the slurry. Then when projected with whatever pump, would scatter across the surface. Adding an endurance and heat to the flame. Possibly sticking unlit or about to be lit coals to things impossible to catch in flame with coals. Which ordinarily are scattered across a surface.
Lycopodium Powder which you used in another video actually has very interesting properties with water where it stays dry and burns quite readily. I believe if the oil doesn't mix completely with it, it could act a pretty interesting addition, as the heat from the flame may cause an updraft raising the dust out of the water and oil producing larger more dangerous flames to make it even more terrifying
A good test would be to create a device capable of launching a stream of the fire at a target, this would effect the viscosity possible. I also agree that the use of saltpeter seems unlikely as theey were trying to burn the ships and the people on them not the water around them
I', curious how you handled the cleanup and disposal of the pool water after your experiments. I've often been curious about such post-experiment processes and never took the time to ask before. Great video!
Please drop Better Help. They’re a really scummy company who sell people’s ‘secure’ data that they collect from devices and meetings and also aren’t even that good with meetings things with therapists who are not good at all
If the ancients had access to the components to make soap (which they did) they were 2/3s of the way to making biodiesel. The most difficult component is methanol or ethanol but the Greeks had the technological ability to produce it, either by distilling or by freezing. No need for natural petroleum. Once a fuel is easily produced, the next most difficult component is the ignitor. If they had access to a powerful oxidizer like potassium permanganate, it should not be too difficult.
The thickening agent in napalm is an aluminium salt of palmitic acid (a long chain fatty acid). It is a form of soap. If you add lime to animal fat (and maybe water- slaked like would be safer) you get a sodium salt of a fatty acid. This is a sodium based soap like the stuff everyone uses. Fatty acid + alkali a standard soap making thing. So maybe quicklime is used to make soap that is then used to thicken the mixture and make it sticky.
Olive oil? Not so much for its flammability but for the low density and viscosity. Mixed with pine pitch, your distilled crude, and maybe a medium like shredded wool, you might have a nice combo if the ratios are right.
Ugh another BetterHelp sponsorship ruining one of my favourite channels. I guess it goes to show that even with such a loyal audience, creators are still bold enough to ask for money through patreon AND take money from sham conpanies.
13:00 Why add the quicklime to a basin of water? The old worlders I've seen always slowly added water to the quicklime to make paste, then mixed it in to whatever material they wanted to make bricks from
Crude oil is definitely the main ingredient of Greek fire, but it would be too thin and burn too fast to be very good on its own. Resin is the most likely ingredient added to thicken the crude oil, being a highly flammable liquid that sticks to about anything. My guess is that Greek fire auto-igniting on contact with water may be an exaggeration based on the flaming liquid staying ignited on the surface of water. Since it was already lit before being fired from pipes, it would be unusual for it to even end up thrown into water without being on fire first. Even in terms of igniting any that is accidentally sent into the ocean without being lit first, the resin is flammable enough to make it easy to ignite. The best reason Romans would have to put any quicklime in would have been for the noise and steam given off when it hits water to make it a bit more dramatic for anybody on the receiving end without any tangible benefit or down side. Sulfur wouldn't need to be added to make it more flammable or to help it burn any hotter, so the only reason I could think of for adding it would be the sulfur dioxide given off when it burns. Irritating the eyes and lungs of enemies could be marginally beneficial to Roman soldiers. Since it was basically napalm already, it really wouldn't need to give off noxious gas to do its job though.
The ATF would like to let you know that you've violated the NFA and are subject to 10 years in prison and a $250000 fine. Homie just making destructive devices without paying his $200 tax.
@@kubakielbasa5987 The tax stamp requires a lot of other stuff to get. And the devices themselves need to be marked with your name and address. I think he might have some problems
My high school chemistry teacher (he was kind of a mad scientist) said that he had figured out that Greek Fire had Lithium as the igniting source. He said that his hypothesis is that the ancient Greeks found a source of lithium carbonate and then couldn't make it again when their source was played out. They wrapped it in tar and sheep wool soaked in natural oil. Then they lit that and launched it out. If it hit the ship and the enemy crew tried to extinguish it with water, it would explode. If it hit the water, it would explode.
To demonstrate, he blew up the duck pond next to the school with a football-shaped grenade he made of this concoction. I remember it hitting the pond, nothing happening for a second, then nearly all the water exploded out of the pond and there was water/feathers/fish falling all around us. I don't think anything legally bad happened to him, but he said the principal warned him not to do it ever again (it was a different time).
He made a bomb
^ he made a comment
Problem is that alkali metals weren’t discovered until long after the usage of Greek Fire.
@@AngiraBlu96
They weren't recorded.
@@Adventeuan That we know of. 🫵🏻
Quick tip from a chemistry student: please clean the ground glass joints in your distillation setup. Anything in the joints will probably cause leakage. You probably don't want that for your safety and yield. And for safety purposes please ventillate well during distillation or do it outside.
Yes. The fumes can easily cause a fire, asphyxiation, or an explosion.
Distillation*
@@adamkluckner3429your comment added nothing to the original comment. 🤓
@@Ith4qua You're welcome to believe that but you'd be wrong. It added correct spelling to an otherwise incorrect sentence.
@@adamkluckner3429 Nitpicking a bit but true, I make that mistake too often. Since I am a fellow perfectionist I'll edit the comment.
