Talk:Molotov cocktail

message: I think we should get a freely lisensed ilustration of a molotov coctail for this article. Either a drawing of some kind or a photo of one (it should be easy enough to make a "mock up" of one). Once we have that we can loose the "fair use" image. --Sherool 22:57, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image request 

message: I re-added the information on safe-handling, it's as relevant to the article as history and basic construction. Shaddack and Gfad1 had previously mentioned doubts about flour and whether this was an arson's manual respectively. 
To Shaddack: flour is nothing more than carbohydrates, it is a WONDERFUL oxidizer. If you have access to an *outside* fire (like a campfire) and a scoop of unbleached flour, you'll see what a delightful accelerant simple flour can be. Off topic but interesting, a calorie is the amount of energy something releases when burned. Asbestos has a very low caloric rating, gasoline has a very high caloric rating. Things with high caloric ratings release large amounts of energy and contribute to the overall efficiency/heat of a fire.  Seriously, throw a cup of flour on an open fire, and be amazed at the awesome flammability - which leads me to my next point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legomancer (talk • contribs) 08:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Flour is fundamentally a mixture of polysaccharides and proteins. There's nothing oxidizing in it, save perhaps few PPMs of residues of flour bleaching agents. From strictly chemical sense, flour is NOT an oxidizer (if we omit the border laboratory cases of making it react with powerful reducing agents, but we talk about normal oxygen-grade burning here). However, it still may be a pretty effective "performance enhancer". (Re open fire, you can pour some gasoline on it and see a nice visual effect as well, but this does not make the gasoline an oxidizer as well. On the other hand, pouring some LOX in a fire is pretty magnificent.) --Shaddack 13:11, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Shaddack, you're right. Flour by itself is not an oxidizer. There are some impurities/additives in flour that are oxidizers (potassium bromate and chlorine cause oxidative changes in carotenoid pigments) though I can't find anything that asserts it would work to oxidize a fire. I should have been more careful in my phrasing and said something to the effect of "Flour is extremely combustible, and can increase the burning temperatures of fires when used as a fuel additive. Care should be taken because small amounts of airborn flour can create suitable conditions for a flash fire." Thanks for keeping me on the straight and narrow. --Legomancer 16:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree that people should have access to this information if they want it, but I'm not sure we're trying to accumulate all human knowledge here - we're just trying to make an encyclopedia - and by extension I'm not sure this is the place for that information. Personally, I was a but suprised when the article went from saying "overfilling the bottle is a common mistake" to saying "for optimal damage the bottle should be a half to two thirds full". My personal opinion is that the second part of that isn't what I'd expect to find in an encyclopedia. 137.205.148.32 10:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right ! And more, I think it's a non-sense to indicate so many details, the childs reading WP may do "to see" so dangerous weapons for themselves. Personnally, I have stopped definitly my participation at WP (French and English) on that point. It's crucial for a large recommandation by responsible teachers and parents. It's very borring some contributors don't understand that.  Sorry, WP was a beautiful project, but without limits it's "science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" --81.252.15.253 16:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: My opinion (on the inclusion of safe handling/construction instructions)

message: I have a question that might seem obvious to most people but has always confused me.  Ok, so a cocktail weapon is made with a bottle of gasoline and then a gas soaked rag stuffed into the opening of the bottle or wrapped around the neck right?  Since gas ignites so quickly wouldn't this design mean that the rag would always burn up before hitting the target?  rvinall 08:15, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why you have to throw it quickly. 64.5.200.68 23:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  question 

message: If this refers to the destruction of the tread on the German tank in the final battle scene, it is incorrect. They used sticky bombs made from demo charges. --152.160.19.186 21:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saving Private Ryan connection 

message: So a few years ago, I offer some good natured advise on how to safely build a Molly, and you'd think I was advocating child porn. Now, it's 2007 and there's pictures and everybody is all "this is wonderful." Did I miss a meeting or something? Thumbs up to whoever wrote it. --Legomancer 19:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WTF 

message: "Molotov cocktail is also a name for a drink for kindergarteners, composed of Gasoline, pepper and Juicy Juice."
I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly accurate.  Is the Molotov Cocktail the name for any other drink, though?  Sounds badass enough to possibly be. 65.94.110.105 23:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Although obscure, there are several drinks called "Molotov cocktail." Bear in mind it has absolutely nothing in common with the flammable substance. Drinking anything with petroleum distillates will prove very bad or fatal (blindness is a common side-effect). I stress this is unrelated to the kerosene/gasoline mixture, but here's a recipe from Barmeister.com
2 part(s) Champagne
1 part(s) Cherry Brandy
1 part(s) Curacao
1 part(s) Vodka
1 part(s) Gin
Serve in chilled glass, or shake with ice and strain, or keep the ingredients refrigerated.
And another with much less work:
1 1/2 oz Vodka
Float 1 splash 151 proof rum
Pour a shot of vodka, float the 151, light, blow out, and take the shot down. Note: a lot of bars in the US do not allow flaming beverages for liability reasons.
And lastly one that sounds suspiciously like a frozen mudslide:
Ingredients:
1 Quart Ice Cream
2 cup Black Coffee
1 Quart Vodka
0.5 oz. Rum
Mix ingredients in blender (must to in at least two batches to fit all ingredients). Sprinkle top of each portion with a little ground cinnamon or nutmeg.
KaBOOM----Legomancer 01:59, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drink? 

