The electric toaster is an important component of civilization and for the domestic environment, completely adequate. However, there are situations where a fully equipped kitchen might not be available. For example, it has long been established that the British military cannot function without constant access to tea. To this end, main battle tanks, APCs etc. are equipped with boiling vessels..<link> This means that the Challenger II may be considered an armoured forward-operating field-deployable kettle. What if this capability could be expanded to the provision of toast under fire? It would be a huge force-multiplier and potentially render the armoured and infantry units deployable for months on end.
Imagine the scene, 8 infantry and an FV432 APC are providing anti-tank support but somewhat pinned down. They've been there 45 minutes, and 12 cups of tea can only suppress a squaddies hunger for so long, so, on the radio, a FDPTU is ordered up from the rear.
In rush two extra squaddies carrying the FDPTU between them, rushing in like a mortar team. The unit is in a similar form factor to something like a 30mm canon ammo crate. In their spare hands, a case of thermite cartridges and two loaves of thick white sliced bread*. They slam it down, pop the lid and quickly add in ~40 bread slices to the predetermined slots. In-between, we have the thermite. These are disposable metal plates coated in a stabilized thermite with a magnesium ignitor. The top is closed and the unit fired by magnesium strips protruding through the lid. The thermite cartridges between the bread slices burns top to bottom in about 2 seconds. Quick as a flash, the team open up the lid, pass off the slices to the buttering operative, distribute to the squaddies and leave. The APC & infantry can now continue fighting for at least an hour & 12 more cups of tea before further sustenance is required.
I think 8th would have liked this one.
*Warburton's the ideal candidate.-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 Boiling Vessel https://en.wikipedi...wiki/Boiling_vessel [bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021] TODAY'S CULINARY TOPIC IS: How to Light a Charcoal Fire https://www.miamihe...rticle22804491.html [Voice, Mar 03 2021] Thermite popcorn Thermite_20popcorn [Loris, Mar 03 2021] It occurred to me this morning that we should have attended the funeral of [8of7] with several hundred pounds of thermite and an initiator.
He would have loved it.-- UnaBubba, Mar 03 2021 That's a speedy cremation...-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 Indeed. For it maketh a pleasing smell for the lord.-- UnaBubba, Mar 03 2021 Hmm... there are competitions for the "fastest lighting of a barbecue". This idea makes me think (obviously) how fast CAN you toast bread? Is the thermal conductivity of bread a limiting factor? What about the e-m absorption spectrum? Is IR the best way to go? Experiments must be done!-- neutrinos_shadow, Mar 03 2021 Presumably, there is a range from which a thermonuclear explosion would perfectly toast bread. I assume that range is quite a long range, certainly compared to the distances normally used in toasters. So, you could arrange a huge hemispherical array of bread and toast a few million slices at once... the efficiency! You would have to remove the toast relatively quickly however, before the blast wave at least.-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 But you'ld be using the blast wave to distribute the toast, wouldn't you? Hence the cheerful promise, "Seconds after you see the flash, the blast wave reaches you and, with that, your toast."-- pertinax, Mar 03 2021 //thermite and an initiator//
I think he'd have preferred the underground detonation of high explosives, in honour of his hero Barnes Wallace's earthquake bomb.-- pertinax, Mar 03 2021 [n_s], a t-n blast *would* give you toast, but only on one side.-- UnaBubba, Mar 03 2021 // [n_s], a t-n blast *would* give you toast, but only on one side.//
A second bomb on the opposite side would work, but you couldn't get the right hemispherical arrangement, so I'd suggest some sort of large wire rack where individual toasted components were rotated after the first blast in anticipation of the second thermonuclear toasting. I wonder if this was what the Soviets were really going for with those rather unusual Duga arrays?-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 Oh, those crazy Russians1-- UnaBubba, Mar 03 2021 The NATO reporting name "Steelyard" was replaced with "Toastrack" in 1988.-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 //wire rack where individual toasted components were rotated// At last, a practical use for the blast wave! Need a lot of fine tuning to adjust the pivot point to get a clean 180° rotation of each slice though-- pocmloc, Mar 03 2021 This is not nearly as ridiculous as it seems. The U.S. army had to use pack mules relayed to man-mules to keep the frontline hydrated and fed in WW2 Sicily.-- 4and20, Mar 03 2021 //Presumably, there is a range from which a thermonuclear explosion would perfectly toast bread.//
Ah, I once calculated how much popcorn you could make like that, for 8th. He was using thermite for it.-- Loris, Mar 03 2021 //how much popcorn you could make like that,//
So fission primary, fusion secondary and Corn tertiary? The expansion of corn is considerable, and it would be immediate. What level of sound from 100 billion corn kernels popping all at the same time? Then, you have an awful lot of flammable carbon in the air. It could be made to behave like a fuel-air bomb.
Just seen the thermite popcorn idea, when I thought of this I immediately thought it was an 8th-style idea. Turns out it's actually an 8th idea... ha!-- bs0u0155, Mar 03 2021 random, halfbakery