The addition of pine tar was most likely to facilitate pumping and spraying. The U.S. Navy had the same thought among others when they were developing what we now know as Napalm. The name Napalm comes from Naphtha and Palm oil, which was their first successful recipe, before they moved on to a fully petroleum mix, which quickly became the standard.
The reason it needs a thickener is that straight gasoline actually burns too quickly, and disperses in the air, resulting in a dramatic loss of potential and effective range when projected under pressure.
Also, if it actually makes the mixture stick to surfaces better, it would make it more effective.
Soap. napalm uses a special soap as thickener. Pine tar was used in the finnish "Molotov cocktail", and it really enhances its effectiveness
@@paavobergmann4920 Soap? News to me, the way I heard it was a petroleum based gel material.
Thicker solution also tends to flow in more laminar manner which is good if you want to make a flamethrower.
@@jono3952 Napalm A used aluminum soap, Napalm B used something similar to dissolved styrofoam in kerosine
Please drop betterhelp
Makes me miss Raid shadow legends.
Unless he sees a reduction in viewership as a result, or they see that they get no clicks from it, there's no direct measurable incentive to do so.
Why?
Agreed, they are a really scummy company.
Bruh
Lost his whole workshop to fire, and yet look at him now.
Fight fire with fire
Fight fire with fire
Fight fire with fire
@@stevexracer4309 just like you
Firebender
Skip 4:42 - 5:39 to avoid Scammy Better Help
Tysm
Appreciated. Thank you.
@@minhuang8848 Does it reliably work? I feel like it wouldn't be spot on, and sometimes I want to watch, or w/e. Idk, don't need control taken from me. I'm really good at skipping the ads.
5:33 for me but still thank u
And a horrible Horrible recording ruining your ears
That wading pool is now an EPA Superfund site.
that can be safely dumped into another EPA superfund site.
@@therealquade To make a super-DUPER EPA superfund site. ;)
This is why we don't have nice shit.
Maybe this might help: Naphtha (refined crude oil, boiled to extract compounds that evaporate at lower temperatures just like what you did), quicklime (as a fine powder), calcium phosphide (produced by boiling crushed bones in urine in a sealed earthen or copper container), turpentine (extracted from pine resin), sulfur (as a fine powder), and niter (potassium nitrate). The working principle involves the reactive ingredients, calcium phosphide and calcium oxide (quicklime). The key question will be the proportions-whether the mixture should have a paste-like viscosity or be more oil-like. I think the solution will require testing and adjusting the oxidizer.
That sounds like a very effective recipe! It's definitely something I'd wear a respirator around, but ignoring the obvious hazard of phosphine, I don't dont see why it wouldn't work. Is there a source to this recipe or did you come up with it?
@@Oystercaulk based on a lot of research, I looked at the tech and what they were using and trading as well as using for medcine. All these things were at their diposal so its stands to reason with a bit of experimenting they would figure it out.. Another thing they had was alcohol but didnt find any evidence of distilling it to a pure form.
@rishia8908 id imagine given its secrecy any literature that may have been produced by someone with high testicular density regarding the production of Greek fire, its constituents, or its precursors would have been found and consequently destroyed since there likely weren't too many people to keep tabs on that knew the recipe. Anyways, this recipe seems quite plausible, and regardless of its potential differences in composition to the original recipe, it sounds like it would produce all the effects that define Greek fire in literature and have been possible for them to produce at the time. Good job, man! Hopefully, someone will come along and test this recipe because god knows im not going to chuck anything containing calcium phosphide into water in my backyard to find out. Then again... Idk. Maybe one of my neighbors has a pool they don't use /s 🤔😂
this looks very promising tbh, imma get the ingredients and give it a shot once I have some free time
@@Oystercaulk just be careful !
I wonder if the "burning on water" thing is aided in anyway by the presence of salt in the water? This stuff was used primarily at sea, not in fresh water locations.
Fortunately the salinity of sea water is well known (I know it varies by location and temperature, but the battles the Greeks were fighting were most likely in the Mediterranean sea so that'll limit the variation)
Betterhelp rears it's head once again. Please stop their sponsorship
I doubt he'll stop with them, I haven't seen them sponsored with anyone else in a long time so he's probably one of the few that kept them on. and because of that he probably paid well and to be honest he doesn't get the views he used to so he probably needs the money.
I'm not condoning it just what I think
@@bigbird4481 They are making a big push, of integrated ads i have seen these past 2 weeks were, a third of them were BH.
It makes sense. We're in an economic downturn, people get fired, start getting dark thoughts, it's their big opportunity. If only they weren't a scammy company.
Why? Did something happen with them?
@@Uncle_Red a huge FTC fine, 3 class action lawsuits due to them mishandling health and other deeply personal data continuously for 8 years, while attempting to look more trustworthy than they are.
Normally the sharing of this type of information would be illegal under HIPAA. But Better Help doesnt actually do the therapy so HIPAA doesnt apply to them. They just connect you and actual therapists.
When I'm looking for a Therapist having a Therapy company say "Everything we're doing is legal because we aren't actually therapists" doesnt inspire great confidence that what they are doing is ethical.
I remember reading somewhere that Greek Fire was preheated before battle, which might affect the results. Also, it seems to me that adding small bits of sodium, lithium, etc. to the mix might be a good way to ignite the mixture in water. Sodium is often stored in mineral oil, so it's safe-ish to transport. Then during a sea battle, as the oil spreads on water it seems plausible that the sodium would eventually touch the water and ignite.
I don't think the Greeks had access to sodium and lithium
How'd you get that with the chemistry of the time? Normally this is done with electrolysis of molten salts (no water).
