It’s under the “I Don’t Know What I’d Do With It, But I Want Them Anyway” category.
I’m not exactly 100% sure what use smoke grenades (or smoke-generating devices) are in a preparedness situation. Oh, sure…from the ‘lost hiker’ perspective it’s nice to have an enormous cloud of smoke wafting through heavy forest canopy making your location more readily apparent to rescuers. Or if you’re in a boat at sea. Now, drop those two scenarios and ….. ?
The last time I heard of anyone outside of the military using smoke to cover a retreat or advance was this guy..and it did not go well for him. I suppose that in some sort of Mad Max world you’d use them to choke people out of buildings or perhaps provide distractions. But, other than that, I’m not really seeing a lot of practical application. Then again, I relly haven’t sat down and wargamed it through completely either.
Regardless….the subject does have some interesting baggage with it.
In the old days, back when this was a free country, you could buy your classic military pull-ring smoke grenades through the mail and at gun shows. They were fun and, no two ways about it, looked cool mixed in with your gear. Paintballers loved em. And, as usual, some scrotally-challenged wonder at ATFE decided that the fuze assembly and/or igniter system fell under the classification of ‘regulated explosive’ and that was the end of the party. (although they are still available on department letterhead or with an ATFE explo license.)
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the market. A few outfits have stepped in with their own version of ‘pull ring’ smoke grenades. Most notably, these guys. I ordered a few of them the other week, out of curiosity and they arrived a few days ago. I haven’t tried them yet but the videos of them being used seem rather promising. But…they are nowhere near the durability of the military product. For one thing, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a firework that has been dressed up with tactial-looking stickers and graphics. The ‘body’ is a heavy cardboard tube..like most fireworks. The degree of weather-resistance and durability of this product would seem to be….mild. As I said, I have no idea what I would do with these things, but if I did think I had a need for them I’d want them to be as waterproof, crushproof, moistureproof, and durable as possible.
To be fair, though…it looks like they generate a nice amount of smoke in a hurry. And..theyre cheap.
Giving us better durability and water-resistance, but a distinct lack of color, are the distress smoke signals available to boaters. I like these. I can usually find them cheap at gun shows, they aren’t about to raise the eyebrows of anyone, and they seem to generate a decent amount of smoke. I could entirely see someone rolling one or two of these down an office stairwell in Katrinaville to dissuade looters from coming up the stairs.
Naturally, there is always a DIY option for these sorts of things. A quick perusal of YouTube, a trip to WalMart, a side trip to Home Depot, and you an pretty much build some amazing, albeit improvised, smoke generating devices on your own.
In regards to the Enola stuff having a cardboard tube, might a few wraps of our old friend, duct tape help on the rigidity? Maybe find a food source that has a metal can near (very near) the size we could drop this in and tape down or so…
Anyway at this price I’ll have to get a few just to try these ideas.
My concern isnt really rigiditiy, since a thick cardboard tube can be pretty rigid…my concern is about moisture and waterproofness. I suppose as long as you kow what you’re getting and take steps to compensate, it’s okay. But, it seems those steps would reduce the ‘quick access’ to such devices.
Waterproofness. We dip them in wax and after drying, store them in a plastic bag. No issues and they work just fine (after taking them out of the bag of course). 😉
That might be the way to go, sort of like when we watched all the badasses in the 80s “straighten the grenade pins” to make them easier. *shudder*
I like the dipping in wax with a bag idea, just be sure (again) get it out of the bag before the perceived need.
Before you think about “rolling one…,down an office stairwell” test them outdoors on a bed of something flammable — pine needles, a section of carpet scrap, etc — in the middle of someplace non-flammable (parking lot?). M18 and M8 smoke grenades — the real military ones — have a long history of burning down buildings and starting fires on training ranges.
And also be sure that your use won’t result in exposure (of you and yours) to the smoke. The active ingredient in the M8 white smoke grenades — and many of the civilian replacements — is zinc hexachloroethane, which burns to produce a cloud of zinc chloride, which forms hydrochloric acid when inhaled and in contact with the moisture in one’s lungs. HC smoke has injured quite a few soldiers — many permanently — and killed more than a few.
Some home-made smoke grenades use sugar and potassium chlorate. This isn’t as toxic as HC, but sugar and KClO3 mixes can be explosive, and could result in charges for “manufacturing an improvised explosive device” in some jurisdictions.
Smoke devices in the standard four issue colors (red, yellow, green, violet) are primarily intended as daytime signaling devices, and would be equally suitable as such in any post-apocalyptic scenario one could envision.
The most frequent us of white HC smoke is as an obscurant, when the bad guys already know you’re out there, and the subterfuge, or aiming disruption benefits outweigh the tactical deficiency of a huge billowing cloud of white smoke.
The cautions about their incendiary properties is well-heeded, as more than one dumbass 2dLt on a field exercise has discovered.
Ask me how I know.