The fire we started
was fairly catastrophic as far as nature is concerned. A few hundred yards behind my housing estate, there are load of lovely fields, and as a nipper we used to build dens in a wooded area. Similar to most young boys, we all had a love for starting fires.

One day we found a huge oak tree with a slight hollowing in the ground beneath it. Not thinking properly, we filled the hole with dry grass and other kindling, and set it alight. Five minutes later and the flame was dying because dry grass burns up rather quickly.

So we added some sticks and a couple of small logs, and thats when the fire began to take shape - we went to fetch more wood, and returned to find a rather large fire.

Stamping didn't help and we had no water about, so we did the only imaginable thing. Legged it.

As we ran further into the fields we saw the fire getting larger and larger, and after taking the extremely long route back to our houses, we found our housing estate absolutely delved in smoke. Next was the sound of fire engines and the like.

Next day we went back to discover scorched earth where woodland once was. We had wiped out an entire 20 metre by 15 metre chunk of woodland, and the huge 200 year old oak that we lit the fire under was gone.

We have kept it quiet since.
( Delete Me, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 22:12, Reply)

HAHAHA stup0t
I'm the Original, STUPOT, how much will you pay me to sell you the real authentic Stupot username?
(Stupot looks at his watch, and it says, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 22:07, Reply)

I filled a petrol lighter
and got it all over my hands. I didn't think to wash them before trying the lighter. It was rather worrying because the bathroom was about 500 miles away. So I ran with both hands on fire to the tap to put them out. Not fun.
( stup0t, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 22:03, Reply)

yay, Reading fires rule...
last year there was a fat fire on the last night and people were going into other peoples tents for stuff to burn, including sleeping bags, tents and some poor blokes CD player even got chucked on, everyone was jumping over it and the little chucking mini gas cans on there... fun... Tickets for this years festival are available on NME by the way.
(Stupot looks at his watch, and it says, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 22:03, Reply)

Tenuous...
A friend of mine used to kill flies in his 7 foot by 7 foot bedroom by roasting them with a deodorant flamethrower... Same friend also used to put Tippex on wooden benches and then light it. I've detonated numerous microwaves with frozen bagels and mince pies in foil tins. Two close friends of mine lost their eyebrows by standing too close to the pyro at a recent gig. However, far worse fire-related incidents have befallen members of the band we saw.... ooooh, stingy!!
(underachiever, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:59, Reply)

I started a fire
at Reading. Since it was going a bit slow i got out a whole double sheet of newspaper and put it on..neglecting to wrap it up or anything in my haste. Luckily, there was a stick in the middle which we had shoved into the cow pat being used as the base and it wrapped around this. A video of said incident can be found at this link Link! It's 6.8MB though. Things could have ended up a lot worse as we were surrouded by fast burning tents.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:50, Reply)

Fire and Bombs and Shit
Friends and i were filming a home movie. I set my leghair and nosehair on fire. My friend set his pubes on fire. we threw an aerosol bottle on the fire and then forgot about it. a few minutes later, when we were trying to get each other to strip on camera, it blew up. really scary, it blew a crater. then we launched rocket engines at each other. apart from various second degree burns, it was okay.
(JarvisoCockeral, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:46, Reply)

Stupid twat is caught red....kneed, I guess...
Letting lighter fluid out all over his arm and lighting it. The intellectual persuits of Luke never ceased to amaze me.
This 'Luke' as he liked to be known was so superiffically pleased with these fiery shenanigans that he would light himself when and where it seemed most inappropriate. His arm was only prevented a severe crisping by his rapid waving of the said limb until it was put out.
So, one boring summer day, the fucking 'tard lights his knee. You can wave a foot. You can wave an arm. You can't wave your knee.
No 'kneed' for me to extrapalate methinks...boom boom...ahem..
Third degree burns and 2 years later, he still dosnt think its a funny story. god. some people
(lifelikeandposeable, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:45, Reply)

Fire, oh yes...
I need to explain it fully... well possibly.