@@SuperEmmetMan I don't know if they did or did not, but they did work with other metals. I think there's at least a possibility that some sort of highly reactive metal might have been part of the secret formula.
Besides, I'd like to see a video of that concoction, even if it's not all that plausible.
@@Neal_White_III Highly reactive metals are that way because they're made that way. Unless you have the technology to reduce alkali to metals, or to make something like pyrophoric aluminum, you don't have such highly reactive metals.
@@goodmaro Agreed. The question in my mind is: Could they have discovered a method to make such a material in antiquity? Considering that it was so secret, unfortunately, it's likely no evidence would remain.
If you've already got pine resin, its a short jump to get turpentine, which is super flammable... and is basically just distilled from pine wood, easier to get then pine tar, possibly just mix it with the raw crude, you have the sticky icky, and the easily ignitable? a simple easy to replicate with Byzantine tech recipe. Maybe add some phosphate as a thickening agent?
Terpentine is a low viscosity fluid, so it’s not sticky. Phosphate is ionic, and as such is very polar. That means it’s not soluble in non-polar organic compounds like those in petroleum. It would just sink to the bottom of the mix, and not do anything
@@ashe1.070 egg is an emulsifier. so is blood. they're both albumen. So is lecithin which is in most plants. terpentine + phosphate + eggs or blood. sounds like alchemy to me.
@@ashe1.070 did you read the entire comment? "possibly just mix it with the raw crude"... clearly not.
How do you add the magnifying glass and create a searchable url in the comments? Tried looking online but could only find copy and paste url.
@@Rizzob17 I think it's automatically generated with AI or something. Not a command by the commenter.
I noticed that they appear and disappear in different comments as I refresh the page.
Today in htme. While trying to crack the code on greek fire, we accidentally made a philosopher's stone and so have discovered immortality.
Immortality would certainly give him the time to recreate everything.
As bob ross once said, there's no mistake, only happy accidents
I think he didn't make greek fire?
Alt: while trying to crack the code on Greek fire, spent hundreds of dollars on a cheap, common commodity, and demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic chemistry.
Now that's a clean-up I wouldn't want to have to do!
That fly got the buzz of his life, to death and back.
If you want to experiment further with fire bottles (molotov cocktails, essentially) I highly suggest you contact the guys from Ordnance Lab TH-cam channel, so you can you do your research under their supervision, as they are officially certified by the ATF for doing such work.
For example, each individual fire bottle needs to be officially registered as a Destructive Device with the ATF, to avoid the chance at a ten year stay in a federal prison.
Not trying to piss on your parade. Just trying to keep you out of prison.
Also, please drop Better Help as a channel sponsor. They are an extremely shady company, that not only offers terrible quality service, grossly under pays their therapists, but they also sell their clients' personal information to scummy data brokers for profit. I understand that you need to eat, but I really don't think you want your name associated with these people.
Maybe when it gets to the homemade flamethrower stage; that might alarm the neighbors. But there has to be a point before which this is just silly. What was being destroyed, a pool of water with a rock in it and oil on top? Or a model boat not even as big as a piece of firewood?
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648The ATF doesn’t have a sense of humor. Doesn’t matter what common sense says. And you can buy a flamethrower off the shelf with no background check anyway.
Please don't ruin this channel with Shawn. The only thing he knows how to do is copy memes and inside jokes found on the NFA facebook group. He's the person that annoyingly ruins the joke every time he catches on to one. His serialized one time use shiner bottle molotovs were the result of finding out I serialized a cage that you could put a beer bottle in and reuse as many times as you wanted, on any surface, including sand or meat popsicles.
stop snitchin
I know nothing about the Better Help organisation, but I would have expected it to use AI bots as counsellors.
Lost his workshop to fire, now fire is about to lose everything to him.
@@stevexracer4309upside down American flag, opinion discarded.
@@stevexracer4309 Yeah, he made a vaguely destructive device the way one tapes a lighter to an aerosol can.
So should I expect to see you with hicks in 4 months when you lose the election?
@@aerindinescarro47 You're arguing with a bot:
"Most comments are satire and sacastic unless stated otherwise. Other questions and comments made by thisnaccount are designed to test logic.
This is a role play account designed to test the psychology of others through comments and questions.
In no way does this account represent a real human. Any interaction with this account should not be taken seriously."
@@TheWasatchCrown I don’t check the bios of every person I reply to, but thanks for informing, I’ll keep more of an eye out.
@@aerindinescarro47 You'd be surprised how many "Average Americans" are actually office workers in Russia. I always check the account creation date and the bio on rabble rousers and troll comments.
My first question on this would be whether or not some of the later results were contaminated by not using a fresh pool with every single different test. Is it possible that some of the later tests did not ignite or may have interacted differently with the water because of the contamination of the crude oil and prior failed tests?
I thought the same thing I think he should clean the pool each time it will take longer but it will be more conclusive
This is your first question? The professor says it's crude oil based and the first thing the dude does is distilation. Anyone can make anything flammable by mixing it with gassoline/diesel and call his video "I recreated lost recipe for greek fire".
@@Borsuk3344 distilled crude oil is "crude oil" based. and his first test was with crude oil.
Greek Fire nowadays, mostly as a nickname, is what Greeks use for BBQ/Grilling. You use the ashes from the current grill and mix it with something like lamp oil or candle wax and you get a deep grey paste that you can use for the next time and it burns super easily and extremely long compared to a regular fire starter.
