The flamethrower

Our narrative here is as much a human one as it is technological. As we shall see, flamethrower operators are rarely thankful for the weapon they carry. Lumbering conspicuously around a bullet-crackling battlefield with a tank of flammable fluid on your back requires either iron nerves or a brutish lack of imagination.

All weapons are, by their very nature, ghastly in purpose, but there is something uniquely awful and inhumane about the flamethrower. Fire is popularly and quite logically held as one of the worst ways to die. It is not quick, the victim taking long seconds and even minutes to succumb, as flesh, nerve, muscle and eventually organs are charred to destruction.
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That intelligent human beings have turned their minds to developing instruments specifically to achieve this goal, represents another tragic failure in society.