Not many months ago, I came back from the pub after a student gathering, rather drunk, escorted by my girlfriend's elder brother and herself. I got into my house, went up to me bedroom and switched the PC on so I could make some random drunken animations. After a while I decided to go into the garden for an abnormal smoke (I'm not a tobacco fan, see). One led to two, and escalated to many. I walked back into the house, very much out of it at this point... went upstairs, and realised I smelt really badly of the afformentioned substance. Worried (an unsuprising after effect) I threw after shave all over myself to rid me of the smell, I hadn't realised that in doing this I'd covered my entire bed thickly in the best part of an expensive bottle of the stuff, so, I sat down at the PC and started playing with a light... the lighter flew out of my hands, spectacularly, when it set my hand on fire due to the aftershave on it, this had coated the lighter which turned into a ball of fire, which in turn landed on my bed. Cue foot high flames coming off of my bed... not knowing what to do, I folded the duvet and jumped on it hoping to put the fire out... thankfully it worked, and the lighter didn't explode on me.
(tehendz, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:45, Reply)

When I was a kid...
... my mate had bought a lighter to school, he was so cool, anyway, on the way back from school we took the scenic route via the recreation ground. It was the height of summerand the grass was dry so we decided to set alight to a clump grass that had been mowed a few days before. But it was drier than we thought, and even the grass that was still growing was very dry and the whole fucking bank woofed into flames and most of the football pitch... and being the brave young, bravados that we were, we... err... legged it.

We went back the next day to admire our handy work, only to be informed that one of the locals had spotted us the day before... so we legged it again. Nothing was said about it again, but we got a few nasty looks from local people over the following few weeks.
(Stupot looks at his watch, and it says, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:45, Reply)

Yes
Yes I did, and got fined two and a half grand for the pleasure
( Disco, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:41, Reply)

F-f-f-f-fire!
Recipe for disaster:
1. Go out for a heavy lunchtime drinking session with a friend and drink til about 5pm
2. Go home and put the chip pan on
3. You and friend then immediately fall asleep on the sofa.
If it weren't for a telephone call we'd both be dead!
(druidus, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:34, Reply)

My Great Combusting Leg Hair
Once when totally bored and a bit party-mad because I went to a huge party and I decided that I'd try one of the party tricks our entertainer tryed, shaving his back with a razor covered with iron filings and gasoline with a match stuck to the candle, finally at the end igniting the thing and it nade a small tame flame. (Ooh, rhyme.) I didn't have the nessisary materials so I cut up a pop can for shavings and doused it with vadko. I also lacked the nessicary back hair, so I shaved my hairy legs. The "shavings" melted and ran down my leg for I used rather much and they burst into flames leaving me 2nd degree burns all over my shins.Whee
(number 27-hunter, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:27, Reply)

I did a good un
I left a candle burning in an ashtray full of rizlas. The candle burned down, the rizla caught fire, the ashtray exploded and set light to a pile of magazines. The magazines were by the bed. The bed caught on fire with me and my partner in it it. I woke up to a room full of smoke, I really thought I had died and gone to heaven when I woke up to that.

Anyhow, we made it out the room and managed to put the fire out. For some reason we threw the still smoking mattress out the window and onto the flat belows conservatory roof. Then we both went out for the day, came back about 4pm to find three fire engines outside the flats. The mattress had burst back into flames and scared the crap out the neighbours. Our landlord was not best pleased with us.
(joolyknockers, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:26, Reply)

Fire , Ooh Fire
I've had a few run ins with fire.. Nothing extreme, No firemen or anything like that
But the only one that still makes me chuckle is when we set about on seeing what we could see was flammable.
It was a saturday and on fridays the Youth Advice Centre gives out free condoms , I had a few laying around so we thought "Well they might burn" they didn't so we sprayed a tonne of deo in them , and nearly burnt my fucking hand off.. luckily i had some sort of thing i could use to put out my hand.
Then my friend gave us the amazing idea he heard from his brother which was spraying deo in a empty plastic bottle then lighting a small flame on the top , Squeeze the bottle thus the deo coming out and whoosh a mushroom shaped flame.. It looks great in the dark , Try it
(smoglane!, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:18, Reply)

Oh yeah!
I forgot about this one...

In my chemistry teacher's old school, a boy stole some magnesium (might have been sodium, potassium etc.. i don't remember) from the chem labs. Then, over the tannoy, the headteacher said "Whoever's stolen the *group 1 element* from the chem labs, please return it and we won't punish you.

Now, what did the stupid child do? He panicked and flushed it down the loo...


BOOM! Every single fucking toilet in the school blew mile high, costing thousands of pounds of damage.

I don't think he lasted long in the school after that....
( Naive Amoeba Bored Cig, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 21:09, Reply)

yes, i have but its a bit rubbish
I'd been drinking an i thought it would be a laugh to burn some crisp bags full of vodka, so i continued with my great idea..until the bottom of the crisp bag fell through an my jeans cought fire!

moral of story, dont buy expencive jeans!
(Eywood, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:57, Reply)

Pigeon.
Back in teenage years, I used to enjoy making smoke bombs and smallish explosive devices from fertilisers and the like.
One day, several of us were out in some woods, in two teams, shooting eachother with BB guns and launching smoke/incendiary grenades (using coke cans) at eachother. Two of us came across a dead maggot-riddled pigeon lying across the trail. So we used our bomb mix to cremate the thing. It went up a little too fast and we were suddenly enveloped in thick choking clouds of burning rotten pigeon remains, which made us smell quite foul for quite some time. Yummy.