So I recently saw the video about the mechanism behind the proto-flamethrower - the recipie itself is not particularly novel, but the mechanism is extremely cool. Using bronze piping to boil a small vesssl of the fluid, building pressure to project it at range is so, so cool.
The Byzantine museum in Greece has the recipe for Greek fire that you can see. Interesting how the historian you used did not use one source written in Greek, he even called them Byzantines instead of Romans lol
God damn please stop the betterhelp sponsorships!
Drachinifel has a great video about Greek Fire and has done a promissing series of tests himself.
Had a great chat with Drach last week about Greek Fire - exciting stuff
It absolutely has to have oil in it because it needs to be:
1. less dense than water so it remains on the surface
2. not water soluble
3. stick to things
Bro this is the first time I've actually been notified by TH-cam when you uploaded.
same
Same
Ditto.
Not me, and ive got that lil bell😢
@@stevexracer4309 It's not going to do that.
Wow, what an amazing interview. Thanks for all that information, John Halden!!
Hooray more reduscovered lost technology
Also another reason for ck3 naval warfare update
No
Maybe the reason greek fire has never been recreated is because nobody thinks they were capable of using more complex chemicals. Maybe they used something thats difficult to be recreated like some sorta chemical that explodes whrn it touches water, which causes the lime to react properly
How the hell did you dispose of that water properly?
prolly threw saw dust into the pool, gathered it up after letting it soak for a while, rinse and repeat until desired result is reached.
@@juslitor The water beneath the oil would be virtually harmless too, and could be siphoned off or pumped away.
Let it dry out and burn the rest?
@@crestdazoltral7705 Seems like the easiest way to me but it might take awhile to boil off that much water.
who cares?
My guess would be asphalt, pine tar and beeswax with wood shavings. It has to burn readily and yet be thin enough to pump a considerable distance when it's hot. It also has to be something that is relatively easy to make in large quantities. I don't think it was self-igniting, just easy to ignite with a torch when it's liquid. Bees wax becomes volatile when heated fairly hot and would congeal when it hit a cold surface. It's also pretty easy to come by. They could just dump the ingredients in a cauldron and heat it up until everything melted and hope to heck it didn't explode on them. I suspect it did sometimes. The wood shavings would absorb volatiles and make it burn longer.
I love that a historian said damp squid, the expression is damp squib, which was a type of firework, when one wouldn't go off the disappointed kids would say it was a damp squib.
Yeah. Squids are supposed to be damp.
Try adding phosphorus to the pine tar+oil+sulphur mixture
i saw video where they tried recreating it, i believe they used olive oil, beese wax and animal fat as the recipe for it, and it seems to work similariy to the described concotion. i think the tar seep mixed with quick lime and pine resin might be a good combo, the pine will give it the stickiness, the pine seep seems to be the most resistant to being extinguished in water, and perhaps due to both the pine and the tar, the quicklime could ingite it if the quicklime was mixed with the resin beforehand
It's pretty cool how you tried out a whole lot of recipes and not just 1 or 2, some real nice experimental archeology here
Fire experiments in a kiddie pool? Oh yeah... that can't go wrong. lol
When we collect the petroleum from the ground, the petroleum is not liquid fide as like a can of oil we see in the stores. We actually called the the crude oil petroleum mud. Cuz it's got the consistency of mud. It's got sand dirt organic matter. The mud is then cooked in a cracker and then distilled into what products we have today.
3:05 he said the thing! "damp squid"
The Professor from the land that invented English had ought to know the expression is "damp squib".
Projectionability is also somewhat jarring.
That was a really interesting video! 😁 It’s awesome that the quest to reignite Greek fire is still ongoing! 🔥
I do have a theory about it’s properties but I’m no historian so take it with a grain of salt.
Auto ignition:
It seems many in history have claims about it’s self igniting properties, however I have a hypothesis that the Greek fire would be ablaze before it hit the water and cause an oil fireball when it made contact, instead of it igniting on contact as claimed.
Reason #1: the administration device
As said in the video, it was claimed that in leaving the device, it was already superheated to a degree that would auto ignite almost any pyrotechnic mixture the moment it touched the air.
Reason #2: steam explosion
The material would be hot enough to cause a steam explosion on contact with a body of water, causing a massive fireball tangential to an oil fire as demonstrated in your video.
Reason #3: Perspectives
This is the one I would like to really be contemplated on. Say that onlookers on a pier watching a ship battle off at sea and the Greek fire is used, they would more than likely not notice the fire leaving the device especially at midday, but they would notice and record the massive fireball created upon impact. Leading to the assumption about its auto igniting properties.
Now there is a counterclaim to this argument in which I lack a rebuttal for until tested:
Scale.
If the quicklime and ether recipe was to be scaled higher like to ship levels, it might auto ignite due to the shear bulk of the the material, and the latent heat of the Mediterranean sun and sea.
Either way I hope this helps you on your quest!
3:04 A damp squid? We all have gaps, but from a greek fire expert?
I've seen a modern recipe for napalm type stuff that used diesel, lighter oil and shaved soap. Loved it though!
Please stop advertising better help. They were recently investigated for selling private user information- information they explicitly promised to never distribute. They also prioritize efficiency and speed over actually getting people help, and they make it very hard to cancel subscriptions, meaningt hey essentially take your money while stalling. They are awful and it's not difficult to look up why.
