# Starting a fire with a potato.



## Yolanda (Oct 10, 2008)

Does anybody know how to start a fire with a potato? I would like to know how if someone could please tell me.


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## Narsil (Oct 10, 2008)

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.


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## Ineffable Aces (Oct 9, 2008)

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.


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## telegramsam (Oct 13, 2008)

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


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## JeepHammer (Oct 10, 2008)

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....


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## NappyRootz (Oct 13, 2008)

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


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## Narsil (Oct 10, 2008)

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.


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## landshark (Oct 13, 2008)

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


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## plangry (Oct 13, 2008)

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 ?


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## 1984CJ (Oct 9, 2008)

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


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## CHUM (Oct 13, 2008)

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?


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## Binary Encryption (Oct 10, 2008)

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


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## JeepHammer (Oct 10, 2008)

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...


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## grundelia (Oct 14, 2008)

Probably potassium...


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## 1984CJ (Oct 9, 2008)

Okay now this is a little off topic but fun to watch.
It is about alkali metals and what happens when they are dropped into a bathtub of water.


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## Narsil (Oct 10, 2008)

landshark said:


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


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...


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## Washkeeton (Oct 18, 2008)

JeepHammer said:


> 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.
> -----------------------
> 
> ...


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....


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## JW Parker (Oct 18, 2008)

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.


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## Washkeeton (Oct 18, 2008)

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.


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## mchugh (Nov 10, 2008)

*Potato to make fire*

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


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## JeepHammer (Oct 10, 2008)

Washkeeton said:


> I would love to see your reference for this...


US Army Extreme Cold Weather Survival Manual.
It's a Field Manual, Or FM, that was published in the 1950's and I'm sure it's still in print somewhere

The 1st Alaska Irregulars during WW II use it,
Several references to it in the different autobiographies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castner's_Cutthroats
There were at least 4 autobiographies written, and all mentioned 'Fire Ice'.

I think it was called, "US Special Operations In The Pacific Theater" mentioned 'Castner's Cutthroats' and the guys starting fires with nothing more than tender and a piece of ice, throughly amazing the Army engineers that came to Alaska.
I don't have the book anymore, and haven't for 20 years, so I'm not entirely sure of the name...

An actual Alaskan native in the Alaska national guard showed us how to do it while we were taking Extreme Cold Weather Training in Alaska in 1980.

Same time I learned how tasty Caribou meat and Seal Blubber could be!
Also found out what 'Survival Butter' was...

Didn't 'Myth Busters' get a fire started with an ice lens also?

A friend of mine is reading, "US Special Warfare Units in the Pacific Theater 1941-45: "Scouts, Raiders, Rangers and Reconnaissance Units" and he says there is reference to Castner's and natives using nothing but a piece of ice to get a fire started.
Can't swear to that one either since I'm not reading it (yet!).


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## Canadian (Dec 14, 2008)

Barter the potato for a match?


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## Backwoods (Oct 27, 2008)

Canadian said:


> Barter the potato for a match?


Ding........Ding........We have a WINNER!!!

Give that man a cee-gar


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