We also threw one of our smoke bombs in school (on the playing fields) to celebrate the last day of term. Unfortunately, we had the mix perfectly correct, and our amusing smoke bomb turned out to be a rather large explosive device that send hot spinning shards of metal and molten crap over a large area. Which was of course filled with milling schoolboys...
More running and plenty of laughter. No police this time, which was nice.
( Kallus speaks for the Spores, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:57, Reply)

geej! geej!
you MUST say what that substance was! please! i'm begging you! pleeeeassee!!! :'(
( Naive Amoeba Bored Cig, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:55, Reply)

Aged 2, I set my house on fire
I remember my thought processes and all. It was cold, and i was sitting on the sofa. So i removed the sofa cushion (it was yellow foam) and leant it up to the fire grille. A few minutes later it fell down off its resting place, but it happened to be covered in flames. Fire ensued.
(ProudClod, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:54, Reply)

Fires eh
I'm a big fan of b3ta though i don't get to post too much, this is the first question thats really caught me eye.

Well, i like fire, not in a major pyromaniac way, but i can do the whole lighter flicky open thing with my fingers and lighting matches on my teeth. There's loads of stories of me and my mates burning each other and Lynx can flamethrowers re-enacting aliens, but one still sticks out in my mind.

A long long long time ago we went to a friend's house to get very drunk, we succeeded and we then proceeded to 'burn things for a laugh'. so we got a massive empty pot for plants, one of those terracotta ones with the breathing holes at the bottom, secured some cans of deodorant pointing at the side on pot, inside the pot was some lighters, so we lit the deodorant cans like flame throwers, the flame was contained in this mini furnace because the flame was being directed back on itself with the pot, so we videoed it, then i walked up to see if it was still going and BANG went the lighters. Thats probably going to teach us a lesson, but no, the air stank like vietnam and we looked for more materials.
We eventually settled on some radiator paint from a instanely massive can, and it made the biggest flame we had seen. so we walked across the road and 'secured' the can against the wall with pavement block against this building, the force of the can was so strong everytime we pushed the block onto the can it'd blow it back. so i stood there with a lighter and i pressed the block in place with my foot, the paint was pissing out everywhere and i lit it with the lighter, and the flame covered me, i lost some of my hair (not really anything to notice :D ) and part of my eyebrows, i looked like a right idiot, but as soon as the flame took i ran like a mad idiot back to my friend's house.

My other mate, who was filming this on his camera stood there.

So a woman came up and completely bollocked him for 'starting this fire' so he scarpered too, some of my mates ran back and got rid of the evidence, but the flames (on this video) were about 7+ feet high in the air against this building's wall.

So subsequently 3 fire engines came, and an ambulance, safe to say the lights were off in my mates house for HOURS, its hard to keep pissed people quiet too, due to the shock of what we'd just done, we sobered up quickly - but its hard to stop concerned friends from "having a quick word to tell them it wasn't you"

Eventually they went, it was in the newspaper etc that damage was done to the inside of the building too and the equipment inside, but i think that might be a bit dodgy, because the building was a steel hut with corrugated walls, but saying that, it was a 7 foot flame. i still like burning things though. HA

Sorry for it being long, and doubly sorry for not saying when/where this happened, but i'm sure you understand :D

p.s. when i find the vid, i'll post a link to it

edit = here we go fire
(stomm, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:52, Reply)

Pipe Bomb
Some mates and I made a pipe bomb/mortar once and got arrested. I mixed up my own black powder using my Dad's extensive list of chemicals that he kept in the garage (he was an industrial chemist.) We then took said powder to a local sandstone quarry which overlooked the village.

We found an old bit of steel pipe that was sealed at one end, filled the open end with the powder and buried it deep in the sandstone (open end up).

I then proceeded (rather stupidly with hindsight) to hammer a small pebble in the open end to seal it all up. Now having a sealed metal pipe buried in the ground we had no way of igniting it so we built a fire around it. We all sat back expecting not much to happen. The mix of black powder was completely random and the seal on the pipe was a bit suss.