Glycerin from Animal Hooves and also Beeswax was used in ton of things by Human Cultures all over the World for 5,000 Years or more so you could've tried that. I mixed Glycerin, Gasoline, 195 Proof Alcohol, Pine Resin, Straight Animal Fat, and Beeswax, and got an interesting result. Took 3 Fire Extinguishers to put it out.
The coolest thing about this video is the collection of raw oil.
Try Birch Tar. There are plenty of primers on distilling birch tar or you can buy it online as a natural skin treatment.
3:04 he definitely says "damp squid" dear oh dear
Here's my mix suggestion. Distilled tar seep, Pine resin, Ether, and either wool, or saw dust. Here is my reasoning. the distilled tar seep and pine resin mix was the 2nd most effective, but most difficult to extinguish it seemed, but the mix of quicklime and ether had far FAR more fire once actually lit and was the actually most apparently effective, though the quicklime probably doesn't contribute much. Lastly, the wool helped contain it on target. I would suggest using sawdust however because, I'm fairly certain it would also float on water, and be more readily available for the greeks to burn, rather than wool, which had far more uses in textiles, and burning it would be a waste. sawdust however, Is already waste product.
Lmao BetterHelp? I'd hope you would be BetterThanThat.
Just fast forward through the ad read if it triggers you....there is a timer top right. Also, learn to read terms of service instead of being annoying
@@fishstix4209 What does terms of service have anything to do with the service being horrible on multiple etical levels, and someone pointing it out?
If any one is annoying then it would be you, for feeling the need to bitch and moan about people pointing out that this sponsor have a terrible trackrecord.
+ the wast majority of people do skip past it. They just feel the need to make the content creator aware of that he is aiding a scummy organisation, that have caused more harm than good. And being asosiated with them can hurt him in the long run. I for one would not want to be assosiated with a bad company, If i were trying to create somthing good.
@@mr-x7689 yall are annoying af
@mr-x7689 no one is forcing you to sign up....read the terms of service, see what they have the right to do if you accept, don't click accept, and move on with your life. Betterhelp isn't the only company that does it btw
@mr-x7689 No one is forcing you to sign up....read the terms of service, see what they have the right to do if you accept, don't click accept, and move on with your life. Betterhelp isn't the only company that does it, btw
Screenshots on this one because it keeps getting deleted
You could try dissolving the pinetar in the alcohol before adding to the distilled oil. As for the power , could be a separately prepared mix used to make the fire on the enemy ship worse after it was scorched and oilly. Just imagine your sails are on fire and the decks an oilly mess when a clay pot lands on the deck, igniting the whole mess and making it hard to put out. One suggestion from the past was that it could be put out with urine but not water. Perhaps this could hint at the mix.
Isn't the use of the grenade a problem? With a flamethrowing device, much more oxygen can be mixed in during transit.
True, but I'm pretty sure the grenade was also a historical method of delivery
@@plvmbvm513 I see, well then was that probably meant to hit a dry deck rather than the hull near the waterline?
the greeks had no conception of oxygen, they're operating on the principals of the classical elements. they couldn't have even done that on accident. How would the greeks even generate pure oxygen.
I don't know how you would get it but I remember reading that some North Slope Crude was so pure that they took it out of the ground and ran their diesel vehicles on it. Take a vacation up to Alaska and see if you can lay your hands on it.
Greek fire was said to be self igniting upon contact with air (not water). So something needs to be added to the mix, and then immediately sealed in the glass ball so that there is very little air in side. When the ball breaks the mix reacts with air and ignites, it also needs to float on water and be a little sticky so it doesn't run off the sides of ships but clings and burns. Making something sticky and also lighter than water and flammable is pretty easy, the mystery is how to get it to self ignite (and its up for debate if it ever really worked that way). Also you don't want to aerosolize the mix, napalm in flamethrowers is NOT delivered as a mist, rather its a dense stream ideally made with the minimum of atomization. Therefore a better choice would be to develop a device that delivers a laminar flow of the fuel out of the nozzle .
Sodium metal shavings are safe under mineral oil but burn when exposed to air.
That might ignite some fractions of the oil, they would ignite the rest.
But making Sodium metal, or White Phosphorus, that's a problem.
@@20chocsaday sodium generally does not ignite in air, not unless its really shaved thin and exposed to humid air and HOT like over 200F hot. Its reactive to water. Maybe you meant white phosphorous that you mention later in your comment (which is wicked dangerous and probably not something the ancient Greeks had access to) but is very reactive to air.
@@heathbecker420 Thanks.
Trouble is, you can't keep the metal except under oil. The same goes for Potassium.
But as for a way of reducing these metals to purity or making White Phosphorus in those days, that is a problem.
Pine tar/pitch, gasoline and crude oil. Sulfur as well. All of which were available naturally. Getting natural gasoline without all the added chemicals could be a challenge though. The mix has to be thin enough to flow freely and thick and sticky enough to cling to any surface it contacts.
The pump mechanism is simple enough, they had bladder bellows for various things like moving air for forges and water for agriculture, no reason one could not be used to create a venturi effect and draw the liquid out f a barrel into a fast moving airstream and ignited in the air.
One of the things that I was told as a kid when I first heard of it was that it could not be extinguished by water and only spread faster when that was tried. Sounds exactly like a grease fire to me. (Maybe it was called Greek Fire because it was first called Grease Fire and just evolved the way words do over time.)
Now, If we could learn to build WWII era Battle Ships and Aircraft Carriers.
lets not go there. its risky to touch boats.
You've recreated Greek fire? good.