message: Wikipedia uses the word gasoline.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.14.72.182 (talk)  01:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it uses the style appropriate to the article it's in. Energy use and conservation in the United Kingdom uses petrol; Strategic Petroleum Reserve uses gasoline Pseudomonas(talk) 08:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This subject is dealt with in Fossil fuel for reciprocating piston engines equipped with spark plugs in WIKIPEDIA:LAMEST EDIT WARS. Petecarney 11:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article started out using petrol and was changed to gasoline with Revision as of 09:43, 20 May 2003, so according to the  MOS section WP:MOS#National varieties of English the use of petrol should be retained. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In many parts of the world, "petrol" is applied to petroleum products in general while "gasoline" is a specific product. UK uses "parafin" to name what is known in the US as "kerosene"; in the US "parafin" is a solid wax used for candles. The Haynes automotive manuals contain a glossary to disambiguate terms: the instructions to clean and degrease car parts with parafin can be puzzling if you skip reading the glossary. "Petrol bombs" are often made with used motor oil with a kerosene or fuel oil igniter to stick to armored vehicles and burn generating lingering smoke, not always with gasoline which can be in short supply in wartime. Where German war records indicate corpses were cremated with "petrol", the "petrol" used was waste oil retained when vehicle motor oil was changed. This is an English language encyclopedia not a UK/British specific encyclopedia and we do have visitors who read English who are not British. Or should we do like the Haynes manual and include a glossary. Naaman Brown (talk) 13:04, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "gasoline" or "petrol" 

message: Was it used in the Castro riots?
Seriously, I'm planning to work on the 'Mechanism' paragraph to tighten up the language a bit and I thought I'd better find out what the liquid incense referred to in the current version is. So I googled it and was surprised. Petecarney 14:55, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[poppers|Liquid Incense?]] 

message: Here are the results of some Google searches, done with "-wikipedia" in the search line to remove references back to this article.
519,000 for "molotov cocktail"
131,000 for "petrol bomb"
12,800 for "gasoline bomb"
7,960 for "molotoff cocktail" (Maybe French transliteration of Russian "ъ", consider Смирновъ = Smirnov = Smirnoff)
1,790 for "molotov bomb"
488 for "molotov's cocktail"
290 for "malotov cocktail"
214 for "melotov cocktail"
9 for "moloto cocktail"
7 for "poor man's hand grenade", of which only 2 are independant references to molotov cocktails--Petecarney 10:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Synonyms 

message: Might be useful to tag this on to the history section, but according to the book "The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-39" by Antony Beevor, the first Molotov Cocktails were used by the Spanish Foreign Legion (who were fighting on the nationalist side) in a battle against russian supplied tanks outside Madrid in the fall of 1936. Worth adding? I only have the Danish translation, so I can't give a precise page number, but it's in the chapter 7. KDLarsen 01:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Tom Wintringham's works might be more accessible. I think there is a bit about this in "New Ways of War". Of course, the petrol bomb was not known as a Molotov cocktail until the Winter War. Gaius Cornelius 08:13, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use in the Spanish Civil War? 

message: Are we sure the guy in the top picture is hooded like the caption says? Seems to me I can see his hair... Sheep81 (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture caption

message: "they [Molotov Cocktails] are frequently used by the likes of yobbos and rioters."
I have removed "the likes of yobbos and", because it hardly seems to set an encyclopedic tone for the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoefromRML (talk • contribs) 12:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encyclopedic? 