After a while, sparks began shooting out of the end of the pipe (I had also put a good dose of iron filings in the powder.) Now these weren't sparkler type sparks, we're talking a good 7-8 feet in length. Woo-hoo! Our jubilations were short lived as an enormous boom ripped through the quarry temporarily deafening us and leaving a 10 foot wide crater in the sandstone. We legged it. Later on we found out that the pebble in the end of the pipe had smashed through the window of a pub about 1/4 mile away below the quarry and almost killed the barmaid.

We were arrested in school the next morning 'cause someone snitched. Bastards! Good fun though. My Dad gave me a right bollocking.
(doowaz, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:48, Reply)

In the summer, when I was 15 or so
myself and two friends were out a-wandering by some huuuge fields. One of them decided it would be a funny idea to begin flicking matches around, and soon there was a small smokey fire beginning to spread through the dried grasses. As fire generally does, it began to grow, until it looked as if it would get out of hand.
We tried stamping it out, but it was beyond that, and the only method left was to smother it with my new jacket. I refused point blank, after all, who wants a brand new singed and smokey coat?
So off we wandered, rapidly, in the opposite direction for about 15 minutes. The fire was huge now, and spreading like, um, wildfire.
A tractor appeared on the horizon and began to chase us. Run run run. Soon enough we were being shouted at by a farmer, from the opposite side of a ditch and a barbed wire fence. There were fire enginey noises getting closer as well.
We managed to evade the farmer and set off homewards, with a thick black column of smoke spreading in the distance.
After a while, the panic subsided and we found it kinda funny, the smoke was covering a vast area now, and it was rather (uncomfortably)amusing because we hadn't been caught.
As we neared home, still walking along a trail by more fields, the twunt that had been flicking matches decided that he was going to fish a golf ball out of a water trough, which took a stupid amount of time. The guy was definitely an idiot.
It was then that the farmers struck. In a pincer movement, they outflanked us and were a little miffed to say the least. They were violently angry as the damage was severe and with a bit more violence and the threat of even more, they got our names and addresses out of us and eventually let us go.

The police came by a few days later, and both my mates were conveniently on holiday , so I was left being grilled by a rather imposing fellow, with a monobrow that could only mean werewolf. Luckily this had been my first offence (or rather the first time I had been caught), and the farmers were planning to torch the field later in the year anyway, so I was let off with a warning. I did think that I was going to end up ripped to bloody shreds the next full moon though.

Moral: Stay away from muppets with matches, never wear your new coat in a field and beware shape-shifting policemen.
( Kallus speaks for the Spores, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:48, Reply)

man, I've had a lot of run-ins w fire...
The first apartment I rented had a gas oven that had to be lit. I had never done that before, so I turned on the gas, shut the door of the oven, and walked away for 5 minutes or so. I figured that would give it time to...well, I dunno. I came back, opened the door, lit the match, and a huge blue fireball flew out of the oven and into my face. Goodbye eyebrows. Man I can't believe how stupid all this was, now that I'm listing it all! DUH!!
(lightningwon, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:42, Reply)

...And she married me. Go figure.
So I invite this girl over to the apartment. I cook a pot of spaghetti and meatballs, everything from scratch. Got a nice bottle of red, got candles on the table. I'm like Mr. Romance this evening. I serve dinner, take a seat, and lean over the table to start the Sam Cooke CD.

So she's tucking in to the food, I'm admiring how beautiful she looks, and I notice something bright out on the periphery of my vision. I look down, and my chest is on fire. Seems while I was firing up the CD, I was leaning over the candle.

Did I say "Mr. Romance"? More like Mr. Don't Play With Matches...
(wretch, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:41, Reply)

Remember kids: Mr Fire is not your friend
The Summer of ‘76 was a scorcher. The sun burned down every day. It didn’t rain for months, and water was rationed as the reservoirs ran dry. Instead of a beautiful lush green, the England was brown, withered and fit to burst into flames. Which is probably a very bad thing if you’re a ten-year-old pyromaniac.

I just couldn’t help it. I had a thing for fire. My parents didn’t help much by putting me in the cub scouts, which was rubbing two sticks together and blazing camp fires all the way. My most excellent grandfather had a bonfire almost every weekend, and we’d pile anything flammable on top and watch the flames scorch the feathers off birds for a hundred yard radius.

I had to burn things. It was ace.

So it came to pass that I found myself on the wasteland between Loddon Hall and the youth club with nothing to do and a packet of Swan Vestas rattling in my pocket. A hedge ran along one side separating it from the park, and that’s where I found an empty glass coke bottle.

It was then I had one of those lightbulb-over-your-head moments.