Now recreate Wildfire!
Some naval deaths in WWII were men who had to abandon ship and jump into diesel that had spilled into the ocean and caught on fire. Diesel as I understand it, is distilled crude and the Romans knew about distillation. It's all very interesting and disturbing.
so the greeks made diesel fuel and metal tanks with tubes, one full of diesel, one full of regular compressed air that they pumped manually, and the air pressure goes into the diesel to force it out of a different tube with a nozzle. The greeks invented the Flammenwerfer (it werfs flammen).
The ships in WW2, and in some cases today, actually run on bunker fuel, usually bunker B. It's consistency is closer to Vaseline than a fuel as we would recognize it. The ships used piping that ran through tanks carrying live steam to heat the bunker fuel up enough for it to be pumped to the boilers. It's really nasty stuff.
@@792slayer that's genuinely interesting. unfortunately, all it does is give me horrid ideas for things to do with vaseline, like using the heating of it with an emulsifier to make the worlds nastiest milkshake as a prank.
@@792slayer Interesting! Thanks for sharing!
@@therealquade hey, what you do with knowledge is up to you, lol.
The reaction of quicklime and water produces acetylene. I think if quicklime was used, it would be primarily for this effect, and also could be an aspect of it being difficult to put out with water since the water would cause the release of very flammable acetylene gas which could easily reach an ignition temperature because it would not be in contact with the water that would keep a liquid or solid cooled below an ignition temperature.
No place to get carbon for that proposed reaction.
I think you're thinking of calcium carbide.
Great video. Did you use dawn to clean it?
Crude oil varies wildly in its composition. It ranges from a jet black, nearly asphalt/tar in consistency and difficult to ignite, to a lighter color than 0W synthetic engine oil, about as viscous as water, and more flammable than gasoline. It all depends on what formation it came out of and how long the oil has been cooking down there. The crude oil you got was likely of the former, and was a little more "undercooked", if you will. If you want some of the better stuff, reach out to a lease operator in West Texas, they can probably get you a jug of it for free to test.
Interesting side note, in the old days when they hit a pocket of that gooey trash and it ended up being too thick to pump out, they would make a loop of rope that went down to a pulley at the bottom of the hole and then back up into a tank, where the rope was threaded through a rubber hole that wiped off the oil that got stuck to the rope as it ran through in the well. Most of them used steam power that came from burning the very oil they were extracting, so with a little maintenance and a water supply, they'd run free of charge until there was no more oil to extract out of the ground.
You’ve got to drop the betterhelp sponsorship, they are AWFUL.
The Finns settled on 20%-30% pine tar to thicken petroleum spirit in their molotovs. 5%-15% beeswax or parafin wax also works. Bear in mind it can get bloody cold in Finland! In a flamethrower you want to throw FUEL, not fire. The additives are to stop it spreading out into a fireball and thus squirt further. In absence of napalm WW2 soldiers would mix gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil until the had a usable consistency and flammability.
Crude oil, Pine resin, Ethanol all mixed in solution with pure sodium dust. As the spray hits the water, sodium will react and create a spark, thus lighting the fire. :D
The question now becomes where did they get the sodium?Sodium was discovered in 1807 by the English chemist Humphry Davy from electrolysis of caustic soda (NaOH). Although sodium is the sixth most abundant element on earth and comprises about 2.6% of the earth's crust, it is a very reactive element and is never found free in nature.
@charlesurrea1451 it was only first documented in the 1800s. I would imagine the properties were discovered but not really understood or described due to lack of chemical understanding.
@@Jenisonc Took the words right out of my mouth. They may not of known what it was truly and since it wasn't recorded we cannot know if it was actually discovered much earlier. I only suggested it because the sodium would sit in that solution well. It's well known that oil and water dont mix so the sodium would be mostly stable in the solution. Only time it would be risky is when mixing the other chemicals into the solution. The Ethanol or pine resin may add some small amounts of water. But you cannot deny, sodium would cause ignition in that situation. Anyone else believe it's worth testing at least?
I think it would be a fun experiment to add sodium but you guys don't appreciate how unlikely it is for the ancient greeks to ever encounter elemental sodium
The sodium metal would react with the ethanol to form sodium ethoxide. Just omit the ethanol and it should work.
You could purify sodium bicarbonate into pure sodium in a coke furnace. You would have to store it in a kerosene like substance to stop oxidation. Have small beads of sodium laced within the kerosene. Could even heat the mixture enough to liquidize the sodium. Add that combo to water and yea 🔥🔥🔥
get a better sponsor
I imagine whether intended or not that sodium may have played a large role in ignition on water. Sea salt itself wouldn't have necessarily done the job but when heated to vapourise, I'm pretty sure some of the sodium seperates from the chlorine. That would also explain the "thunder" that accompanied the fire. Not a chemist though, I've just heard the sodium and chorine seperating during desalination is what makes it hard to do at a large scale
Would love to see what the EPA has to say about the pool in his back yard.
"Protected wetlands"?
@@johnbuchman4854 I'd think that pouring all that oil and other chemicals into the pool is going to create some kind of disaster. How do you even dispose of it?
@@BillAngelos burn it. Once a supercontaminated river ignited.
I'd be much more concerned about what the ATF says since he made dozens of unregistered destructive devices, each which can carry a sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
@@andytheturtle87yep
Greek fire was also described as green... copper produces a green flame, was readily available at the time, and was used often in alchemical explosives, as copper powder when spread through the air can combust in the same way that sawdust or flour can.
