Uh. Oh. Let’s just look at this wonderful assortment of words: drone, flamethrower, China. No, surprisingly enough, this isn’t some kind of terrifying weapon of war; you won’t be seeing your local McDonald’s set ablaze by an unmanned drone with a fire cannon any time in the near future.
In fact, terrifying as this may seem, this unmanned death machine is actually a tool for routine domestic maintenance. Check it out:
Yep, seems like pretty routine maintenance, right? Just using a flame-throwing drone to burn a net off a power line. Everything’s fine, here; carry on.
Per Esquire:
The Wall Street Journal reports that a net became tangled up in a power line in Xiangyang, and it had “severely affected” the power line’s operation. Maintenance workers used a flame-throwing drone to get rid of a net that was tangled up in a power line. And when we say “get rid of,” we mean “burn to fucking oblivion.”
Of course, removing trash isn’t the most glamorous and/or badass of activities for a flame-throwing drone to complete, but at least no eagles will be injured.
Look, I know this is supposedly routine maintenance work, but either China is just trying to be ostentatious and gaudy (like Dubai’s firefighters) or they’re surreptitiously demonstrating the kinds of wacky, destructive, totally insane devices they’re capable of creating. My bet’s on the latter—though I do wonder how long it’ll take for these flame-throwing death machines to make it to the shelves of your local Walmart. Black Friday’s only nine months away, folks.
(h/t Esquire)