message: There is another possible name source mentioned in the Russian variant of this page.
Molotov has signed the order to the Soviet food industry to start production of these weapons at 10 June, 1941.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.51.82.19 (talk) 23:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  an alternative name history 

message: The image :Image:OldhamRioter1.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check
:* That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
:* That this article is linked to from the image description page.
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --23:28, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Image copyright problem with Image:OldhamRioter1.jpg

message: One user is adamant that this  image should not be used in this article, apparently in the mistaken belief that to include it contravenes WWIN#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual.2C_guidebook_or_textbook. To me it seems absurd to suggest that including this image makes the article read like a manual, or that the Spanish language text within the image constitutes a how-to, tutorial, walk-through, or instruction manual in an English language article.
The fact that the image originates in a manual is the reason why it is there, to document the molotov cocktail's history in subversive literature. Please make your view known, for or against. If there is a consensus against it I'm happy remove the image from the article myself. --Petecarney (talk) 15:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing mistaken about my edit. It is a scan of a page from a manual on "how to" make the item. Therefore, it is against the cited policy. You should not have reverted my last edit until a consensus was reached because it was the most stable version of the page. The picture has not been on the page for several months. I intend to alert an admin or two so they can weigh on on the discussion based on their knowledge of policy. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 16:15, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no expert, but I think I'd side with Ghostexorcist here. Yes, it's in spanish, and yes any moron can make a molotov cocktail if they think about it, but I don't think it contributes anything to the article, especially since the picture hasn't been in it for quite a while. Skinny87 (talk) 10:02, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My opinion is that whether it violates that policy or not is irrelevant, as it adds very little value to the article, and shouldn't be in under that particular clause. However, should consensus prove that the image is worth keeping, I'd say that the image isn't really in violation of the policy because its not there as instuction (i.e. simple prose), but as a representation of history (how the CIA promoted Nicaraguans to insurrect). If anyone wanted to use Wikipedia as a how-to-manual, using an image of text is an ass-backwards way of doing it. bahamut0013♠♣  19:25, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

text: I don't think it contravenes the policy. I think that's there to stop people creating articles like How to bake a lemon cake or What to do if your dog gets fleas. I think the picture is reasonable, especially since the Freedom Fighter's Manual is mentioned in the text; whether or not we include it is pretty much an aesthetic judgement, not a policy one. Pseudomonas(talk) 19:55, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is always, of course, the option of cropping the text off, leaving just the lower image, though I think that's less interesting in terms of political background, and the artwork itself is pretty substandard. Pseudomonas(talk) 20:05, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be happy to crop it as suggested. I think the childish artwork gives it a certain ironic humour. However I'm now starting to think we should chop out that whole section for being too trivial. --Petecarney (talk) 00:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The cropped version looks much better. Thank you. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:25, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  CIA image, looking for a consensus 

message: Molotov Cocktail is so widely used, iguess it should be a point that is a partial list, it would be impossible to count how many times it's been used. 200.222.3.3 (talk) 21:23, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use by Civilians 

message: perhaps strange question, but is it known why the Fins decided to name it after the minister and not, say, Stalin? Mallerd (talk) 18:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm told that it was Molotov who claimed that Soviet bombers are in fact dropping food for the Finns. This sounds like the kind of rumor that's made up in wartime, but also like the kind of thing Finns would turn into a running gag. --Kizor 14:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: From the article:  When Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Molotov bread baskets.[2] Geoff B (talk) 14:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW Molotov was also head of government in Soviet Union then (and not Stalin)... -- Ahsoous (talk) 01:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Stalin was still very much the head of government; there was no doubt among anyone anywhere that Stalin was running the show. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was largely Molotov's brainchild, but nobody in the Politburo did anything without Stalin's explicit approval. Stalin was smart enough to pass the buck off on his subordinates with an absolute bare minimum of paperwork to destroy later, a skill Hitler never learned. Court Appointed Shrub (talk) 07:22, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  minister 

message: Do we really need that legality section?  I mean other weapons of war don't seem to have them.  It would be weird to see a legality section on flamethrowers: "Flamethrowers can kill people and killing people is illegal in most countries."  -Keith (Hypergeek14)Talk 22:17, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legality Section? 

message: Soviets have used them extensively. They were mass-produced different variants, some self-igniting. Why had't they been included in the article?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.195.187.245 (talk) 18:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Military issued incendiary bottle bombs 

message: I'm surprised that there is no mention of the use of these weapons during protests. At least on of the photos looks like it it has police in the background, which suggets that the Molotov was thrown during a protest. 
These are used quite often in, for example, Greece, during anti-state, anti-police and anti-capitalism protests. **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 14:49, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use during protests etc. 