Copper has a melting point of nearly 2000⁰f, so it could retain heat well during an alchemical reaction, also. Maybe pairing copper powder with the quicklime could work, as the quicklime could heat the metal powder rather than just itself and the water, potentially achieving a higher potential temperature. Having copper powder in the oil could potentially produce a green flame, which isnt particularly useful but would have been an incredibly intimidating thing to see as a soldier on a midevil battlefield, so maybe the green color was less practical and more of a shock tactic
what i wanna know is how you guys cleaned up all that oil
are you asking for a woman you know?
1st Century Ignitable Mixture Recipe
Ingredients:
- Calcium Oxide (Quicklime): 50%
- Sulfur: 15%
- Charcoal (finely powdered): 15%
- Pine Resin: 10%
- Animal Fat: 10%
Instructions:
1. Mix Dry Ingredients:
- Thoroughly mix the powdered calcium oxide, sulfur, and charcoal.
2. Add Pine Resin and Animal Fat:
- Gradually incorporate the pine resin and animal fat to create a homogenous paste-like mixture.
3. Storage:
- Store the mixture in a dry container to prevent premature reaction with moisture.
Reaction Process:
1. Application:
- Apply the mixture to the oil-based material you demonstrated in the video.
2. Water Introduction:
- When water is introduced, the calcium oxide reacts vigorously, generating heat - the finer the better. More surface area...
3. Ignition:
- The heat produced can ignite the sulfur, charcoal, pine resin, and animal fat, leading to the ignition of the oil-based material.
Explanation of Reactions:
- Calcium Oxide and Water:
CaO + H2O -> Ca(OH)2 + heat
- Sulfur Combustion:
S + O2 -> SO2 + heat
- Charcoal Combustion:
C + O2 -> CO2 + heat
- Pine Resin and Animal Fat:
These organic materials will ignite and sustain combustion, helping to spread the fire to the oil-based material.
Hope this helps!
Your final mixture may still work, depending on the conditions you're testing under. Try hitting some wet wood (the hull above the waterline) with the mix. There won't be as much water to cool the mixture, which could lead to ignition.
It may have also been pine sap dissolved in toluene or a similar solvent extracted from pine trees - but yeah the black color sounds like crude oil. Cool!
Please don't use better help. With better help you are responsible for vetting any "therapists" they give you, to make sure that they are actually therapists. I believe Better Help is a scam, do not use them.
Try a higher distillation temperature to get the higher octane fuels. Maybe even try stacked distillation since each grade boils off at different temperatures. Mix in some fresh crude to the diesel/jet fuel. Add some liquefied pine sap to thicken it. Then spray it through a crude, lit, nozzle with a hand pump. That should give you decent effects, burn easily, and stick to targets even in water. I doubt the hand flask grenades are much more than oil in a corked beaker. Pretty much fancy medieval molotovs. It's the dragon breath at the front of the ship that's really awesome.
Congratulations on turning your back yard into an EPA superfund site..
He also made incendiary devices, 10 year prison sentence and a felony in the USA.
Looking at the water level in the friggin thing.....one side was partially caved in.......BRO you dont clean that SH*T up with paper towels! That property is likely permanently contaminated.
You don't actually need much other than a flammable material that can be heated over the ignition point of its aerosol form. Oil for example, can be heated to beyond its ignition point while liquid, and it won't ignite until vaporized. Gasoline acts similarly. You can throw a match at a pool of gasoline or oil and neither will ignite. The match will just be extinguished. So in order to make Liquid Fire, all they would have needed to do was heat any kind of oil with a frothing agent (McDonald's in the United States uses a frothing agent of similar makeup to keep the fryers clean and make the oil last longer) slightly over the ignition point of oil vapor.
This mix can be heated to beyond the ignition point of an aerosol spray, then forced with a pump through an opening that turns it into an aerosol, resulting in stream that doesn't ignite until sprayed, and will travel several to a dozen meters, splash onto a surface, ignite it, and ignite the rest of the oil mixture as it further splashes and mixes with oxygen. Liquid Fire was never much of a secret. Just a terrible means of transferring energy from one place to another that left the operator vulnerable to accidental explosions.
The secret would have been to find an oil that can get hotter than the ignition point of typical pitch used to seal wooden ships. This would cause the pitch to act as a continuous source of rapid ignition for any oil that cooled below the ignition point and/or wasn't completely aerosolized.
It would be possible to create small amounts of metallic sodium (Making a small amount of electric current with chemical batteries would be a reasonable amount of effort for a secret superweapon of the day). Try mixing some of THAT in the oil.
Sodium was discovered in 1807 by the English chemist Humphry Davy from electrolysis of caustic soda (NaOH). Although sodium is the sixth most abundant element on earth and comprises about 2.6% of the earth's crust, it is a very reactive element and is never found free in nature.
It would have to be done with molten salt -- not a salt solution.
Maybe try linseed oil. In a fine spray it could self ignite.
Please do better research on your sponsorships. BetterHelp has a dark reputation, and a channel your size surely isn't having a hardship finding alternate sponsors. You can, and should do better.
The thing is that with greek fire, it's always accompanied by a flamethrower apparatus, so using glass pots will give different results than with a dusperser. But i agree that a light crude oil/pine tar mix is probably the best thing to come to what was actually used.
