Starting a fire with a potato.

Start with a medium-to-large potato. Russets are best although Yukon Golds work well also. Stay away from the baby Reds. Take a large fork and poke numerous holes through the skin of the potato. Insert the potato into your microwave oven and set it for 90 minutes on high. Depending on the wattage of the microwave, your potato will burst into flames before your eyes.

Really, how do you start fires with potatoes? I thought I'd heard just about all the different ways of starting fires, including how to start them using ice but I've never heard of using potatoes.

 

I haven't heard that one. I know you can use a Frito corn chip to transfer fire from one place to another. It's great for a tinder bundle.

 

Squeeze the water out and throw potassium in it, then toss leaves on

 

I though maybe you wave it in front of a starving guy and get him to rub the sticks together fast enough to start a fire....

 

How the hell would you start a fire with ice? Never heard of that before. Seems impossible to me!

 

It assumes you are in a frozen environment. It takes a fair amount of effort, but you can create a magnifying glass from ice which can then be used to focus sunlight and start a fire.

It isn't terribly practical and I believe it's probably more for bragging rights than anything else.

 

It is really possible to make a magnifying glass from ice?

 

I'm pretty sure that if you use some nails and wire, you can measure voltage from a potatoe...maybe you could load a capacitor and create a spark ?

 

Okay, I know that you can make a potato power a clock and light a light bulb.
Hypothetically, you might be able to hook enough potatoes together to get enough potential to make steel wool glow but I am not sure that you could get enough amperage.

Really this is just a guess.
Make a potato light an LED

 

OK....ya need to McGyver this.....but here we go...

you need;
potato
toothpaste
salt
2 wires
2 toothpicks
cotton swab

cut potato in 1/2
poke 2 holes w/ tooth all the way thru on 1 side
push 1 wire thru 1 hole and the second wire thru 2nd hole

take 2nd half of potato and scoop out a nook from center and fill with salt
then add a glob of toothpaste to the salty nook and mix

take both halves of potato and reassemble (make sure only the bare ends of wire are pushed thru in the first half and stick together with toothpicks)

take a cotton swab...fluff it up....and wrap it around 1 ends of wire coming out of potato....wait several minutes...then lightly touch other wire to cotton swab....


weird huh?

 

As far as the potato, I could not find any ref to starting a fire with a potato other than using electricity running Through it or drying it out first. You may be able to I just couldn't find any info on it.



Fire from ice. YES
Source Mythbusters: http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/01/episode_45_shredded_plane_fire.html

 

Fire from ICE...
Native people of Alaska and Siberia have been forming lenses from ice for centuries, and using the lens to focus sun light well enough to start tender smoldering.
-----------------------

There was something about using a piece of ice or snow for an incendiary device in the military, but I can't remember the exact details...
Wasn't in a book, I just heard one of the EOD guys talking about it once casually...

It's like taking an element, Phosphorous, Potassium, Sodium, or something like that and rolling it up in a snow ball or hollowing out a piece of well frozen ice and adding the element to that and plugging the hole.
Then you slide the contraption into a heated space, like bunker enemy tent, ect.
Takes a while for the ice/snow to melt, but when it becomes liquid water it will react with the elemental substance and start a raging fire that adding water to just makes it burn hotter and faster...

No reference, and may have been BS, but the EOD guy was from German and swore it would work...
Swore the Russians inflicted several casualties with this product during WW II by leaving these things in areas that would later be occupied by German forces and as soon as they started a fire....

Maybe some of our military information historians can shed some light on this...
I just don't have access to Russian military archives, nor do I particularly care to go routing around looking for the plans...

 

Probably potassium...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFG4Yr7lQzw[/ame]

 

Okay now this is a little off topic but fun to watch.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2134266654801392897&q
It is about alkali metals and what happens when they are dropped into a bathtub of water.

 

Yes, but again, I believe doing so is more for bragging rights than practicality. If you have the materials necessary for a fire, namely fuel, there are far easier ways to create fire than creating an ice magnifying lens.

Photographic evidence...

 

I would love to see your reference for this... I study old native ways and how they survived and spend many hours talking and learining from some of the elders up here... This is one thing that has never been mentioned but I will be definately be glad to ask around and find out about it.

I can see the practicality of this connected to the link just above my post here... But we are talking Alaska here... Where the winter temps in the north range from 50 to 70 below 0...or more...We are also talking where the sun goes down in November and comes back up in Feb. In the area around Barrow...Fairbanks with 3 hours of day light in the winter and farther south around Anchorage there is about 5 hours in the winter time...
We are talking the sunnier the day here the colder. Thanks....

 

I've seen fire started with ice on TV and with water and a condom on u-tube but that would be a last resort for me.

 

Im not saying it cant be done, JW, I am asking for a reference for the folks up in Alaska and Siberia... What my point is... there isnt that much sun light to start a fire with up here... What sun light we do have is a very distant sun light and it doesnt have the capability of warming here in the winter so Im wondering how it can start a fire. I would like to see a reference for that and follow up with it... I would also like to read the rest of what that information is in and gleen some new information and education for myself.

 

Potato to make fire

Take two potatoes and rub them together...oh wait, that's mashed. Heat would be needed after that.