“Wouldn’t it be great if I could light a fire in this coke bottle and carry it around with me?”

To a ten year old this genie in a bottle stuff is pretty sound logic, but frankly, nigh on impossible as any fule kno.

I stuffed the bottle with scraps of paper and tinder-dry sticks of which there was a plentiful supply. I struck my first match and put it in. Nothing. As soon as it passed the bottle top it went out. Stupid thing. I tried it again. And again. And again with less paper and sticks in the bottle. Clearly it wasn’t going to work.

My second lightbulb moment.

“What if I lit the fire outside the bottle, and once it’s well lit, I can put it in!”

Genius. I set about building a small fire out of the materials to hand. One match, and up it went like Mount Vesuvius. In the space of approximately five seconds, my small fire had become a raging inferno. And there was no way on earth I was going to pick it up and shove it in a bottle. In fact, the fire was spreading at such an alarming rate over the grass and into the bushes that all thought of my fire-in-a-bottle were forgotten and replaced by an overwhelming urge to run away and hide under my bed.

So that’s what I did. I only lived about a quarter of a mile away, and my feet barely touched the ground. A glance over my shoulder confirmed the worst - the entire hedgerow was aflame in almost biblical proportions. I ran upstairs and dived under my bed. By the light of a blazing match (yes, I really was THAT stupid), I could see that I was alright and clearly hadn’t been followed home by the forces of law and order.

I went downstairs. My mother was standing at the kitchen window watching a column of thick black smoke rising into the sky, punctuated by the odd lick of flame. The sound of sirens could be heard.

“Ooh. I wonder what happened there then?”

I wouldn’t know, mother, I wouldn’t know. I just hoped my eyebrows would grow back before she noticed.

Postscript: I went back to the scene of the crime a few years ago (for the now infamous Wedding From Hell). It’s all grown back now, and I didn’t even have the slightest urge to strike a match. Hardly.

Shameless plug: More burny tales of mirth and woe back at the Scary webshite. That bloke from the Prodigy reckoned he was a twisted firestarter. Feh - he was a rank amateur.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:22, Reply)

ooooh fire!
When i was a child, one christmas morning at about 5am after opening my presents, i decided i would be helpful and tidy by puttin all the disguarded wrapping paper in the Parkray (Tm) coal fire we used to have in the sitting room. I piled it all in to the flames, only for half of it to fall straight back out again onto the carpet, leaving nice black burn/melt holes in the carpet. Wasn't the best christmas ever....
(Trimble, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:17, Reply)

well kinda a fire
Well, I added 2 completely volatile substances together in a tank of petrol, which would have been good if it had been in an empty field, but this experiment just happened to be in the utility room of my house. The reaction, takes about 3-5 seconds to kick of, in this time I was bricking it, the flames bust out into the mixture which began spontaneously combusting, igniting the petrol, the flames as you can probably imagine, immediately ignited into a big ball of burning gas, in turn lighting the petrol vapours in the air, there was a huge, Whoof, and the flames went out, due to the vacuum that the vapours created on combustion. I escaped with no fringe and no eyebrows and no eyelashes. The two chemicals were potassium permanganate and glycerine. Don’t do it inside, you can buy both at chemists.
(Fragrent Vagrant, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:17, Reply)

oh yeah!
I got frustrated trying to burn a big pile of wet leaves in my yard. I had tried EVERYTHING, and I got bold (read: STUPID) enough to shake a little gasoline on there. I stood back and threw matches. Nothing. I put more on. Threw matches. Nothing! I put quite a bit more on. Stood back, and WHHOOOOOOOOOOM! Fireball, shockwave, almost like a bomb. I'll never forget the sound.
(lightningwon, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:16, Reply)

The Burning Ross Of Aylesbury- BWAHAHAHAHA!
'Twas that crazy year of 2002- I was in lower sixth at school in Aylesbury, Bucks, and I had a friend which I did politics with called Ross. I also had a cigaratte lighter which I used to burn things (I don't smoke- but I did chemistry so it was OK to have a bit of extra fire).

Anyway, he always wore the same jumper day in and day out. It was a lovely cream and black highlighted one, with food smears across it. Possibly made by a grandmother. Anyway, we were walking out of politics at the end of the day, and I thought it would be amusing to torment him with fire. So I lit the cigaratte lighter against his jumper- and suddenly a sheet of flame rippled across his side. We both realised the fire at the same time, and spend several seconds beating him out.

Oh the memories...
Ross now lives in Exeter.
(Phil The Easter Chick, Tue 2 Mar 2004, 20:16, Reply)