Please drop betterhelp unless you're into exposing people's personal information
He probably can't stop. Sponsorships usually work by contracts which say how many videos you need to make, how long the advertisement is, how many posts you have to make, etc. Or it could be a campaign style where its 1, 2-minute advert for every video created between a start and end date. It's always different per company and usually you cannot simply drop a sponsor once you agreed and signed to it. Not at least until the contract is fulfilled or youve reached the end date.
What happens if you add rough particulate charcoal? It likely would settle or float inside the slurry. Then when projected with whatever pump, would scatter across the surface. Adding an endurance and heat to the flame. Possibly sticking unlit or about to be lit coals to things impossible to catch in flame with coals. Which ordinarily are scattered across a surface.
Doesn’t burn as well as youd expect.
If this guy doesn't drop the betterhelp sponsorships I'm boycotting these videos, who's with me!
Lycopodium Powder which you used in another video actually has very interesting properties with water where it stays dry and burns quite readily. I believe if the oil doesn't mix completely with it, it could act a pretty interesting addition, as the heat from the flame may cause an updraft raising the dust out of the water and oil producing larger more dangerous flames to make it even more terrifying
A good test would be to create a device capable of launching a stream of the fire at a target, this would effect the viscosity possible. I also agree that the use of saltpeter seems unlikely as theey were trying to burn the ships and the people on them not the water around them
I'm just here wondering how he cleaned up the kiddie pool after the video.
I', curious how you handled the cleanup and disposal of the pool water after your experiments. I've often been curious about such post-experiment processes and never took the time to ask before.
Great video!
Please drop Better Help.
They’re a really scummy company who sell people’s ‘secure’ data that they collect from devices and meetings and also aren’t even that good with meetings things with therapists who are not good at all
If the ancients had access to the components to make soap (which they did) they were 2/3s of the way to making biodiesel. The most difficult component is methanol or ethanol but the Greeks had the technological ability to produce it, either by distilling or by freezing. No need for natural petroleum. Once a fuel is easily produced, the next most difficult component is the ignitor. If they had access to a powerful oxidizer like potassium permanganate, it should not be too difficult.
You know he tipped that water in the storm drain 😂
Narsty. Better that it be evaporated and burned, or disposed of as HHW.
The thickening agent in napalm is an aluminium salt of palmitic acid (a long chain fatty acid). It is a form of soap. If you add lime to animal fat (and maybe water- slaked like would be safer) you get a sodium salt of a fatty acid. This is a sodium based soap like the stuff everyone uses. Fatty acid + alkali a standard soap making thing. So maybe quicklime is used to make soap that is then used to thicken the mixture and make it sticky.
Feds are going to be calling…
As crazy as it sounds, Molotov cocktails are prohibited as destructive devices.
well that may be because they are, hmm, destructive devices?
Only in communist countries.
@@stevexracer4309 say that to 1.78 million people who would stand by him(subscribers).
Not entirely prohibited, you just need to apply for a tax stamp for each one, which is an annoying, expensive, and slow process.
Uhhh bro stop commenting that everywhere, go do smth good in your life... BTW ATF sucks and I don't care about them 🤣🤣🤣 @@stevexracer4309
You missed a detail...they used this in the begining for battling ships...that means in the sea...sea has salt..
Better help was a scam 5 years ago and it barely improved since then.
Olive oil? Not so much for its flammability but for the low density and viscosity. Mixed with pine pitch, your distilled crude, and maybe a medium like shredded wool, you might have a nice combo if the ratios are right.
Ugh another BetterHelp sponsorship ruining one of my favourite channels. I guess it goes to show that even with such a loyal audience, creators are still bold enough to ask for money through patreon AND take money from sham conpanies.
13:00 Why add the quicklime to a basin of water? The old worlders I've seen always slowly added water to the quicklime to make paste, then mixed it in to whatever material they wanted to make bricks from
Please no more better help 😢
Crude oil is definitely the main ingredient of Greek fire, but it would be too thin and burn too fast to be very good on its own.
Resin is the most likely ingredient added to thicken the crude oil, being a highly flammable liquid that sticks to about anything.
My guess is that Greek fire auto-igniting on contact with water may be an exaggeration based on the flaming liquid staying ignited on the surface of water. Since it was already lit before being fired from pipes, it would be unusual for it to even end up thrown into water without being on fire first. Even in terms of igniting any that is accidentally sent into the ocean without being lit first, the resin is flammable enough to make it easy to ignite. The best reason Romans would have to put any quicklime in would have been for the noise and steam given off when it hits water to make it a bit more dramatic for anybody on the receiving end without any tangible benefit or down side.
Sulfur wouldn't need to be added to make it more flammable or to help it burn any hotter, so the only reason I could think of for adding it would be the sulfur dioxide given off when it burns. Irritating the eyes and lungs of enemies could be marginally beneficial to Roman soldiers. Since it was basically napalm already, it really wouldn't need to give off noxious gas to do its job though.
Rename the Video to "How to cause an environmental disaster in your backyard". How did you get rid of all the mess?
So, Greek Fire was Pitch! Good old crude oil that was refined into a more flammable fuel oil.
The ATF would like to let you know that you've violated the NFA and are subject to 10 years in prison and a $250000 fine. Homie just making destructive devices without paying his $200 tax.
bro he paid the tax probably
@@stevexracer4309 why are you commenting this same thing everywhere? don't you have better things to do with your life?
@@kubakielbasa5987 The tax stamp requires a lot of other stuff to get. And the devices themselves need to be marked with your name and address. I think he might have some problems
@@stevexracer4309Why are you spamming comments showing off how deep you can swallow a boot?