message: I was watching Lion of the Desert that shows Libyan rebels against Italian conquerors dropping earthen jars filled with flammable liquid and topped with a rag, sometime before 1931.
Is this artistic licence or was that a real predecessor of Molotov cocktails?
--Error (talk) 18:19, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lion of the Desert 

message: did not deal with "partitioning" Finnland, but setting "spheres of interest" in Eastern Europe. --197.228.9.76 (talk) 14:35, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite right. I have made a change. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 09:34, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:   Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact  

message: "....non-professionally equipped fighters...." "professionalism" is not always "perfect"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:7C05:8000:D9FA:4A42:1635:6A2F (talk) 21:23, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  a comment 

message: The captions of the first two photos are clearly wrong. The first photo depicts the torso of a person with a glass bottle strapped to their belt and is captioned "A Finnish soldier with **two** Molotov cocktails in the 1939-40 Winter War"; the second depicts a soldier with two bottles hanging from his belt and is captioned "A German soldier with **a** Molotov cocktail on the Eastern Front" (emphasis mine in both cases). So, did the captions get switched in their entirety or just the numbers? (I'd guess the latter, with the person in white wearing snow camouflage but it would be nice if somebody recognized the uniforms, for example.) Dricherby (talk) 21:41, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The first is Finnish, the second is German. Only the numbers themselves got switched. I'd take a look at revision history, as it's likely a very old prank. 38.106.100.57 (talk) 04:16, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: After further inspection, it seems User:Chiswick_Chap hid it in an 8 June 2016 revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Molotov_cocktail&oldid=724279281 38.106.100.57 (talk) 04:28, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed.  The captions are right, except the numbers where wrong.  --A D Monroe III (talk) 01:04, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo captions 

message: Kinda making a bold edit here, but I think it may be suitable. Recently as shortages of gasoline have occurred in Venezuela preventing some from making Molotovs as well as finding "creative" ways for protesters to counter Venezuelan authorities, the "puputov" has been created. Various news organizations have covered this and since it was directly inspired by the Molotov, it should be suitable. I also placed the section "Variants", to cover it, since I'm sure there may be other variants out there somewhere.--ZiaLater (talk) 09:18, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Puputovs... 

message: An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Petrol Bombs. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so.  ««« SOME GADGET GEEK »»» (talk) 07:47, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Petrol Bombs" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: Gold, David L. 2009. "Etymology and Etiology in the Study of Eponymous Lexemes: The Case of English Molotov cocktail and Finnish Molotovin koktaili." Gold, David L. 2009. Studies in Etymology and Etiology (With Emphasis on Germanic, Jewish, Romance, and Slavic Languages). Selected and Edited, with a Foreword, by Félix Rodríguez González and Antonio Lillo Buades. Alicante. Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante. Pp. 193-235.
The article notes that the earliest-known evidence for the English term is older than the earliest-known evidence for the Finnish one.
That does not necessarily mean that the Finnish term is younger, but it does mean that we should just state the dates (Gold gives them in the article) and leave it at that. 
Since this is by far the longest treatment of the name, it should at least be listed in the bibliography and checked for possible useful information.
The article also deals with the question of when Molotov cocktails (however called) were first used.S. Valkemirer (talk) 01:05, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  43-page article on  the name "Molotov cocktail" 

message: In light of the current world events, someone seems to be trying to send people who need help specific instructions on how to construct this device. While this may be a noble goal for some, the Ukranian/Russian translation should be written on Ukranian or Russian Wikipedia, with the English translation written here. Either way, they should be written as though they are part of the article, and include sources. I don't know where you're going to FIND sources, but that's not my problem. 135.0.230.68 (talk) 16:36, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  War does not justify vandalism 

message: On Twitter, Ukrainian officials told civilians to stay indoors and prepare Molotovs while Russian troops invaded Kiev, should we add a section for that? Poopykibble (talk) 19:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It's already mentioned. Section, I don't know. Endwise (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

text: That is interesting. I can't find any other mention of it in other news outlets, and I'm not even sure what "silver dust" actually is. It seems likely that was the decision of the specific group of people The Guardian was discussing rather than any recipe dictated by Ukrainian officials. For instance, here was another homemade recipe used by one group of Ukrainians mentioned in The Independent: "They are armed with instructions from television and radio channels, as well as information gleaned from internet searches ... Ms Kucherenko and her friends have gone for the option of baking soda, Styrofoam, strips of old tyre, soap, cooking oil, what petrol they can find, vodka, large beer bottles, and wicks made out of torn-up tea towels. Endwise (talk) 10:49, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: personally I´d say: negotiations are better. then again, there are those who want to get the connection between 'bazooka joe' piecefully acting  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4DD4:CDC0:0:6093:5D54:1A6A:D858 (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use in the russian-ukraine war 

message: The citing on the name history is attrocious, at this point this can be considered a myth, one cites a book from 2012 about a british game show and the other is an article on a website that also doesn't soruce it. A proper source would for example be the actual speech Molotov gave, some firsthand sources about the bombs being called breadbaskets etc. This is nothing. I can only find this Myth in different variations but none actually link a historic source it either links back to wikipedia or to nothing at all. For all we know it wasn't even the Finns that came up with it. I didn't even want to go down all this I just wanted to look it up for a youtube comment. There has to be an actual source for the Name or this will be another Hetzer situation. 217.229.24.252 (talk) 22:20, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name history